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The main problem with "political compass" tests

There are many tests out there that can be used to find out where (according to that particular test) you land on the so-called "political compass" (which is usually a two-dimensional graph where the horizontal axis depicts left-vs-right mostly in terms of economy, and the vertical axis depicts libertarianism-vs-authoritarianism in terms of sociopolitics.)

Generally, when you do one of these tests, it will show you the "political compass" and a dot depicting where you are aligned.

The problem with this? That single dot does in no way depict how "spread out" your opinions are on different topics. Some people might very narrowly fit one single small area of the "compass", while others may be all over the place. In other words, if you were to draw a dot for each individual opinion, rather than just showing the average of them, some people would have a rather small grouping of dots somewhere, while for others the dots would be all over the place. And this isn't usually depicted at all in the results of these tests.

I myself don't consider fitting entirely at a particular place in the "political compass".

In many things I'm definitely very, very conservative ("right-wing" in the American sense, not the European one). For example, I heavily, heavily oppose abortion, and I value and support the traditional family unit, and I am also of the strong opinion that immigration should be heavily restricted, limited and vetted. I also think that free-market capitalism is, by far, the best economic system in existence. Among many other such opinions that land on the heavily conservative side.

However, I also support many things that Americans would call "liberal" rather then "conservative". In other words, in some aspects I lean quite a lot on social liberalism rather than classical liberalism or conservatism.

While I support free-market capitalism as the best form of economy, I strongly think that the best brand of it is the so-called welfare capitalism, rather than laissez-faire (which is what most American conservatives support). Welfare capitalism is a form of economy where the economic system is full-on free-market capitalism, but on top of that the government engages in more or less heavy taxation and uses those taxes to provide strong welfare safety nets and services to citizens, ensuring their education, health and overall well-being, eliminating homelessness, poverty, lack of education and people needlessly dying of curable diseases and injuries. So yes: Unlike most American conservatives, I do strongly support tax-funded high-quality free universal healthcare. However, private practice must not be banned (like eg. Canada does.)

On the other axis of the compass, as I have written in this blog many, many times, I'm a very strong supporter of the right to free speech, what you would call "free speech absolutism" (the right to free speech is universal, unconditional and inalienable ie. irrevocable, no matter what, with only an extremely small very carefully and reasonably chosen subject matters where such speech should be restricted.) I suppose this would put me very far towards the "libertarian" edge of the compass. My opinions on strongly restricting immigration probably would put me relatively far towards the opposite edge, ie the "authoritarian" side.

Those are just some of the examples. And as can be seen, many of these opinions are all over the place, left, right, up, down, center... The average would probably put me very close to the center, but a lone dot there wouldn't really be a good indicator.

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