Click pic to embiggen
Now someone needs to create the middle of the road panel which fits the vast majority of the country. And, of course, the panel for those who just don’t give a crap.
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
Doh! #14*
# 16 LibertyLover
> All campaigns should be publicly financed to
> remove control of government by wealthy
> individuals and corporations both here and
> abroad.
I’ve put some thought into this.
My biggest concern is it violates the freedom to associate — sending money to whom you wish.
Interestingly, if you do not allow people to spend even their own money on elections, then you just end up with needing to enforce outright bribery laws. And, there is a limit, albeit fairly high at $12,000 last I checked, to how much tax free money you can gift to someone.
Anyway, I don’t claim to have all of the answers. But, it would be a start.
> remember, from strict definitions of
> the terms: the opposite of conservative is
> progressive; the opposite of liberal is stingy.
Nice. I’m stealing that.
Go for it. It’s not original on my part either.
#19 – LibertyLover,
I think the democrats should be portrayed as piss-yellow and the republicans as shit-brown.
Ah, so you do think one is worse than the other. I agree with your color scheme.
To others who question the liberal/libertarian similarities, I would state as a liberal that I feel far closer to libertarians than to other somewhat similar mind sets.
We share more than the first 5 letters of our labels. True libertarians are socially liberal, just as liberals are, hence the similarity in the names. Both want maximal human rights and freedoms.
The differences only come in when we look at what services we want from government. Liberals tend to want a government that assures a certain base level of living standard that is above abject poverty. Libertarians believe in the freedom to starve (Heinlein’s phrase, not mine. And he thought it was a positive statement. So, I’m not being disparaging.)
What makes more sense is to think of the political compass, which separates out the social from the financial and allows for a finer grained division to understand our similarities and differences.
That said, those of us who are liber(al|tarian)s should really try to work together on our common goals more often. There are far worse people out there than either of us.
We need to stop the big-government, borrow-and-bomb repugnicans who we both hate and who hold a position antithetical to all that is good and decent and moral, for example.
We also need to stop those who would turn this once-great nation into a theocracy.
#34 – me,
I probably should have split that post. Most of it has nothing to do with LibertyLover.
#25 – LibertyLover,
Economic Left/Right: 3.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.82
This is what I mean about concentrating on our similarities rather than our differences.
Here’s one from a seriously radical liberal, me.
Economic Left/Right: -7.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.31
So, don’t think you can offend me by calling me extremist. I know I am. I’m more left and libertarian than Ghandi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.
My quick summation of what my scores mean is this:
I believe people should be as free as possible and that corporations require tremendous regulation.
A corporation is a tool, like a hammer, created by humans for humans’ purposes. Like a hammer, it is not a life form and has no inherent rights. It should be used solely to limit personal financial liability. It should not provide protection from one’s own actions that may be criminal or negligent or both.
#35–Scott==”I probably should have split that post. Most of it has nothing to do with LibertyLover.” //// Heh, heh==as in liberals and libertarians having much in common doesn’t include the infantile fantasies of LL? True nuff.
#27 – Dallas,
The right side should be amended to say “Borrow and Spend” vs the left “Tax and Spend”.
I prefer borrow-and-bomb to describe today’s neocon right wing radical non-conservative reactionary nut jobs.
But, this diagram is about the classic definitions which have mostly been forgotten.
#3 – LibertyLover,
I just got around to following the link in that post. All I should say is “Godwin’s Law: You lose.”
What I will say (that I shouldn’t) is that comparisons between Adolf and the current leaders in the U.S. really belittles the holocaust and disrespects those who lost family and friends during the time.
Pointing out that W may indeed have been following the Mussolini 10 step process may be valid. But, closing a society and making it totalitarian does not necessarily result in a holocaust. It does result in a really bad system and does indeed kill.
However, I think you may be overlooking the systematic genocide that did take place in WW II but has not (yet) even been hinted at within the U.S. Try to keep a sense of proportion about this.
Dang. I forgot to close my bold tag after the close quote. Sorry.
[Fixed. –ed.]
#39, Give it some time. Once the dollar collapses, you’ll be looking at that cartoon again.
Ask yourself who the “hated enemy” is now?
#39, Followup
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater, variant
#38 Agreed.
It would shock most to find out I was republican through the Reagan era. You know, the good old days when William F Buckley provided intelligent speak and the party had a shred of integrity.
Now the GOP organism is infested with religious taliban parasite. I’m afraid the parasite now controls the host and both my be destroyed.
Elected representatives are both more pragmatic (as evidenced by the success of well-monied lobbying efforts) and more statist (they don’t run for office in order to put themselves out of a job) than the electorate.
So the voters may be “Don’t Tax and Spend” but so many of the electees are “Spend and Don’t Tax” (the latter being pragmatic, to bribe the electorate with its own money).
#25
Economic: 0.88
Social: -4.00
Many of the questions are obviously worded vaguely, but I find there aren’t many people, other than myself, that consistently score in that bottom right quadrant on these types of tests until now. LibertyLover, clearly you take it to a whole new level.
#36
In short, you are saying people should be free, right up until they start a corporation. If that were the mentality, no one would start a corporation; just large businesses.
thomas: yes people should be free. Corporations should not be more free than people.
#47, Part 1: It’s easy when you truly understand what Liberty is 🙂
Part 2: I’ve often wondered what it would be like to see what would happen if companies had no more than three levels of supervision. i.e., Owner -> General Foremen -> Superviors -> Workers.
I’ve got some vendors who are so large, they own competing products and don’t know it. They have management levels that are 12 people deep! I don’t know how they get anything done.
Hmm economic -.88, social -5.08
Not sure why they feel the need to have two decimal places, perhaps it’s like the 99c store for tests.
As for the original post… standard naive gobbledygook. Two sides, no grey areas, completely ridiculous. I’m so getting tired of simple people with the black/white up/down left/right arguments. Moral and ideological ambiguity is part of modern society whether you like it or not. It has been in all societies, but as has been said, the victors write the history.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a group of humans that were completely independent, morally, physically and mentally, that could write history without the impact of personal preference?
#47 – Thomas,
In short, you are saying people should be free, right up until they start a corporation. If that were the mentality, no one would start a corporation; just large businesses.
No. I’m saying business requires regulation for our health and the health of business. With 28 unbroken years of deregulation, from Reagan on, including the Clinton administration, we have destroyed the economy.
We need Glass-Steagal back. We need tighter regulation on the amount of leverage banks can sustain. 12:1 wasn’t high enough; the greedy bastards needed 44:1. That’s right, 44 borrowed dollars for every one dollar they actually owned.
And, in the absence of Glass-Steagal, we ended up with the FDIC guaranteeing the deposits in corporations that were betting in the wildly risky environment of subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, and the rest.
So, people should be free. Corporations should be treated as a tool to limit personal liability, and nothing else. Corporations have masked active crimes (e.g. Bhopal), deliberate and calculated negligence (e.g. sweatshops that violate what few safety laws developing nations have regarding living over flammable factory supplies, Exxon Valdez that had nothing to do with a drunk captain and everything to do with Exxon and BP deliberately violating the agreement they signed to be able to use Valdez as a port), lobbying in the name of the corporation as if the corporation itself has any right to vote (not out of the pockets of people, but out of the corporate coffers) (e.g. for unsafe inefficient vehicles, against diplomacy in favor of war by the military industrial complex, etc.)
This is not about personal freedom. Corporations deliberately hide the names of the people responsible. They issue press releases as if there are no people behind it. Exxon said this. Enron said that. In Britain, it is common to say “Exxon were negligent” rather than “Exxon was negligent” as an acknowledgment, however feeble, that the corporation didn’t do it, a group of people did.
So, the person remains free. The hammer and the corporation remain lifeless tools.
#50 – Jim,
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a group of humans that were completely independent, morally, physically and mentally, that could write history without the impact of personal preference?
Yes. And still, those people would need a source of information. Where will they get any input? As long as someone is in control of sources of information, there can be no one who is “completely independent”. Further, we are not evolved that way. Ostracism has always been the worst punishment because humans don’t survive well alone and are a highly social species.
Lastly, with 6.7 billion people
litteringliving on the planet, there are bound to be similarities of thought in bunches of people. It is a nice shorthand to be able to label myself an environmentalist, a liberal, an antitheist, a misanthrope, etc as a shorthand for some of the memeplexes I hold.Many memes are dependent on other memes forming memeplexes. How, for example, could one believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old despite all obvious evidence to the contrary unless one first believed in the infallibility of a book on genealogy? (Sorry, I did say I was an antitheist, though I hope not to make this a huge sidetrack for this particular thread.)
So, despite the 6.7 billion people on the planet, there will be large areas of commonality of thought among certain groups. Labels function as a shorthand for the memeplexes. As long as we recognize that most of us will not fit perfectly into even the labels that best describe us, it can shortcut a lot of discussion in getting to know someone.
#42 – Alfalfa,
Of course the leftist here hate it…they don’t like being accurately described.
As the farthest left leaning person here so far, at least by posted political compass scores, what the hell are you talking about?
I don’t hate this.
I’ve said several times that this reflects old school liberals and conservatives. It does a fair job of it.
What you fail to realize because you don’t even accurately see your own side of an argument, let alone the side of anyone else, is that those of us on the left would be insulted to be characterized the way the conservative side is portrayed here just as true conservatives might be insulted to be portrayed as the true liberals are here.
What you should really care about, being a neocon, reactionary, uber-right-wing, uneducated hick of a nut job, is that an accurate portrayal of the neocon philosophy would be insulting to anyone with more than four neurons. Good thing you’ve only got three. Even better that two of them are misfiring.
If we could harness the sum total of your brain power over your entire lifetime, we just might be able to light up one very weak LED for about 3 nanoseconds.
#51
I agree that businesses require regulation. So did Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II (along with every other President). As always the question is not “whether” we need regulation but rather, “How much?”, “Where exactly?” and most importantly “What are you willing to give up for it?”. Too much regulation in a specific area stifles economic growth; not enough can do the same.
> Corporations deliberately
> hide the names of the
> people responsible
True and not true. They do shield those responsible from personal liability. That is systemic to the design of corporations. However, the names of those “responsible” is a matter of public record.
If no one could sue you, then the need for corporations would be less. However, since people can sue you walking down the street the wrong way, there needs to be protection for those that take a risk on starting a business.
The real problem isn’t what other party says it is going to do.
The real problem is that each party increasingly wants to social engineer us, instead of detach from us.
I don’t have a problem with “social engineering” as long as it is from a distance.
But both parties constantly stick their hands in and micromanage and increase the bureaucracy.
I guess what I am saying is that both parties take the “let’s write a huge book of new laws” approach instead of a minimalist solution.
This overhead is KILLING us.
#54 – Thomas,
I agree that businesses require regulation. So did Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II (along with every other President).
You wouldn’t happen to have a single example of a business regulation implemented or made tighter under any of them, would you? To my knowledge, all they did was remove and lessen regulation again and again and again, with the result of a complete financial meltdown from which it may take years or even a generation or more to recover.
As always the question is not “whether” we need regulation but rather, “How much?”, “Where exactly?” and most importantly “What are you willing to give up for it?”. Too much regulation in a specific area stifles economic growth; not enough can do the same.
You wouldn’t happen to have a relatively recent example of too much regulation killing business, would you? I can think of a number of examples where deregulation hurt whole industries for quite some time before they came back years later, the interstate trucking industry, the airline industry (when that one was deregulated, the average age of aircraft went from 15 years to 30 years, and many airlines collapsed), the savings and loan associations and later the aforementioned entire banking and brokerage industry.
> Corporations deliberately
> hide the names of the
> people responsible
True and not true. They do shield those responsible from personal liability. That is systemic to the design of corporations. However, the names of those “responsible” is a matter of public record.
I’m fine with corporations for the purpose of shielding individuals from financial liability for the reasonable and lawful actions taken as officers of the company.
When they start shielding people from crimes, fraud, and gross negligence of their own actions and then corporate coffers exert greater force on our politicians than voters, I have a real problem with that.
Again, it is the people, not the corporations, who have rights.
#55 – Hmeyers,
The real problem is that each party increasingly wants to social engineer us, instead of detach from us.
I don’t have a problem with “social engineering” as long as it is from a distance.
In theory, I would agree with this. In practice, you say that you don’t have a problem with social engineering from a distance, what I hear in practice is “I want my social engineering from corporations like McDonald’s.”