Redit: Japanese political compass 2024

 

Japanese political compass found in https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/1c0a5ca/japanese_political_parties_on_the_compass/

This is still very rough and a wee bit inaccurate. Yet, it depicts the rough idea of the distribution of these political parties. According to it, I am the very centrist in Japan as I have a highest number of match with the manifesto of 国民民主党 (National Democratic party). Maybe NHK党 (The party for abolition of the national TV Broadcasting station) too, but found not practical enough to be a mainstream political party. I have to disagree with 公明党 (Komei party) as it is likely to be against the separation of religion and politics stated in the constitution although I have a compatibility with their moderately liberalist stance. .... I have to say that the position of 日本維新の会 (The party of Ishin) should be economically far right wing and socially more authoritarian; just slightly more liberal than the 自民党 (LDP).

 

Social Democracy is not exactly equal to Socialism

 

The terminologies of political ideologies are really complex to explain as well as indeed maniac for most people unless they are keen to study political science. In particular, when it comes to define Socialism, the definition varies across interpreters. Moreover, Social Democracy does not exactly imply Socialism whereas Democratic Socialism implies Socialism for certain.

 

The definition of Socialism involves a wide range of policy-implementations in terms of both economic and social scales. Generally, Socialism means to proactively take the external influences of policies on society (taking an account of the group of individuals, their interactions, and the external environment where they cohabit together in) into consideration. The fundamental problem of Socialism is the subjective interpretation of what are good for society so that its interpretation often depends on each interpreter implementing Socialist policies.

 

Focusing on the economic policies, Socialism is often used as the synonym of the collective/command economy based on the cohesive planning ahead as opposed to the market economy based on the laissez-faire planning. The market economy allows each individual economic agent to decide while trading their goods and services where it relies on the spontaneously driven distribution order. By contrast, Socialists insist on planning of, or intervention to at least, economy to induce their desired outcome. There tends to be a paternalistic institute, which can be either government or commune, instructing each individual and their firms with reference to their Socialist planning.

 

The types of Socialism are unique from each other depending on the instrument of implementing their policies interpret as producing good outcomes for society. Their uniqueness is more obvious in the social-policy scale than the economic-policy scale of political science. The orthodox Marxism in particular puts emphasis on the revolutionary government by the proletariat autocracy commanded by the chosen elites selected from the proletariat citizens who are supposed to be excel at knowing what are the best for their society are. Anarch-Syndicalism relies on the community of individuals who are voluntarily gathered into it from any social background to negotiate and decide their policies to implement. Democratic Socialism stands between these two policies as it allows the open political decision-making processes while it weighs on the responsibility of the chosen represents by non-random selection.

 

The confusion is that Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy are not technically equal to each other. Democratic Socialism prioritises the paternalistic planning/intervention into individuals' life and their living environment (i.e. society) while encouraging the minimum required open decision-making processes. Social Democracy still takes policy-impacts on society into consideration to the certain extend. However, it defies the paternalistic collective order and responsibility imposed by Socialism restricting each individual's freedom of choice and voluntary will.

 

In terms of the social-policy scale, the difference between Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy is slight because both support the open decision-making process conducted by the representatives elected by the citizens as well as the certain degree of political freedom for individuals unless threatening the system stability. On the other hand, in terms of the economic-policy scale, their difference is obvious. Social Democracy embraces the market economy with the optimum level of the intervention required for solving their social issues of concern whereas it avoids being the perfectionist paternalism suppressing both economic efficiency and individuals' own freedom of choice.

 

Social Democracy is actually the derivation of Liberalism encouraging each individual's own voluntary actions and free will instead of collectively intervening into them. Social Democracy is relatively more friendly to Socialism than the other types of Liberalism. It trusts in the invisible hand spontaneously adjusting the socioeconomic environment by letting individuals and their interactions be free. This is the critically unique point distinguishing it from Democratic Socialism supporting much stronger interventions into individuals and their interactions for their perfectionist objective.

 

Sum up, the word order makes a distinctive contrast between those two policies: Socialism and Social Democracy. They are neither exactly different nor same. It may be insignificant in our daily life and journalism meanwhile its difference is significant in political science. Hence, it is important to take enough attention to quote this kind of terminologies.

 

Legal Positivism In Defence: Authoritarianism Compatible With Liberalism

Authoritarianism is often regarded as the antinomy of Liberalism. However, some Liberalist philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham regarded highly of the existence of the rational authority as a core intermediary body of mediating the whole individuals and their society. This rational authority must exist as a public good deserving for all individuals with a fair judgement.

Furthermore, in order to ensure the fairness and the consistency of legal civil codes provided for all individuals, it requires some form of a central body. The antinomy of this existence is considered to be the customary law such as British and American Common law, the customary law of the United Nation (UN), and various tribal legal codes having existed in the pre-Roman period.

Many Liberalists, especially those supporting Classical-Liberalism and Libertarianism, tend to affirm that the customary/natural law is a more liberalist legal structure because of its decentralised form. However, the incompatible aspect of the customary/natural law is that it is very often influenced by the moral entrepreneurs such as religious and populist zealots. This might conversely induce illberal moral policies and oppressions toward the minorities.

Moreover, the judgement of the customary/natural is frequently influenced by the intelligence and the social power of the interpreters such as the lawyers. More powerful the lawyers are, more chances for defendants/plaintiffs to win the court case. Therefore, these individuals with more significant physical wealth and social status are more likely to take a significantly higher advantage regardless of their ethical and legal justifiability.

On the other hand, Legal Positivism propped up by the consistent civil codes prevents the moral monopoly by moral entrepreneurs. These legal codes are created under the consensus of individuals in a society to functionalise their fair social contracts. It is usually designed for providing all individuals with the fair judgements verified by a single public body existing as a public good deserving for all individuals regardless of their physical wealth and social status.

Another concern is that there is still a very high risk that an authoritarianism leads to an illiberal characteristics. The key point which distinguishes these two kinds of authoritarianism is whether it is the rule by law or the rule by persons. Socialists especially those supporting the orthodox Marxism tend to undermine the importance of the rule by law because they condemn the law as the bourgeoisie ideological production protecting their interests.

The orthodox Marxian perspective has originally started to elect the proletariat dictatorship deserving for a majority, the party of these proletariats are prone to the seduction to corruption unless there is any outside intervention correcting their actions. The wealthy and privileged elites may have an advantage to gain the power even under the rule by law ensuring fairness and moderation. But, this is not directly caused by how the law exists: It is simply the case that the wealthy and socially privileged individuals are more able to be advantageous regardless of any legal structure.

Montesquieu, in his book Spirit of the Laws, insisted that the republic providing individual citizens with equality and fairness requires the law as a social model for individuals to comply with. The more illiberal authoritarianism, the less significant of the law is because the rule exists for the only selected number of individuals enjoying their privileges.

The mistake of the old socialism such as the orthodox Marxism is defying the existence of law by replacing it with the rule by persons. Under this rule by persons, the proletariat party members in this case, the inequality furthermore expands in this rule dominated by the proletariat government than those liberal democratic nations with the rule by law.

In order to keep the fair third person's view, the rule by law implemented by a consistent form which is detached from any interest of a particular group of individuals. The civil code should exist as the pure intermediary structure which is created under the strong consensus among individuals cohabiting together.

Cooperative Liberalism: The new form of Liberalism from 2020s onward

In order to defend Liberalist philosophy and ethics in the current world socioeconomic environment, we, Liberalists, need to introduce a new form of political ideology.  As stated in the previous blog posts, the laissez-faire policy which Classical Liberalists, Libertarians, and the Objectivists claim for no longer stimulate the free market competition.  

 

1. Equality of the opportunity requires a certain degree of the equality of the outcome

The world economy has already become so complex and bureaucratic and requiring the huge economic scale to compete against each other. Only the economic agents with the significantly high capital investment advantages may survive in the current market economy.  Therefore, the world market in general tends to be almost always the oligopoly while some markets are even in the monopoly or the monopsony. 

In order to encourage the competition, the positive intervention by the public sector is more likely to be required than the past.  In the past, letting all individuals do alone in a natural competition could often stimulated them to form a diverse market competition providing the equality of opportunity.  By contrast, the new entrants in most of fields are struggling to compete without any supports because the capital requirement for joining the market has become too high for market entrants.

Firstly, private banks hardly lend money for new entrants because the risk premium of investing to new ventures is high nowadays.  The already established enterprises and economic agents in one industrial field have already secured their capital required for survival in the market of this industrial field.  On the other hand, small enterprises and individual entrepreneurs need a high level of investments from the others to enable them to survive there.  Private banks prefer lending already established big enterprises and rich entrepreneurs from the other field to lending those ventures and entrepreneurs with little capital.

Secondly, the opportunity of individuals joining market requires a significantly higher skill level than the past.  The education (Not only the higher education but also the job experiences and the transferable skills) for allowing individuals to compete with the already established corporations and the other talented educated individuals from all over the world.  The tertiary education such as college education has become necessity rather than complementary so individuals usually invest their time and income to graduate from a college/university.  Moreover, individual economic agents are expected to have both experiences and skills on the top of studying for their tertiary education.  All in all, the education requirement for surviving in the market competition is so severe that it depends on not only the talent but also the naturally endowed fortune of individuals are mandatory to not only win but also survive there.

Thirdly, the information symmetry for both investment and moral is a big concern. Because the world infrastructure such as transportation links, the information technological networks, and the production optimisation and logistics, there is almost no industry still robustly growing and certain for individuals to gain a profit from by investing them.  Furthermore, while the access to various abundant information resources is highly available nowadays, individuals are often confused with their right decision and the right duty to make. The ethical principle does no longer seem to be universal for all the human individuals to follow so they are often confused to derive their moral decision and ethical practices.  

On the top of these aforementioned situations, the current development of the artificial intelligence (AI) is expelling human individual workers, of not only the blue collar jobs but also the white collar jobs, from their employment. As Yuval Noah Harari described in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st century, human individuals are furthermore divided to the aspiring elites and the non-working useless classes.  In case of this situation, the laissez-fair claimed by Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism is quite likely to let human individuals to lose their life. 

Overall, the positive intervention by the public sector will be all the more demanded by the majority individuals.  The government role will eventually be big to satisfy the greatest sum of individuals' happiness in their life.  The next chapter explains the idea to prop up individuals' liberty and autonomic right while

 2. Big roles of the public sector while promoting individual liberty

As same as Libertarianism, this new form of Liberalism regards highly of the pluralism of freedom of expression, diversity of beliefs, ethnic groups, genders, and any physical and mental trait, cohabiting together. Although the laissez-faire economic policy could encourage such a pluralistic society, the laissez-faire nowadays contains a significantly high risk of impoverish the majority individuals without some degree of the positive intervention.  The paradigm of ethics in politics is dramatically shifting.

Our society now needs a positive intervention to allow them cohabiting without fear of losing their income and means of living.  The majority of individuals can be easily impoverished by losing their job or the stagnation of their income growth due to the aspect mentioned in the aforementioned chapter.  Offering a high degree of liberty and autonomous right, the new paradigm claims for allowing individuals without merely judging them by means of the industrial and commercial productivity.  

The new form of liberalism insists on a high provision of public goods and services whose welfare gain is shared among all the civic individuals. The shared economy is growing so that the demand of public goods and services is becoming notably significant. Furthermore, the flexible and inexpensive access to well-managed public goods and services may reduce individuals to cut their living costs so that it allows individuals and institutes including business enterprises to spare their income. 

There is another reason why the public sector is becoming all the more important. Majority of individuals nowadays tend to lose their traditional communities such as family and company.  There are many individuals having lost their interesting in marriage and these family members are becoming more individualistic than family oriented. The companies administration model nowadays are becoming more capital intensive than the labour intensive.  In order to compensate for their loss of their traditional community, the public sector is going to function as their substitute community looking after individuals. 

To enable the public sector to provide individual citizens with public goods and services with a high quality accessible level, the sufficient tax revenue is inevitably essential. This is what many supporters of the Classical Liberalism, Libertarianism, and the Objectivism because it enforces involuntarily sacrifice their income/property. However, in order to provide the majority of civic individuals with their liberty and right to live, it requires to forfeit some degree of economic liberty at the minimum optimum level avoiding too high taxation to hinder economy. 

This public management policy sounds like socialism.  Yes, this new form of Liberalism is admitted to be a part of Socialism although it is prevented from turning to be a radical form of socialism.  The radical forms of socialism such as Communism and State-Socialism excessively penalise the high income earners by accusing the market economy.  By contrast, this new form of Liberalism still aspires to maintain the robustly growing market economy combined with the optimum positive planning by the public sector.  In another word, it allows the high income earners to contribute back to their community of individuals having enabled them to earn their high income to thank their belonging economy and society.

The biggest concern of allowing such a significantly major role of the public sector such as government is the possible violation of their authority.  In many socialist nations with an obsolete socialist political stance, the power of government encourages their corruption with their violation of their public management authority.  In order to discourage their power violation, the public sectors such as government have to be constantly monitored and moderated through their citizens' view.  Many welfare state nations in Europe put their countermeasures against this authority violations, they maintain a high degree of the freedom of expression, the guarantee of individuals' autonomic right by questioning any authorities, and the freedom of media coverages which whistle-blow their public sector bodies.

 

3. Importance of the Progressive Tax and the Public Sector Provision

This new form of Liberalism regards highly of individual liberty and each individual's autonomous right as same as Classical Liberals, Libertarians, and the Objectivists.  At the same time, it regards highly of the cohabitation of unique individuals living in society so that individuals are encouraged to cooperate together at the same time. 

For example, in order to develop their convenient life style, the public sector growth is typically demanded. It satisfies each individual own egoistic interest even after sacrificing their tax contribution by splitting some share of their income. 

The tax should be progressively taxed due to the degree of the negative effect on individuals' utility varying across their income level.  The utility declining rate of the lower income individuals is significantly higher than the higher income counterparts.  Therefore, in order to increase the total sum of their utility, the progressiveness of the taxation is crucially important. 

There is a claim that the progressive tax may encourage the high income earners escaping from where they contribute to the public sector finance.  However, another study shows that the tax rate change is more likely to affect the lower income earners than the higher income earners.  The background aspect is that the high income earners gain benefit from taking their geographic advantage of their residence while the lower income earners merely exchange their own physical labour with their income.  

Even though the high income earners pay a high share of taxation, they can benefit from the safe and culturally well-off environment where the public sectors are eager to prop up such an environment.  In addition, the high public investment toward the public education will increase the abundant supply of the human capital which individual citizens may produce a high income together by sharing the benefit of these public goods and services in this region.  This place may become attractive for rich private investors to invest for their high return.  All in all, the overall return of paying the high tax for the higher income earners will be high enough to cover their cost. 

For the low income earners, it is important for them to access their fair opportunity for growing their income to satisfy their utility.  Sharing the public goods and services is necessary for them to save their income as well as to encourage their accesses to education, public transportations, high security, and information resources. 

In addition, it might be also important to provide enough lump-sum state benefits especially for the deprived individuals.  The old Liberalists often claimed for the meritocracy where all individuals compete to achieve with their own efforts and skills with a minimum support.  By contrast, because the income gap is widened and the access to the competition is limited far more than the past, a certain degree of the equality in outcome is all the more unavoidable to achieve the equality in opportunity. 

4. Cooperative Liberalism: Reformist rather than Revolutionary

This new form of Liberalism encourages individuals to cooperate to establish the environment for their liberal life style satisfying the greatest sum of individuals' happiness as well as offering the safety and the opportunity for the least fortunate member. Therefore, it is called Cooperative Liberalism. 

Cooperative Liberalism  is not a collectivism such as state-socialism and communism: It still retains the market economy, private property right, and financial industries' capital market operations.  It still retains the philosophy of Liberal Economism which regards highly of liberal rewards for each individual's contribution and merit to another individual or the whole market.

This policy actually preserves the market economy just with some positive intervention into it instead of replacing it with another by revolution.  The degree of the intervention is tuned depending on each situation. Instead of establishing a rigid socioeconomic political system based on the perfectionist philosophy, it admits the imperfection of economy and society of the world. 

The vector direction of Cooperative Liberalism is resemblance to Anarchism which defies both the excess government autocratic intervention and the big corporations' monopoly and exploitation.  As same as Anarchism, Cooperative Liberalism attempts to protect individuals' autonomous right, oppose unethical laws and orders established by both government autocrats and corporate tycoons, and individuals' voluntary cooperation within their spontaneously unified community.

At the same time, unlike Anarchism, Cooperative Liberalism still relies on government and bureaucrats' rational authorities for the public good and service provision and encourages the private enterprises' profit maximisation as long as individuals' liberty is protected and encouraged.  These institutes will be allowed exist while individuals are allowed to question these authorities against their power violation. 

All in all, Cooperative Liberalism is distinguished from Classical Liberalism (including Libertarianism and the Objectivism) as well as the majority socialism. The closest allies are Social-Democracy (Majority ardent socialists call "Friendlier version of capitalism" and Anarchism (by means of its vector direction; not its vector magnitude).  Cooperative Liberalism attempts to secure and encourage individuals' liberty in terms of the new socioeconomic paradigm of the current and the near future world.

My graphs of socio-economic policy created in 2004-05 found while searching my old albums

 

 

I created these graphs of socioeconomic policy when I just started studying in Scottish university.  Since communicating with my Anarch-socialist/communist friends in Edinburgh and the member of the student union in the university, I have started to realise that the multi-dimensional analysis is needed to analyse politics as well as economics and sociology.  The impression and the culture shock were so big that my artistic inspiration stimulated me to create such simple but impressive graphs at the time period even before I started this blog (from 2006). 

Suicide and Community

 

Unfortunately, the suicide rate has notably increased. Individuals' mental breakdown has been perpetuated by the fear of the isolation from and the meaninglessness of living in the current society.  This downfall has inspired to re-think about some sociological studies which may derive the answer for why a suicidal ideation tends to strike us so often.

This reason seems to be caused by not only the temporary effect of the pandemic but also the permanent effect of the world social environment transition. The current post-industrial modern society of the technologically advanced globalised world has already created the root cause of the rising suicide rate; the ongoing socio-economic depression caused by the pandemic has just perpetuated the social illness demonstrated by the rising suicide rate. 

 

Emile Durkheim explained about the four types of suicide caused by the two elements of society, the integration level and the regulation level.  When either of two becomes either excess or lacking, individuals living in their society are more likely to be prone to their social illness inducing their suicide attempt.  The excess social integration among individuals may encourage to the altruistic suicide while lacking their integration may lead an individual to the (irrational) egoistic suicide.  The excess societal regulation based on social norms may result in the fatalistic suicide whereas the excessively deregulated society with little shared norms and values among individuals may induce the anomic suicide. 

The typical examples of the altruistic suicide is a suicide attack committed by the former imperial Japanese soldiers in the World War II and the extremist Islamic suicide bombers.  This suicide occurs when individuals are excessively loyal to their belief and/or their figurehead leader and attached to the whole member individuals living in their community.  In such a situation, their love of community tends to be too strong to sustain their life as an individual. 

The industrial revolution has caused a strong transition of individuals' society.  Since the industrial revolution, individuals have started moving to a place employing them away from their homeland. Their mobility of changing their living place has become far more frequent than the pre-industrial counterpart.  It has become rare for individuals living in a community with little or no new comers so that their communities and their neighbours living there are no longer permanent. Their feeling of belonging to one community with familiar neighbours has been depreciated since then. 

In such an industrialised society, individuals are often less caring about their neighbours because they are often complete strangers for their own life and their too busy for their own life to care about the others.  By losing their integration among individuals, they often suffer from loneliness and meaninglessness as their neighbours no longer care about each individuals. When their feeling of loneliness and meaninglessness exceeds their patience, they are prone to commit the suicide due to their loss of interests in living any longer which Durkheim called the egoistic suicide.

Apart from the aforementioned suicide caused by either of the two different extreme societal integration issues, the most notable factor to analyse the current rising suicide rate is the regulation issues.  The regulation mentioned here is neither economic nor political, it is purely a regulations on social factors such as norms and values individuals follow.  

In the past, both the pre-industrial communitarian society and the early modern industrialised society, various fatalities were burdened on individuals.  They were fated to sacrifice their energy and time to work to gain their means of living.  They were often prone to various fatal diseases in either a technologically little advanced pastoral community or a high polluted industrial zone. 

Furthermore, individuals were more highly bounded by rigid norms and values in their belonging institutes in the past than nowadays.  Their traditional communities and their working environments used to exist in a longer term than nowadays.  So, in order to conduct them to fulfil the interests of their belonging group, the unified codes of conduct were essential to produce their desiring outcomes together.

By contrast, because the businesses and the public managements are shifting toward more capital intensive and of their institutes' structure are frequently modified in order to adjust them to their rapidly changing socio-economic fashions and trends. Therefore, individuals are more prone to losing a job and in a frequent need of relocating themselves to another working environment even in a global scale. 

In such an environment, the permanent norms and values seldom remain existing to conduct individuals to live.  There is no longer a form of social conduct telling individuals what to do.  In another word, these individuals now have to self-regulate themselves without being relying on either the others or their belonging institutes such as companies, governments, and religious organizations.  Durkheim predicted that more individuals would suffer from normlessness and lacking values encouraging them to live because of this rapid transition of the societies in the whole world in the future from his time.  

Karl Marx predicted that majority individuals, the proletariat, would unify them together to establish a socially minded economic and political system. However, unlike Marx predicted, individuals nowadays are far less likely to unite together to cooperate to reform their society.  Instead, the majority individuals nowadays hardly cling to any unified value to believe in to achieve their unified goal such as Marxist social revolution. 

Durkheim called social illness individuals suffer due to lacking regulations by a code of conduct and unified values "Anomie".  Anomie caused by the aforementioned normlessness and valueless is represented on one extreme side of the regulation axis.   When individuals lose their guidances of life such as social norms and their meanings of life such as social values, the syndrome of Anomie often create various social and psychological problems and even induces them to commit suicide.

Ferdinand Tönnies was also one of the remarkable sociologists pointing out the change in social characteristics.  He claimed that human individuals' society was gradually shifting from Gemeinschaft (The traditional community based society) to Gesellschaft (The modern individualistic society). He referred to these two types of society for explaining how the form of the social contract among individuals vary depending on their social structure. 

The former society puts priority on preserving the existence and the interests of a community, the group of individuals sustaining their common living environment, over each individual's existence and interests.  Over there, individuals form their social contracts by means of their emotional whim and the spontaneously established order such as a customary law.  These individuals help each other quite often in order to keep their kinship with each other like forming a big family and believe in and strictly unified norms and values.  

These members of the communities are afraid of changes in their living environment so they are often deeply suspicious about new ideas or new comers threatening the permanence of the characteristics of their familiar living environment.  Individuals are not so free to act and think with their own will although the strong sense of belonging prevents them from the negative phycological illness caused by loneliness and meaninglessness.

The latter society put priority on individual responsibility for their self-preservation as a condition for providing them with their unique individuality and each individual's merit stimulating the development of the whole society.  Over there, social contracts among individuals are formal and often clearly defined in order to keep their mutual agreement rational and transparent.  This society provides with the equal treatments of individuals under the law so that their agreements must be formal and clearly defined.  

The existence of communities is considered to be transient to allow flexible mobilities of individuals and resources to encourage innovations with a robust development pace.  Individuals are seldom emotionally attached to the others so they are less likely to voluntarily help their neighbours because their neighbours are often complete strangers for them.  It provides individuals with freedom in a wide range of their life without being restrained by solid norms and values.  Nevertheless, it also means that they have to find their own meaning of existence even by struggling with it.  

 

In the current globalised world, the characteristics of many regions of the world are becoming more identical to each other under a unified objective of increasing the material productivity level with flexible foreign trades across their borders.  Because of the massive material benefits brought by adapting to the global capitalism, more and more countries adapt themselves to the formal and individualistic social contracts.  This trend has induced them to transform their traditional communitarian society, so-called Gemeinschaft , to the world-standard business-like modern society, so-called Gesellschaft .

The recent world wide information technological development has also accelerated the trend shifting their society from the traditional communitarian society to the post-industrial modern society.  The post-industrial modern society has provided people living in any part of the world with their access to the abundance of technologies and creating wealth which includes their access to medical treatments curing them from fatal diseases and the most advanced intellectual knowledge. Therefore, this trend certainly has beneficial advantages.

However, the non-negligible problem is a rise of phycological illnesses including suicide which are seemingly caused by lack of integration with the others as well as loneliness and meaninglessness in their life.  Only the material productivity growth and the convenience derived from it are seemingly emphasised far more than each individual's psychological and social problem.  

Some individuals feel being left alone when these individuals cannot meet with what the current market demands even after making their best efforts.  Because the pace of societal changes is so fast that the socioeconomic gap between different individuals can be widened furthermore.  Then, these left away from the trend, because of being detected as the useless, may face losing opportunity to work for enough income sustaining their cultural living standard.  At this stage, even in order to provide all individuals with the equality of opportunity, a certain level of the positive intervention in their outcome to diversify the resources will be a necessary condition.

In addition to their economic needs, their social needs are also crucially important.  Some politicians just claims to provide these left alone individuals marginalised as the useless with the state benefits such as providing all individual citizens with the universal basic income.  Nonetheless, this does not solve the problem of providing them with the meaning of life as well as saving them from loneliness.  When the progress of the current societal change moves forward without taking this psychological social aspect into consideration, there is a high risk of the emerging negative reactions to the current socioeconomic structure.  

 

All in all, regardless of a plain freedom of actions and thoughts and the prevention of bad living conditions causing a fatal death, the newly arising suicide rate and the other social disorder are derived from a newly arising social problem of the post-industrial modern society.  Even with an abundance of material resources, it is neither easy nor simple to solve this psychological and social illnesses.  Unless this is solved, various forms of negative reactional insurgences threatening the peace and the stability of the world may arise.  Furthermore, it is simply regrettable to see many people committing suicide despite the progress of the world as a while.  None should be left alone from gaining the benefit of the world development.  

The Political Compass by Country measured by Numerical Data

Published on 08/06/2019



The Political Compass inevitably relies on the author's subjective sense of judgement to measure where politicians/countries are located on each spectrum. Its author still uses the objective analysis to the certain extent as he seems to be an educated and well-informed academic. There are also various many derivational charts of political compasses invented by various individuals. However, majority seem to rely on the subjective measurement to determine how the selected policies are categorised in their chart.

This project is inspired by the Political Compass, and attempts to create a chart based on less relying on an author's subjective sense of judgement. So, the numerical data set is used to create this chart. The data were downloaded from the following sites:

Data Source:
Economic Freedom: https://www.heritage.org/index/download (2019)
Political Freedom: https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world (2018)

By following the Political Compass, the X variable (The horizontal axis) indicates the economic freedom i.e. friendliness to free market capitalism. The way the economic freedom is measured turns to be notably different from the perspective of the Political Compass because the Heritage.org regards of the economic freedom and the development of the global capitalism as the positive optimistic element meanwhile the Political compass regards of them as relatively more oppressive and something not favoured by the mass. Yet, the main objective is to measure how each country adapts the free market global capitalism on the horizontal axis so that this does not induce it to be a significantly different analysis.

As same as the Political Compass, this chart also indicates the top side of the chart denotes more authoritarian, i.e. less politically free, and the bottom side denotes more liberal, i.e. more politically free. So, the Y variable (The vertical axis) is created by diverging the political freedom index. This is also not quit identical as what the Political Compass attempts to indicates. This index from FreedomHouse.org only ranks the countries' policies only by means of the relative measurement to the other countries in the current world situation: It compares them with neither historical examples nor the non-existent but maybe possible policies introduced in political theories.

Each variable is calculated as follows:


Both indices are powered by 0.3 in order to balance the chart (Making the candidates on the chart comparable and the chart more visible). 0.3 is used for the power because the average and the median of the variables become close to 0.5 together and the gap between the minimum and the maximum is widened by this calculus.


This chart was created by Microsoft Excel but it is not equipped with the chart label shown on the map of the chart. So, a chart-labelor was installed from www.appspro.com/Utilities/ChartLabeler.htm.

The dots of these countries are shaped and coloured dissimilarly by means of various diverse geographic and cultural regions. Unlike the original categorisation for the referred data sources, this chart scattered the original regional categories into more detailed unique ones. Western English speaking countries are categorised as Anglo-Saxon and Celtic on this chart (Blue Dia). Those in Asia-Pacific which are heavily influenced by Confucianism (Red Circle) are distinguished from the rest Asia-Pacific (Purple Circle). Those in Europe are roughly divided into three groups, West (Yellow Dia), Central (Pale Green Dia), and East (Pink Dia) in order to clarify the difference caused by historical and ethnic characteristics and the past as well as the present political factors. (It is by means of this author's subjective sense based on his knowledge because it is difficult to clear cut with a pure objective measurement)

This may help to compare and understand the economic and political attribute of various countries in a macro perspective.



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New Alternative Political Compass

The Political Compass by Country measured by Numerical Data

The Political Compass inevitably relies on the author's subjective sense of judgement to measure where politicians/countries are located on each spectrum. Its author still uses the objective analysis to the certain extent as he seems to be an educated and well-informed academic. There are also various many derivational charts of political compasses invented by various individuals. However, majority seem to rely on the subjective measurement to determine how the selected policies are categorised in their chart.

This project is inspired by the Political Compass, and attempts to create a chart based on less relying on an author's subjective sense of judgement. So, the numerical data set is used to create this chart. The data were downloaded from the following sites:

Data Source:
Economic Freedom: https://www.heritage.org/index/download (2019)
Political Freedom: https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world (2018)

By following the Political Compass, the X variable (The horizontal axis) indicates the economic freedom i.e. friendliness to free market capitalism. The way the economic freedom is measured turns to be notably different from the perspective of the Political Compass because the Heritage.org regards of the economic freedom and the development of the global capitalism as the positive optimistic element meanwhile the Political compass regards of them as relatively more oppressive and something not favoured by the mass. Yet, the main objective is to measure how each country adapts the free market global capitalism on the horizontal axis so that this does not induce it to be a significantly different analysis.

As same as the Political Compass, this chart also indicates the top side of the chart denotes more authoritarian, i.e. less politically free, and the bottom side denotes more liberal, i.e. more politically free. So, the Y variable (The vertical axis) is created by diverging the political freedom index. This is also not quit identical as what the Political Compass attempts to indicates. This index from FreedomHouse.org only ranks the countries' policies only by means of the relative measurement to the other countries in the current world situation: It compares them with neither historical examples nor the non-existent but maybe possible policies introduced in political theories.

Each variable is calculated as follows:


Both indices are powered by 0.3 in order to balance the chart (Making the candidates on the chart comparable and the chart more visible). 0.3 is used for the power because the average and the median of the variables become close to 0.5 together and the gap between the minimum and the maximum is widened by this calculus.


This chart was created by Microsoft Excel but it is not equipped with the chart label shown on the map of the chart. So, a chart-labelor was installed from www.appspro.com/Utilities/ChartLabeler.htm.

The dots of these countries are shaped and coloured dissimilarly by means of various diverse geographic and cultural regions. Unlike the original categorisation for the referred data sources, this chart scattered the original regional categories into more detailed unique ones. Western English speaking countries are categorised as Anglo-Saxon and Celtic on this chart (Blue Dia). Those in Asia-Pacific which are heavily influenced by Confucianism (Red Circle) are distinguished from the rest Asia-Pacific (Purple Circle). Those in Europe are roughly divided into three groups, West (Yellow Dia), Central (Pale Green Dia), and East (Pink Dia) in order to clarify the difference caused by historical and ethnic characteristics and the past as well as the present political factors. (It is by means of this author's subjective sense based on his knowledge because it is difficult to clear cut with a pure objective measurement)

This may help to compare and understand the economic and political attribute of various countries in a macro perspective.



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Ethical/Philosophical Chart - Political Philosophical Compass

Chart Explaining Singaporean Economic Political Model

This chart is used for explaining Singaporean economic and political model with comparison to Anglo-Saxon style free market model with a small government and European social democratic welfare state model with a big government. Also, the idealistic world view created by European classical idealism is briefly introduced as an opposing side of the Singaporean model.

The vertical axis scales how big a government is in a model. Bigger government implies a central government role is significant to intervenue into economic and social issues and to administrate a huge scale of public sector. By contrast, smaller government implies government role is limitted for intervening into economic and social issues and more likely to let private enterprises and voluntary will of indivuals to look after public goods and services.

The holizontal axis scales the attitude toward equality. The right side puts priority on taking inequality for granted as a mean of promoting meritocracy stimulating a high aggregate productivity under an elitist socioeconomic structure. The left side puts priority on more egalitarian values where socioeconomic inequality is minimised with a high effort.

The modern Western politics tends to focus on the one dimensional spectrum based on the conflicting view between the European social democratic model regarding highly of a relatively egaritarian policy with a generous welfare state programmes and the Anglo-Saxon style free market economy promoting meritorcratic competition and optimising the productivity level under competition. The former has a relatively less confidence on entirely letting private individuals and market handling economy and social policy with their voluntary will and a relatively stronger confidence on relying on a government role looking after public. The latter has a strong condidence on a free market and private individuals in it voluntarily looking after both themselves and the others and is sceptical about government roll of intervening it.

Singaporean politics is so unique that it combines both a big government looking after a nation like the European welfare state model and a free market economy and meritorcacy like the Anglo-Saxon model. Singaporean model has a strong confidence on both a powerful government intervention and a voluntary force of free market and private individuals. The big goverment roll provides the public safety backed up by the strong law enforcement, the guardianship of harmonising citizens with multiculturalism and public education programme, and well-developed healthcare services. However, the big government of Singapore does not disrupt free market competitions based on free voluntary will of individuals and corporation, and it actually encourages it enough to establish such a strong meritorcratic socioeconomic structure accomplishing a miracle economic growth.

On the other hand, Singaporean model has some negative feedbacks from some endogenous citizens frustrated by the socioeconomic poliitcal system. Singaporean model applies the pragmatic attitude of adapting any existing socioeconomic policies not being constrained by ideologistic politics, and its utilitarianistic realism merely focuses on the national well-being as a hole. So, the rapid economic growth and the public safety are exaggerated meanwhile the frustration of relatively poor individuals and minority's view points tend to be overlooked.

Singaporean model is far from the classical idealism described by various European philosophical theories which aspires to invent an alternative which is not yet established but worth to attempt to establish. Producing an eccentric genius inventor like someone obtaining a Nobel prize is not a priority for Singapore. Although the voluntary will of individual is highly admired there, an individual sovereignty and her/his uniqueness are relatively more disregarded than strengthening the aggregate strength of a nation.

Overall, this comparison demonstrates more than one pathway of promoting small/big government and meritocracy/egaritarian policy. Singaporean model is refered to as an example of implimenting a unique pragmatical perspective policy as a successful and yet controversial example.

Economic Political Compass/Spectrum

From economists' point of view, the economic scale based on goverment size (big v.s. small) in Political Compass is not useful to explain the real impact of policy on economy. In the real world economy, government size does not seem to matter whether a nation/community impliments elitist or egalitarian policy. The real matter is the intentional objective whether a government or a community aspires to accomplish.

Both capitarist economy based on a severe competition of private enterprises and socialist economy mainly operated by a government central planning support meritocracy establishing an efficient mechanism of sustaining productivity and a rigid hierarchy maintaining a stable social order. By contrast, more egalitarian economies may keep a feasible balance of government size and freeness of private enterprises, and this balance varies across different geographic and ethinic characteristics.

Singapore and South Korea encourage a high economic freedom of private business competition and also maintain a roll of big government propping up public goods and social order. In these nations, the big government sustaining the stable social order and bearing the responsibility of administrating public sectors assist growing the private businesses and the furthermore economic freedom. In addition, Singaporean and South Korean economy keeps their capacity of controlling business cycles. While remaining the relatively free market economy, their big and proactive government is prepared for mitigating either overheated or hard-falling of their business cycle.

Modern continental European nations tend to focus on encouraging more egalitarian values and freedom of expressions more than economic efficiency. Their government roll is bigger than the U.S.A. and the U.K. but smaller than both socialist and the aforementioned emerging Asian nations. In particular, the current Eurozone seems to be afrain of an excessive government intervention into its economy because of the predicted excess cost of implimenting it in such a huge economic zone with its unstable fiscal and regulatory structure which is still not well integrated. This unstability is also the cost of accomplishing their ideal of European integration with an egalitarian value.

Scandinavians are far more famous for accomplishing egalitarianism while maintainig their reasonably strong economy as well as their political and social stability. They still keep their proactive capacity relatively more than the Eurozone because they are not in a part of a massive complicated economic zone like Eurozone. But, Scandinavian economic policy is not so much proactive because they have been historically famous for their conservative macroeconomic policy reluctant to spend government expenditure for economic stimulus. Instead of spending for incentivising the macroeconomic performance, they put priority on sparing their expenditure for their generous welfare programming for their egalitarianism.

Judging from these examples, the key scales of distinguishing economic policies should be the "efficient but oppressive v.s. egalitarian" axis and the "proactiveness v.s. passiveness" axis instead of a simple big v.s. small axis. An efficient but oppresive policy with a proactive attitude focuses on sustaining a remarkable economic performance while their stratified elitism may increas a frustration of subordinate citizens. An egalitarian policy focuses on spending for their egalitarian ideals while sacrificing their efficiency of stimulating their economic performance.

There is an notorious policy which should be called the "efficient but oppressive and passive". This one has been frequently seen in various primitive developing nations and the USSR style communist nations. Their passiveness comes from their lack of economic ratinale of either not understanding economics or intentionally abandoning economic well being for their eccentric dogma. The egalitarianism is also ignored because the minority ruling class controlling their dogmatic state hold their ultimate power of controlling the rest of people.

The "egalitarian and proavtive" policy hardly appears in the real world but Islamism often indicates the economic policy in their teaching. Islam is famous for involving teaching about economy in their religious teaching which claims for letting money following without not stuck in one place and being generous to give away for saving deprived ones. This policy suggests for a volutary religious will of individuals instead of a modern government intervention for implimenting egalitarianism so that this is another remarkable example of something the "big v.s. small government" does not seem to explain.

My result of 8 Values Test

Three Dimensional Political Compass Spectrum

Type: Imperialist
- Real Example: Greco-Romanic Empire, Various European empires, and perhaps the USA under Republican government since the late 20th century.
- Fictional Example: The Leviathan state (Thomas Hobbes), Various aggressive strongholds in novels and games, Dark Force in Star Wars
- Advantage: Rapidly growing capital and accumulating wealth. Encouraging cosmopolitanism and unity under a stable protection of this robust political regime.
- Disadvantage: Costly to prop up due to the unlimited need of expansion. Perpetuating frustration of the marginalised individuals forced to subordinate.

Type: Oligarchist
- Real Example: Most of private corporations in the global capitalism. Perhaps the USA under Democratic government since 20th century.
- Fictional Example: Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
- Advantage: Encouraging meritocracy motivating individuals to be competent to live. Rapidly improving the material living standards
- Disadvantage: Increasing social problems caused by anomie where individuals lose their means of living. Blunt cultural characteristic

Type: Nationalist/Patriotist
- Real Example: Scottish Nationalist, One Nation Tory, the typical characteristics of Japanese nation, Various modern Asian nations
- Fictional Example: Various kingdoms established by rebels.
- Advantage: Preserving its own culture, history, and identity.
- Disadvantage: Excess emphasis on its cultural superiority by looking down the others. Perpetuating the romanticism intoxicating individuals with day dream.

Type: Marxist-Socialist
- Real Example: Controversial to say if it has really existed.
- Fictional Example: Socialist world in Capital (Marx).
- Advantage: Efficiently reducing social problems like crime&deviance and discrimination against minority.
- Disadvantage: Weak economy and freedom of choice. Easily encouraging the corruption by bureaucrats.

Type: Democratic-Conservative
- Example: The Untied States of America from 18th to 19th century. Confederate State of America
- Advantage: Developing and preserving self-autonomy of individual-citizens and their culture and religion.
- Disadvantage: Excess emphasis on religion, traditional-values, and individuals' freedom while neglecting material well-being and economic and social stability

Type: Communitarian/Primitivist
- Example: Paganism, Counter-culture, Islamism
- Advantage: Growing strong spirituality invincible in any challenging situations
- Disadvantage: Significantly difficult to promote innovations and convenient material living standard.

Type: Anarcho-Syndicalism
- Example: Republican Spain during the Civil War
- Advantage: Having achieved the high level of spiritual happiness and equality of individual citizens while maintaining the reasonable level of industrial productivity and military strength.
- Disadvantage: Seeming to be vulnerable to survive because it existed only in a short time period. Maybe suffering from the same socio-economic consequence as Marxist-Socialist.

Type: Libertarian/Objectivist (Anarch-Individualism)
- Real Example: Never existed yet.
- Fictional Example: John Gould Gulch in Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
- Advantage: Rationality prevails everywhere in life: Fairness of all agreements, trades, and individuals' autonomy are guaranteed. All individuals are literally completely free to live and die.
- Disadvantage: Only the super-persons would survive and weak vulnerable individuals may severely struggle to live.

ABL Political Compass (Legislative and Judicial axes) to the Unknown-Ideal

When people talk about anarchism (Zero control) and the low control level, many of them tend to be confused with a chaotic or primitive state. A chaotic and/or primitive state often implies the low or no control. But, anarchism does not always imply either chaotic or primitive. There are several forms of control-ship as well as there are several forms of no/low control-ship.

However, there is a significant difference of an economic political structure between controlled and less/non-controlled. The characteristics of the economic political control is created within a relatively short time period meanwhile the characteristic of non/less controlled economic political structure is created through various influences of cultural and technological new inspirations unless it is a collapse of civilisation going back to chaos/primitive. The control is artificial meanwhile the counterpart is spontaneous. The spontaneity cannot be artificially created all the sudden: Individuals and their living civilisation need to experience various cultural and technological influences enough to obtain the wisdom to live without an artificial economic political control.

The controlled structure can be sustained as long as a few powerful individuals in charge of the control are wise enough. By contrast, the structure with no/less control requires majority of individuals to be enlightened and already wise enough to be self-autonomous. The root motivation of individuals enabling to establish no/less controlled state can be religion and other forms of strong ideologies. However, this project also adds another form of no/less controlled state which is free from not only the physical (economic) control but also the moral (political) control, and this is the unknown ideal which I, the author of this blog Art&Blue-Liberalism (ABL), is aspiring to discover.



The following charts explains how the new political compass based on the political map of various already-existing forms of civilisation and the unknown ideal together:



There are two axes, the legislative side of politics mainly in charge of regulating economic policies and the judicial side of politics mainly in charge of regulating moral policies.

There is only one the most economically and morally controlled state. It assumes that the objectives of all rational individuals in this world is to achieve in material as well as spiritual prosperity. So, regardless of ideology basing the control-ship, the main-objective is prosperity and the degree of control is adjusted to achieving it.

The spectrum of the old political compass is based on the straight forward high-low control. By contrast, both the ends of this new compass are low control and the centrist indicates the highest control.

* Legislative: Economics side *

This project regards that the pure command economy, such as Marx-Leninism, is equivalent to the primitive economy, and the high economic control implies the positive planning of economic policy such Keynesian economy. So, it does not measure by means of the size of public sector: it measures by means of the active role of government and big corporations directly intervening into the business cycle and the overall economic climate.

Furthermore, it indicates the clear difference between two low control levels: The one where majority of individuals are less aware of market mechanism and the other is majority of individuals are aware of market mechanism without an instruction provided by rational authorities.


* Judicial: Moral side *


An intense autocratic government always requires its citizens' worship to it as though it were only one God. Even an authoritarian government with theological ideology, they often use religion and morality as their political instrument. The pure religious community represses the excess control of government, and individuals follow moral disciplines without any paternalistic intervention by a political autocracy.

The third characteristic of this spectrum is the freedom from both government or any moral entrepreneurs' moral intervention. Many Continental European states are close to this category. The extreme side of it is the anarchism existing in political theories.




The teaching of Islam contains a full knowledge about the market mechanism, and citizens of various Islamic nations achieve in a reasonable level of economy. Their government often intervene into economy to stabilise their business cycles, and the big corporations and the Islamic banks are highly encouraged to voluntarily help the economic adjustment.

Jewish community is not restricted by a nation state, and their holy nation Israel was established relatively new compared to Jewish people's own long history of existence. They are only controlled by the moral entrepreneurship which is free from any artificially created autocratic form of politics. Majority of Jewish are aware of market mechanism, and self-autonomous enough to cope with any havoc challenging them.

Asian nations tend to prefer a high control for both economy and morality. Their culture to follow rational authorities enables them to stimulate rapid economic growth and political stability. The weak point is their low self-autonomic level which hardly promotes a self-autonomous state.

The moral entrepreneurship in Latin America is intense even nowadays. The degree of economic intervention varies across different Latin-American nations. They are less secular than majority Asians but less religious than Isramic citizens.


In the Western nations (except Latin-Americans), there is a big divide between the Continental Legal Positivist states and the Anglo-American Common-Law states. The former is a rational secularist nation which promotes morally neutral policy with an effective economic intervention. The latter remains a strong moral entrepreneurship but a laissez-faire economic policy. The latter puts emphasis on the self-responsibility of all individuals for both fortune and misfortune, and the flexibility promoted by this emphasis has strengthened their strong financial management. The former put emphasis on the safety net helping individuals accidentally trapped into misfortune, but demands on individuals' tax contribution and strict legal codes which disrupt the flexible flow of the financial market.

Scotland is one of the former states even though she is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Jeremy Bentham aspired to establish a perfect legal-positivist state and ardently challenged against the traditional commonlaw of his own mother nation. Bentham 's ideal state is to promote the maximum secular freedom of individuals protected by the reasonable level of positive government intervention and the fair judicature based on the logically and explicitly coded legal codes. Murdock empire is not a nation but its media influence is often superior to any national propaganda. The media empire of Murdock is highly secular meanwhile it still remains its business ethics based on the common law states requiring all individuals to be responsible for both their fortune and misfortune.

The unknown ideal is something combining the secular-rationalism of the legal positivist states and the self-autonomy and the strong financial management of the Anglo-Saxon and Jewish culture. In order to accomplish the unknown ideal such as Max Stirner and Ayn Rand had aspired for, the combination of the flexible flow of the financial market promoted by both Anglo-American Common law and Jewish culture and the morally neutral rationalism promoted by both the Continental Legal Positivist Europe and Asian nations seems to be demanded. The practical method to achieve is not created yet, but there is already an idea leading to keep looking for the solution.