Political compass for the21st century

[Eric the Green]

(09-23-2018, 01:13 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Perhaps a sphere, regular octahedron,  or cube would work better by allowing three axes instead of two. The most obvious axes would be those of the Nolan Chart, the left-right axis for economics and the top-down axis  for libertarianism versus authoritarianism.  (I am tempted to believe that the libertarian dream ends up as a feudal nightmare, which is a different story, with the manorial lord becoming extremely powerful in his demesne over people who become subject to the liberties of the manorial lord). Would the third axis be conformity versus self-expression? Or something else?

Actually, the left-right axis on the Nolan chart is NOT just economics, but both economic and cultural (primarily "personal"; or conformity vs. self-expression). If you redraw the map in the way the political compass does, then the left-right axis becomes economics, and the up-down becomes cultural. Conformity vs. self-expression is part of the cultural aspect, shown as up versus down on the political compass, and called "libertarian versus authoritarian" there. It is well accounted for in both the Nolan grid and the political compass. The two charts are identical, except in where the factors are placed. The names for the various factors are not identical, so that can confuse people. For the Nolan chart, "authoritarian" means statist and is placed at the bottom, and "libertarian" means less or no government (depending on how extreme) and is placed at the top.



In the Nolan chart, the up-down axis is libertarian up to anarchy, and statist down to totalitarian. In the political compass, that same axis appears as lower right versus upper left. The left-right axis in the political compass, shows liberal at the lower left (minus/minus scores) and conservative at the upper right (plus/plus scores).

This map of the political compass is good, except that it puts Obama in the wrong place.


Here's another version of the political compass from the wikipedia article below:



wikipedia has an excellent summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart