Political Compass Test

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Interestingly enough, the AnCaps would make the same claims about your beliefs, essentially arguing that your version of anarchism requires that certain negative rights be violated and therefore that left anarchism is authoritarian. As well, AnCaps essentially argue that your version of anarchism is impossible of working well in a modern industrial society due to the complex nature of the economy and of economic calculation. Really, it is arguable(and most people probably believe it is correct) that neither form of anarchism has much of a chance getting power though.

Negative rights like what? There are few things more authoritarian than the concept of private property, and surplus value, which are both fundamentally theft.

That does not make sense to me. The entire point is to completely replace the economic system with a new one. To me the only relevant factors when producing and distributing products is: who wants them, how many, are the resources there, and how much energy will it cost. The reason for this is that in North America there has been the capability to produce an abundance of goods and services since 1912, and Europe has definitely caught up by now. However, it probably does not apply to other regions of the world. A Technocratic Communist system would simply not work in Africa, for example, because the three prerequisites are not met:

1. Sufficient natural resources to produce and abundance of goods and services (Africa probably does have this).

2. Sufficient industry to process said resources into an abundances of goods and services for distribution (Africa does not have this).

3. Sufficient people trained to use and maintain such industry to produce said abundance (Africa does not have this either).

You should note that I mention only the names of continents or other large areas. The UK on its own, or any other country in the world (with the possible exceptions of Russia, Australia or Brazil) would not be able to support such a system on its own, as not all the natural resources are in that area. For smaller areas and other continents, a different economic system is needed, and there is debate within the Anarchist movement as to what it would be. The most popular one is a more primitive form of Communism as opposed to the more advanced Technocratic Communism. I am afraid I do not know so much about how that system would work, as I focus mainly on what should work in the place I live: Europe.



Even if that is the case, I would try for it anyway. I am certain that the system, once in place, would work, and that is good enough reason for fighting for it. Hopefully in the fullness of time more people will come around to my position, and so make my system realised.

AnCaps essentially disagree and believe that your statements come from fundamental errors in understanding economics and that measures to abolish those things are authoritarian by nature. Surplus value is a falsehood based upon a lack of understanding of subjective evaluation by instead focusing on the false labor theory of value. Both sides ultimately come to a mutually beneficial agreement on what pay should take place, if a better option were available either side would leave the table in pursuit of it. As well, private property is a natural relationship between a man and material things that has existed in most developed societies and also is an incentive for economic action. Individuals act for their benefit, and in order to personally derive benefit a system must be created to allow for this to occur. If I work to create a chair then the most logical owner of the value of this chair should be me to compensate me for this task, in a propertyless system I do not get the value of my chair or the ability to freely trade that value.

Yes, and AnCaps essentially believe that the only economic system that works properly is capitalism. There are more factors involved with the functioning of an economic system than that: there is incentization, there is effective pricing so that individuals feel the effects of their choices and can make rational decisions on whether to take present goods over future goods, there is the efficient use of resources both human and natural, and the fact is that energy is a rather useless measurement of value because it does not deal with the issue of opportunity cost, resources are not valuable because they take energy to create but rather because they take goods valued in other sectors of the economy and put them towards that task. The AnCaps, claim that only their system will find the most efficient methods of production by determining how people value certain things and by letting individuals make the trade-offs through a property based system, and essentially through capitalism they believe that their free system will come to natural harmony.

Economic Left/Right: -6.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36

It's neat where it shows where well-known leaders are in this...I'm in the same region as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama

By the way, this document might explain things better than I do below:

http://haraldur.mysticsoftware.net/etsc1_3.pdf

Not really. I do not subscribe to LTV. However, the wage a worker receives is less than the subjective value of the good produced, otherwise there would be no prodit.



It is not an equal negotiation. The prospective employer is in a position of power over the prospective employee. This is most obvious in times of high unemployment. The employer has much more freedom of choice than the employee, and they both know it.



Not true. Private property is a recent invention, developing alongside Capitalism. Before private property existed feudal property, which is very different. Also, it has only been an incentive for economic action within Capitalism, and not the only one. A private property concept is not necessary for things to be produced, and production and distribution ( and ultimately consumption!) of things is the fundamental purpose of any economic system.



Yes, but individual benefit can be, and often is, the same as collective benefit, and it is possible to have a system where they are almost always the same.



That is not private property, that is personal property, which is very different. An example of private property is a factory, or a patch of land. Some forms of Socialism do include personal property, and do have trade, but do not have private property. This includes Mutualism.

Of course, Communism does away with personal property, but for a very good reason: it assumes the existance of an abundance of goods and services, and in a situation of abundance goods have no subjective value. Example: sand is abundant in the Sahara, you would have to be crazy to buy sand from someone else if you were there (unless is was somehow special and rare sand). In an abundant system there is no incentive to trade things on a quid pro quo basis: you can only distribute according to need. Keep in mind that personal property and possessions are also different things.

In Capitalism, in most cases, you would be producing that chair in someone else's factory, which would be their private property, and so would charge you a rent for the use of the tools and land to produce the chair, which is your personal property. If you are a worker in that factory, your personal property is given as rent at its going price, and you are paid the difference as a wage. Hence someone who owns a factory can get a portion of the value of the chair without actually doing any work to produce it.



Well, feudalism used to work, except the material conditions changed. Despotism worked before that, and barbarism before that, and savagery before that... Besides, the AnCaps also say that only their version of Capitalism works property. Anyway, the point is that conditions change, making some systems possible and others impossible. In the early days on Capitalism, Feudalism was still possible, and had not completely disappeared in some places, but as Capitalism developed with the Industrial Revolution, Feudalism started to become infeasible, and Communism became possible some time later.

Also, that AnCap statement does not have much credibility, as I stated before, as they say that the systems are most closely match what they want are medieval Iceland and parts of modern-day Somalia, both of which are pre-industrial, and so would almost certainly not work in such an industrialised country as the UK! After all, you can hardly envision the UK going back to Feudalism, can you?



The factors of importance in an economic system depend on what type of system it is. In a Capitalist system, or any other Price System for that matter, price is of course an important consideration, but price can only exist, and will only exist, in a situation of scarcity, either natural or artificial (natural scarcity does not exist for the majority of the industrialised world. It is theoretically possible to produce an abundance, and so an artificial scarcity exists to keep prices up. One of the most fundamental ways of doing this is matching up supply and demand to produce the highest profit). Once and abundance comes into existance, price becomes zero.

The incentive is obvious in any system: food to eat, water to drink, pleasure seeking etc.. Also, I disagree with your assertion that Capitalism is efficient. If it were, then there would be a lot more reuse and recycling going on. On the contrary, Capitalism, and all the Price Systems before it, such as Feudalism, are very wasteful of resources. The difference is that, before Capitalism as we know it today, the wastefulness did not matter: there were not that many people, do the impact was negligible. This is not the case now.

Energy is the only fundamental unit of value, as if you want to produce something, it costs you energy, if you want to transport something, it costs you energy. If you want to provide a service, such as train travel, it costs you energy. It is the fundamental unit of value apart from the materials themselves. Opportunity cost is only a consideration in a system where a profit must be made, unless I mistake the meaning of the term.

"resources are not valuable because they take energy to create but rather because they take goods valued in other sectors of the economy and put them towards that task." That makes no sense. Natural resources are not created by expenditure of energy (that is what defines them!), though it does cost energy to extract them.



How do they define efficiency? Efficiency in terms of money? Fine. But efficiency in terms of natural resources and energy? Certainly not.

Also, the history of Capitalism has never really had much harmony, except maybe for those at the top. For those at the bottom harmony is hard to find.

The wage that a worker receives is based upon the subjective value of the labor, the good produced is immaterial as it is only the labor that is sold. If the worker could create the good by himself to get that same amount he would do so, obviously he cannot do so without previously made investments of labor from others and these others deserve their cut.

It is still a negotiation. As well, it depends on what type of labor we speak of. The nature of negotiations depends largely on the type of labor represented. An engineer receives large sums of money for his specialized work because he is one of the few who can provide this, a janitor has considerably less ability to negotiate because there are other alternatives. This is to some extent due to the nature of supply and demand.

Feudalism is not a good economic system anyway and is not what we model anything after as feudalism was only built to be stagnant, not only that but in a feudal society there was some notion of property such as land titles although possibly different than that under a capitalist society, as well, even further back we had societies such as Rome and Greece that also had private property, in fact . The only incentive for production other than gain is coercion and coercion, although popular throughout history, is not the mark of a free society. A private property concept is not necessary for the most basic of those systems, but it is necessary as complexity increases.

Not usually, slacking is individual benefit but not collective as well as hoarding and in a modern age there are other acts such as polution. As well, capitalism is that system of which you speak as in order to gain you have to organize a manner for others to gain as well.

The distinction is too hard to actually make, and really is arbitrary as the same goods can take on different characteristics in different circumstances. If I had not said a chair I could have said a saw or hammer, or even a car or plane if I had chosen so. The communists rely on a false concept of abundance because abundance is relative to human desires, and sand is a bad example due to the fact that few people buy sand anyway as to most people sand does not have the quality of being a good. The fact is that people will want more, they will want bigger houses, they will want more opulence, etc and we need a system that deals with that. If things were truly too abundant for people to desire more then this would have already shown itself as people would not gain from trading and would rather give things up.

The person owning the factory provides the initial capital to create the chair, this IS a genuine contribution as capital arises from previous labor and is not magicked up. Because the previous person or previous persons invested their efforts into a capital good and made a choice of valuing future consumption over current and sacrificed in the short run they deserve benefit.


Feudalism was a stagnant system, despotism and barbarism and savagery are all marked by a resistance to change. As well, AnCaps have a point considering that the modern state intervenes continually for the benefit of the few. All anarchists have problems with the state acting improperly. Capitalist precursors existed long before the Industrial Revolution, some would even argue that Rome and Greece were such systems. As well, capitalism is marked by its tendency towards change where as past systems do not deal with change at all, as technology has progressed and gotten more advanced capitalism has gone with it. If any thing is impossible it is communism as such requires an artificial coordination system whereas the price system in capitalism is simply a result of individual human action.

I'd say that the AnCaps do not usually point as much to history as they do to their economic theories on calculation of goods in a free market, as well as their views on the despotism of the state. In actuality, the struggles that anarcho-capitalism faces is more on how to create order, which all anarchist systems face.

Except that you have never proven abundance relative to human desires. You pretend it has already been proven. Scarcity is not artificial, it is relative to human desires which are great and many. As well, you assume monopoly where it is not shown to exist.
Capitalism is the only actual price system. Feudalism, barbarism, etc did not rely on money and free action in the same manner as capitalism does. As well, you make claims on the inefficiency of capitalism which are false based upon the fact that every individual in a capitalist system has an incentive to bring forth resources and use them to the benefit of others. Not only that but reuse and recycling does not mean efficiency at all necessarily, recycling and reuse can sometimes take more valued resources away than they create given the abundance of certain resources.
Opportunity cost is a consideration in EVERY system, whether or not profit exists as the allocation of limited resources is the problem within every economic system. The reason why it must be accounted for is to determine the desires of individuals for goods, prices go up based upon the demand relative to the supply all of which affects the ability to produce other goods and so on and so forth and the price must show how this reallocation of resources affects individuals.

Sorry, I meant goods. I have been slipping up a bit on spelling.


What you forget is the role of money in coordinating the entire economic structure and how it represents human desires. Natural resources and energy are subservient to these desires. Money is a tool of calculation that deals with the subjective nature of goods. As well, the thing is that the amount of wealth that currently exists, even at the bottom, is greater than in past societies. You pretend we still live in feudalism when we have a society where the average man lives better than the kings of old due to economic progress.

Not a big fan of this survey but the results are:

Economic Left/Right: 5.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.05

The last time (July 9, 2006) I took the quiz I got somewhat different results:

Economic Left/Right: 2.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.36

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My survey/quiz/compass I take I tend to be range either Conservative or Libertarian (or something like that depending on the survey). On occasion I have tested differently and gotten Anarchist, or Social Democrat. They is a bias element involved in these obviously.

Yeah, I get results similar to yours on the social end and I end up being between conservative and libertarian as well.

Economic Left/Right: 2.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.15

I'm libertarian, as expected.

Economic Left/Right: -5.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.54

Left Libertarian

Economic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97

I have always thought of myself being politically left.

Economic Left/Right: -4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.08

Always regarded myself as a social liberal with some slight right-of-centre tendencies, so it seems about right.