In the centre of the compass
The Political Compass provides an interesting take on the New Zealand political spectrum and illuminates how the four parties forming the new Government are relatively closely aligned, particularly the key players Labour and NZ First.
For those who haven’t visited this amusing wee site, the positions on the compass are found through answering a questionnaire. I would be interested to see where you lot land up, so feel free to post your coordinates after you take the test.
FYI, the frog’s position is the same as the Green Party ;).
Bookmark to:
October 18th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Bizarre, apparantly I am even more left wing and even more libertarian/anarchist than the Green Party. I guess that’s what opposition to corporate globalisation does for you, makes you out to be some sort of radical.
I question the methodology for the parties though, since a Party cannot fill in a questionnaire, clearly someone (who?) has decided where the Party is located.
October 18th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
I’m about in the same spot as Nelson Mandela, a little more “left” than the Greens and a little less “Libertarian”.
I also question the methodology. We got to answer in degrees of agreement - how can they tell to what degree parties support an idea?
October 18th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
I’m open to the possibility, but does anyone else out there (et tu Frog) agree with the Political Compass’ placement of National as more socially conservative than United Future?
Or the marked difference between Labour and National on economic matters (there is so much agreement on things like free trade, inflation et. al.)?
Or the nearly-zero difference between Act and National on economic matters (near-zero difference between Act and Don Brash, sure, but Act and the National broad-church?)?
October 18th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
hhhhmmmmm…yes I’m inclined to think that those positionings are a little dodgey.
October 18th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Mid-20’s, male, postgrad university student, pakeha, voted greens…..
= -3.88 on economic scale
and -5.18 on social scale
…probably not too far from green party as a whole.
October 18th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
Yeah Edge, I think that some of those placements are dodgy. UF is certainly more socially conservative than National, and Act more economically right….perhaps it does come down to that level of agreement thing. Also, the questions were more about ideals, and general preferences, and maybe these parties are really similar there, but become diffferent in how much they implement their ideals into policy.
Also, they didn’t have anyone there, but what would a Right Libertarian party look like?
October 18th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Have a look at the UK compass as well.
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/extremeright.php
It is interesting to see that they place Labour and the Conservatives in exactly the same place! The UK Greens are positioned a little bit more radical than NZ Greens.
October 18th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Economic -4.0 Authoritarian -3.28
I took this one at least a year ago…
Near match - Ghandi.
Frog… who filled out the party forms. I know that the site doesn’t do that so someone here must’ve pretended to be in ACT and filled out the form ?
Should discuss the methodology of deriving the format.
respectfully
BJ
October 18th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
As best the resolution of mine eyes, I appear to be about on top of the Greens dot. Scary. Economic Left/Right: -4.63, Social Libertarian / Authoritarian: -4.67
October 18th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Yeah, im an anarchist, commie.
- But Its the second time I took the test.
Made my answers more extreme , taking into account the fact that the questions are assuming things about the current situation that were living in. “should” is a very open word, The first time I answered the test, when offered a “should” I would often think - well yes if all this other stuff was changed, then this proposition “should” be so.
This time I assumed nothing else would change.
October 18th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Last time I did the test, I got:
Economic Left/Right: 7.00, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.28
October 18th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
This first circulated in the swamp and its environs a few weeks back and pretty much every Green supporter I know who did it landed up more left and more libertarian than the Party itself, most of them by quite a margin.
I suspect that whoever filled in the questions for the parties was overseas and only judged parties by their web-based official pronouncements, rather than native knowledge of the players themselves.
October 18th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Well - I’ve been getting more right wing and conservative as I age and now I am
Economic Left/Right: -6.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36
I must have been a real pinko in my youth
I probably would have hated me.
October 18th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
I’m more green than the Greens, apparently. I suspect a lot of Green party members are.
October 18th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
You may be interested in this analysis I did of the enviornmental policies of the major New Zealand parties, entitled “Policy Webs and the Coalition Game”. The Greens obviously group with the Maori Party and the Progressives. ACT groups with no one. All the rest are very central.
http://greengeneration.blogspot.com/
October 18th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
Oh and I am further left and more liberal than the Green party apparently… They should lock me up
October 18th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
frog:
coordinates as asked: economic : -8.88 ; social : -6.05
October 18th, 2005 at 5:29 pm
Economic Left/Right: -7.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.18
It doesn’t seem quite right though.
Also, I felt there should have been five options rather than four - what about the issues you just don’t have an opinion on?
October 18th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
not here:
I thought that too … so I did the test (quickly) twice, and although my answers may have been a bit different on a few items, I came out with almost identical scores.
October 18th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Hey, think I’ve set a record here. -9.25 Economic, -8.21 Social.
Is this for real?
I believe in libertarian and democratic socialism. I am certainly no anarcho-syndicalist, but the result on this test would depict me as one.
And, shit, the questions seemed so innocent!
October 18th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
jeeks fwwog, this not good, my redneck fascists score near the Green dot, do you think this why we got discommunicated from ACT, must be the lack of dwugs, we best go into think retraining tonight to correct situation, we want to be authoritarian fwwog, what the use of a gun if we a bunch of soft wimp
October 18th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
* Economic axis: -9.63
* Social axis: -9.13
Damn, I’m a lot more socially conservative than I was the last time I took this test…
Frog, I have to say that if these indicators are anything to go by, then you’d expect the party itself not to be as radical as some of its members are because of the political realities the rank-and-file has to face.
And as Nandor said, he hopes to re-radicalise his politics now that he’s out of Parliament. Says something about the nature of Parliament and the effect it has on you.
October 18th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Wow, I am feeling at home now. I didn’t think there were so many people in the seriously left liberal category. We might survive after all.
October 18th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Economic Left/Right = -6.00, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.51 which also makes me Greener than Green.
Interestingly, I’d just done my own mapping of Greens v other parties, and felt that United was closer to NZF as part of a ‘central’ core vote.
Based on the past 4 elections, I had ‘left’ leaning voters around 47%, ‘right’ leaning voters around 39% and ‘centralist’ voters around 14%.
The centralist vote goes in circles and can favor either side at about a 50/50 split, so NZ’s overall positioning is towards the left at 54%/46%.
I think the graph pushes the NZ partiy positions too far towards the upper right.
If I were a Green strategist for 2008, I’d look to create a strong Green magnet to collapse the Progressive vote, collapse the Aotearoa Legalise Marijuana vote, mop up the socialists and the communists, attract 10-15% of the liberal Labour vote, around 10% of the liberal NZF vote, around 5%-10% of the liberal UF vote, form understandings with the Maori Party and with emergent Pacific and low waged parties/groups and an understanding [on personal freedom issues at least] with ACT.
None of these viewpoints stray wildly beyond the Green core, and form part of a Green rainbow.
The intent is to push Labour more towards the right to the point it has more in common with National, at which time the Greens can effectively become the true ‘liberal left’ party.
The new minority Labour administration has created a vacumn towards it’s immediate ‘liberal left’ which the Greens are well placed to exploit. There is no-one else there, and because Labour has shifted right, it’s beautifully exposed it’s most vulnerable flank. Go Green.
October 18th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Yeah - it’s nice to be among friends, eh?
Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.44
God I’m such a radical…
October 18th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
-6, -4
I was hoping to see this during the campaign. Ah well.
October 18th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
thanks webweaver, I feel a little less inclined to nick out and refuel the old molotov collection after reading your stats
Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72
October 18th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
A centrist - no surpruise there…
Economic Left/Right: 0.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.67
October 18th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Economic Left/Right: -5.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.23
Interesting
October 18th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
wow, I did this one back in 2004, came out near Ghandi, too.
where has this quiz been lurking in the interim? Think I’m prob’ly closer to the anarchist end now than I was, but it’s late, I’m not re-sitting the damn quiz at this hour
October 19th, 2005 at 12:06 am
I have it on good authority that one of our MPs scored: Economic -9.75 and social -8.41 so they may be getting older, and they may have mortgages, but they haven’t quite sold out, yet!
October 19th, 2005 at 12:47 am
These scores are not just what you believe in. They are also affected by what you know ….
I was thinking about why my social score was 2 points further towards the centre than my economic score. I realised that because of my social science background, I have a more in depth knowledge in that area.
Because of this extra knowledge, in some questions the “yes but” factor moved my response from (eg) “strongly-agree” to “agree”.
For example “consenting adults” may include women who, because of sexual abuse at a young age, agree to abusive situations in later relationships. Technically they are “consenting adults”.
Individually this extra knowledge could skew a result. In a population it would probably “even itself out”.
eredwen
October 19th, 2005 at 1:04 am
Well 2 dimensions is better than 1 however I am a triple bottom line kind of gal, and would like to see a political cube perhaps
October 19th, 2005 at 1:11 am
-6.0/-6.51.
I think the whole compass is skewed towards the right for NZ, and think UF is closer to NZF and Labour.
Acting as a ‘Green magnet’ on the liberal-left of Labour, we should consider 15% of the popular vote in 2008 as achievable, and take a real crack at Wellington Central and Rongotai electorates. They have strong potential to go Green provided we begin campaigning in them within the next six months.
If not in 2008, then they’ll crack in 2011, as Labour/ NZF/UF become joined at the hip and suck blue blood out of National.
October 19th, 2005 at 1:56 am
Economic Left/Right: -7.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.64
… but in some of the questions, when I ran into such nuances as Eredwen describes, I mostly stuck to “strongly” for simplicity. So in practical terms, I’m probably more like -6, -6.
I have a feeling that right-wing libertarians are extremely rare; no right-winger I know has ever scored anywhere near me on the libertarian axis. ACT claims to be there, but in practice, they are prepared to envisage all sorts of constraints on individual freedoms.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:46 am
Come on Mr Farrar, post your score!
October 19th, 2005 at 9:27 am
Greenfrogred:
Yeah I see myself as a civil libertarian as well, and economically I too am a democratic socialist. I guess that’s why we both have ‘Red’ and ‘Green’ in our usernames huh?
I think the ‘radical’ positioning many posters here have scored is due to the fact that we answer ’strongly agree/disagree’ as opposed to just ‘agree/disagree’.
That said, it’s good to see the party has members/supporters who are ‘radicals’. History has shown that through time, the more established a Green Party gets, the more moderate/conservative it becomes. Hence the need for people to keep the organisation ‘in check’.
October 19th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.82
About the same as Ghandi.
October 19th, 2005 at 9:44 am
This plum is -9.25 on the economic scale and -5.44 on the social one.
I expect others have found some of the questions open to argument, however, as I did!
For the record, I’m male and 71… getting greener by the dayas I ripen.
October 19th, 2005 at 9:57 am
E -3.75 S -5.49, right on top of the dalai lama.
I’m not surprised to be hovering around the Green party, having voted for them, for the first time.
I think you can read far too much into a graph. 2D is better than 1D, but there’s as many dimensions as there questions, really. Which means you can’t draw a pretty picture. Every choice of question and which axis it contributes to are subject to much debate.
For instance, you can ask the question: Do you dislike other races?
It’s not obvious which dimension this contributes to, and in which direction. It actually says more about the political views of the question writer than the answerer.
The groupings you see tell you more about the choice of viewpoint than anything profound about the available space in politics. Economic and social liberalism are 2 dimensions, which appear to skew the politics of the developed world into the upper right quadrant. Which doesn’t mean there’s rich empty territory to be conquered in the lower left quadrant. It is possibly sparsely populated with supporters, reflecting the sparse political representation.
Doesn’t mean this method was useless, but be careful in analysing it. I get worried when people talk of conquering a corner, like there’s some virtue in that. What you really should be doing is conquering voters on each and every issue you agree with. In other words, drag voters towards your spot, don’t make your spot bigger to grab more voters. That dilutes the message more and more, until you end up like National, with no message. It might be nice to have a big party like National, but you have to compromise all of your views. If you’re into having a big leftist spot, you should probably be in the Labour party compromising with Dunne and Peters.
October 19th, 2005 at 10:36 am
I’m pretty much the dalai lama, (yessssss…..)
October 19th, 2005 at 11:12 am
My scores are:
Left/Right: +10.0
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.15
which unlike most here, makes me a consistent defender of freedom
October 19th, 2005 at 11:13 am
Kindly tell us what YOU mean by “Freedom”, David
October 19th, 2005 at 11:20 am
It means he’s in the even more empty quadrant than the Greens are. Which might look like vast tracts of exploitable land, until you go there and see it’s a great sandy desert populated by the ghosts of Labour Ministers past.
October 19th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
It means free to take whatever’s not nailed down and claim that anything he can pry up isn’t nailed down.
Like all the business critters who think the commons are a “free” resource his position spells doom for both the commons and the community. He is reasonably bright, but needs re-education before he will be ready to live with others
respectfully
BJ
October 19th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
No it means freedom to run your life as you want to, not as the ruling political party wants you to. It means if I want to buy ice from eskimoes and they want to sell to me, I can.
October 19th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
I completely agree with you DF except that my living my life as I want cannot negatively impact on anyone or anything (including the environment).
But I agree that on the face of it LibS/LibE is a nicely defined and easily understood (and legislated) way to do things.
You haven’t read enough Hobbes or Locke.
October 19th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
Yes Clara but you can take that to extremes. You can say that me buying ice off eskimos instead of off you, my next door neighbour, negatively impacts you so hence I should be forced to buy off you.
October 19th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Dude, you’re sitting on +10 and you’re talking about extremes?
So you ticked disagree that Govts should have ability to penalise companies that lie to thier consumers? Or can you get to +10 without going to that extreme?
October 19th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
Yes David, but you can take ignoring your impact on others to extremes too. Are you advocating that, as +10 implies, or is there some method to your ‘I couldn’t give a damn if it hurts you’ madness?
October 19th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
David Farrar:
When you buy ice from Inuit would you sell it elsewhere?
If so, with what would you transport it should you choose to market it?
Would not that that fuel choice and the fuel choices of all the other free peolpe on this planet ultimately affect others on this planet?
I assume you know that Inuit are the people you call “Eskimo” ?
(… of course you are “free” to call them what you want, whether it is the name they choose to be known by or not.)
One finite planet, a variety of interrealated life forms in many habitats …
all affected by the behaviours of others.
“Freedom” is an interesting concept.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
David - The MARKED difference between Greens and Libertarians is how the price on the use of the commons is set. I am sure you understand the phrase “tragedy of the commons” and have probably read through the actual article that introduced it. I respect your abilities but you still need re-education
Greens insist that the use of the commons be costed and that everyone, businesses included, pay the cost. At present that’s a carbon tax, since there’s no other practical way to cost the use of this commons. You come up with another and we’ll listen…. or at least I will (I can’t speak for everyone here, they’ve made it plain I am tolerated but they don’t always agree
Business repeatedly has pointed at this sort of issue and said basically “Hell no, we won’t pay for what we have always had for free”… and other things which shouldn’t be said in front of the children. However, the commons is disintegrating. The ability of the planet to support the burden we place on it is beginning to break down. The price of the commons HAS to be costed into business models in order for an adjustment to be made sensibly.
Maybe the tax is at the wrong rate… or isn’t clearly compensated by some other reduction in general tax take as it should be… we can talk about those issues, but the cost of the use of the commons HAS to be made clear to give meaningful feedback to a market based system.
Basically you “trust” business to do the right thing. Business WILL do the profitable-next-quarter thing very accurately and better than government could do it. It manages next year pretty well but its 20 year plans are random guesses. Moreover, the most profitable thing may NOT be the best thing for the country or the planet. Business need not care about that and doesn’t, as long as it does not break the law or appear to risk getting caught breaking the law.
Greens trust government because the long view, the collective welfare of the whole country and the care of the planet are simply not the business of business. There is no way for a business to set a price on the use of carbon independently and uniformly. The damage is irretrievable and inconceivable if we simply leave things to the invisible hand of the market.
The feedback to the economic system occurs over decades and centuries as our indirect and uncosted destruction of the commons (environment) turns into direct economic costs. The warming that will occur in the next 50 years is already in the pipe. The effects will not abate even if the US had a Green revolution and tossed Bush in the slammer where he belongs.
We don’t hate business (though some business PEOPLE have earned our opprobrium). We simply want to ensure that everyone including business, pays a fair price for use of the commons.
Refusing to pay for what you use makes you what David? What word do you use for people who don’t pay for what they take? Freeloaders is probably the gentlest term I would use.
That’s your freedom. Freedom to be freeloaders… no better than “dole bludgers” or simply thieves. Stealing from your children.
Gawd… +10? Attila the Hun couldn’t have got more than a +8
… and here I am hanging out with people who score -9?… this place definitely gives new meaning to the word “stretch” 
respectfully
BJ
October 20th, 2005 at 3:52 am
Economic Left/Right: -7.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.21
October 20th, 2005 at 9:04 am
-8.5, -6.31. Nice to find like minds.
Like DR’s comments.. the danger in courting a demgraphic too rigidly/openly is in your chosen group being poached. But who of the main parties could move sufficiently left/down to court this quadrant any more? The big question (and I’m sure a green marketer has the answer to this) is how large is the demographic of Q3?
October 20th, 2005 at 10:35 am
David Farrar:
Pip asked you: “So you ticked disagree that Govts should have ability to penalise companies that lie to thier consumers? Or can you get to +10 without going to that extreme?”
For you to have scored a perfect ten, you would’ve had to tick ’strongly disagree’.
Is your vision of economic freedom then one where you are *free to* lie, cheat, defraud, embezzle, manipulate and exploit?
Back when I was a member of the Libertarianz, I asked someone in the Young Free Radicals (as Libz on Campus were known back then) about how absolute economic freedom can be consistent with notions of fair dealing and business integrity. His reply was that laissez-faire has a self-regulatory mechanism (he was vague and incoherent about this) that prevents the circumventing of the requirements of fair and honest business dealings.
Leaving aside the merits of this for now, the point is that he says laissez-faire IS ABOUT fair and honest economic activity. So my question to you is: Why then do you think companies should get away with lying to their customers? What shouldn’t they be penalised? Having scored a 10, you demonstrate that you are an absolute economic libertarian, which means either you don’t subscribe to the idea of corruption-free business, or you’re saying that economic freedom should not involve considerations of integrity and honesty, or both. Either way, it’s not a good look for the *virtues* of economic freedom now, is it?
In an earlier statement, you imply that if you don’t subscribe to this brand of economic freedom, it means you’re necessarily anti-freedom. This is both fallacious and intellectually dishonest. The freedom the Left (if you like) touts is freedom FROM rather than freedom TO. In other words, we believe in freedom *from* exploitation (natural resources, workers’ rights etc.), manipulation, abuse of power, corrupt and dishonest practices, and so on.
Also, to have scored a perfect 10, you would have had to answer, in the affirmative, the statement ‘What is good for the company is necessarily good for everyone is society’. Sounds to me that the natural corollary of this would be for corporations to dictate to society and its people how to run their lives, since corporations are the fount of all that is virtuous and desirable. What happened to ‘freedom to run your own lives’ then?
Additionally, you cannot then argue on the one hand for the rule of law, then assert on the other that corporations should observe non-compliance with the law.
And don’t you and your ilk staunchly advocate ‘getting tough on crime’? Or does this exempt white-collar crime? This seems to be your stance, given that you rule out any role for the government to prosecute companies for fraud/dishonesty/corruption, consistent with the stance of absolute non-interference by the state. Moreover, whatever happened to ‘one law for all’? Exceptions/exemptions for corporations/corporate elites, perhaps?
October 20th, 2005 at 11:26 am
I don’t actually believe DF got a 10… I think he was winding us up
… if so, good on you David, I appreciate it, but we are a tad curious what the real numbers were
respectfully
BJ
October 20th, 2005 at 11:42 am
I think it’s possible to get a 10, ‘cos once when I did the test I got a -10 on each axis…
October 20th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
RedGreen - Alright, a 10 by giving honest answers rather than trying to max out/gross out your friends or enemies. respectfully BJ
October 20th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Husky nut, that’s an interesting question. I think the answer is ‘any of the political parties could move down, if they saw the opportunity’.
Which is why I made the point that we shouldn’t be about moving our spot, or Labour’s spot, or picking an empty spot. We should be about drawing voters to our spot, since we picked it by believing in the issues the spot represents.
That would be the ultimate victory for the green party. Not selling out to get more votes. When I go on in another thread about GE and how it hurts the Greens, I’m trying to draw the greens to my spot. I think it’s a more defendable spot, and more voters will be drawn to it, so long as they don’t have to worry about the green cloud that draws them towards the antiscientic camp. My opinion, of course.
I see it as ultimately more consistent with the green philosophy, which is in most respects scientific and liberal. Except on economic issues, which I have no great beef about. Economics is an arena more practical than moral, and I have few qualms about trying an alternative to some of the last 20 years’ madness, and the swing to the ‘left’ hasn’t hurt the economy, quite the opposite has happened. I can’t see that economics defines the Greens in any way other than that they have a scientific approach to the problem, and in science you have to experiment. So we experiment with the economy. If that causes horror in the Libertarianz camp, too bad. They’re the ones who see economics as a moral issue, not me.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
BJchip:
if you’re still reading this, that was a good little synopsis above. Much appreciated
October 20th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Ben:
I agree. That’s why I commented much earlier here that the Greens must ‘create a strong Green magnet’ to attract the additional votes.
Without those votes, we have no power. No power, and no ability to put into place the policies those voters entrust us with.
October 20th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Economic Left/Right: -8.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.51
actually david i suspect that would proably make you more like a lot of people here; your displacement is along the economic axis
have not read the full thread so apologies if someone has made that point, or if the facts contradict me!
how easy would it be to to generate a anonymising graph function ?
Could be an interesting way of testing how approximate to centre this site’s (political compass) axis calibration is for given populations. (0,0) ought to be defined as the centre of opinion, at least for that given population, two axes casts just slightly more light, than one!
October 20th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
The problem with right-wing libertarianism is that it asserts only humans have rights….and therefore whenever a human “mixes their labour” with a mineral, plant or animal form they somehow gain a MORAL RIGHT to exclusively (ab)use that form.
October 20th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
That’s only one of the many problems with it. Another is that it often doesn’t work. Huge power concentrations can occur which create massive injustices.
November 1st, 2005 at 5:47 pm
“So you ticked disagree that Govts should have ability to penalise companies that lie to thier consumers? Or can you get to +10 without going to that extreme?�
There is a self-regulatory effect in the goodwill that is heavily destroyed. The main thing I’d want to do is penalize the *people* that gained from it. People don’t have a share price, they’re fine if they can just walk away with the cash.
If someone misleads the public to earn some cash, they should be the ones fined for it. Why randomly hurt innocent shareholders even more?
The best way to protect the commons is private property rights. It doesn’t work for everything, such as air pollution, but it does solve a lot of things. If there was a public lake that everyone could fish out of with no limits, pretty soon the fish would all be gone. Instead of simply regulating the limits, a property right would incentivise conservation.
Also of note here which is quite crucial is the fact that the right ideology for one scenario may *change* for another. Socialism and redistribution of wealth is a poor strategy indeed if there is hardly any wealth to redistribute. It’s a large problem for us looking onto third world countries and thinking in a first world mindset. Moderate socialism is not such a bad thing when the economy is already working well. However, there’s no surer way of keeping third world countries in poverty if we insist they follow our standards. Laissez-faire capitalism, even if you don’t agree with it, is a good strategy if you’re looking for growth rather than perhaps percieved “fairness”. After you’ve built up everything, *then* your socialist policies are more viable. Making people rich and then taking some from them is better than having no-one rich at all. Even if that means that the workers have very poor conditions, it’s an investment in the future so we can achieve that. And you don’t stop at socialism, either. Once the gap between the rich and the poor has been reduced, you can relax your redistribution somewhat to help the growth again.