The Political Compass, meanwhile, keeps asking us to make judgements based upon false dichotomies. For instance, how the hell am I supposed to answer the first question, "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations", given that I don't believe there's a conflict of interests? Do I say that I strongly disagree, because I think the premise is balls, or that I strongly agree, because if I did think there was a trade off then of course I'd prefer the common interests of humanity to those of corporations, or do I pick one in the middle so as not to skew the results, or do I just draw my answer from a hat? How do I answer a question on international law, since, having studied it, I realise that most of it doesn't actually exist? Actually, I tend to think the whole of that first page is a lot of arbitrary nonsense.
...Which, on second thoughts, wouldn't distinguish it from the rest of the table. Here's another one: no, I don't think that a company would necessarily value protection of the environment, so I have to vote in favour of regulation. Except, hang on, that's going to make them think I'm a lefty, when the kind of regulation I favour is the assignment of property rights. Whoops, that's another one down the tube!
Here's another: "It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society." What do I do with that? The only people I can think of to whom that applies is people who gamble at casinos for a living, and I regret them, but I also realise that the author thought he was referring to (for instance) hedge fund managers, but I wholly disagree with his assessment of their place in society.
Luckily I managed to end up with the respectably libertarian score of:
Economic Left/Right: 6.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72
So I guess there were enough decent questions to make up for those. That, or I just managed to mess up the system well enough.
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Psalm 91:7
