“You will be more conservative as you grow older”

You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.

Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.

I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.

I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
Or you'll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they're not young anymore
- I became a socialist because I was an "essential employee" during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
  
  We can't make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.

In aggragate, that's the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)

I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative
- I assume they meant conservative, not fascist.
That and the lead poisoning.
Luckyyyyyy!
Statement unclear whether increased conservatism is the natural result of property/capital or if property/capital are merely requisite.

Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they're working from the premise that you'll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn't true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can't figure out why millenials aren't getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.

Yeah, though there's also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more, the idea being that you have less future to look forward to (since you're closer to death than your birth) so instead you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it.
- Oh yeah, that's definitely why older folks are socially conservative, although usually when I hear people say this (and definitely in the context of this meme) they're talking about becoming fiscally conservative.
- there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more,
  
  That's more a consequence of the moment. Older people like stable material conditions. And with programs like pensions, public health care, and a safe suburban neighborhood with good amenities, they see the status quo as worth defending.
  
  But swing through North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring (anyone remember that?) or pop over to the UK in the wake of the last election cycle or visit an impoverished neighborhood in Haiti or a bombed neighborhood in Lebanon and you'll find plenty of elderly revolutionaries.
  
  you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it
  
  People may be nostalgic for their youth, but they are rarely nostalgic for being treated like a child.
  
  And you're going to find it hard to locate a South African native nostalgic for Apartheid or a Pole or Romanian who misses occupation or a Chinese national who pines for the Century of Humiliation.
  
  Westerners coming out of their post war pre-Reagan Golden Era just have more to be nostalgic for.
yup it applies only to the privileged class, and of course only people in that class would think that is the general experience.
All of that is the same here in Germany. Check out the stats on home ownership here... But oh man are the kids flipping to the AfD (far right nazi party) quick and in huge numbers. It's scary to see.
- Honestly, that makes sense to me. It seems like when economic systems start breaking down for people, they turn to populism. It's either left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism, or right-wing populism, which scapegoats minority or immigrant groups. Right now, the youth in the U.S. are interested in left-wing populism, but right-wing populism (AKA Trumpism) is the only thing making it into the political mainstream.
- German government should just ban the AfD and end with it.
What if you start to become better off, but realize so many other parents are unable to provide for their kids like you can, and you can’t hope to provide for your kids like the wealthy can? What if paying exorbitant amounts of money for your kids education drives home the point that we need to make that investment for all kids futures? What if you are more often on the hiring side and realize your well being depends on the next generation having opportunities and the means to successfully achieve them?
- Then you're a good person, which is a statistical minority. Most people will never intentionally vote against their economic self-interests by raising their own taxes (although you can trick them into voting against their economic self interests; Republicans have been doing that for years by using racist dog-whistles to attack entitlement programs and pushing discredited trickle-down economic theories).
- Then you are alright with me. I think a large amount of our problems as a species come from those with a lack of empathy. If everyone thought like you, then we wouldn't have the vast wealth inequalities and greatly varying qualities of life between working class and upper class.
  
  On the other hand, if everyone had empathy in the first place, I think we wouldn't have the economic systems that put profits over people.

I’ve only gone further Left.

I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right's bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the 'both sides!' trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.

It became really easy to articulate what I didn't like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox removed about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic... but no real examples.

Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they're running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime... against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP'S TIME TO SHINE! ....yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won't ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.

Guess I'll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let's see what we have to work with...

there's the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim 'fiscal responsibility' which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we're done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that's pretty bad...
Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of... getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things... and... well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants... *checks* ...uhh, nope! Fuck, I'm starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.

So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that's best for the US. That way there's no bias and I won't be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics.... Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.

My desire to be 'independent' on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I'm being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn't a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I'm poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I'll come crawling right back.

Now, I'm not rich or anything, but I'm (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I'm at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.

I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven't missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I've gotten to the point where I'll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.

The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.

Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of... getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things... and... well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants... *checks* ...uhh, nope! Fuck, I'm starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.

The DNC isn't to the opposite of the GOP, they are aligned on the vast majority of issues and use the rest to yap loudly in disagreement. Dems aren't left.

During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I'm at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life.

Social programs aren't socialized, that's a bit of a misnomer.
- However US Corporations that exploit US Workers and Workers abroad are subsidized, even for their losses. Us Taxpayers pay them while they exploit us further and Social Services get gutted and crumble. Gotta love neoliberalism, where socialized welfare is bad for workers, but good for corporations.
  
  Edit: not actual socialism like worker owned, just socialized losses, as in the working class paying taxes foot the bill for the corporations benefit and privatized gains
Well said!
Thanks for sharing! I feel like this is representative of a small but important political group recently.
there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war.

The blue team is doing the same thing: burning through fossil resources in the name of war. The military complex doesn't stop or change when blue or red are elected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war

I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn't a football match where teams compete against each others and "left" and "right" are two buzzwords.

https://archive.org/details/lawauthorityanar00kropuoft/page/n5/mode/2up
- I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
  
  No offense but I think OP has a better grasp of this than you do

I am more conservative in the sense that I see things with more nuance. I understand societies are very complex systems in a fragile equilibrium and that my naive solutions to the world's problems are not feasible.

And yet, each day I'm more convinced we need to eat the rich.

Eating the Rich is not enough

Edit: We need to create a whole new system to prevent people from getting that rich and to keep the power to the people
- Eating the rich isn’t a coup de grace, it’s the beginning.

I don't know what it's like to live under communism, but I do know what it's like to live under capitalism and it's grip tightens more and more with every passing year.

I don't think anyone knows what it's like, was there any communist country which wasn't also both a dictatorship and poor?

Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it's always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.

P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things... there's also war, and that applies to most of them too.
- It's capitalism that doesn't work.
- I don't think anyone knows what it's like, was there any communist country which wasn't also both a dictatorship and poor?
  
  Most steadily improved their material conditions and did not have dictatorships.
  
  Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it's always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
  
  Explain, please.
  
  P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things... there's also war, and that applies to most of them too.
  
  Are you saying most Communist countries intentionally started wars?
- Fascists masquerading as communism doesn't count

Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly "conservative" party), your parents may have been right.

What if my goals include family values, such as opportunity for my kids to earn a good living, live a long and healthy life, enjoy the environment, in a world better than the one I had?
- Then you have to join in the fight for those things and educate yourself. This world is not getting better, and the reason for that is the productive political economic system in which we live.
  
  I have the same values and I am a Marxist communist. That means I work for political struggle with the systems that oppress and exploit to for improving conditions for all, and also work to try and educate workers about the class dynamics of this struggle, and the revolutionary potential of the working class.

Straight up I was conservative as a young teen, because that's what EVERYONE was here in Utah when I was in the LDS church.

Now I just keep floating more and more left as time goes on.

I went from "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" in high school to liberal to communist to anarchist back to communist now I think I'm democratic socialist in my 30s? Just basic safety nets and unions, please.
Same homie. I can’t even imagine what it was like to be a leftist after 9/11. The whole fucking country was blood thirsty. Heard my friends say some of the most abhorrent shit, and just brushed it off as patriotism.

So fucking glad I found my way out.
When I was a teen, I was definitely fiscally conservative. Paying better attention to how you use money is easy to understand and a central pillar of politics. But it was a sheltered life in a town with all well-paying jobs, no diversity, and an excellent education system.

Now I keep floating left the more I realize how many people missed out of that picture.

But it was my kids that really did it. Fighting for better opportunities for them easily turns into wanting a better world for them to live in. I’m more worried than ever about my government’s poor money habits and when it will eventually come due, but we’re in the middle of a rolling disaster of short term and misplaced spending, our politicians more concerned with scapegoats and spite than actually benefitting their constituents
- My brother in Christ, im sorry to inform you but the upcoming fiscal crisis are gonna be some of the least of your kids worries. I'm still probably closer in age to you rather than them, but i grew up knowing that money is gonna mean jack shit once the water starts boiling (metaphorically, but hyperbolically realistic). We're the frogs in the pot and the economy is gonna be the least of our troubles. We're seeing a global rise in fascism, climate disasters, war, inequity, and yes financial instability. If you wanna help your kids, get involved in the community and organize. Start unions at your work places and march in protests for a better future. I'm not talking about a stronger or more fashy future, but one where we work together. Join or make mutual aid networks where you live. The best thing you can do for your children (imo, coming from a young person) is help set up the future you want for them. I would hope that's one of community and mutual aid where we help each other not because we expect a reward or are paid to, but because together we stand taller and can hoist up those who cannot stand on their own. I hope i don't sound too preachy, but it sounds like you love your kids so I implore you to get involved further. The future did not look kind to me when I was a child, and it looks even less hospitable now. We can change that. Direct action and mutual aid are the way forward to a better future imo.

“You will be more conservative as you grow older” is not a truth, but a threat. If you don't become a conservative under their regime, you won't become old.

How'd you get a picture of me?

I have become aggressively more anti-capitalist as I've grown older. At 56, with a nice professional career mostly behind me, I am vigorously ANTIFA EAT THE RICH ACAB.

Well some people never learn I guess.
- Some of us learn better lessons.

The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.

Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.

The one I've heard replaces "brains" with "money."
- To the point at least. The impression I always got was that it was meant to imply you’d have money by then and not want to pay taxes.

In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452

Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn't cause it.
- There's a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.

Seize the means of production

Yup but I have seen it in my peers unfortunately. Honestly though not in the ones who were actually passionate. Like the guy who started the environmental club is as left as he ever was but like the one friend I had I think just parroted what most of his friends said atm.

my experience is the opposite

How is it that some of us get further left and some people go right? Even poors and immigrants go right and vote against their own interests. I really don't get it.

Broadly speaking, I'd say it's done out of fear. Voting conservative feels like staying the course and not challenging the status quo, even if it's not ideal. Voting change could be seen as a threat to "stability" even when it's a false narrative.
- To add to what you said I'd also argue it comes with finding financial success while lacking the awareness of how lucky one had to be to achieve that kind of success in life.
  
  -- although lately I have also seen a lot of people that lack the imagination to consider a reality different from what's presented to them by the status quo.
  
  On second thought, that latter point just sounds a lot like Indoctrination.
Immigrants being on the right is also implicit. Almost nobody is gonna migrate to some place new because things like recent changes are going well for them in their country of origin. They instead leave and migrate to some place that is relatively more stable & predictable. Host countries don't like it when people migrate over and start agitating for change. As a result conservatism is built into the process.

–Consider the Cuban Communist. The Cubans that are happy with Communism have no major incentive to leave and resettle in Miami. The Cuban Capitalists OTOH flee to Miami where they espouse the evils of Communism while advocating for our government to continue the trade embargo, ensuring they can spread their pain to their fellow Cubans back in Cuba. It's the same exact story with Falun Gong

If conservative means "cautious and wary of unexpected results", "disillusioned with methods that we tried and failed with" or maybe even "equipped with experience of successful and failed cooperation with various sorts of people", then yes. Already before age 50, I'm spoiled with various good and bad experiences. I cannot exclude that as my tendency to explore decreases (psychology tends to affirm this trend), I may get prejudiced too. I may have to figure out something to counter it.

But if conservative means that I suddenly don't want a society with equality and without hierarchy, then - nope.

Maybe we become more extreme in our existing beliefs. My political compass position drifted right from bottom left as I hit my thirties. After the Iraq invasion of 2003 and recessions following 2008 it swung back towards Ghandi. I became convinced that conservative politics isn't working in my late forties and that has only been reinforced as I try to access the creaking UK healthcare system.

To be fair, the political compass is astrology that makes no actual point.
- It's definitely a terrible system, and there are better ones out there like 10Groups. But astrology is completely meaningless. The PCT at least tells you a vague (terrible, yes), but somewhat meaningful direction in which you believe.
  
  For example, I know that since I'm libertarian left on the PCT, that I'm going to disagree with 90% of the things somebody who's authoritarian right on the PCT believes.
  
  Astrology doesn't have that ability to reliably compare, since it is literally and completely meaningless.
  
  But again, shit like 10Groups is better and everybody should switch to measures that have more than 2 axis.

On some social positions, I've grown more conservative.

On fiscal issues? Son, at this point I'm only slightly to the left of "Feed the 1% to the homeless and convert their left-over mansions into low income apartments."

really If anything i have become more communist as i have aged, when the daydreams of becoming a millionaire or whatever fade away all thats left is the reality of life as the 99% and it kinda sucks, also the older i grow the more i learn about history, about the world, just about everything really and the more i realize how fucked up capitalism is and how much i was lied to thru out my life. Putting that aside tho, people generally do become more reactionary as they age for the simple fact that what was revolutionary in our youth becomes standard and then reactionary over time while many people dont change their views much.

I was slightly conservative when I was young. Now I don't know what political orientation I have

Any opinions at all?
- they probably are too privileged or can't form an opinion by themself

I was politically ambivalent as a young voter.

Now, I'm pretty much convinced the rich people (and the parties that represent them) are just out there to screw everyone else over. And every single year just adds more evidence to the pile.

I don't think there is any conceivable scenario in which anyone can convince me that free market will magically fix all problems. It's nonsense.

Yep, hence why Communism is necessary.

Yeah I think they misunderstood what was happening cause they were getting wealthier as they got older.

Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.

There are plenty of nerds that are super conservative about their fandoms and what is allowed to happen with them and same for all kinds of niches but the idea we would get more conservative with money really assumed we would accumulate more of it and assets. But what people do have is their apps and thoughts and those... Those people will be just as conservative as the boomers are about their money as they get older.

I am becoming more annoyed by young liberals as I get older but I'm sure as shit not turning GOP conservative.

If something, as years roll on talking to people with different experiences enriched me as a person.

Eventually, it will overflow and you will become fascist

I'm pretty old. Not very old, but old enough to be a legal adult. And I'm possibly the most liberal person in my family. I've been this way for years.

Liberal, or left?
- A bit of both. I also don't like capitalism.

This looks more like a tankie cat.

What even is a tankie to you? Are all Marxists tankies?

All that saying means is that some people are willing to change their moral compass according to situational convenience

I know that conflating Liberals and Conservatives is practically lemmys official pass time, but I have to point out they are not the same.

Liberals and conservatives are more similar than liberals and progressives.
- No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism. It honestly makes me feel like most people on lemmy have never really worked with liberal groups.
  
  The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
  
  Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won't typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
  
  This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we've made, as is about to happen in Canada.
Conservatives are a subcategory of liberal. They aren't conflated, that's like saying thumbs and fingers get conflated.
Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.
A lot of conservatives are liberals. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.
Yet both liberals and conservatives (in your sense of the words) say this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
- Based on that link it says that conservatives are at odds with and are critical of liberalism. There is a subset of conservatism called liberal conservativism that incorporates liberal stances into the conservative position however.

Not communism, but Putin.

This is the Maga flag. This is the "new conservative party"

What are you talking about?
- Trump is a Putin puppet.
  
  The Russian flag may as well be the MAGA flag

How many millions died under Stalin, Mao, Che?

How many millions died under Kissinger, Truman, McCarthy?
- don't know, tell me with sources, please
Makes me think of the old Samuel Clemmens quote

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak;

whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

~ Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

It's so easy to pretend the mob that turned on French nobility in the 1800s or the Qing Dynasts and Russian Tsars in the 1900s or the Arabs who lashed out at European occupation in the 2000s were simply seized by mania or some animal impulse.

It's so easy to pretend they had no grievance, they suffered no generational atrocities, they had no motivation for their violent uprising, save the insidious Mind Virus of Leftist Agitation.

It's romantic to see the aristocracy and the colonial governments of these nations as martyrs of a golden era. They were cruelly deposed by savages for the crime of living the gentile and sophisticated life. They were the Eloi, dragged into the dirt by vicious Morlocks who envied their perfect beauty.

But it's all bullshit.

The aristocracy were monsters. They maintained their grips on the people through generation after generation of terror, torture, and enforced ignorance. They were cult leaders and warlords who claimed turf through centuries of conquest, inquisition, and cultural indoctrination.

When these archaic institutions failed, we like to blame the revolutionary leaders who happened to climb atop the ruins of their bloody legacy. But they were simply at the right moment in history to witness a corrupt edifice crumble under the weight of millions of their own dissatisfied subjects.
How many do you think? Legitimately, what's your understanding of history? Where are you getting your numbers?
Millions of Nazis, yeah
- Stalin alone:
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
  
  Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
  
  This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[9][10] some 390,000[11] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[12] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[13] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[2] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[14] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][15]
You're right. Maybe we shouldn't have a state people suffer and die under.

You people so naive its toxic. Ill leave this here for reference about one of the many examples as to why communism is not the way to go:

https://youtu.be/g0SrSUClpRk

Thank me later.

3 week old account

Only comment

Why not use your main account? Ban evasion?
As if total communism were the only alternative. And you call us naive.
- It pretty much is in the long run.
- Climate Change will make planned economies inevitable.