Left wing and rigth wing, are they really far apart?
Spain is a country with a great political incoherency. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have two main political forces: left and right.
They are very different. While right wing thinks that the religion and economy are very important aspects, left wing thinks social balance is the main objective.
However, they have also big similarities. Both ideologies look for social justice. If you ask to the left wing, the State is the main instrument to achieve it, while for the right wing it is the market. Both assume that the human being is highly reasonable. Both work following a theory under some foundation that don’t exist at all in practice.
In order to work, left ideas need an efficient State. So they need that all the people work hard without taking advantage of their power and without being incentivized by the possibility to win a bigger salary. Sadly, the reality is that left governments traditionally tend to end in absolutist regimes like in Cuba, the USSR and who knows what will happen in Venezuela in the future.
On the other hand, right wing is always speaking about freedom, but the reality tells us that if you let “freedom” happen in a market ruled by human, it will end by a single corporation controlling everything and, as a result, an absolutist regime.
In the end, these two political approaches are about controlling humans to achieve success. If they would work in practice as the theory says, both of them would end up with a wonderful world with social justice. One pushed by the government and the other by the market balance, but both with the same result.
Just take a newspaper, read the news and let me know if you see that happening anywhere.
If you ask me, the real political opposition is not between left and right, but between rules and freedom.
If you think about it, by intuition we would say that the right wing is all about freedom. However, we would also say that Trump is all about right political ideas. So one of the men that represents better the extreme right wing, is the president that is enhancing limits to the market like taxes to foreign products.
Another example are financial markets. If you don’t think much about it, financial institutions are ones of the most liberal institutions of the world. They are always talking about freedom. However, when something like Bitcoin appears, that makes the central bank useless, the Government of US, one of the most liberal countries in the world, think that a regulation is needed. Why? Because Bitcoin makes them less powerful, and freedom is only good, when you are the biggest fish in the sea. By the way, the guy that pushed the regulations for companies that wanted to allow their users trade with Bitcoin, left his work after the regulation appeared and guess what? He has a joined a cryptocurrency company to help them to pass the requirements for the regulations that he himself worked on. Lovely freedom in the US, right?
In Spain it is the same. The right wing would say that they are liberal if you ask to them, but then they like to introduce a lot of rules about social aspects like marriage, education, how to become Spaniard if you are foreigner, etc.
As a result, if you don’t like the left wing idea (or as usually happens, the people and party that call themselves as its representation) and you would prefer rights ideas, you have to support a party that is too conservative and against freedom when it comes to your social rights.
Podemos is the new party of the left ideas. They want social justice, they say they will achieved it. A short time after he becomes a member of the parliament, the leader of the party bought a house for 615,000 euros. He has the right to do it, of course, I just don’t like the feeling that a share of my taxes is going to pay his mortgage.
