My idea for a new political compass.

[Sims2789]

I've created the idea of a 3-D political compass because politicalcompass.org's compass mixes socially conservative with authoritarian and socially liberal with libertarian. Although generally socially conservatives are more authoritarian then socially liberals, there are exceptions. For example, a libertarian social conservative might say, "I think gay marriage is wrong, but the government shouldn't control the people based on it's morals, so we should legalize gay marriage." Note that the 2-D one does not use the dotted line(often mixed in with Libertarian/Authoritarian). The 1-D one mixes all three into one line.

 

[MarineCorps]

Odd looking.

 

[Sims2789]

yes, that is true. if i was a better artist it would be more 3-D like. it would look like those 3-D graphs you drew in school.

 

[Perfection]

I'm not seeing how social libralism is different from libertarianism and social conservatism is different from authoritarianism, could you please explain futher?

 

[luiz]

Traditionally, when making a 3-D graphic, the third line passes through the 1st and the 3rd quadrants.

edit: and perfection is right

 

[Achinz]

I think for a level playing field discussion, the political terms ("compass points") should be defined or at least briefly described.

 

[Sims2789]

Originally posted by Perfection
I'm not seeing how social libralism is different from libertarianism and social conservatism is different from authoritarianism, could you please explain futher?

in general, social liberals are libertarian and social conservatives are authoritarian. but as i pointed out, there can be exceptions. a social liberal authoritarian would say, "Anyone who doesn't recognize gay marriage should be jailed." while a social conservative libertarian would say, "I don't support gay marriage, but it isn't the government's right to decide what's morally right and what's morally wrong, so I'd vote Yes on legalizing gay marriage."

 

[Marla_Singer]

Personally, Sims2789, I would put it in 2D :

• [0;x) dimension : Social Liberal ; Social Conservative
• [0;y) dimension : Economical Interventionnist ; Economical Non-Interventionist.

The Authoritarian/Libertarian axis is meaningless since we can be both economically and socially either authoritarian or libertarian. Conservatives (reps) are socially authoritarian and liberals (dems) are socially libertarians. Both being economically libertarians.

 

[Sims2789]

HAS ANYONE EVEN BOTHERED TO READ MY EXAMPLE OF A SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE LIBERTARIAN!!!! I'll post it for the 3rd time and maybe if i get lucky someone will actually read my statement:

in general, social liberals are libertarian and social conservatives are authoritarian. but as i pointed out, there can be exceptions. a social liberal authoritarian would say, "Anyone who doesn't recognize gay marriage should be jailed." while a social conservative libertarian would say, "I don't support gay marriage, but it isn't the government's right to decide what's morally right and what's morally wrong, so I'd vote Yes on legalizing gay marriage."

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Damn Sims, you just don't get it. Huge text pisses people off. No one will ever take this thread seriously again now.

 

[Mojotronica]

I've thought about this a lot, Sims -- it's the difference between liberty in terms of free elections and liberty in terms of protection of the rights of the individual.

Without the latter, a Democracy could become an oppressive by majority decision -- but it would still (technically) be a democracy.

The three vectors are illustrated in the game Nationstates -- Capitalist Vs Socialism, Democracy Vs Authoritarianism and Civil Libertarianism Vs Moralism.

I think the 3D version should resemble a cube.

 

[Bootstoots]

What happens if somebody comes up with a fourth political compass dimension? How's that going to be drawn?

 

[Perfection]

Originally posted by sims2789
in general, social liberals are libertarian and social conservatives are authoritarian. but as i pointed out, there can be exceptions. a social liberal authoritarian would say, "Anyone who doesn't recognize gay marriage should be jailed." while a social conservative libertarian would say, "I don't support gay marriage, but it isn't the government's right to decide what's morally right and what's morally wrong, so I'd vote Yes on legalizing gay marriage."

I would consider those the same on the political compass, becasue this is their view on governmental roles that count not thier views on morality. The only place I can think where the distinction is important is authoritarians, who may different views on morality effecting their political opinions, but I think it is too minor a distinction to warrent the creation of a third dimension.

 

[Mojotronica]

I like it. I think it's important to illustrate that in a technical democracy, individual rights can quashed. The framers of the Constitution thought it was important enough to include the Bill of Rights amendments to protect the rights of individuals.

 

[RoddyVR]

Originally posted by Bootstoots
What happens if somebody comes up with a fourth political compass dimension? How's that going to be drawn?

then you take a whole bunch of the "cube" that is in the first post here, and allign them in a line. you find your place in the cube and then figure out how far along the line of cubes you are to the right or left.

i'm not 100% sure, but i believe the term is a hyper-cube (though that could be a 6 dimension cube)

 

[Mojotronica]

Think of it this way -- if the majority of citizens in a nation felt it was important that every citizens got a tongue piercing, they could gather a majority of votes and pass this legislation into law. That's a completely DEMOCRATIC decision. Is it an infringement of an individual's right to not have one's tongue pierced? Yes. But that vector is not measured in the 2D compass.

Only the expansion to a 3D compass can measure all three aspects of liberty.

 

[RoddyVR]

i like the toung pearcing example. though i dislike toung peircings and thinking of them makes me cringe.

good example though. come up with another one.

 

[The Last Conformist]

hyper-cube is 4+ dimensions. If you want to specify the exact number of dimensions you have to do it explicitly: "6D hypercube" or whatever.

The politcal space has a practically unlimited number of dimensions - what about people who advocate laissez-faire capitalism for some goods but state monopolies for others? Are they left or right of people who advocate regulated markets for everything? To end up with something truly representative you'd have to have approaching one axis per issue.

Given this, I think the politcalcompass solution is a decent compromise between accuracy and handiness. Adding this particular extra dimension, I think, adds more complexity than understanding.


Out of principle, I have to express how much I CENSORED hate when people write in oversized letters.

 

[Mojotronica]

Granted that I am not very smart -- but I can't think of an example of gov't policy that cannot fit onto a 3D political compass. The tongue piercing example is one that demonstrates the inadequacy of the 2D version...

Another example would be a nation with a policy od oppressing all religions other than a particular faith -- and justified it because the majority of citizens belonged to that faith and voted to oppress the smaller religions. Democratic? You betcha! It was decided by popular vote. But oppression of a religion goes against the principle of individual liberty empbodied in the third vector.

Sim's 3D political compass provides a great way to understand the dynamics of economic, democratic and indvidual liberty.

 

[The Last Conformist]

What's wrong with the example I gave?