My Political Views

Right at the end of the last post I showed my results from taking the Political Compass test, which can be found here. (If you haven't taken it, I highly recommend you go through the test and then take a look at some of the graphs related to whichever country you happen to live in.) I did, however, mention that my results were not particularly indicative of my actual political stances on the majority of issues, as I hold a large number of extreme viewpoints that average out to about that position.

The reason for this is that I am a political and economic pragmatist. It is my belief that the government should be concerned chiefly with creating utility for its citizens. As such, I believe it is the duty of the government to take any and all actions that result in a Pareto efficient solution.

(Pareto efficiency is well described here, but for those of you who want the short, simple version, Pareto efficiency is an allocation of resources such that everyone is better off, and there are no losers.)

Obviously, there are not any situations that can be considered purely Pareto efficient. However, there are many actions that a government can take that result in near-Pareto efficiency, such as the enforcement of legislation punishing the premeditated murder of another individual.

Things seem fairly straightforward for the moment. However, my second belief when it comes to government is a little stranger - I believe it is the duty of the government to attempt to maximize the social utility gained by the actions they take. This means that any action that results in the creation of more utility than is lost should be taken, with emphasis on taking actions that have a wider gap between utility gained by those who gain it and lost by those who lose it.

(Again, the government should be concerned only with its citizens. While individuals can and, in my opinion, should care about the fate of people who are not citizens of the same nation as they are, the government should not, as those individuals are not its concern.)

(Also, erring on the side of caution and personal freedom is usually the way to go. You can never account for all changes in utility that result from a particular action, so only taking actions when the gain is fairly clear is important. The ability to choose, on the other hand, nearly always increases the utility generated by an action.)

A good, moderate example of this is government backed mortgages. This actions is taken to help ensure the affordability of housing, a basic human necessity. If anyone loses as a result of this, the gains by those who can afford housing as a result of the backing gain much more, as few things rival the benefit of having a roof over your head.

On the more extreme end of things, I believe that all drugs that are not immediately addictive AND cause constant deterioration of health over the period of usage should be legalized, regulated, and heavily taxed. Substances such as heroine, which are incredibly addictive but have few side-effects when the user has a steady and clean supply of the drug, cause more damage while illegal then they would after legalization.

As a weird example, I also believe that a strong case could be made for nationalizing all airlines and only allowing a few, highly regulated substitutes to exist, a la USPS and FedEx. Assuming that everything functioned similarly to the post office, it can be shown that ticket prices would decrease drastically, and national security concerns related to commercial airlines could be wrapped up entirely within the government, as opposed to currently

My final true political opinion is that politicians should not run on platforms, but on the capacity to make solid decisions and to fight for the benefit of their citizens. Representation by politicians, while a good idea, is largely silly, as politicians have access to more information and expert advisers than most voters and, as such, should be able to come to logical, beneficial solutions, rather than simply doing what the most individuals want.

I, personally, would vote for any politician who separated his personal views from what political actions he would take, and largely ran on his ability to make good decisions and listen to his advisers. That's the sort of politician who will do what is necessary to generate the benefits the government should be generating.

So, yeah, hopefully that clears up the last paragraph from my last post, for those of you who were wondering. For the rest of you, maybe I'll sway you to closer to my point of view which I, honestly, believe to be the only reasonable one when it comes to politics.

If you have any questions, put 'em down and I'll see what I can do to answer them.