Many political debates here have included references to The Political Compass, which uses a set of 61 questions to assess one’s political orientation in terms of economic left/right and social libertarianism/authoritarianism (rather like the “Libertarian diamond” popular in the US).
And so, every so often I will begin a thread in which the premise for debate is one of the 61 questions. I will give which answer I chose and provide my justification and reasoning. Others are, of course, invited to do the same including those who wish to “question the question”, as it were.
It would also be useful when posting in these threads to give your own “compass reading” in your first post, by convention giving the Economic value first. My own is
SentientMeat: Economic: -5.12, Social: -7.28, and so by the above convention my co-ordinates are (-5.12, -7.28). Please also indicate which option you ticked. I might suggest what I think is the “weighting” given to the various answers in terms of calculating the final orientation, but seeing for yourself what kind of answers are given by those with a certain score might be more useful than second-guessing the test’s scoring system.
Now, I appreciate that there is often dissent regarding whether the assessment the test provides is valid, notably by US conservative posters, either because it is “left-biased” (??) or because some propositions are clearly slanted, ambiguous or self-contradictory. The site itself provides answers to these and other Frequently Asked Questions, and there is also a separate thread: Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading? [size=2]Read these first and then, if you have an objection to the test in general, please post it there. If your objection is solely to the proposition in hand, post here. If your objection is to other propositions, please wait until I open a thread on them. (And for heaven’s sake, please don’t quote this entire Opening Post when replying like this sufferer of bandwidth diarrhea.)
The above will be pasted in every new thread in order to introduce it properly, and I’ll try to let each one exhaust itself of useful input before starting the next. Without wanting to “hog the idea”, I would be grateful if others could refrain from starting similar threads. Finally, I advise you to read the full proposition below, not just the thread title (which is necessarily abbreviated), and request that you debate my entire OP rather than simply respond, “IMHO”-like, to the proposition itself.
To date, the threads are:
Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading?
Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.
#2: My country, right or wrong
#3: Pride in one’s country is foolish.
#4: Superior racial qualities.
#5: My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
#6: Justifying illegal military action.
#7: “Info-tainment” is a worrying trend.
#8: Class division vs. international division. (+ SentientMeat’s economic worldview)
#9: Inflation vs. unemployment.
#10: Corporate respect of the environment.
#11: From each according to his ability, to each according to need.
#12: Sad reflections in branded drinking water.
#13: Land should not be bought and sold.
#14: Many personal fortunes contribute nothing to society.
#15: Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
#16: Shareholder profit is a company’s only responsibility.
#17: The rich are too highly taxed.
#18: Better healthcare for those who can pay for it.
#19: Penalising businesses which mislead the public.
#20: The freer the market, the freer the people.
#21: Abortion should be illegal.
#22: All authority must be questioned.
#23: An eye for an eye.
#24: Taxpayers should not prop up theatres or museums.
#25: Schools shouldn’t make attendance compulsory.
#26: Different kinds of people should keep to their own.
#27: Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
#28: It’s natural for children to keep secrets.
#29: Marijuana should be legalised.
#30: School’s prime function is equipping kids to find jobs.
#31: Seriously disabled people should not reproduce.
#32: Learning discipline is the most important thing.
#33: ‘Savage peoples’ vs. ‘different culture’
#34: Society should not support those who refuse to work.
#35: Keep cheerfully busy when troubled.
#36: First generation immigrants can never be fully integrated.
#37: What’s good for corporations is always good for everyone.
#38: No broadcasting institution should receive public funding.
#39: Our civil rights are being excessively curbed re. terrorism.
#40: One party states avoid delays to progress.
#41: Only wrongdoers need worry about official surveillance.
#42: The death penalty should be an option for serious crimes.
#43: Society must have people above to be obeyed.
#44: Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything isn’t art at all.
#45: Punishment is more important than rehabilitation.
#46: It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
#47: Businessmen are more important than writers and artists.
#48: A mother’s first duty is to be a homemaker.
#49: Companies exploit the Third World’s plant genetic resources.
#50: Mature people make peace with the establishment.
#51: Astrology accurately explains many things.
#52: You cannot be moral without being religious.
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**Proposition #53: Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.
SentientMeat** (-5.12, -7.28) ticks Strongly Disagree. (This cuts right to the heart of the difference between economic left and right, and so my response is rather longer and more detailed than usual.)
“Better”? The proposition appears to hinge on one’s interpretation of this word. Clearly, there must be some realistic element to the interpretation - I might just as well consider benevolent magical elves to be “better” than social security in principle since they could guarantee instant, voluntary, universal help of precisely the right kind. Of course, believing that they realistically could in practice would be ludicrous.
I propose separating the two issues: the principle and the practice. I will address whether charity could realistically address genuine disadvantage better than social security later. For now, let us explore the idea that it is somehow better in principle.
So it is that we come to the idea of “forced help”, which I consider to be a rather tired canard. The caricature of a government pointing a gun at one individual and forcing them to provide for another is a particularly inaccurate exaggeration. In a democracy (the least worst political system), the electorate chooses a government and a level of taxation. Taxation is the price of government. The electorate also has some say over how the government spends the revenue accrued thereby. Specifically, the electorate can decide to some extent how much is given over to “helping the disadvantaged”.
Now, how might one be “disadvantaged”? Well, other people might disadvantage me directly, and very gravely. They might assault me or commandeer cherished or essential objects I have surrounded myself with, by force or stealth. I might manage to protect myself from such threats, but instead I demand that someone else provides for me in this way. It is my right to be protected from such things. Gimme gimme gimme!
And so, the government helps the genuinely disadvantaged by providing protection from crime or invasion. When I see an old lady being mugged, the government “forces me to help” her according to that old misguided cliché, even though I might live in a private fortress free from such fears. Another example: what of the educationally disadvantaged? See those children struggle to read, write, or develop countless other skills essential to carrying out economically useful tasks later in life. They demand handouts from my pocket to meet their educational needs, whether I have children or not. Out comes the fallacious government gun again: Hand it over, punk.
Nonsense. The old canard’s bedtime is long overdue - let us retire it forthwith. Helping the disadvantaged is a legitimate function of democratic government: only an anarchist can disagree in good faith, wishing as he does to see the back of all governmental tyranny (including that of forcefully upholding property privilege).
Now, some contend that such a legitimate function should only be limited to certain kinds of “disadvantage”, namely those due to the crimes, invasions or perhaps educational needs described above, and that those covered by “social security” are not the concern of government. I must admit, I have never found this distinction between “positive” and “negative” rights particularly compelling, and the idea of upholding my property rights or right to an education before protecting me from poor health, starvation or exposure seems positively absurd. Sure, it would be nice if everyone provided the necessary funding voluntarily, but if they did that, well, why do we even need such an enormous apparatus protecting their monopolistic use of property if they’re going to donate it so charitably anyway? I simply do not accept that charity is “better in principle” than social security, in the same way that I do not consider economic coercion to be substantially different to other kinds of coercion. Nevertheless, the idea is popular (although, curiously, only particularly so in the US) and so we should proceed to consider how charity or social security addresses disadvantage in practice.
What if the government simply flipped off the disadvantaged and left them to private charity? If I wanted to help, the government is no longer “forcing” me to do so. I could tend to the sick, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless - why, I could be a veritable Saint Meat! Any sick untended, hungry unfed or homeless unsheltered would simply be my will - if I thought they needed help, well then, why didn’t I help them, or at least pay for another to do so in my place?
Here, again, a useful parallel with addressing other forms of disadvantage by private funding can be drawn. I could also dash to the assistance of those old ladies being mugged, repel foreign invasions, teach those disadvantaged children, and all the rest of it: old ladies which went unsaved, or children untaught, or civilians undefended, would be my “will” also. Clearly, I could not save, teach and heal every genuinely disadvantaged person myself even if that was my will. That people still got mugged and died of preventable conditions would be due to the inadequacy of my charitable endeavour, noble though it was in principle. In practice I would be sadly inadequate, no matter how “efficient” my man-hours.
And here lies the rub. Welfare economics, as practised in most of the industrialised democratic world, has shown that social security can provide universal help for the genuinely disadvantaged, whatever the cause of their plight. To believe that charity could get anywhere near that coverage seems to me to be as naive as believing in benevolent magical elves. The moment that private charity fails to help the genuinely disadvantaged where social security succeeded is the moment when that society develops indifference to the suffering in its midst. Charity becomes a band aid upon a cancer, its function being more to ameliorate the guilt of the giver than to actually, realistically address the plight of the recipient.
This is essentially the same argument as for many other publically funded institutions: they universally guarantee what private or voluntary funding can merely hopefully offer selectively. (If only the opportunity is guaranteed, people are bound to miss out: what of them?) Again, this proposition boils down to what one considers to be the concern of government. Some propose what I consider to be the false dichotomy of “negative/positive rights” in this regard, focussing solely on upholding property privilege even to the point where it engenders economic coercion, with the bargaining power of the unemployed reduced to so near zero that they must practically beg for a job or meal, no matter how exploitative the conditions, like the medieval serf and his feudal lord. Woe betide me if I believe that tyranny and coercion can arise from capitalism just as easily as from over-authoritarian government, and threaten to withhold those taxes which fund the property-privilege-enforcement apparatus allowing a tiny minority to take and hoard so many slices of pizza that many are left only with the box, which they must live in. One can seemingly complain about (or even threaten to withhold) funding which addresses hunger, exposure or ill health in bien-pensant comfort, but do the same with policing and defence and one is suddenly assailed by all kinds of arbitrary arguments for why they have to be funded compulsarily rather than voluntarily.
When the rich become the new government, the lives of the poor are restricted just as much as in any Communist state: Plutocracy and autocracy look identical from the bottom up. In a democracy, the electorate chooses a taxation revenue and spending plan thereof. If we find ourselves in disagreement with the electorate then we either stay and accept that plan, refuse it and go to prison, or move. Were the government chosen by the electorate to ever declare the suffering of its genuinely disadvantaged people “outside its concern” I could not in all conscience voluntarily remain under its influence. I thank fate that I am a member of a social democracy which guarantees a threshold of security to its people, wherein the likelihood of such upheaval appears vanishingly small.
