| (Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1498 Joined: 14 Oct 2007     | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1134 Joined: 23 Oct 2007     | Economic Left/Right: -5.50 Used to be somewhere, when I was about Labyrinth's age, around: but I grew older. Socialist thought grows less common as you grow up and have to fend for yourself. I'll argue my points later on, once a few more people have started things off - I debate better by responding rather than expressing my thoughts outright. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 611 Joined: 27 Sep 2008    | -4.62 |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 551 Joined: 6 Mar 2008   | I've done this test several times. I tend to come out as a semi-authoritarian socialist. If I had a complaint, it'd be that some of the questions are directly conflicting and muddle the results. For example, being pro-choice and pro-drugs negates my state-centric stance on security and taxes, so I end up looking like a wishy-washy liberal. It's still a fun thing to do though. edit: I did it again. Economic Left/Right was -9.38 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian was -5.33(!). Picture below. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1250 Joined: 5 May 2008   | I turned out to be this: Economic Left/Right: -6.75 I consider myself to be a mostly liberal person. But there are a few topics I am conservative on. Capital punishment and gun control for instance. I won't go into detail on my personal views for fear of starting an argument, which for the moment I'm not in the frame of mind for. |
Muckraker  Posts: 258 Joined: 9 Apr 2008 | Your political compass Pretty much what I expected. I usually end up around there on these sort of tests. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1498 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 |
The point of this thread is to promote argument, in an intellectual manner. So go into it-away! |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1250 Joined: 5 May 2008 |
Once I return home and have my internet back I'll be glad to start a confrontation. I don't, however, feel like entering a heated political argument whilst at my neighbor's house :) |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1367 Joined: 12 Sep 2007   | I am Economic Left/Right: 2.00, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.51. I've done this several times and it has a big flaw - the failure to differentiate between freedom (libertarianism) for individuals and for corporations. I think people should generally be allowed to do as they please as long as they are not affecting others, but I still think corporations (especially larger ones) need some regulation and (similar to individuals) don't always have the best interest of others at heart (nor should they.) Also, their chart shows Hitler to the right, whilst their text says his economic policies "were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today's Labour parties." On the positive side, I'm really close to center, which reinforces my belief that everyone should think like me. On the negative side, in their chart of politicians my quadrant is completely unpopulated (at least Friedman is in the quadrant, if far away.) No wonder I feel so freakin' abandoned by politicians. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 529 Joined: 27 Aug 2008  | Economic Left/Right: -4.50 Hmm, I would've though I'd be further to the right on economics and further to the left on social issues. That's pretty interesting. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3653 Joined: 29 Nov 2007   | I don't need a damned test to tell me where I stand. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 815 Joined: 2 Jul 2008   | Economic Left/Right: -3.38 Pretty close to The Dalai Lama. I don't find that too suprising, I'm a big |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 56 Joined: 8 Sep 2008   | Your political compass I expressed strong opinions but viewing things in such a limited way balanced them out and dropped me in the middle. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1498 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 | It does allow for personal vs corporate freedoms, it's just that they're on the different axies. Considering the Australian Labor Party, it's not difficult to be left of them. And if you feel abandoned by politicians, think how someone like me feels! The quadrant format is just a means of representing the continuum, rather than a definitive black/white thing. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1225 Joined: 30 Jul 2008   | Economic Left/Right: -1.75 Honk honk, gentlemen. Looks like I've been placed nearest to Ghandi, but still pretty far from just about everyone. Huh... For me, I think it's because showed so much displeasure for highly rich and super-corporate entities. The options they gave slanted corps as uncaring about everything but profit, which I mostly disagree with. Although I tended to keep gov'ment away from corporations as well, except where monopoly-prevention was concerned. Just call me middle-ground-man! Ah well. As you were. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1123 Joined: 17 Jun 2008 | I've done this before, and I really think they need a middle option. My opinion is more complex than a simple yea or nay, and for that reason this will never be too accurate. Economic Left/Right: -4.38 Here's a similar one I took, that is a bit shorter. http://www.moral-politics.com/xpolitics.aspx?menu=Home Your scored -4.5 on Moral Order and 1.5 on Moral Rules. System: Socialism Of the 486,843 respondents (5,933 on Facebook): |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1498 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 | I'd suggest that people read the FAQ when stating that it's a slanted quiz, or that it's inaccurate, or whatever. Aside from that, the answers are actually rather witty. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 849 Joined: 22 Aug 2006 | Economic Left/Right: -0.62 As always, I hate surveys. What does my belief in the need for monopoly regulation in a free market have to do with "predator multinationals"? I hate having to decide if I agree or disagree based on how they phrased the question, as opposed to how I feel about the subject at hand. Ugh. Stupid surveys. Or, what does "social responsibility" have to do with providing value to stockholders? To me, a corporation has 0 social responsibilities (outside of what I would consider its legal liabilities) and 1 FISCAL responsibility: to provide value to stockholders. So when you ask me if I agree that "companies have 1 social responsibility, to provide value to stockholders", how should I respond? Maybe? BS. Give me an option for "your question reeks" and I might be happy. So, to speak to some of the comments in the original thread: When I read what you were saying, and as I began the quiz, my framework-of-the-day evolved to be something along the lines of... We, the people, the government, are a collective bargaining tool against the corporations (which are also people in some la-la fairyland called legality). We give them a free market to play in, but we bound that market by the things we consider intolerable. Environmentalism, for example: many of the situations we consider to be sources of intolerable pollution are cases where corporations were allowed to externalize their unwanted outputs. The EPA and other (not all) environmental regulation serve to force the business to operate in a (more) closed system. In effect, to pay for their negative outputs and receive payment for their positive ones. It is no fault of the corporation for trying to externalize these costs, but through government, the society as a whole can prevent the corporation from doing so. We can't just make a law that says "Don't externalize things", because we have to judge which externalizations we are okay with, and which ones we aren't.
This is silliness. Why even have taxes if you're not going to allow the government to dole it out as we, as a group, see fit? The point is that as a collective group, society can decide where that money is best served, instead of having everyone watching out for themselves. No, it doesn't work perfectly, and it might not be the best system, but throwing out all semblance of communal direction? You might as well not have a tax at all, and just let people do what they will with what they have. I could understand that if you were somewhere closer to the middle on economic left/right, but you're way over there. What good is your stance if you can't force the fatcats to put some of their billions into the causes you deem worthy? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3512 Joined: 25 Jan 2008 | Economic Left/Right: -5.50 Edit: Adding in Shivari's test... The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): 1. System: Authoritarianism WEEEEE! Iraq Osama for the win! |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 518 Joined: 3 Sep 2008 | Did that back when I did Politics at AS. Got the same position as Gandhi.. not sure what to make of it. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1498 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 |
My point is that people should be involved in the running of a country and what happens with that country's money, rather than the present state of thing were it is people having little or no involvement beyond voting once every x-number of years and trusting a questionable system out to cut costs at every chance with their future. I believe an accurate term is "Grass roots community democracy" as my utopic state. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 447 Joined: 24 Sep 2008 | Economic Left/Right: -7.25 Yeah, I'm way on the left. I think that people should be allowed to do what they want to do, and I believe that every human has an equal right to the resources of the Earth and that socialist economic policy is the best way to achieve that. |
Pulitzer Laureate Posts: 849 Joined: 22 Aug 2006 |
Living in the US, I have representatives, for whom I voted, who go and do the politics thing. Do you want more frequent elections? Do you want direct votes on certain things? Do you want to do away with the republican/representative democracy altogether? Specialization of labor! I don't need to spend all day pondering legislation. I hire someone with my taxes and with my vote to do it for me. Personally, my biggest gripe with the US system is the ingrown party system, which defies the natural spectrum of political opinion (which is far more than the one-dimensional party system, even more than the 2-dimensions of the test we all just took), and forces dichotomies where none exist. That last bit, where you refer to cost-cutting... are you talking about the government? I'm indirectly paid by the government. They aren't much into cost-cutting. If instead, you're now talking about corporations, you seem to be commingling our government with the economic system our government supports? While they are intrinsically tied and co-supportive, I think it inaccurate to treat them as one-in-the-same. As far as little to no involvement... people have the choice to be as involved as they choose to be. Nobody is forcing them to end their political views at the polling station. EDIT: P.S. BOOOO stealth edits. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 93 Joined: 20 May 2008 | Economic Left/Right: -3.50 Not surprising I'm a live and let live kinda girl, but i just got back from seeing Religious so this could influences my views |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1367 Joined: 12 Sep 2007 | On Shivari's: Your scored 2 on Moral Order and -4.5 on Moral Rules. The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): System: Conservatism 3% are close to you. The scores didn't make much sense (only 11% are more liberal?), but the predictions are dead on (since Palin I've abandoned Barr) except I think I may still be registered as a Libertarian and I was a Kennedy kid because as a child my family used to be staunch Democrats who loved (and still love) Kennedy. (Now all my family are Republicans.) |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 423 Joined: 17 Sep 2008 | Economic Left/Right: -3.25 I think I answered mine with the most just answers I could have given. I think an interesting thing that a lot of people have forgotten is that Ghandi and Hitler never took this test and believing that any of the peoples personal view are accurately reflected on this graph is foolish. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1367 Joined: 12 Sep 2007 |
Excellent points all. This would never work due to fraud and the HUGE overhead, but wouldn't it be great if you elected Representatives, but could then choose to pull your proxy and give it to a different Representative for a certain vote? Say I elect Congressman Wamp from Tennessee to represent me, but if he's going to vote "YES" on the bailout I could choose to shift my proxy to Congresswoman Kaptur who's voting "NO". Instead of just counting the representatives' votes, they would count the actual number of voters behind each one to decide if something passes or fails. Each person would have to decide how much attention to pay to government; the more attention, the more say you'd have. Actually that would be close to mob rule, would give the media WAY too much power, and would be subject to massive fraud (everyone in the union must assign their votes to Jesse Jackson Junior or not work), but it would be fun for awhile. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1844 Joined: 13 Dec 2007 | Economic Left/Right: -6.88 -3.5 on Moral Order and 4 on Moral Rules Is it wrong that I've never heard of David Cobb? Probably not. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1718 Joined: 13 Sep 2007  | Economic Left/Right: 0.75 Your scored -5.5 on Moral Order and -1 on Moral Rules. The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): System: Liberalism I really don't know. |
Infamous Scribbler Posts: 551 Joined: 6 Mar 2008 | |
So I envisage that this thread will quickly descend into an argument, but I hope to at least keep it political in nature, adhering to this original idea and hence have those involved avoid the banhammer. No crabs here.
So let me begin by introducing a website and a quiz I have long-standing respect for.
This site contains scholarly and mathematical attempt to graph political views according to a bi-axis spectrum. As can be seen on the site, the y-axis is social views, while the x-axis is economic opinion. This leads to a graphic demonstration of the political continuum.
Now to the point. I would like people to go and see where they are located upon this particular graph (You get co-ordinates when you're done.) then let the rest of us know so we can have a good political argument. Yes, it's likely to get heated, but that's the point. If there is any forum I know of with the capacity to have a broad scale discussion of this nature, it would be Escapist. So let the fun begin.
On a side note, I find the general spread of political views displayed by that site intriguing. It seems to swing mostly between "governments in bedrooms, not in board-rooms" and "governments in board-rooms, not in bedrooms" which in my mind displays an exceptional dichotomy between public and private lives. This separation has been present for centuries, even demonstrated back in the time of the Roman republic where one's love life tended to be their business, as opposed to modern day where it doesn't matter what someone's spending huge amounts of money on, (or where they're getting it from) and instead their private lives are up to open scrutiny. To be fair, the above is incredibly generalised with there being quite a number of outliers, but it stands none the less. This division seems to rest between the people who believe that the few cannot be trusted with the wellbeing of the many, but can be trusted with the wellbeing of themselves (board-rooms, not bedrooms); and those who believe that the many cannot be trusted with the wellbeing of the many, nor of their own wellbeing, but that the few can, with both.
I came up with a location of (-8.8), (-8.2). No surprises there, really.
From my view, capitalism replaces the fiscal responsibility and power of governments who answer to the people in the hands of corporate management who, in an increasingly free market, answer to no-one, and get away with many moral and ethical travesties. That's my biggest gripe with it, as a political system. I also believe that authoritarianism impedes the personal freedoms people ought to have, hence why it pisses me off in turn. Let someone decide themselves what happens with the tax they pay, and what they do in their own social lives. Individually people aren't as bad as they are on a group basis.