A Short Survey

by | Oct 6, 2026 | Admin, Poll | 52 comments

Quick background on this. A fellow I met while I hung out with the AZLP Mises Caucus is actually working on a degree in Political Science. He has a fun survey out there that he is trying to manage the weighting on the responses. If you don’t mind helping a guy out.

Yes, its a Likert-type survey that puts you into a quadrant, but what makes this one different is it maps it into three dimensions with the third being tradition vs. openness. It then plots it in a way for you to visualize exactly the type of totalitarian shitlord you are. Its kind of cool.

Beyond the Dichotomy

About The Author

mexican sharpshooter

mexican sharpshooter

WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. https://youtu.be/qiAyX9q4GIQ?t=2m22s

52 Comments

  1. R.J.

    Interesting. My browser may be keeping me from actually taking the survey. Regardless I am person A. No/no enforcement, liberty, traditional morals.

  2. The Late P Brooks

    “Are you now, or have you ever been…”

    • Rat on a train

      No … but we are willing to learn …

  3. The Late P Brooks

    Not working for me.

  4. The Other Kevin

    The first half we’d probably all agree on, the second half gets interesting. My results:

    Economic +87.5
    Your responses lean toward private ownership, voluntary exchange, and decentralized economic decision-making

    Social/Cultural +12.5
    Your responses place greater value on inherited traditions, social continuity, and established cultural institutions.

    Enforcement -75
    Your responses place greater emphasis on allowing peaceful individual choices even when those choices conflict with prevailing social or economic preferences.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      Mine was pretty close to that: +87.5, +12.5, -91.7

    • RAHeinlein

      Econ – 100
      Social/Cultural – 37.5
      Encforcment – -41.7

    • JaimeRoberto feckful & gruntled

      We’re almost twins. +79.2, +12.5, -75.0.

    • cyto

      I was all the way at the extreme for market and liberty, and dead in the middle for social.

      I think the wording of the questions is too ambiguous to suss out true orientation.

      I believe a lot of cultural traditions are important… many are important to having the ability to live a free life in a free society.

      And in most cases, the government should butt out.

      But this survey did not explore the nuance of “should the government stop a guy from wearing a dress and calling himself Shirley” and “should the government allow Shirley (neé Cletus) to change in the locker room with my 12 year old daughter?”

      So a lot of my answers landed in the middle because “it depends”.

      I am pretty extreme on individual liberty and right to challenge authority-government or otherwise.

      But I am also pretty extreme on the importance of culture in maintaining a functioning society. Example? Compare the US with … anywhere outside the west.

      It really doesnt do a good job of capturing that.

      • EvilSheldon

        The problem isn’t so much that the questions are ambiguous (although they are, necessarily so).

        The problem with this, and with every other similar survey, is that your answers are going to change when you actually confront the questions in real life, versus on your computer while arseing off at work over a plate of takeout Pad See Ew.

      • cyto

        Ooh. Now I want Thai food….

      • Ted S.

        I like Thai. You like shirt?

    • Raven Nation

      +95.8; +4.2; -91.7

  5. Chipping Pioneer

    +100, +20.8, – 95.8

    Thanks for sharing, mexi.

    • kinnath

      +100 economic; +16.7 social; -95.7 enforcement

      clones

  6. R.J.

    I got it to work in FireFox, Windows version.

    Market orientation: Very strong +100
    Your responses lean toward private ownership, voluntary exchange, and decentralized economic decision-making.

    Traditional orientation: Moderate +37.5
    Your responses place greater value on inherited traditions, social continuity, and established cultural institutions.

    Liberty orientation: Very strong -100
    Your responses place greater emphasis on allowing peaceful individual choices even when those choices conflict with prevailing social or economic preferences.

    • Chipping Pioneer

      See, the divergence between your Liberty orientation score and mine highlights the nuance that’s missing. I think the question that prevented me from getting to -100, I interpreted in my mind as “No, you can’t just dig a pit and take a dump on a public beach. We don’t do that here.”

      How it’s enforced is a different question.

      • cyto

        Yeah, there was lots of room for “mostly” in those seemingly absolute questions.

        He needs to take another look at his questions and tighten the ambiguity. They are way too broad to get a real picture.

      • R C Dean

        I kept seeing “generally” in the questions, so they didn’t seem absolute to me.

        Where I thought it got interesting was testing how committed you were to traditional values. Should the government enforce them? Not always, but also not never. When, how, and which ones are where the nuance is. Which you’re not going to capture with a survey like this.

      • R.J.

        I am just a caveman libertarian. OG SMASH COMMIES! My scores reflect that.

      • R.J.

        One more thing, I have been around long enough to see why “maybe” does. One the government gets a little piece, it never stops. Don’t feed the government bear!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VM6E4UAJ30

  7. Chipping Pioneer

    Something I think is always missing from these types of surveys is what types of social values are being preserved, and against what?

    If we’re talking about preserving generally Western Judeo-Christian social values against Eastern Islamist blood feud values, I’d say yes. If it’s about preserving conservative Christian values against having a more open and liberal society, I’d say no.

    • RAHeinlein

      My husband and I thought the same – the survey emphasizes government’s role but not that of society in-general.

    • R C Dean

      The difficulty, Chipping, is that its not at all clear that you can have a dechristianized open liberal society that has sufficient antibodies to, say Islamic tribalist values. That’s kind of the experiment Europe is running right now, and the early returns are . . . not encouraging.

      • cyto

        Yeah, they have weaponized “freedom of religion” to mean “dont teach shared values.”

        Civics used to have a function of a general indoctrination into our society. The CWP replaced this with a different indoctrination.

        It doesnt have to be explicitly Christian (but an outside authority definitely helps), but it does have to have a shared value set centered around the things that allow a society to function, including personal honor and integrity, family, respecting and helping your neighbor, etc.

        Without that, it just cant work.

        And they know this. Which is why it is under such sustained attack.

  8. Sensei

    OT – I’m enjoying all the political theater in Japan over the US Marine who allegedly robbed and killed a woman in Okinawa.

    If he’s guilty I hope the Corps throws the book at him, but I’ll happily pull all our troops from Japan to solve the problem.

    • Ted S.

      As I said yesterday, they recognized the guy from his tats, which is one more reason not to get tatted up.

      • Sensei

        The Japan politics about hosting and where to host US troops is an amazing exercise in NIMBY.

        Having grown up in a heavy summer tourism area I get it. OTH, Okinawa really needs the money they spend. Also Okinawa has always been considered 2nd class by Tokyo.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Sensei,

        Okinawa has always been a floating prison for US armed forces in the region. As you said, mainland Japanese are happy to house them down in Okinawa so they aren’t pestering the “nice” Japanese girls.

        Sadly, it seems that there is always some rape scandal du jour going on. Ship young, dumb, and full of cum dudes overseas in the thousands and you shouldn’t be surprised when some of them cause issues. When I was stationed there it was common for the Marines to turn over criminals to the Okinawans for punishment in most cases. “You’ll spend the next 20 years eating fish heads and rice” is how they put it. I think they also punished them after their terms were up too. (Bad Conduct Discharge, etc.).

        The good news is that, outside of these incidents, there is a lot of good will between the Okinawan young ladies and US service members. All a guy has to do is try to learn a little “pillow” Japanese and he will find lots of gals willing to work on international relations with him.

      • ron73440

        Pope, from yesterday:

        Seems like there is always some case of rape or murder happening. In extreme cases, innocent young Okinawan ladies have the worst happen to them and end up marrying a guy like Ron.

        My wife laughed so hard when I showed her this.

        She was glad you think she is innocent.

    • cyto

      I wonder when we will be able to say “that has served its purpose”

      The original intent was to secure an enemy and stop their military from reforming.

      But now the function is to project power.

      And China provides an excellent reason for this.

      So… we “dont need” it…. never?

      • Sensei

        Or if Japan wasn’t busy building its own versions of bridges to nowhere they could defend themselves.

        If they don’t want to do that they can become another province of China. Turnabout is fair play, I think.

      • cyto

        I think that exactly sums up our current dilemma.

        Do we subsidized Japan’s bridges to nowhere?

        Or do we allow China to eventually absorb them?

        China isnt exactly know for its territorial expansionism beyond contiguous Asia. But they definitely have their eye on global domination.

        If we leave Japan and Korea, I doubt it would be too terribly long before they were at least protectorates of China.

        Look how quickly the promises of autonomy for Hong Kong evaporated.

  9. Not Adahn

    (+91.7, -20.8, -95.8)

    • Not Adahn

      Being the only person with a negative middle score, it’s clear I’m the only True Libertarian.

      My ranking system is Individual > Hey Buddy, Stop Doing that > It’s not theft/kidnapping/murder when the police do it.

      So not inviting the Reformed Gofruitian to the neighborhood BBQ ’cause who wants to associate with Reformed Gofruitians amirite is fine.

      Encouraging the Reformed Gofruitian to move by telling them they’re unwelcome is also fine.

      Encouraging the Reformed Gofruitian to move by punching them/keying their car/molotoving their house is not fine.

      Passing a law evicting the Reformed Gofruitian is the absolute worst.

      • cyto

        I think we all agree on all of that.

        I saw the ambiguity there in things like

        “Is it OK for the government to require separate restrooms for women”?

        “Is it OK to exclude Trans women from those restrooms?”

        There have been times when “the market” failed on these questions.

        So when dealing with it philosophically, you have to factor in “what if the market locks out women, blacks or the Irish?”

        My pure libertarian ideals say “someone else will hire them and wipe the floor with everyone else because of cheap labor.”

        But history leans the other way – although not purely. Jim Crow was needed to fight back against market forces, for example.

      • Not Adahn

        “The market failed” is necessarily a matter of opinion, not fact.

        When you start with the basic assumption that “collective action is going to happen therefore it should work the way I want it to” it leads you to a lot of bad places. Yes Jim Crow was “necessary” for those people who were unhappy that individuals chose to act/associate with undesirables.

        History is pretty clear that “The Market” is never as monolithic/consistent as government is.

  10. R C Dean

    Economic – Market +100
    Social Cultural – Traditional +41.7
    Enforcement – Liberty -29.2

  11. Rat on a train

    (+95.8, 0.0, -91.7)

  12. cyto

    I think we are seeing a libertarian consensus form, where “it depends on how you interpret it” being the controlling factor for the soxial/cultural axis. Lots of SoCons running around. Some would have the government enforce it. Others would just have everyone agree on certain basic principles.

    I think a society depends on a shared set of values.

    For us it would be an old school “your word is your bond”, “honor is everything”, “respect your neighbor” kind of society.

    Without that, it would be really hard to have liberty.

    Which is probably why the left attacks those values so vociferously.

  13. EvilSheldon

    Economic +79.2 Market. Pretty accurate. I don’t think that unfettered market capitalism will produce the shining city on the hill, but I also don’t much care that it won’t. Nothing will.
    Social and Cultural +8.3 Traditional. Also not bad. Despite my atheism and genial libertine perversity, I’m actually quite fond of traditional cultural values, even religious ones. Just keep them out of my basement.
    Enforcement -100.0 Liberty. Dead nuts on.

    Not bad, I guess.

    • cyto

      This seems to be close to the consensus.

      “Traditional values” are not uniformly good. But you cannot have a society with bad or broken shared values.

  14. PieInTheSky

    my issue with many liberty questions is it needs a “no one has to pay if you fuck up” clause.

  15. Drake

    Setting this group lose on that survey is going to skew his results in very strange ways.

    • cyto

      I suspect that he will learn that his survey is not very discerning at the extreme on liberty or market.

      I suspect that he wont learn anything with that set of questions on society.

  16. creech

    Nolan Chart questions were too ambiguous too. I once demonstrated to Nolan himself how two hypothetical people could answer every question different from each other and both land dead center on his chart. His response was that while possible, such persons could not exist.

  17. ron73440

    +100 +25 -75

    About average around here it looks like.

Submit a Comment