I think there are times when your values dictate your opinion rather than the facts.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
We’re emotional creatures.
A strong opposition should help reign in excesses of either side, and we should crave it.
There are ideas that originate on the right and are embraced in the left - universal basic income comes to mind.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
Two things:
- Yes it does. It sells a lot of cars, skin care, and fashion. Just look at the sales numbers for off-brand, never-advertised cosmetics (e.g. Walmart’s Equate), generic clothes (which outsell brands by enormous amounts every year), and why it’s incredibly difficult to actually buy a new electric car right now (they’re sold out everywhere; enormous waiting lists).
- Those things aren’t government! Running a government based on feelings is likely the worst possible way for a democracy to govern itself. It’s also the worst possible way to select a candidate! Look at they’re policies and their history and especially the outcomes of their policies. Both the likely outcomes (researched by fact-based organizations that study such things) and the historic outcomes. Then select a candidate.
Aside: To this day it still baffles me that conservatives are still pushing abstinence-only education when study after study has shown conclusively that such programs increase teen pregnancy rates, STD transmission rates, and are overall very bad for society at large. Like, I get that you think your daughter will be fine without comprehensive sex ed but do you think the same of the kids down the street?
If you’re trying to say that liberals are trying to sell government based on science and reason while conservatives are trying to sell government based on feelings and faith, I’d agree with you.
Maybe I’m too cynical from working in marketing?
- Yes, logic sells somethings, but it’s not the majority, or really a remarkable percentage in most categories.
I’d argue that generics are really a substitute purchase for a brand category that has been developed and promoted by brands. If logic was the basis of purchasing then brands probably wouldn’t exist - esp for commodities like flour and sugar. But they do. Like it or not the brands create demand by emotionally manipulating consumers into feeling incomplete, then offering their brand as a way to fill that hole.
Electric cars do have logical benefits, as do a lot of other products, but I’d argue that they’re also a status symbol. It means something to be a person that drives an electric car - it says something about who you are, and your values. There’s a reason Tesla launched as a luxury brand first.
- Agree with you that reason should drive government. However politics is the art of persuasion, as is marketing, and as such there are three key factors: logos, pathos and ethos.
Like it or not your favourite candidate needs to be likeable, believable, and share your convictions to succeed. Or just slightly more so than the alternative.
I’ve always wished that instead of selecting a person or party, that when it came to vote the key campaign policies were what people voted for or against, and the candidate/party who’s positions gained the most support took government with a clear mandate on those policies.
Feel like this would go some way towards infusing more logic-based campaigning, and avoid the cut and thrust of, in the US context, having things like “swift boats” “47% of people” etc become the thing that crashed campaigns, and instead be substantive debates on ideas.
