So. Anybody not to busy in the left/right argument to help me look for flaws in this?
Sure can!
The very first point is inherently contradictory. They state folks should have 'a say' in things that effect them AND that they "should not be subject to the will of another." These are inherently contradictory to their support for democracy. Either folks should not be subject to the will of another, in which case democracy is no better than any other form of justification to impose upon folks, or democracy is totally good and folks having 'a say' apparently allows their will to be subverted if they don't win a vote. This is the fundamental flaw of democracy on a conceptual level. This will also be a running trend of their ten things being basically buzzwords with no substance and plenty of contradiction.
They then move on to Social Justice and Equal Opportunity, which are also contradictory buzzwords. For one, social justice is a non-term, it is nonsense. To quote F.A. Hayek, the term is as valid as 'a moral stone.' More fully, "There can be no test by which we can discover what is 'socially unjust' because there is no subject by which such an injustice can be committed, and there are no rules of individual conduct the observance of which in the market order would secure to the individuals and groups the position which as such (as distinguished from the procedure by which it is determined) would appear just to us. [Social justice] does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone'." Further, this does not at all speak about 'equal opportunity' as generally conceived, but rather that folks have a right to certain allotments of resources, which are "afforded us by society and the environment." Of course, this is nonsense. Resources are not 'afforded' by 'society' (which does not exist,) nor 'the environment' which has no will and affords no one anything they don't put effort into obtaining. In short, point two is nonsense.
This point also builds on the first in showing the collectivization inherent in the platform, rather than a focus on individuals. Even when lip service is paid to the individual (ie: should not be subject to the will of another,) it is nothing more than a cover for the much longer talk on how great democracy is, how society is what matters, and how we must recognize injustice in terms of groups, rather than individuals being subject to injustices.
Then we get into Ecological Wisdom, which again enters into contradictions. It starts off talking about how we must recognize we are 'part of nature,' not separate, and then turns around and talks about 'ecological balance' and living 'within the ecological and resource limits of our communities and our planet.' Many questions come from this. First off, species do not seek to live in ecological balance. Species seek to exploit as much as they can, and balance is an emergent phenomenon, not even truly real. If we are part of nature and not separate, than anything we do is inherently 'natural' by its, well, nature. The irony is this entire argument premises that we are NOT part of nature and must instead BECOME part of nature. There is nothing wrong with sustainability, yet the contradictions rise so quickly when they say we must "live in ways that respect the integrity of natural systems," which implies our actions are outside natural systems, which implies
we are not part of nature. It also seems to think nature is somehow in stasis, rather than a constantly fluctuating system.
I also suspect that their support for an 'energy efficient economy' doesn't actually mean high-tech energy sources, but rather support for highly inefficient energy methods. IE: they're likely implying wind farms and solar, rather than nuclear and other methods which are significantly more 'efficient.'
They then go into 'non-violence,' which sounds nice, yet they seem to speak nothing but platitudes "we need to demilitarize, but we can't forget other countries are not going to buy into our system, and we promote 'non-violent methods' and want to work towards 'lasting global peace' but ignore that if you have nothing to back up your points with, everyone is just going to run roughshod over you.
Then it gets into decentralization, and it's not TOTALLY wrong that centralization of power and money causes issues, but seems to want to place the blame anywhere but the very things they are espousing. They say they want a 'more democratic' society, yet 'less bureaucratic.' Well, that simply isn't possible in any sort of scale. They claim that they want decision making to be at the individual and local level, yet the rest of their platform necessitates a strong, centralized power to dictate these things.
And then they just go full socialist/communist and I completely check out of their retrograde economic and social policies, where they explicitly talk about wanting to redefine the meaning of words like "work" and "job" and "income," and then go into even more full contradictory mode in talking about restricting economic activities and redefining what work actually means while somehow also not restricting innovation, and yet somehow respecting individual rights still too, mind you. To say nothing of the massive contradiction of talking about wanting to "restructure our patterns of income distribution to reflect the wealth created by those outside the formal monetary economy," which makes
no sense. The use of the terms income, wealth, and monetary make it clear they're talking about one thing, yet they imply wealth created 'outside' this must be recognized... yet that doesn't make sense, by its nature, it's not recognized in an income or monetary way because it actually isn't creating the wealth you think it is, in the way you think it is. What this basically amounts to is socialism and redistribution, and is full of even more contradictions and at this point I'm basically just done.
I'll touch on that they invoke feminism without at all recognizing how vague as fuck that is, and contradict themselves by talking about replacing cultural ethics here yet in the NEXT ITEM talk about respecting and valuing cultural ethics and the like. Of course, they also imply that there is a cultural ethic of domination and control at play which is entirely missing the point, to say nothing of how inherently dangerous this idea that you can just 'replace' culture that way, and still not recognizing the contradiction in saying they want to value diversity and preserve cultures yet then turn around and talk about reshaping culture too. Also, I feel is hopelessly reductive when they start by saying we have 'inherited a social system based on male domination of politics and economics,' yet women are both the majority of voters, considered a political bloc on par with an ethnic group, and also have a majority control of spending power in the west as well, meaning this apparently is very odd in defining what 'male domination' actually means. It's almost as if this is an extremely complex system far removed from something so simple as a broken Marxist "oppressed/oppressor" dynamic.
Honestly, this entire thing is just rife with contradictions, platitudes, and a mix of reductionist and regressive silliness.
