Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.

[II_Gyan_II]

@hawthorne

If corporations benefit from globalisation, in the background their owners benefit. And they’re human. The question as to how (or if) you should aggregate the various benefits is left hanging.

And that accounting is where the difference lies. Dictators are human. But that multi-source single-sink system has been selected against

[erislover]

I just realized I inverted my answers. I chose “agree”, given the reasoning in my first post. Don’t know why I got it backwards. :o

[Debaser]

@erislover

Anyone who felt that the most efficient way to help humanity is to help corporations should at least disagree.

Wrong.

Someone who felt that the most efficient way to help humanity is to help corporations is at odds with the premise of the statement.

The statement clearly puts humanity and trans-national corporations as mutually exclusive items. This reflects the bias of the test writer, and makes for an unfair question.

The test taker you present thinks that the two are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact linked.

So, in order to answer this question a person who does think that humanity is best served by corporations is forced to disagree, but hold his nose while doing it because of the way that it is written.

[erislover]

@Debaser

The test taker you present thinks that the two are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact linked.

So do I. Didn’t make the question any harder.

[Debaser]

It seems that you are being deliberately obtuse to make some sort of point. However, I will continue to try and explain what I mean in good faith…

@erislover

So do I. Didn’t make the question any harder.

So, you disagree that economic globalisation should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations?

Doesn’t this mean that you agree that economic globalisation should serve the interests of trans-national corporations rather than humanity?

Since they are put as mutually exlusive in the statement (when we both agree that they are clearly not) you cannot disagree to A, without agreeing to B. The premise is biased and invalid.

[erislover]

FTR, I misstated my first answer because I inverted what the question said was the focus. As the question stands, I agree.

Multi-national corporations are not humanity. Humanity is not a multi-national corporation. Their needs and “wants” can overlap and be related on many levels but mustn’t do so necessarily. Where those two differ I think humanity’s interests should be given a focus. I do not think that it is always in humanity’s interests to serve the interests of corporations. Reasonable people might disagree here. I would expect them to do so without feeling like they’re wiping their own ass without toilet paper.

Dinner isn’t at odds with dessert. I still think we should focus on vegetables and prepared fowl rather than triple chocolate volcano ice cream. Yet dessert can be a part of dinner. It’s not a hard question.

[BobLibDem]

-5.75,-1.79 Strongly Agree. This was to me the most nebulous of the questions in the test. “If globalization is inevitable”- meaning the rise of international corporations and the global economy? My take was to consider this an extension of the old saw “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.” So is it better that humanity is served or the shareholders of multinational corporations? I think the greater good of all humanity should come before that subset of humanity that owns the corporation.

[dal_timgar]

I agree, but the question is how can this be accomplished.

I am inclined to agree with Adam Smith but the devil is in the details. There was no nearly universal education in Adam Smith’s day. We can now make accounting/personal finance/economics mandatory in high school. Our politicians talk about education all of the time and want more money for it. When have you heard a Republican politician say accounting should be mandatory? A democrat?

NOT!!

ECONOMIC WARGAMES is my attempt to use von Neumann’s GAME THEORY to combine Adam Smith’s WEALTH OF NATIONS with Sun Tzu’s ART OF WAR. Would that create:

THE INVISIBLE HAN

1.3 billion invisible Chinese. Sounds dangerous.

Dal Timgar

@SentientMeat

Many political debates here have included references to The Political Compass, which uses a set of 60 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).
Whenever such a reference is made, there is often dissent regarding whether the assessment it provides is valid, notably by US conservative posters, either because it is “left-biased” or because some questions are clearly slanted, ambiguous or self-contradictory.

Now, the site itself provides answers to these and other Frequently Asked Questions, and I think that even the most poorly conceived questions give some insight into one’s true position, but I think that it is such a useful site that it might be worth exploring the entire thing here in detail.

And so, every so often I will begin a thread in which the premise for debate is one of the 60 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 might 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.

(The above will be footnoted in every new thread in order to introduce it properly.)

So, let us have at it.

*Proposition 1: * If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

SentientMeat ticks Agree.

There is scope here for objecting that the two are not mutually exclusive (see later question 47; one can contend that what’s good for those corporations is good for all of us), which is perhaps why I do not Strongly Agree.

However, I contend that declaring on the side of “humanity” clearly sets out my stand as regards where I believe real power should ultimately reside; ie. with democratically elected governments rather than corporate entities. Globalisation must work both ways; if it means rich countries’ people can buy cheap goods by opening up Third World markets, it must also mean that Third World people can offer their services more cheaply than rich countries’ workers. Furthermore, the benefits of such increased economic freedom should, by the power vested in said governments (eg. taxation, anti-exploitation laws etc.), fall primarily on those rich consumers/poor workers rather than on the shareholders of those corporations.

I contend that a tick for Agree (whether Strongly or not) is ultimately a tick for some vestige of democratic control over “OmniCorps” and a tick against protectionism.