Hindopia wrote:So what is the problem with Political Compass?
My problem with it is that "two co-ordinates instead of one" satisfies so many people, who have already realized the deficiency of left-and-right as measures of political position. It's just a stronger version of the same divide, which invites us to characterize a poster by their scores (two of them, instead of one) on a test with many other variables not statistically accounted for. And with the accounting method not disclosed in the "results" of the test.
Politics is about balancing one thing against another. It's about personal choices, it includes allegiances of personal or tribal or political origin, which aren't necessarily mentioned in debate. Politics includes the personal, and the tactical, and the trans-personal, and the ideological. Politics is something we DO. And it's just insulting to map my "political position" ... or yours ... as left or right, up or down, or even both at once.
Two dimensions of politics is better than one. But I still take it as stereotyping. I take it as "you believe this thing libertarians believe in, therefore you believe in these other things libertarians believe in". I take it as political profiling, fitting of the poster to a suit of opinions.
I still see the collectivist nature of public politics, being imposed on our personal politics. I don't find Political Compass significantly better than a test which places candidates on "the left" or "the right". The x=y correlation having been amply demonstrated, it is best that we put Political Compass in our box of beloved toys, to be brought out in sentimental moments as an example of how we were once very naive.
