Saturday, March 1, 2008

political compass test

As my friend Mark Storella put it, this is a good way to waste ten minutes at work. The political compass test asks you some questions and then rates you on two scales: economic and social.

My scores:
economic: -1.75 (slightly left, I'm a free market guy who hates any protectionism and wants to see a hefty dose of regulations to keep companies from exploiting workers)
social: -5.74 (don't bother me, keep governments out of my affairs at all costs)
I'm proud to say that the closest men to me on the scale are Ghandi and the Dalai Lama.

4 comments:

Ned said...

Good Morning, Oh Friend of All the World –

My score came out similar to Milton Friedman, which makes me happy, because I when I’ve read his work I’ve been struck by how true it seemed.

Economic Left/Right: 4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.26

I wasn't surprised to see your libertarian bent, but I thought you'd be more right on the market. Gov't regulations seem like a good concept until you see how they actually get implemented in most cases, then the free market looks so much better.

Anonymous said...

Economic Left/Right: -7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97

Lex Pelger said...

but on the other side, my baba, my scientific view of the world makes regulation appear very necessary. we both don't think communism works because people can't work for the greater good, they mostly can only work for themselves and their immediate family. that's their motivation.

if you view a corporation as an organism (as i always do), its job is to make a profit and one easy way to that is to exploit the workers (subtly or otherwise). the people in the office can't really be expected to care about the workers. it's too disconnected from them. they think about the people they work with and how to make more money for their family. the Workers on the floor can be as an abstract a concept as the the State.

some companies do a good job taking care of their people and that's great for them but that's not the norm and we need regulations in place to protect workers from business. that's one important role of government.

total free market is anarchy and i know what you think about anarchy.

Asti said...

Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian:-4.36

Um. Yeah. Whatever Nelson Mandela said.