[Pops]

So lets devise our own quiz and political compass specific to Peak Oil. It can be called the Peak Oil Party Spectrum (POPS) --- or some less catch name of you like.

I like the Political Compass map of authoritarian/anti authoritarian on the vertical axis and on the horizontal axis, call it anything like: Left:right, collectivist:individualist, sharing:market, give-all-you-got vs take-all-you-get spectrum.

The general problem is how to define what is what. Can a person who believes there should be no restrictions on gun ownership occupy the same position as one who believes there should be no limits on abortion? Or that there should be no death penalty vs no pollution standards?

where conservatives are, variously, more accepting of authority over their neighbors: gays, abortions, religion, immigration, and less accepting of authority over themselves: taxes, guns, environment. By the same token, liberals pretty well take just the opposite positions, accepting more control over.

The very top left corner is totalitarian communism (top-down collectivism) and we can call the quad Authoritarian Socialism? This quadrant would be the folks who think government is the key to surviving peak, that capitalism and greed is the main problem, that regulation and cooperation is the only hope for Kudzu Ape

Top right corner is Plutocracy, mercantilism, and absolutism. The more moderate area of this quadrant is for generally conservative people who think markets are good, societal control is good and security is the overriding concern.This quad might contain most everyone from the US & GB to maybe the "modern" RU to KSA.

Bottom left corner is anarcho-communism (stateless, collectivist, propertyless), union/worker ownership of the means of production, direct democracy little to no hierarchy.
The quad in general is more concerned with civil rights and the social contract than security or maximizing personal wealth.

Bottom right is individualist anarchism, egoism, Ayn Rand-ism
Not sure what to call this except Social Darwinism or maybe just Somalia, maybe someone can help. Generally this quad is more socially liberal capitalists, Free marketers and corporate personages.

--
The questions are the key, but an easy self-scoring system is also required. So:
2 sections, one for each axis?
3 responses for each statement: Agree, Disagree and Neither/Not applicable/No opinion
Agree scores +1
Disagree -1
N = 0
+1/-1 Extra Point if this is Very Important, Top 2 or 3 personal issues

So here is a sample questions to experiment on:
All oil production should be nationalized.
A "Yes" answer is a +1 authoritarian
A "no" is anti-authoritarian -1
or is it an economic issue
Yes is -1 collectivist
No is +1 free trade

hmmm

Guess I'm gonna need some help.

[C8]

It might be much simpler just to have folks here take the established political compass quiz at
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Off the top, I would guess that PO Doomers and environmentalist doomers probably score high on the authoritarian scale as they have a low view of the common man (which they call "sheeple"). If you see average people as morons or easily fooled then it doesn't make sense to trust them with much power.

[dinopello]

Off the top, I would guess that PO Doomers and environmentalist doomers probably score high on the authoritarian scale as they have a low view of the common man (which they call "sheeple").

These don't necessarily go together. It's very possible to see the commoners as "sheeple" but just prefer to be leaving the little sheepies alone to their own devices.



But to the subject, I would start with pre-made quizzes as you suggest. I think I have a little plutocrat, a little anti-authoritarian and a little collectivism. But it also depends on the day and what happened. I'm probably not a good test case.

[ralfy]

It might be much simpler just to have folks here take the established political compass quiz at
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Off the top, I would guess that PO Doomers and environmentalist doomers probably score high on the authoritarian scale as they have a low view of the common man (which they call "sheeple"). If you see average people as morons or easily fooled then it doesn't make sense to trust them with much power.

There's a 2010 thread about that here:

political-compass-t59648.html

with a reference to an earlier thread:

post56560.html

I mentioned the ff. in the 2010 thread:

political-compass-t59648-40.html#p1017155

[sparky]

.
I find this kind of thread very very interesting , not so much for the answers as for the questions

when a society is facing an existential treat , authoritarianism is way more efficient
during WW2 the US was run on "cool Stalinian" style , to the ever glory of the place , the very authoritarian ( with a smile ) system got dismantled once the need receded , it was due to the basic decency of the then governance ,a bit to the higher interest of the ruling class and a lot to the scary fact that the debt to GDP ratio had blown out at around 100%

as the saying go "a ship and a kitchen are not a democracy"

the post war "easy street " saw a huge explosion of government intervention , that was a very mixed bag to say the least
waging the cold war , the Vietnam war , the fight against segregation , a shot at an American on the moon ,Lyndon Johnson "great society " and Nixon establishing the Environmental Protection Agency .

the list itself is giving the vapor

now things are a bit more constrained , choices have to be made , priorities set !
that business overriding concern is to crush its workers wages is probably true
that any public administration will fight tooth and nails to protect and increase its budget is close to holy writ
that war is good for Army suppliers is no doubt a concern
that Greenies are loud mouth irresponsible morons could be argued by some ,even when they are right
that the God given right to F...ck any which way one want is a strong human force can hardly be argued
that bearing children is both a source of strength and a chain driving women to murder or suicide is a fact

so I don't really care , a society define itself by its perception of needs and choices ends

[vtsnowedin]

I took the political quiz in the link. My score -2.63 and -3.08 so I'm in the lower left quadrant to the right of Gandhi. It seems high on bashing corporations and light on balanced budgets. It is one thing to say able bodied persons should be required to work and another to say that others can not afford to support themselves and those that choose not to work.

[h2]

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

C8, re that site, any questionaire that starts off like that is worthless.

That question is almost totally incoherent, so the rest of the test's questions can't be much better. I stopped there (I lied, I read a few more, and they were all this stupid).

That's like saying, to start: if I shoot your wife, should I turn myself in, or try to avoid capture and arrest.

It's a stupid way to post the question, and avoids all the actual questions in the process. It's totally obvious from that first question that this site has some agenda or other, makes it worthless in my opinion. Perfect fodder for chatter here though I guess, or something.

I've seen ok tests like this, but this clearly is not one of them.

If one picks that question apart, it's absurdity grows evident.

If economic globalisation is inevitable :: makes no sense, it is the result of massive resource exploitation, drop resource consumption globally, and globalization fades to a sustainable level. Drop oil availability and the economic advantage of globalized outsourced production vanishes. Any question that assumes a premise is incoherent, nothing after that can make any sense. And it doesn't.

it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations. :: this is even more stupid, globalization is created by and for trans-national corporatism, to pretend it would exist without that system is absurd. Beyond ignorant. That's been the case since the first trade corporations were created by the british and dutch. Trade itself is something different, though similar in appearance, for example, you could be a trader just walking from one tribe to the next to trade your most excellent arrows, or whatever. Globalization as a subset of trade however has always been corporate as far as I know.

So I guess this test shows the following: the people taking it and making it can't read, or reason. So I guess that would lean it towards the right spectrum is my guess. Just a guess.

Looks like peakoil.com is starting to dig around the bottom of the barrel for topics, too bad, this site had some potential, rapidly fading as far as I can tell. Will there be a direct relation between the lowering quality of 'oil' sources and peakoil.com forums? Seems to be the case. Though I have to admit, the recent exchange between copious_abundance and desumaiden was priceless, it was like a boxing match between two midgets, you sort of feel guilty watching, but you can't help but do so anyway...

Too much partying tends to have negative health and life consequences (though that's not always the case), too little probably results in writing inanely absurd test questions like this, so I guess one should strive for a middle ground in partying, that's the best I can come up with.