political compass

[AlexM]

Economic Left/Right: 5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95

I've taken this test before, and it's not very good. Many of the questions are just plain terrible and force you to choose between two things you don't agree with, and it won't let you skip them. I expect most of my veering away from "pure libertarianism" is when they arbitratily assigned one of the two answers to a question as being more libertarian when in reality neither were remotely. Of course, I still scored in the middle of the libertarian quadrant.

Another problem with tests like this is they don't provide extreme enough questions. There's only one question on drugs and it's concerning marijuana. To truly measure a person's political compass, you have to ask extreme questions that 90% of people are going to answer the same. Examples:

Should castration be a penalty for some crimes?

Should all hard drugs be legal?

Should bestiality be legal?

Should the government provide all people with a living wage regardless of whether they contribute to society?

Without questions like these, you can't really find out where someone stands politically.