What's Your Placement on the Vosem Chart?
Due to a recent discussion with tcaud, I've been studying various political classification systems. The most interesting one I've found so far is the Vossem Chart, similar to the Nolan Chart but with three axes instead of two. So I decided to make a poll!
Read the following descriptions, and decide which one most applies to you in each category (Cultural, Fiscal, and Corporate). At the end, combine them to find out which category you fit.
CULTURAL
CLASS 1: A person belonging to the first camp in the cultural sphere supports cultural freedom. People in this camp believe in the right to have sex in any position or with any gender you want (assuming it's not rape), drug legalization, the right to burn the flag, the right to request one's life ended (suicide or euthanasia) and government non-regulation of things like prostitution, gambling and pornography. They welcome diversity in dress, means of expressive speech, language (including foreign languages being spoken in public), living arrangements, art, and ethnic varieties of food, recreation and religious ritual. Since they hold the view that activities that don't hurt anyone (except possibly the people engaging or requesting the activity themselves) should not be punished by the law, this means they believe such activity should not be punished regardless of who does it, and therefore they are strongly in favor of civil rights. Believe in equality regardless to gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, nativity, socioeconomic class . . . Characteristic catchwords: government out of our bedrooms, tolerance, intolerance, consensual, victimless crime, do your own thing, born free, chains of society, fascist police state, gestapo.
CLASS 2: The second cultural camp is much more puritanical. People in this camp call for repression (both through an individual's self-control and through government enactment and enforcement of laws) of personal urges. A person with these cultural views will call for said repression in the name of "tradition", or of "law and order", or perhaps will summon both. Sex "between consenting adults" is just not good enough if it violates from some social convention, religious dictum or other moral belief. While people in the other cultural camp are militant supporters of the equality of demographic groups, people in this cultural camp will sometimes sacrifice equality in the name of tradition or other causes, such as believing, perhaps, that a man should have authority over his wife. They will be much less likely to condemn racial profiling, and will even often unapologetically support it if they feel it is in the name of national security. Youth are viewed not to have the same capacity or deserve the same rights as adults, and such policies as curfews and a punitive drinking age are strongly backed. They believe parents should be given maximum power to enforce rules on their children, as the concept of authority is very important to them, people in positions of authority never to be disobeyed, questioned or mocked, even when they are in the wrong. Investment in the military is crucial and they shudder at the thought of what any cut in defense, relative to whatever has traditionally been spent for the military of their country, could do to the security of their nation. They have a strong emphasis on patriotism and accepting the nation and its laws as they are; remarks that condemn the country or acts of civil disobedience are never OK and flag-burning is out of the question. Some idealize a national homogeneity based on a modern conception of "mainstream" culture (mainstream-American, or mainstream-Canadian, or mainstream-Australian, or what-have-you) in standards for lifestyle, while others' views on proper lifestyle and rites of passage in life come from ethnic tradition. Social conventions, including restraint of emotions and traditional rules of dating and roles of the sexes, are very important to them. People and practices that are eccentric or new to them are seen as not simply "weird", but as scary, and something to be deeply alarmed by and suspicious about. Characteristic catchwords: tradition, law and order, chaos, protect people from their own stupidity, people who know better, honor and duty, these laws exist for a reason, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.FISCAL
CLASS 1: People in the first of the two fiscal camps believe in activist government in the fiscal sphere of life. They dream of a government that provides money for social security, welfare, and college tuition, as well as offering free universal health care. Some will even go so far as to make college free and universal, just as grades K-12 are. Prescription drugs would be given to seniors for free, and Medicare and Medicaid would be under the arm of the government. Many also believe in funding for the arts, although some who are also conservatives in the cultural sphere will oppose funding certain art if they find it to be pornographic, or may even support strict legal control over what can be painted or sculpted, so that they will not have to pay any tax money to a state that will monetarily redeem the painting of art they object to. People in the first fiscal camp are in favor of government-funded charities. They do not mind paying and levying higher taxes for all of this. Down inside, they believe in the power of government to take on grand projects. They believe that if people worked together with their government, great things could happen and we could build a better tomorrow. Characteristic catchwords: compassionate, free and universal, support, invest in our country's future, cold-hearted, stingy, wants to rob our children.
CLASS 2: The other fiscal camp consists of people who oppose more government in such spending. They oppose social programs, and are readily willing to cut them or other government projects in the name of lower taxes. They push for the privatization of social security, and believe that medical plans would be best served by being privatized and left to businesses (rather than provided by the government) as well. Those in Europe work hard to have the high tax rates lowered considerably, and are often "drained" out of the country in search of lower taxes; and if those in North America, already calling for a lower tax rate in their own country, moved to Europe, they would find the tax rates absolutely scandalous and so insane as to warrant a certification of mental illness on the part of government. Generally, the more cut from taxes, the better. They are more likely to support a flat tax than people in the opposite school of thought on fiscal issues. Reasons for their views on monetarily activist government are varied and some are just primarily concerned with the rich, but generally all people in the second camp believe in responsibility. They believe that to be respected as a mature adult, a person should be able to handle his own financial affairs and not lean on support for governmental teats. For many it is an opposition to government interference in anything, anywhere, as a matter of principle. Some conservatives in the U.S., a nation founded through immigration, exploration, grueling migrations through wilderness, and rough harnessing and taming of the landscape, believe strongly that doing your own work and keeping your own rewards are important traditionally American values. People from some religious denominations find those values to be an important part of Christian conduct. Others refuse to give anything to or take anything from a government they find oppressive. Characteristic catchwords: personal responsibility, big government, tax-and-spend, welfare state, privatization, welfare cheats, rugged individualism, hard-working Americans, save you millions of dollars.Results:CORPORATE
CLASS 1: People who are in the first camp on this final dichotomy are, all around, pro-corporate. The way they see it, corporations should be treated and protected with the same rights as individuals. They want businesses to have the power to hire and discriminate against whom they want -- if an employer doesn't want an immigrant or a member of an ethnic minority working for him, he shouldn't be required by hire any people in that group, even if they are indisputably qualified. They also want everyone's business to be protected by private property rights -- the owner paid to keep the space and he can insist in anyone he wants leaving the business, including using the police to enforce this wish. Anyone walking on a business' premises against the wishes of the owner is viewed as trespassing. They oppose the right of people to strike or otherwise rebel against a business, and will favor laws that allow a corporate head to have his employees arrested for striking. They can be very strongly anti-union and view management as knowing best. Corporate monopolies are just seen as part of the game. As they see it, pure freedom of the market will take care of any injustices or inequities, and will promise diversity and creativity. If something done by a business is unethical and/or harmful, people will make the right choice by choosing another business, thereby regulating themselves. They trust the patron public will know and decide what is right. Some even support reversing government restrictions on dishonestly mislabeling or misrepresenting your advertised product. They are not quite as concerned with or offended by Enron/WorldCom type corporate dishonesty as their opponents. Strongly pro-copyright, they favor punishing Napster and want to hunt down other music site offenders on the Internet. Characteristic catchwords: it's their business, free enterprise, the magic of the market, property rights, intellectual property violator.
CLASS 2: Someone in the second camp opposes corporate power and rule of the business over the individual. They believe that a corporation is not a person and cannot be a person, and therefore does not deserve the same rights as a person. Businesses are viewed as a form of authority, akin to government authority, that can be oppressive. The major heads behind huge corporations, furthermore, are viewed as greedy rich folks who will do anything to make even more and keep the oil flowing to them. Many of these people are anti-WTO, anti-IMF, etc. If you see someone engaged in a protest against "corporate goons", taking it to the streets like the Seattle protestors of 1999, they no doubt belong to this camp. They consider discriminatory or otherwise unethical behavior by a business owner or manager completely inexcusable. They consider it unacceptable to have to watch anyone -- even one person -- be legally hurt by a business' practices in order to get people to finally bring the business down with their own boycott. They do not trust the common people alone to be able to drive every and any immoral business into the ground with their purchasing choices. They fail to see any flourishing of diversity or creativity of products due to the market; rather, they view increasingly richer cannibal companies as having homogenized the market and given us too few different companies and too few products. The overwhelming power of a few names over radio stations has likewise ruined the diversity of music. Some even turn to Internet file-sharing. They are opposed to the concept of "intellectual property". Characteristic catchwords: corporate greed, people before profits, Naderism, sell-out, monolithic corporate culture, pigs, Micro$oft.
Culture Group 1, Fiscal Group 1, Corporate Group 1: New Labour
Culture Group 1, Fiscal Group 1, Corporate Group 2: Liberal
Culture Group 1, Fiscal Group 2, Corporate Group 1: Libertarian
Culture Group 1, Fiscal Group 2, Corporate Group 2: Anarcho-syndicalist
Culture Group 2, Fiscal Group 1, Corporate Group 1: Authoritarian
Culture Group 2, Fiscal Group 1, Corporate Group 2: Totalitarianism
Culture Group 2, Fiscal Group 2, Corporate Group 1: Conservative
Culture Group 2, Fiscal Group 2, Corporate Group 2: Paleo-conservative
If you're on the line between two of them, vote both.
The full article I'm quoting from, including descriptions of the different results, is here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/14/45425/6208
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Originally Posted by CILi
--> perhaps Normalizing 
