Nolan Chart

The Advocates for Self Government have long had The World's Smallest Political Quiz. It is famous for helping to plot on their Nolan Chart, where you fall on the grid based on your answers to some pretty basic political, socio-economic questions.

While I certainly applaud the Nolan Chart and The Advocates for their efforts in helping to promote Libertarian thought and acceptance, I wonder if it may have come with a price- that of misinterpretation.

For example, look at this chart... 60% social, 60% economic scores.


and this chart... 60% social, 100% economic scores.

and this chart... 100% social, 60% economic scores.


Now, try not to lose me here... see the chart- it's all math- but the math is incomplete.

Take for instance, 6/10 x 6/10 = 36/100 or 36%. They score that as high centrist. I disagree. I believe that a score of 36% put to the pole directly between Libertarian and Authoritarian/Statist is decidedly Statist. Simply count by 10s strait up from zero- where is that on the chart?

Now, 6/10 x 10/10 or 6/10 x 1 = 6/10 or 60%, in the charts above that is Libertarian, if socially dominant, then liberal, if economically dominant then conservative tendencies. I will argue here that either of those scores is centrist.

In fact 50-60-69% is centrist either way and below 50% is decidedly statist with aggressiveness toward anti-libertarian society either socialist or fascist respectively.

Put another way, the chart fights to break society of their left-center-right paradigm, but it forgets to introduce more concretely, more accurately, the vertical axis of liberty/tyranny.

At the same time, it fails in its own math to accurately show that centrists do not fall on either axis, but instead plot themselves more accurately in the region:
50%s vs 100%e
70%s vs 100%e
100%s vs 70%e
100%s vs 50%e
and any %s x %e that is a composite score between 50 to 70% measured by the vertical axis.
Indeed, a score of 50%s x 50%e is 25% and statist, not centrist.

Further, I believe that Minarchist Libertarians fall between 70% to 99% of the vertical wether or not they reside precisely on the axis itself, and that plumb-line libertarian, anarcho-capitalists, and agorists would reside at 100%s/e with the Agorists and Stateless being the over-achievers.