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It’s the conservative ideology: they see everything as a zero-sum game. If anyone gets something, whether it’s food stamps, medical care, or a place in a college admission, in their minds, that means it must’ve cost somebody else that thing.

That’s just not how the world works

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IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Well they definitely weren’t taking his spot at Harvard, that’s clear

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Tiresia@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Conservatives are perfectly capable of understanding positive-sum games when they expect the privileged in-group to be the benefactor. What is a labor contract, if not a positive-sum game where the corporation sucks up all the positive gain?

Game theory as a cental tenet of the human condition is a liberal concept, which conservatives will happily discard if it doesn’t suit them. Conservatives may cloak their disapproval in the guise of liberal concerns so that they’re in a stronger debate position in liberal-dominated social circles, but what they’re really upset by is the negation of the conservative world order - a strict hierarchy with narcissistic men at the top of clearly delineated nations, struggling for dominance through pettiness and violence.

They will accept any negative sum game, they will ruin their own livelihoods and their own lives, if only it helps sad little kings of sad little hills.

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- jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  They will accept any negative sum game, they will ruin their own livelihoods and their own lives, if only it helps sad little kings of sad little hills.
  
  I’m reminded of that book about Authoritarian Personality Types. They did like a model UN / Civilization game kind of thing, where the players represented different countries and could make decisions about policy, war, and so on. There were two groups. Unknown to the players, the people running this experiment put all the people who scored high for authoritarian personality in one group, and everyone else in the other group.
  
  The group with low authoritarian personality scores? Basically everything was fine. They solved the ozone layer crisis. They were solving world hunger. One guy tried to be a dick and the rest of the group brought him in line.
  
  The high authoritarian guys? Nuclear apocalypse. They made them sit in the dark for five minutes to think about what they’d done, and let them have a do-over. They still did a shit job. Petty squabbling. Stealing. Out of control climate crisis.
  
  I don’t think there’s an ethical way to do this in real life, but I do think if you just didn’t allow people with that kind of personality to have any real power, we’d all be much better off.
  
  It’s also possible i mangled the story because I rewrote it here from memory, but I believe it was in this book: theauthoritarians.org
  
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- peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  See it’s descriptions like that that make me think conservative ideology is actually a mental health issue, not a political one.
  
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JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Its a private university you know, they can enrol anyone they like, they don’t “owe” anyone anything.

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- floo@retrolemmy.com ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You forget: conservatives believe that they are entitled to whatever they want
  
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Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
also being hypocrites when they are frothing at the mouth about food stamps, while they are using food stamps and medicaid themselves.

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- nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The moment that you call them out on hypocrisy, you’ve already lost. In conservatism, hypocrisy is only a problem if it can be used as a bludgeon against an opponent. Otherwise, it’s a privilege or something to use to rub it in the face of the out group that one has power over them.
  
  The ideology is fundamentally about rigid socioeconomic hierachies that allow cognitive loads to be outsourced to one’s “betters” and power to be exercised over those lower in the hierarchy. The ideology is almost completely opposed to meritocracy - one is supposed to know the station that they were born into and not try to reach too high. And a fun thing that many moderates and center-left folks still don’t get is that conservative morality is based upon the person and their standing in the hierarchy, not their actions (unless they oppose the hierarchy). This is why they don’t give two shits about electing a convicted felon and rapist. And this is also a major part of why neoliberal centrists do everything that they can to prevent laws from applying to said felon and rapist - as someone high in the socioeconomic hierarchy, he’s supposed to be above consequences for any actions, the laws only apply to their “lessers” (plus, allowing them to be applied would put virtually every career politician at risk of prosecution for the crimes that they’ve committed).
  
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