Is there enough liquidity to do arbitrage against other markets?

Of course they can and they do, but they are in a bind, because they too are anti-government/pro-capitalist.

Republican says: the government (except the “defense” part) is evil, so lets’ cut it, kill it.
Democrat says: yes, the government is evil, but let’s nevertheless expend it a bit, for the sake of capitalism.
Which slogan is catchier, more convincing?

There is no mainstream ideological force, no soc1alist party (and for structural reasons can’t be) that says: “redistribution is good, more government/public property is good”. If there were, the Democrats would happily occupy their normal niche, arguing: the libertarians have some good ideas and the soc1alists have some good ideas, so let’s mix them together and find a compromise, the “third way”, the middle road. But without soc1alists Democratic “middle road” is between the Republicans and abyss. They have to keep steering away from the cliff. They become a moderate wing of the right-wing party, the single ruling party.

It appears as though Prof. Haidt is saying that he believes Democrats have been unable to appeal to swing-voters because they have not created for themselves a moral identity that can compete with the moral identity that the Republicans wrap around themselves. That is true as far as it goes, I suppose, but I think it is wrong to suggest that the reason why swing-voters do not perceive the Democrats to have an appealing moral identity is because because they do not have one, or because they are not interested in having one. The contrast in moral identity is created by the constant finger-pointing sanctimony of our modern-day Pharisees: the Republican Christian. That is the part of this problem that Democrats need to fully understand.

Bad Slocum!

That “we” is so cosy and snuggly and smug.

They can’t do it because the Democrats are not soc1alists, they are liberals, just like the Republicans

Democrats can certainly advocate increasing the government’s share of the economy without also necessarily being Marxist control freaks. The idea is to move the balance between public and private sectors in a more beneficial direction. We’ve had the ‘less is better’ crowd running things for quite a while and they’ve improved almost nothing for the American people, economically. The answer to less-is-better is not more-is-better, but rather achieve-the-proper-balance.

In the hands of the Democrats, it would be possible for the federal government to achieve most of the idealistic goals that Dems want to achieve for The Average American by simply being a big purchaser of various goods and services. If it were willing, the federal government could increase public INVESTMENT levels enough to create a modest labor shortage, where there are substantially more jobs available than there are people to fill them. There would be no need for minimum wage legislation, welfare programs, unemployment insurance, etc.

One exception: health care. A more purely socialist approach, like Britain’s National Health Service, would provide the American people in general with a dramatic improvement in the quality of health care services. It makes no more sense for Americans to embrace private health care services than it would for us to replace our current public police/fire protection institutions with privately-owned police/fire protection providers. Just imagine: families in need of a police officer would first have to call all the local police protection companies to compare their prices before deciding on one to call for emergency assistance. Or in another variation, if the police arrive at the scene of a crime, they would first seek to determine if all those present have kept up with their police insurance premiums.

Anyways. I took one of those little quizzes. It seems I care about “Harm” as much as Liberals, about “Fairness” less than both Liberals and Conservatives, about “Loyalty” slightly more than Liberals (no finking to the teacher!) and less than Conservatives (unless it’s really bad), and both “Authority” and “Purity” much less than both those groups. I really do have some morals, somewhere…