h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm oppossed to slavery.

Working conditions are a local matter. If this is what people have to do to get by, then they have more serious economic problems than this.

I don't think businesses should encourage the practice. I think it's good for the public to be aware of the sitution so that they can vote with their dollars if they feel its needed.

I don't see it as the problem of my government.

I took that test once and I was proved to be just as communist as Stalin.

2Bit, that doesn't even begin to answer the question.

Let's take another example. The American motor trade. Decimated, millions thrown out of work by 'downsizing', the jobs re-located to Mexico so that Ford and GM could continue to make outrageous profits.

Where was the freedom of choice for the workers in the US auto trade?

Regarding freedom, choices, and corporations.....

The problem with the idea of freedom to choose to buy or not to buy certain products is that what might be a harmless choice in isolation becomes a very harmful choice when made by a lot of people. This is a kind of destrutive version of Adam Smith's "hidden hand".

e.g I want a particular brand of word processor for my home computer, because it's the same as the one I have at work. I choose to buy it of my own free will, and this is a fair and reasonable choice. However, I may not want everyone to make the same decision, as I don't want that company to have a monopoly on office applications, because it would harm competition and damage innovation.

So even if no-one really wants slave labour and such huge inequalities, what sustains them is a huge number of small individual choices that are reasonable (or at least not too unreasonable) in themselves. Small numbers of people realise this, and amend their behaviour, often choosing more expensive alternatives. But some people don't realise, some can't afford, and some just don't have meaningful options.

The same goes for a lot of environmental damage - lots of people making the same choices, all reasonable, but together causes damage. Everyone wants to drive a car (fair enough), but if everyone does, the environment is damaged, which nobody wants.

This is the major flaw with many libertarian arguments - they want freedom on the small, individual choice level, but without someone taking an overview and sometimes restricting choice, there will be results that no-one wants, which themselves reduce freedom, or the use of freedom.

Government is the only organisation that can do it, and the question of who's freedom is to be restricted, how, and when, is a question for social justice.

Otto

"The weakness of the left is that it concentrates power in the hands of the government"

and the weakness of the new right is that it concentrates power in the hands of private enterprise and business who, unlike government, are unregulated and uncontrolled.

Power, wherever it is located, is always a threat to liberty. Look at the East India Company, a private business that ended up running the Indian subcontinent.

Libertarians, of whatever hew, need to understand that power *must* be controlled or tyranny will arise, as an inevitability. That goes for government and corporations.

This is an interesting point. Unsurprisingly, I agree with everyone saying that corporations have too much power. I'd like to raise a question, to which I don't even have the beginnings of an inkling of an answer: how can this be changed? The "race to the bottom", where governments, or even regions within a country, compete with each other to lower regulations such as minimum wage, environmental protection laws and taxes, seems to be inevitable without global governance. International treaties, in theory, could do this - but in practice they are too slow, too easily overruled, etc. I came across one new idea - simultaneous policy, see www.simpol.org - but I think it unfortunately doesn't have a particularly good chance of success. Any ideas?

Question - has anyone had a play around with the questionnaire to see if they could reproduce the results that someone like Margeret Thatcher got... I just did the test again giving all the answers as far right as I thought were decently possible (without being a rabid fascist) and still only came out a wishy-washy tory wet!!

Does this mean the questionnaire is biased towards the left or is it just that I'm finally discovering what the right stands for (or is this questionnaire an attempt at anti-conservative propoganda)...

Answers on a postcard please to the Conservative Party Central Office, ...

I took the test and came up with -1 and -1. It would appear that I am as close to centre as it is possible to get. But.............
Rod

I don't believe that this sort of test is valid

Going back a bit, to the alleged leftist bias of the political compass test...

Part of the problem may lie in the way the left is fractured. There are lots of differences of opinion on the left, from the New Labourites who see private industry as a necessary part of governmentm, to the anarchists who want to destroy capitalism and start again. The right, on the other hand, has much more of a consensus. This could be why the test seems to have a left bias - it's trying to recreate the subtle shades of red.

I want to answer, perhaps obliquely, a point Blues Shark raised earlier. He said; "Let's take another example. The American motor trade. Decimated, millions thrown out of work by 'downsizing', the jobs re-located to Mexico so that Ford and GM could continue to make outrageous profits.

Where was the freedom of choice for the workers in the US auto trade?"

I don't think NAFTA is the only villain here, Blues Shark. What has happened in Detroit -- and in Pittsburg and Bethlehem (PA) -- has more to do with the re-orientation of the whole economy, globally. It was no fun during the Industrial Revolution, either, but even the Luddites couldn't stop what was happening.

"The right, on the other hand, has much more of a consensus"

I disagree. One the right of the Political spectrum you have fascists, conservatives, neo-liberal economists, free-market authoritarians, free-market libertarians, religious fundamentalists......

quite a few, and they don't really agree with each other

I wasn't imjplying NAFTA to be the villian here, but the orporations themselves. A deliberate policy decision was made in places like Detroit and Flint that in order to maintain profits, American workers would be put out of work and the jobs transferred to CHEAPER employment areas.

The population of the industrial world is being lied to. Timwe and again we are told that there is a downturn in trade, that profits are falling. Yet the fat cats get fatter all the time. Their bowl of cream never seems to get emptier or thinner.

For example, the Times has just undertaken a survey of the 200 richest people in Britain. The bottom placed in that list this year are 'earning' over three times as much as they were two years ago.

I, my colleragues, and I supect the majority of H2G2 users have not seen our standards of living increase by as much as ten per cent over the same period. Why?

They tell me it's an economic down turn, that we must tighten our beklts, make economies, make do with less.

Yeah, right.