My Political Compass

I recently found a website called "The Political Compass". I took the test to see where my compass was pointing. Read below for the result:

Some famous (infamous) people in the chart directly below. Important to note that the 'social dimension' is important in politics. That's the one that the left-right scale doesn't adequately address. So there's a scale ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.

Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. While the former involves state-imposed arbitary collectivism in the extreme top left, on the extreme bottom left is voluntary collectivism at regional level, with no state involved. Hundreds of such anarchist communities exisited in Spain during the civil war period.


On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.


The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy)

The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples social Darwinian right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism ( libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner.

My political compass

Economic Left/Right: -8.12

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56

I always thought I was like Ghandi! :-)

Numbers that matter

K Rudd and his media machine will have us think that all is hunky dory in this "lucky" country of ours. After all, our GDP is one of the best in the developed world. The debt we have got ourselves into for the sake of financial "stimulus" is one of the lowest in the developed world - break out the champagne!

When you scratch the surface things aren't all that they seem (are they ever?). As I have mentioned in a previous post on GDP and well-being, there's more to being considered fortunate than to have a growing GDP. Below is a list of figures that is a reality check on our good fortune, or as I see it, a blight on where and how our government chooses to spend our money. All figures are from the OECD website and publically available.

Our population growth is ranked 6th highest (1.44) is the OECD, just one below India (1.52). What's wrong with this you may ask? Well, considering we live in a country that has a love affair with consumption there's everything wrong with this. Unless we can reduce our consumption (not likely) then a high population growth is something to be concerned about.

Our balance of payments (not something talked about by K Rudd Inc.) is -5.59% of GDP in 2009, OECD average is -1.46% compare this with Mexico who has a balance of payments of just -0.76%. Not pretty.

The not-so-clever country; Expenditure on R&D is just 2% of GDP. The OECD average is 2.26%, with Sweden (number 1) spending 3.5% of GDP on R&D. Related to this is the number of Patent Applications (2005). Australia - 1180, Canada - 2586, Netherlands - 3739, Japan - 21,163, USA - 35,657! Yes the USA and Japan have a much higher population but the Netherlands with more than twice the patent applications and a population of just under 17 million (33 million in Canada).

Public Health Expenditure (2006) was 5.9% of GDP. The OECD average is 6.5% and France spends a whopping 8.8% of GDP on Public Health. If the Health of our population is so important why is so little finance allocated to it? Persons of below average income going without needed Health care due to costs (2007) was 32%; compare with UK - 9% and Netherlands - 6%! Now that's a number worth looking into.

Poverty Rate in Australia is 0.12 compared to OECD average of 0.105! The lucky country?

Social Expediture in Australia - 17.1% of GDP; compared to OECD average of 20.5%. Italy spends 25% of its GDP.

Lastly, Australia is the driest continent on earth yet we consume the 3rd highest amount of water per capita (in the OECD). 930 cubic metres of water per person! Compare this to the UK with 61 million people who average 240 cubic metres. We use more water in total than the UK with three times the amount of people (no jokes about bathing habits please).

So, K Rudd with have us believe we are going great guns and yes in some sense we are. But I personally think that where it REALLY counts we are not even in the same league as those we like to compare ourselves with. The time has come for a paradigm shift in thinking about our society and what constitutes progress.

Be careful what we ask for

The Australian Government, since before the 1970's, has gleefully jumped on the globalisation bus. The only problem is that the bus didn't tell them where they were going. The push, of course, was led by the big industrial juggernaughts from the USA with vested interests in seeing this form of "economic freedom" expand. The "promise" was that free trade and globalisation is supposed to lift everyone out of poverty. The reality is that in the 50 years since globalisation has become a seemingly unstoppable burden the world has even MORE poverty than ever before, and it is getting worse as I sit here typing away!

The USA has reaped the greatest benefits of globalisation and these benefits are not being shared (as if we didn't already know!). Interestingly, in 2001 the average worker in the US was earning 10% less (adjusting for inflation) than he/she did in the early 1970s (ref: Take it Personally, by Anita Roddick). Globalisation exacerbates this trend by setting workers against each other all over the world to keep wages low. And who wins? Mutli-national companies who are able to pay CEOs 100s times the salary of the workers they employ and still make massive profits!

Late last year I left the company I was working for because they said they couldn't afford to give me a pay rise (even though I saved the company a couple of 100 thousand dollars). "That's fine", I said. The next day I found out that one of the executives recieved a bonus worth more than my annual salary - I put in my resignation. This is not the first time I have done such a thing. People think I am crazy but I am a man of my convictions. I couldn't work for a company who say they value their employees and care for their customers when this is clearly false - the reality is in this world of globalisation - Profits and Share Price are joint Kings. Too many examples in Australia show this to be true and we have federal governments to thank for perpetuating this situation at the expense of the people who elect them.

Understanding - the key in discussion

In previous posts I have spoken about the importance of dialogue and how gaining an insight into how and why others think the way they do helps us approach difficult topics (and also may help us reflect on our own thinking and reasoning behind an issue). I believe that even the most unteniable disagreement can be resolved with a little reflection on how to approach the situation.

The single most important thing to remember is that when we are speaking with someone that they are just like you i.e. a human being with emotions. Emotions can get in the way or they can help. What needs to be the first step in any potentially difficult argument is to separate the people from the problem - don't assume that because you have a fear about something that the other side of the debate fears the same thing. Get to the problem not the "effects" of the problem.

One of the other things that is very easy to overlook is not to "bargain" over positions. For example, my wife likes 100 blankets, plus a doona on the bed at any one time - I don't! So the positions are 1. blankets, 2. no blankets. The problem isn't the blankets (or the position of wanting blankets) but that our "interests" are different. It is the interests that need to be the focus. Her interest is to be warm, my interest is not to swelter. So if we focus on the interest it is more likely that we can come to an amicable conclusion. Focusing on interests and not positions allows more efficient and effective deliberation. Taking this even further, one can start to talk about different metabolic rates and the heat generated from that - one of the many factors for me not needing all those blankets.

I don't have a formal education in negotiation, but I have certainly had to negotiate throughout my professional and personal life. It seems to me that if we can just perform the two steps mentioned above then we would be well on our way to being able to come to some sort of mutual agreement in any dicussion, whether it be about temperature control in a matrimonial bed or industrial relations.

Challenges for ALL sides of politics

On Saturday I went along to the corner of Victoria Rd and Lyons Rd Drummoyne with other hardy souls from my local Greens Group (Inner West). It was an opportunity to chat to passers by and hand out free copies of Green Voice. I was standing on one of the corners (eastern side of Victoria Rd) holding signs for the traffic to see. The signs read (1. Water tanks, not desal 2. Ban developer donations 3. Better Cycleways 4. Services not Tax Cuts). I had a mix of reactions from a few friendly toots to yells of abuse and one driver gave me the finger which I actually thought was pretty funny. Anyway, one of the persons that I chatted with was a mature lady (over 60). She admitted to being a Liberal supported and had some scathing things to say about the State Labor government - I must add that she approached me because she thought there was an election on that she had missed out on - I assured her that we were just here to speak to people and advertise the Greens.

This lady's stance was based around ALL politicians being crooked and in it for themselves - certainly not the first time I have heard such a thing of late. As I tried to assure her that this is the thing that makes the Greens different - that we don't compromise on our principles, she followed it up with, "I wouldn't trust that Bob Brown." So it got me thinking, how do we appeal to the voters who seem fed up with all the nonsense going on in Australian politics (especially in NSW)? Then tonight on the news there was a story on the tiddly winks being played by NSW Labor.....Rees, Stewart, Robertson and their silly buggers. What happened to governing the state for the people? I don't accept the statement, "it's just politics."

Unless there is some sort of miracle the people in NSW are going to be faced with a Liberal Government - maybe the lesser of the two evils in some respects, but certainly not something to be positive about and definitely something to be feared. The best scenario of course is that the Greens end up with the balance of power in the Upper House. If the Greens don't make significant inroads into NSW politics in the next state election then we have only ourselves to blame. We should pull out all stops (which I'm sure we will).