• nednobbins@lemm.ee
      9·
      1 year ago

      I have to applaud David Nolan on some next level marketing for this one.

      He invented the predecessor of that chart as a way to promote libertarianism. It’s very clever in how subtly it introduces a loaded question.

      The phrasing asks the viewer to consider if they want more or less political freedom and if they want more or less economic freedom. Obviously, most people want more freedom. Therefore Libertarianism is the best form of government. QED!

      But that makes two big assumptions that are almost certainly incorrect:

      1. It assumes that choice of government is entirely, or at least predominantly, determined by your views on economic and social regulations. Questions of military, legal process, environmental policy, etc are all either irrelevant or can be entirely described within the economic and social regulation factors. That doesn’t even pass the sniff test. If two people agree that they want social and economic freedom, do we really believe that they necessarily have identical political beliefs? No, because we know that in real life they’ll define those freedoms differently.
      2. It assumes that complex topics such as economics and social regulation can be entirely described on a single axis of “more vs less". If you look at the disagreements that people actually have, it’s almost always about the types of regulations, not on the degree of regulation.

      It’s a little frustrating that unabashed marketing is so frequently trotted out as though it were an established fact.