What is your political affiliation?

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C40
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by C40 »

Jean wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:48 am
I think a very important axis would be wether one sees humans as a part of nature, or masters of nature. Many ideologies that are very close to one another on the compass are in reallity opposed because of this subject.
I agree absolutely, Jean. I think that is a big part of what makes me feel like these two scales are not accurate for me.

I just took a look at this chart below, and I was quite surprised to see so many in the upper right box (including folks like Yang). It seems I know even less than I thought about these political scales. I do believe that the red and blue team's views and strategies are actually about 95% the same, if one actually considers all of the things they agree on without debating, and how similar many of their strategies end up being in action, even on some things they supposedly disagree on (like starting bullshit wars)... so I do think that on a political classification system - if it were to be anything close to complete, those two groups should actually be really close together.... but considering the questions used in the test, I didn't think they'd be so close on this scale

I also learned that perhaps I should be interested in Howie Hawkins, though I have never heard of him until today. I'm listening to him talk now and agree with what he's saying, but what I've heard him talk about so far had been Green reform and so far it seems to be centered around technology solutions of greatly increasing/adjusting manufacturing in order to shift to clean energy. His Green strategy sounds like it may be the "everybody buy a Prius/Tesla strategy, which I disagree with in large part.

But really, I was wondering about what changes he may suggest are necessary to actually improve the lives of humans (relating to wellness indicators like satisfaction, fulfillment, health, mental illness, community connection, along with long-term improvement and protection of natural resources).. I think that such a poor and non-existent focus on these things is what makes me dislike both the red and blue teams so much (and my opinion that the problems in these areas are largely caused by living as if we are masters of nature, and measuring progress only by $ - which both parties fully adhere to) ... but then even folks/groups on the green side seem to me to be, basically, the blue team with a green sash.

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Last edited by C40 on Tue Apr 14, 2020 6:22 am, edited 7 times in total.

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Bankai
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Bankai »

Jean wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:09 am
Adolf Hitler and Ghandi are the famous politicians I respect the most. Ghandi's image is still kinda in fashion, but his ideas aren't. Hitler's both are ilegals in most western countries.
Maybe they are illegal for a reason. I'm all for freedom of thought and speech but coming from the country which lost 22% of the population in WW2, what you wrote is disgusting to me.

However, it ties in with your idea of total extermination of Muslim immigrants which you expressed multiple times here, so I can't say I'm surprised who your idol is.

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Jean
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Jean »

We only disagree on who is to blame for it. I'm sad about it.
Édit: your oversimplification of what i said ties in well with your understanding of wwii. I'm back in the Woods.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

C40 wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:58 am
*
Where did that chart come from? How was it created? I am familiar with that type of chart but the results here seem off to me.

Edit: I found it, though there is little explanation for the results. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020

Edit 2: OK, the results aren't surprising when you think about where US politics is compared to the rest of the world.

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Seppia
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Seppia »

Ok so I’m -4 left/right and -2.36 libertarian/authoritarian.
In the USA, I tend to agree most with democrat capiralists/businessmen.
For example I rarely disagree politically with Barry Ritholtz.
In Italy, I just despise most politicians.
In America, I would vote democrat today

jacob
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by jacob »

The most important missing dimension as measured by voting interest(*) during 2010--2020 is elitism vs populism, establishment vs precariat, socioeconomic winners vs losers, or whatever you wanna call the axis. One suggestion for illustrating this [on a flat piece of paper] has been to change the topology of the traditional left-right axis to a horse shoe, but ideally this is better shown in 3D.

(*) As measured by the size of the various green parties, environmental concerns are rather low on the priority list of the voting population.

IlliniDave
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by IlliniDave »

I think I've taken that quiz before, but don't remember how I did. This time I was about 1.5 ticks down in libertarian territory right on the left/right line (coordinates [0.13,-1.38]). That agrees with my self assessment. I didn't really like the quiz because it seemed designed to trigger emotional biases rather than tease out thoughtful positions.

I noticed it was apparently done in Great Britain. The argument that the x-y scatter plot that shows virtually the entire US presidential field up in Hitler's corner of the space because ex-US politics being the gold standard is interesting to apply to the quiz. The scatter plot shows that the closest candidate (whose name I recognize) to me to where I mapped on the quiz is Tulsi Gabbard, ironically. Ironic because she was the only Dem candidate I liked even a little.

One could view the scatter plot as shifted to make the leftmost US candidates (those who venerate Norway) look centrist. The explanation is that other western democracies' preferences define center rather than something somewhat objective like how much control a candidate wants the federal government to exercise over the private sector and individual citizens, separation of power between state and federal, etc. Interesting that people who run on reducing the size, scope, and role of the federal gov't in the private sector map highest on the authoritarian scale where people who want the most federal involvement and control of the private sector map much closer to libertarian (e.g., Sanders and Warren).

Obviously, libertarian/authoritarian and left/right mean different things to me than to the average citizen of an ex-US western democracy. Odd the US is implicitly considered not representative of western democracies. It would be interesting to see a population-weighted mapping where the US landscape and viewpoints would be included.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

I was genuinely surprised by my results....

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Jean
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Jean »

It's not only an environnemental concern

Tyler9000
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Tyler9000 »

IlliniDave wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:11 am
One could view the scatter plot as shifted to make the leftmost US candidates (those who venerate Norway) look centrist.
IMO, any chart that labels proponents of the Green New Deal as economically centrist is exhibiting a particularly left-leaning Overton window. When politicians populating a significant percentage of the left of the chart don't even allow for democratic elections (I wonder where they'd list Maduro and Xi), I think maybe you should re-think the scale.
Last edited by Tyler9000 on Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by jacob »

The scatter plots used to be more evenly distributed, but there has been a significant neoliberal drift in the world over the past 10-15 years. Not just in the US. I suppose the website retained its original calibration to show this. Look at earlier maps to confirm.

This drift has also caused the emergence of left-wing populists (Bernie bros) as well as right-wing populists (Trump base) which were previously minor players on the fringe but has since grown very large in influence. This is not just organic growth but also because the US first-past-the-post system allows the fringes to punch above their weight and because many voters felt that the centrist-neoliberal policies with resp. a right-wing slant under Bush2 and a left-wing slant under Obama didn't work for them.

In proportional representation systems, fringe parties usually have a hard time gaining traction because the center-right would rather work with the center-left and vice versa than either would want to work with the far-left or far-right. Sometimes the extremists even prefer to stay out of government because they realize they have more influence by sticking to protesting rather than having to take responsibility for governing. For example, 2010-2015 saw several examples of far-right populist parties forming governments in Europe. This lasted only a few years until voters (and the parties) realized what a clusterfuck that was and changed back again. However, in the US red must work with red and blue with blue... and so we see the extreme partisanship that has developed mostly because the wings have become important in both parties.

The political compass does not show the populist dimension even if that dimension is very important for what's going on now.

For example, much of the Democratic primary was trying to decide whether to fight right-wing populism with left-wing populism or whether to return to the left hand side of the centrist-establishment. For traditional reasons, there was no such fight in the Republican party, but there still exists a bunch of "NeverTrumpers" representing the right hand side of the centrist-establishment e.g. Kristol, Conway (the husband), Romney?, the Lincoln Project. It's certainly conceivable that this is also the case for team red congressmembers in general even if they can't admit it publicly for partisanship reasons.

Non-politicians tend to be more all over the map insofar they're no asked to identify directly with a sports team(*). The website actually used to show some of those with plots of composers, writers, ... Professional politicians tend to align on an x~y line. I think this is because they're largely limited by how much they get to decide over the public and therefore can only disagree on whether that control should be socially restricted and economically free or vice versa. This is because most politicians represent an established system which they have to work within. This keeps them on the x~y line. Trump would of course very much like to leave that line and follow whatever impulse he might have, but the constitution, courts, ... the checks and balances don't allow it.

(*) In particular, voters will often support policies that their party is against insofar it the policy has not been tagged with a team color.

black_son_of_gray
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by black_son_of_gray »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:26 am
Nearly the same score here. Glad I'm in good company!

Unless I'm missing something (quite possible), there's an asymmetry to the Authoritarian<>Libertarian axis whereby the extreme authoritarians have no problem with imposing their views on others, while extreme libertarians do... because libertarianism. Hence unlikely to gain/keep much political momentum/clout. On other words, there is a kind of gravity constantly pulling towards authoritarianism.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by ZAFCorrection »

The pull towards authoritarianism can be thought of in the opposite sense too. Most people are basically incapable of acting effectively in a libertarian context. They just don't have the skills or discipline to avoid falling under someone's influence. In fact it is expected that that will happen. Hence people getting pissy when the government hasn't done something about the crisis of the day.

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Jean
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Jean »

Master of nature - part of nature
Authoritarian - libertarien
Communiste - individualiste
Tribalist - universaliste

I think de can use those four dichotomy in an mbti fashion to classify nearly every ideology or religion. The populiste - élitiste dichotomy is more of a thrust issue on wether we believe someone is serving thé nations intérest or some hidden interest.

KeepItReal
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by KeepItReal »

jacob wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:16 pm
I agree. Neo-liberalism is pretty much corporations advocating for same sex marriage and environmental concerns but they exploit natural resources and labor in other countries to sell its product at maximum profit, while paying its employees relatively cheap wages. Or another way to view it is neo-liberalism is the system looking out for the wealthy establishment with market running and government intervening when corporations need help or to make up the gap in social issues. The working class (middle and low class) got left behind and exploited by politicians and corporations for the past decades. The economy continues to shift its wealth and resources to the top 1%, hence the growing gap in the wealthy inequality between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99%. Both political parties in the USA are parties working for corporations and not for the Average american. The military industrial complex, health industrial complex, banks, fossil fuel companies, and etc. have so much influence on the politicians and their states/districts that money truly runs politics. Would the military industrial complex want the USA to end its military presence in other countries? Would the health industrial complex want a single-payer government universal health care? Would fossil fuel companies want a "green new deal"? Would banks want the re-in statement of the glass steagall act? Of course no, so they will do anything it can to prevent the politicians to pass such policy. What is the future of neo-liberalism? Is neo-liberalism a bad thing? What are solutions or alternatives?

nomadscientist
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by nomadscientist »

I've always considered myself an extremist, but I've flitted from one extreme ideology to another. I was a centrist for a little while but only because I couldn't think of an honest argument not to be. Meanwhile, I observe most people prefer being centrists, because it lets them be a part of a group.

As I age, I become more cynical and tend to view the political structure of the world more as a set of boundary conditions to be optimised for rather than a collaborative project in which I have some personal investment. That's especially true as I see the foundations of collaborative government eroding and most people not noticing; that's always the case though, just as how "democratic" parliaments of a totally different new age ideology have complete continuity with medieval institutions that would be baffled or alarmed by what they evolved to become.

Everything in the mass media is just propaganda and usually contradicts itself on the 3-6 month time scale (i.e. just a little longer than most people remember). There's a gradual fade-out in the propaganda content as the scholarly quality increases through popular books, to scholarly books, to scholarly papers (although some prestige fields are pure propaganda since intended as such).

At the same time, I do not like Cui bono?-type conspiracy theorists who tend to view the world as perfectly organised along some scheme by some narrow group. If people were capable of doing that things would be a lot plainer and saner. People are just not evolved for dealing with more than about 100 characters in their lives and that's perhaps the number one factor in shaping human social relations.

Aspirant
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Aspirant »

I was pretty much on the same place than 2Birds1Stone.
I like to think that I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

The placement of the origo is an interesting question. I think I would identify with Bernie/AOC crowd in States. In Finland I am more right wing. Actually Bernie would be more right wing than our right wing president :D

I am naturally biased by my home country but I think that maybe the top 1 % doesn't need eleventh luxury yacht and could pay a bit more taxes so that the guy camping under the bridge could have shelter. Or universal healthcare or less expensive education. At the same time I am complaining about the Finnish tax rates... My ideal would be something in between.

Nomad
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Re: What is your political affiliation?

Post by Nomad »

Generally left wing, pro liberty, pro democracy, pro freespeech, pro capitalism - but a well legislated and safe one.
Probably could be summed up as Scandinavian style social democrat.

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