Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: The Political Compass is a steaming crock 30
For one example of a loaded question from TPC:
Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.
Evil. Corporations. Are. Evil.
Right. I hail from Western Oregon, which has been thoroughly denuded and rendered a blighted wasteland by Weyerhauser.
NOT! Corporations tend to grasp their symbiotic relationship with the market.
They can tend toward monopoly, and there is a reasonable regulatory role for government.
Just keep in mind that government, itself, is the ultimate monopoly.
Which is why (Score:2)
In "advanced market economies" the Government has been captured by corporations seeking to leverage that monopoly power. Hence? The Heritage Foundation.
Romney was the bitch they rode into Mass., for their HealthCorp monopoly. Obama is the bitch they rode to take it out of a single, state-sized pilot.
It AIN'T "Socialism" if you are forced to pay a privately-owned corporation - even by Gov mandate.
But Mussolini would have really dug it.
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Dead Center, Slightly High (Score:2)
I've long rated Dead Center on their test, slightly high. But note that NONE of the politicos at your link are anywhere near center.
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Of course it is, it's based on Americanism.
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Liberty is essentially Christian, whereas Postmodernism was born in Hell, with the Devil for a father.
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Liberty changed with the heresy of Americanism. Authentic liberty is the right to do what is moral. Americanist postmodern liberty is mere hedonism rewritten- the right to do whatever one wants regardless of who it hurts.
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In a word, 'infantilism'.
I figured you would find a way (Score:1)
All it asks is if you agree or disagree. I don't say corporations are evil. I'm telling you the authority is evil. And people with authority cannot be trusted to voluntarily regulate themselves. So it must be removed and dissolved. You still erroneously distinguish the corporation from the government. A government exists because the people with the resources to create one allows it to. The government is their private security guard. It is not the ultimate monopoly by any means. Otherwise, in the middle east
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Private property--does it exist?
And no, I didn't finish the quiz. I hated every question for the cheap farce it was. I could have written this JE against virtually any one of them.
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The right to common resources - do they exist? You have an exclusive right to the physical things you, yourself produce and possess.
Cheap farce = a little too revealing for your tastes. I'm sure you can write volumes against such a thing...
About seven or eight years ago somebody made a graph of slashdotters (teh circle, as it were) who did the quiz. I could swear your name was there. Maybe a ghost from the distant past can dig it up.
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Oh come on: "You didn't build that."
Even the things you think you possess were obtained by some act of 'theft' to which you were not privy, carried out by ancestors of whom you know not.
Just lay back and enjoy being buried by the Bulldozer of Guilt.
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You can't 'steal' from the dead, only from their living descendants. There is no sensible argument against the rights of access to clean air and water and land. That requires the twisted political mind of those who wish to subjugate others.
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Thus we start with a reasonable proposition. Where does it go from there?
A bureaucracy is born, and the notion or 'rights' gets expanded and extended, such that people can't put in an airport [theothermccain.com], because it involves moving some coal, and that triggers a bureaucratic avalanche.
When the means becomes an end unto itself, no good can come of it.
slightly embarrassed (Score:2)
I'd rather not share my score, but I'll say this much:
Fidel Castro refers to me as "that freaking far-Left kook".
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For the Right circa 2012, "freedom" is just another word for nothing left for other people to lose.
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Here's mine:
Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56
I've been known to characterise myself as "slightly to the right of Leon Trotsky", so no surprises here.
According to TPC, though, I'm keeping company with the likes of M Gandhi. Could be worse.
I remember passing those out in '88 (Score:2)
And yeah the questions suck, but then again, it's actually really hard to come up with something inside of the same time and space that doesnt suck more.
That question, to me, is a pretty solid yes. That doesnt mean that by 'regulation' I mean what a lot of people would today though. I mean effective prohibition of fraud and force - not regulatory capture.
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The Wasa! (Score:2)
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I have actually walked that ship from end to end...
So have I. Several times. Most recently about 2 weeks ago. (I live in Stockholm, BTW.)
...it's quite the shrine to the Swedish ideal of lagomhet...
Huh? Vasa capsized on her maiden voyage because she was too damned top-heavy. What's that got to do with being lagom?
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Congratulations, nice place, the only major city I would consider living in. I spent 3 years based in Uppsala, close enough to spend a lot of time in Stockholm.
It's the always needed bad example. The Wasa was extremely olagom, and the entire exhibit seemed pretty well focused on pointing that out (and thus justifying current sensibilities which would have rejected
It's a test, Leon (Score:2)
and if your reaction to the question is to shoot the examiner, you just might be a replicant.
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Left, Right, Top, Bottom (Score:2)
All are useless. They all represent futile attempts to preserve at all costs things that can't be preserved.
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That's the same as asking if you can preserve the inevitability of error and death.
What you can do is trade one kind of error for another or use up one thing to temporarily save another. That's all you're ever doing in life. We end up arguing with each other over what we should and shouldn't use up and what we should try to save. Lots of people respond to this by picking a few things to try to hold on to and damning the rest. I don't mind picking a few things to try to protect, it's the "damn the rest" part
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In what larger context is this troubling?