Obvious examples: health care, education, social benefits provision, public transit, arms control. All involve expansions of the state bureaucracy and decision making power.
This is tangential to whether those things are good/bad in and of themselves.
The reason Bookchin was interesting, and why he was isolated even from Sanders, was he accurately saw any hierarchy as oppressive, whether class, capitalistic, cooperative, or even a temporarily well meaning state bureaucracy. It also says something that such a person didn’t manage to create a sustainable movement.
The classic right wing policy which confused everyone was “the negative income tax” that Milton Friedman was so keen on, yet it is UBI by another name. Aside from advantages compared to a minimum wage the important point is by being universal you remove the scope for bureaucratic decision making, so they went to enormous lengths to ensure it never happened.
> Obvious examples: health care, education, social benefits provision, public transit, arms control. All involve expansions of the state bureaucracy and decision making power.
So what you have established is that the left and right both want to expand government power, but the left wants to use it to improve the general welfare while the right wants to use it to crush their fellow citizens. Thank you for the clarification.
I generally lean left, and favor a large welfare state, reasonable regulation, etc. and I find your statement unfair.
People can reasonably disagree on these things.
In particular, the role of the federal government (vs the states) is important. Many of the benefit programs have no real need to be national, other than the ability of the federal government to borrow an unlimited amount of money. And many regulations are only federal because that was seen as easier and faster than gaining support in each state for them. Forcing a nation wide policy on an issue that could easily be dealt with by each state because you know you can't get the support is not very democratic.
That does not seem to be a differentiator, either. The right is definitely trying to use federal power to enforce their positions on the entire country when possible, e.g. abortion. It sure seems like "states rights" is more a slogan used when convenient, not a core ideological position.
Care to name a specific example?