Political Ideologies and Their Strengths and Weaknesses

Liberalism:

Individuals should have freedom to live their lives as they see fit. It is an idealist ideology, they know what is best for them. Choose what's best for you even though it isn't.

Strength:

Humans do best when allowed to make their own decisions, no one is able to say in certainty what is best for us, only I know what is best for me, humans are fallible.

Weakness:

Individual freedom may be an illusion since we are not as free as we might like to think. Many people are manipulated by corporate and government interests. Advertising.

Socialism:

Workers control the means of production and distribute profits according to need. Critical response to capitalism, tries to solve the unfair situation of the employees.

Strengths:

A fair distribution is morally a fair and appealing idea. Receive according to your needs, it's a moral argument.

Weakness:

Experience shows us that in practice it doesn't work. Humans do better when striving for our own good. A. Smith argued that when individuals each pursue their own interest, the interests of the whole are also served by what he called the invisible hand.

Conservatism:

Is about preserving the institutions and social structures that each generation inherits, not wanting to see a major reform, change is dangerous, don't want any evolution, making changes gradually.

Strength:

We should appreciate the cumulative wisdom past generations. The present is the result of centuries of gradual evolution and we bring it down at our peril. Catalonia.

Weakness:

Institutions and practices aimed to preserve often serve the interests of a narrow section of society. Slavery. Institutions in many cases narrow life is served and can't be justified. We live in a changing world.

Anarchism:

Alternative for the other 3, governed not by rules but by self-restraint, extreme liberalism, any power the state takes diminishes the freedom of the individual.

Strength:

Society is stronger because people will enter into voluntary partnership with each other, a bottom-up approach may be more effective and durable. Ex. Spain, abuse power, corrupt.

Problem:

The vulnerable would suffer, it is based on an extreme form of liberalism, where freedom is more important than anything else.

Social Contract: Hobbes Theory

Humans are naturally self-interested but that it is rational for them to behave morally in order to maximize this self-interest. War of all against all.