[CLUE-Talk] Political compass

[Jed S. Baer]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 06:56:20 -0800 (PST)
Jeffery Cann <jc_cann at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Here's an interesting anonymous survey to determine
> where you stand in the political arena.  Good
> questions, designed to evoke responses.  It plots your
> responses on two axes, economic and social, and gives
> some example historical figures for each quadrant for
> reference.

Economic Left/Right: 2.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.21> Jeff

On their "world chart", there's nobody in that quadrant. I disagree that
their questions were good. I wound up spending time pondering what the
underlying "bent" of some of them were, and so probably wound up answering
more moderately, and/or perhaps on the other side, than I might have.

Example: "No one chooses their country of birth, so it's foolish to be
proud of it." The unspoken qualifier is "... solely on that basis." Is
that what's behind the question? Probably, but we don't know.
  
Another: "Controlling inflation is more important than controlling
unemployment". If your view is that the government should control as
little as possible, then you'd strongly disagree with this statement, or
simply not want to answer it. But the implication of that, in an either/or
scenario, wouldn't necessarily reflect your views.

And: "A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all
the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system." Does
agreement with this really imply a political leaning? Advantageous for
whom? Certainly for the party in power. Can I agree that it's advantageous
for the party in power, as a recognition of fact, without getting pulled
over to the authoritarian side of the graph?

There was another of these things making the rounds last year. My graph
was indistinguishable from Eric Raymond's.

jed
-- 
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier