as of summer 2014:
Apparently, from last year, I have moved .5 towards the economic right moved .16 towards authoritarian. I guess this change is not very significant since it is such a slight change.
If any change in my political/economic views actually occurred it was certainly because of living in a sort of communist country for 7-8 months. China is very capitalistic by now, though the political power is still very centralized/authoritarian and freedoms are limited.
Ok, I'll try to explain my position on the graph in words: I do tend to believe in government as an tool to help balance out and prevent some of the inequalities and problems that an unregulated society creates; while acknowledging governments themselves often have a lot of problems/do bad stuff too. A pure free market economy might be very "efficient" if you're looking purely at profits and such, but can be pretty awful in its blind efficiency. A pure planned economy, as we can see from any country that's attempted it, is so completely inefficient it's devastating. So yeah, mixed economy is the best way to go. You gotta think about other aspects of society when determining economic policy, which is why the government has to be involved with the economy, even if it creates some inefficiency. So it seems to be a spectrum, with efficiency/inequality on one end, and inefficiency/equality on another end, that you gotta settle along
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summer 2013 + link to last year's post, a half-hearted analysis
summer 2012
