What is the basic difference between Conservatives & Liberals. Here is the fundamental difference in approach to others.

1. Conservatives believe Men are basically evil and need to be kept good by force of law, tradition, culture.

1/n

2. Liberals o the other hand believe mean are basically good if left alone to pursue their own happiness & well being because they know being bad invites retaliation in kind & hence doesn’t work for them.

Your approach to these to assumptions shapes your politics & attitudes.

There is a lot of ground between these two assumptions and what you believe depends a lot on where in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs you place yourself.

Conservatives tend to be nearer the bottom of the pyramid in terns of where they place OTHERS than themselves.

While liberals tend to place not only themselves, but OTHERS as well closer to the top end of the pyramid where self esteem & self actualization kick in more that basic primal or tribal needs.

That is the basic bipolar field or battle ground 4 politics.

Most politics & thinking never goes beyond this basic fundamental dichotomy. Therefore Conservatives and liberals design zero sum games that seek to gain advantage at the expense of the other leading to popularized politics & mutual bitterness.

That’s where we are.

Adam Smith, Hayek & others including the under-read Karl Popper showed this irreconcilable dichotomy can be bridged. Adam Smith & Hayek Showed how this bridge is built in the economic sphere while Karl Popper showed the bridge works inn politics & social relations.

Basically Adam Smith & Hayek show that when individuals pursue their personal & selfish goals freely in a market based economy, they also maximize collective good efficiently. That is to say, good or bad, they still produce collective good.

So in the economic field, it doesn’t matter really if you think men are bad, selfish, lazy or self-directed, self-motivate self-actualizing people. Either way, if you let them pursue their own goals in market based fair economy, they will bring about the best possible outcome.

So this whole debate between Conservatives & Liberals is pointless where the economy is concerned. You only have to have market based economy.

Karl Popper, Edmund Burke and Roger Scruton show how a similar individual based process of bargaining in the social sphere works.

In the social realm individuals bargain for power & influence in much the same way as they do in economic matters. Only the process is much more invisible than even the invisible hand of the market but no less real.

People copy good behavior & learn to shun the bad.

As long as you have fairly level playing field fort individuals, and you assure them basic freedoms, they will produce a fairly just society.

Like the market based economy, it evolves of its own & cannot be by design. You can legislate a just society.

Everybody has tried their hand a making a just society by force. Religions have tried by theocracy, fasicts have tried it with nationalism, communists have tried it communism and they all ended in disaster.

Modi’s religion + nationalism will harvest a doublle disaster.

Don’t take my word for it. Read these people - Adam Smith, Hayek, Popper. They are very easy & entertaining to read.

And they tackle issues that of relevance to us today but sorely missing from the TV debates.

They have answers you are looking for.