The Pitters' Place

The recent stuff about the Gentrification has brought to light the fact that I'm possibly more right wing on some matters than some people here. Which surprised me a bit 'cos I don't consider myself to be right wing.

I found one of those Politcal Compass websites where you answer a series of questions and it plots your Economic and Social position and I thought it might be a bit of fun...

So I got:
Economic Left/Right: -1.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.1
(https://www.politicalcompass.org/analys ... 3&soc=-4.1)

Kinda right wing of Ghandi, but not really right wing by any real stretch of the imagination. And very liberal.

Give it a go. The starting point is at:

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Your Political Compass

Economic Left/Right: -7.0
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.85

https://www.politicalcompass.org/analys ... &soc=-5.85

https://www.politicalcompass.org/analys ... &soc=-5.28

Economic Left/Right: -4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.28


They just didn't ask the right questions.

I'm left libertarian. I kind of knew that though.

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -9.49



Hmm...

Yeah, there really is such a thing as being too libertarian.

CashRules wrote:Yeah, there really is such a thing as being too libertarian.

Murray Bookchin, Kropotkin, Bakunin? They were the real libertarians until the U.S decided to ruin that term forever.

I always thought the hicks were crazy when I was growing up for saying there was such a thing as "too much book learning". I find myself having to rethink all my negative opinions of the hicks I grew up around.

The ideas of those men are the ones that are inspiring thousands of men and women fighting ISIS while installing a system based on comunes and voluntarism. It's nice to see how people like ignoring that while being arrogant.

Economic Left/Right: -5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.49

Well, that explains why I read about scifi dystopias and think they'd be great places to live.

Economic Left/Right: -2.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.67

Maybe I didn't answer all questions right; I remember taking a test like this before and being more right on the economic scale.

I've done this quiz 3 times in the last, maybe 10 years? My political beliefs have been all over the place on that thing. I'll give it a go in a bit to see how much I've changed in the last couple of years. Last time I did it I was over to the left a fair bit.

Economic Left/Right: -0.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.54


I had issues with a lot of the question wordings. First off, there needed to be a middle option. There were plenty of questions that I had no clear opinion on, but still had to choose "agree" or "disagree".

But then other questions just seemed to be phrased in a way where the answer may imply something other than your actual belief. For example, the question about if people who are able but unwilling to work should expect stuff from society. Perhaps the literal answer would be "no", but that ignores the fact that it's never as simple as "being unwilling to work"; it ignores all the many real factors that cause poverty even among those who are technically "willing" to work.

And then the question about spanking asked if good parents sometimes "have" to spank their children. Well what does that mean? Have to? Obviously not... clearly any parent who spanks their children is choosing to do so.. they don't have to do it. So you could believe strongly that spanking is a good thing, and still not know how to answer that question.

Stop Gendoing

There are a couple of interesting things from all of this...

First of all, I'm not the most right wing person here (just!)!

Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently, we are all in the bottom left hand box - left wing (to varying degrees) and Libertarian (to varying degrees). When you compare that to the mainstream parties that we have available to represent us:





We are essentially not presented with any real choices come election time - particularly given the first past the post system in the UK and America. And although the Green Party had come us as being closest to where I am on the map, even if I though they had a chance of getting elected I won't vote for them because most of their policies don't add up and are just fairy tales.

No wonder voters feel disenfranchised.

So well then... we all agree the system doesn't work, we can't vote out oppression and capitalism is shit. Good! Baby steps.

Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56

I can't seem to post the image like the rest of youz guyz, so here's the URL. Basically i'm to the left, which is what I expected.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/yourpo ... &soc=-5.44

even if I though they had a chance of getting elected I won't vote for them because most of their policies don't add up and are just fairy tales.

I also hate this line of thinking. "This is offering me the change I want. But I won't vote for it." Well yeah, I mean, people were saying the same thing about Bernie Sanders and he's taking Hilary down. If you don't vote for them, if you don't make your effort for change. Don't complain about things being the same when you are voting for the same.

I at least cast my vote for the Green Party.

I voted Green too.

aels wrote:I voted Green too.

We seem to be pretty similar on the graph in terms of politics.

We're pretty similar in most ways except you have no feelings and I have all the feelings.

aels wrote:We're pretty similar in most ways except you have no feelings and I have all the feelings.

Feelings are overrated.

I like that you are basically Christian Bale in Equilibrium and I'm... fuck, I'm Sean Bean. It is never advisable to be Sean Bean.

Dr_Liszt wrote:

even if I though they had a chance of getting elected I won't vote for them because most of their policies don't add up and are just fairy tales.

I also hate this line of thinking. "This is offering me the change I want. But I won't vote for it." Well yeah, I mean, people were saying the same thing about Bernie Sanders and he's taking Hilary down. If you don't vote for them, if you don't make your effort for change. Don't complain about things being the same when you are voting for the same.

That's not true. I voted for the candidate I wanted to win in my constituency even though I knew there was no chance that they would win.

I just won't vote Green at the moment, because in my opinion their policies are poorly thought through populist sound bites that don't stand up to and sort of serious scrutiny.

But until we abandon First Past The Post about half the country may as well not bother voting anyway. I live in a "safe Conservative seat" and it has a colossal Tory majority - they could put anyone or anything up and slap a blue rosette on it and it'll get elected. The first step in get different parties (even the Greens!) into parliament in any sort of serious numbers is to change the electoral process.

First Past The Post

What is this?

Also, when I move to the UK, I plan on starting a #it's not your turn campaign. You should join and we can convert everyone to stop voting for war mongering politicians. (even if it's all of them at the moment )

Dr_Liszt wrote:

First Past The Post

What is this?

Also, when I move to the UK, I plan on starting a #it's not your turn campaign. You should join and we can convert everyone to stop voting for war mongering politicians. (even if it's all of them at the moment )

First Past The Post (FPTP) is a system used in the UK (and some other countries) where whomever gets more votes than anyone else wins. They don't have get a majority of the votes, they just have to get more than the next highest candidate.

So. When we have a general election here we don't actually vote for our Prime Minister. We vote for our local MP (Member of Parliament). There are 650 MPs. And each MP is elected on a FPTP basis. So you can have a constituency with (say) six candidates in it that people are voting for and one candidate gets 15,000 votes, the next candidate gets 12,000 votes, another gets 8,000 votes and the other three get 5,000 between them. The first candidate only got 15,000 votes out of the 40,000 votes cast, but because they got more votes than any other candidate they win the constituency.

As a result, the smaller parties tend to pick up a few thousand votes in every constituency but never actually win any. So they could end up with 5% or even 10% of the popular vote, but 0% of the 650 MPs. But the bigger parties on the other hand are over represented. For example at the last election the Conservative won a majority in Parliament despite only getting about 40% (I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like that) of the popular vote.

This happens at pretty much every election - both Labour and Tory governments frequently get elected with majorities in Parliament despite not having won a majority of the Popular vote. And it's all thanks to FPTP.

And because I live in a constituency which is heavily Conservative (at the last election the Tory won with something like a 30,000 majority which is huge) and that's the only place I'm allowed to vote, my vote really doesn't count. This is know as a "safe seat" - the Tories know they're going to win it - they don't even bother campaigning. Labour have them too. And there are something like 250 or 300 safe seats in the UK - seats that haven't changed party since World War II. If you live in one of those, the Democratic process seems a bit of a farce.

Isn't all democratic processes a farce though?

I was reading a blog of a Black Lives Matters activist and she wrote in defense of protests "When has change for us happened through democracy?" And it got me thinking, when has change for people in oppression ever happened through democracy? Or just change in general??