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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises

Suppose I come along and assault you, you defend yourself, and then someone comes along and tells you that you are as much to blame as the person who assaulted you. Are they accurate, or just squeamish?

Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift, where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of avoiding controversy. Consider the the atrocities perpetrated pursuant to the Iraq war, for which nobody but the very lowest ranks (and only a few of them) have ever been held accountable.

I respect my ideological enemies more than this panglossian excuse-making. At least those people stand for something.

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I like to differentiate between "moderate" and "centrist". A moderate is, by my definition, someone who has firm convictions and anchoring principles and those just happen today to plant them in the center of the political spectrum. If the Overton window shifts, today's moderate will become tomorrow's conservative or liberal.

By contrast a centrist always takes the middling, compromising position at the middle of that Overton window. It's centrists that contribute to ethical drift.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity

That's one way to put it. Here's another to think about: moderates lack rigid principles and avoid ideological convictions.

People on the extremes of both sides have a tendency to "paint." They paint the opposing view as monsters, and they paint people with independent views as "lacking convictions."

It is not accurate.

By no means am I arguing that those at the extremes are always right. I'm saying that if you have no other principles than 'compromise' then you will simply let yourself be pulled around by the most powerful force in a go-along-to-get-along fashion.

Moderates are simply conflict averse and don't consider that there is anything worth fighting for, ever. Unscrupulous extremists rely on them as a strategic buffer, because they are easy to manipulate. Neville Chamberlain was a moderate.

"conflict averse" and "easy to manipulate" are personality traits. Pretty subjective and not useful for (adult) discourse. There's a way to think of political "moderates" as a political science category. An example of a moderate position would be, supporting a free market economy but a wide social security system. An example of the other (economic) extremes are laissez-faire and socialism.

You're successfully proving my point from the comment above: you're painting folks who don't share your views. This does you a disservice as you can't possibly understand the arguments. There are many, many ways in which a person can be a Moderate or a particular topic can have a moderate viewpoint.

The cure for this affliction (of imagining your opponents and creating personifications in your head) is to diversify your conversational and reading sources.

"conflict averse" and "easy to manipulate" are personality traits. Pretty subjective and not useful for (adult) discourse.

Nice attempt at well-poisoning. You'll excuse me if I don't engage with the sophistry that follows.

Perhaps it's you who should broaden your reading sources, as people's behavior is much more amenable to objective analysis than you seem to be aware of. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451

You don't have to go very far for some links that echo what I said above:

"Moderate is an ideological category which designates a rejection of radical or extreme views, especially in regard to politics and religion.[1][2] A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views and major social change. In United States politics, a moderate is considered someone occupying a centre position on the left–right political spectrum."

Very uncontroversial take by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_moderate

The pinning of subjective elements and personality traits to your political opponents is as dangerous as it is unscientific (and people both on the right and the left do this).

In the United States, a political moderate typically acts according to principles that the extremes of the large political parties don’t prioritize. They are only in the middle because we use a one-dimensional political spectrum in our discourse.

Nonsense. If moderates believed that they would form their own party and stake out territory. Instead they say 'the two party system forces this on us', and do nothing about it. There is no 'two party system.' It's just a bistable equilibrium state that arises out of the winner-take-all voting system. Moderates find it profitable to ride that oscillation without worrying too much about where it takes them, and prefer stable mediocrity to chaotic uncertainty.

There are multiple such parties. Wikipedia maintains a list of third parties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in...

Moderates also tend to run as independent candidates. Ross Perot is probably best known in the US.

It is difficult to successfully invest resources contra the two party system in the US, though. I think it’s a legitimate pragmatic decision to try to influence from within one of the two parties.

There are multiple small parties, but the moderate bloc that likes to occupy the center of the US political system hasn't thrown in behind any of them because (it appears) swinging between the two large parties is more profitable. Like I said, if they really meant it they would stake out territory.

I think it’s a legitimate pragmatic decision to try to influence from within one of the two parties.

So, sit in the middle and say 'both parties are too extreme' while bargaining with both for concessions and refusing to organize outside that framework, even though moderates/swing voters consider themselves to be the largest political bloc. That seems like perpetuating the system you complain about for profit, which is exactly what I complained about in the first place - a lack of any identifiable principle. You mention 'principles that the extremes of the parties don't prioritize.' What are they? Where are your red lines?

Moderates also tend to run as independent candidates. Ross Perot is probably best known in the US.

Ross Perot ran 30 years ago, since when we have been through two major wars, a huge financial crisis (and multiple smaller recessions), a pandemic, and a constitutional crisis. No outside candidate has mounted a serious challenge since then. Plus he was only able to do that because he was independently very wealthy.

I have posted this article about polarization here many times since it was published and all I ever hear from moderates is how bad it is, so bad that nobody can do anything about it. Moderates' unwillingness to anchor themselves to anything is a major contributor to the problem of polarization. https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8485443/polarization-congress-...

Thanks. Fair weather moderates swinging between whichever party is advantageous, or less scary to espouse principles from within, wasn’t what I was talking about, but I see that you were. I’m glad you clarified that and hopefully we both understand we were talking past each other for part of this.

I do see specific suggestions from moderates. A lot of them have to do with campaign finance reform. Others have to do with alternate voting systems, like ranked choice. Ranked choice can be advantageous to extreme parties, of course, but they also make 2-3 more self-aware middle parties possible because they can stay in power as the #2 or #3 choice without having to engage in tug-of-war.

I agree that personal wealth is an unfortunate limitation to anyone seeking to run as whatever is in vogue D or R. I only mentioned Ross Perot to remind you of a well-known independent candidate. The 90s were a long time ago, yes!

I really appreciate your thoughtful clarification.

Both of the proposals you mention are valuable and would do a lot to improve politics, narrow as they are. It would be great if there were an identifiable group clearly advocating for those approaches, whether within or outside existing party lines.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity

Idk about this. Maybe they just think things are currently pretty good, and that the other options would be worse. I think democrats are largely on the right track. Just enough regulation to ensure market failures are fixed, broad social policy to do what you like as long as it doesn't harm others, a safety net that helps those who are down while encouraging everyone to work hard for the better of society.

I have frequently participated in an extreme version of this discussion.

Think about a situation where your race was being genocided in a neighboring country. The fastest way to stop it would be to engage in war. Now if you lose, genocide goes on, you have no recourse and your country is vulnerable to exploitation.

Instead, you can use economic levers. Maybe wait for your armed forces to be strong enough to go to war. Wait for winter and destroy food reserves. Maybe strike a deal to have your race only be 'persecuted' instead of genocided. Maybe fund militia instead.

All of these are suboptimal moderate outcomes. All of these lead to some loss of life or huge losses of freedom.for the people you want to save. But it avoids the worst case outcome. Majority of your race stil lives.

Moderates aren't spineless. Rathe, they understand that their agency is limited and you pull levers that are within said agency. If you try to climb a mountain that's too tall, it will lead to your demise.

Idealists want to be olympic gymnasts at 30. Moderates make peace with being a Yoga teacher. That's not spinelessness, that's wisdom.

What you're describing isn't moderation, but strategy. What I'm talking about is people who have agency but choose not to exercise it because it's inconvenient.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift, where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of avoiding controversy.

the point of being a moderate is picking and choosing which policies from which party you support and which ones you don't. The insistence that everyone decide between one of two party lines is what's driving this country towards civil war

So form a third party with middle-of-the-road policies that large numbers of people could get behind, because your buffet politics approach is clearly not working.

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