Fwib wrote:What about this:?
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
Divides political leanings into two axes: Left-Right and Authoritarianism-Libertarianism
Is this a sensible division? if not, how would you do it better?
Uh better than some, still wildly uninformative on some issues.
Consider the following concepts:
Socialism
Personal Freedom
Secularism
Citizen Participation
Inclusiveness
As it happens, I am largely speaking in favor of all of them to a point, but they are all in fact quite different. And most importantly they are available as a package to one degree or another (including "not") in a variety of social and political movements, philosophies, and parties.
Let's go through the list above:
Socialism: The degree to which the government intervenes economically to uphold its end of the social contract. You can have more of it by having the government make more social safety programs and increase infrastructural investment by the state. You also can have more or less of it in different areas: for example you might have a state supplied police and fire fighting force but not a state planned healthcare program (d'oh!). One can very vividly and easily imagine having too much of it in one or more area, to the point where the government is providing you with not just the means to eat lunch but the lunch itself (depriving you of lunch-related choices). People seriously come out for and against it across the board, and still others see the merits to one degree or another in one or more facet of society. This single axis is
itself multifaceted, and it fractalizes itself all the way down.
Personal Freedom: The degree to which an individual is allowed to make choices and perform actions of their own devising. While it sounds like a no brainer, this is actually quite a complicated problem. In even the freest society people would be royally pissed at someone who yelled "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and societies where one is permitted to punch or stab people who piss them off are generally considered barbaric rather than enlightened. Again this seemingly simple slider is actually a horrendously complex system of balances, gives, and takes. When members of the IMF talk about "freedom" they are generally only talking about the individual or even the corporation's ability to invest, buy, sell, and transfer wealth. When I talk about freedom, I'm usually talking about the individual or the group's ability to self expression: protest, discourse, and argumentation. One can easily imagine a Mad Max style dystopia where one had too much personal freedom, and yet one can make a persuasive argument that we presently don't have enough freedom anywhere in the world.
Secularism: The degree to which civil society divorces itself from religious thought. A far simpler question than the previous two, as I actually don't see anything inherently wrong with a society simply being Atheist. That's seriously not even on the list of problems that the Czech Republic has. Nevertheless, there are people who are willing to fight wars over it to one degree or another, even amongst those who are ostensibly on the same side. For while the side of secularism is fairly simple in its bifurcations (religion-blind or anti-religious?), the anti-secularists are completely fragmented in their beliefs (are we imposing Allah or Vishnu today?).
Citizen Participation: The degree to which an individual citizen has a say in the workings of society. The foundation of democracy, this is in general somewhat non-contentious in modern discourse. Except of course, that that's a damn lie and everyone knows it. Monsanto throws a fit every time democratic institutions want to have a say in what they do with their money, and act like governments don't even have a right to consider doing anything about it when they commit supercrime. What should be subjected to democratic review and how one should go about doing that review is a hotly contested issue even in the first world republics. One can easily imagine a situation where citizen participation has gone too far (either a civilization where the lay person is confronted directly with issues too complicated for them to understand or a situation where emergency situations are subjected to consensus building techniques rather than acted upon within the time frame of the emergency). And one can see the merit in having citizens participate in some decisions and not others. Scientific questions being decided by consensus amongst experts in the field rather than by a consensus or everyone.
Inclusiveness: The degree to which the rules and benefits of society apply to everyone within society. Again, it is initially a simple appearing question, but in reality it's filled with exceptions and subcategories and is very difficult to represent with a simple slider. The Czech Republic, for example, treats 14 year olds like adults. Which means that they can make contracts and be fully punished for breaches of the law. It also means that you can have sex with them without that being a crime. I personally feel that goes too far, but to what extent 14 year olds should be treated differently from older people within the society is certainly up for vigorous debate all over the world. Some things, such as classifying certain groups of people as sub-human and allowing other humans to own them is obviously right out - unless of course one considers that I intend to o exactly that to
babies of all ethnicities. It is a complicated and multifaceted issue.
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Right. And now we can consider such things as
Security,
Privacy,
Military Preparedness, and
War. None of those issues are simple. But I don't even have terribly strongly held convictions on those issues, so it's difficult for me to articulate what the vagueries even are.
-Username17
