In the wise words of William H. Geiger III:
As I stated in my previous post the Nolan chart is flawed. In it's attempts to be "two-dimensional" it artificially separates interdependent philosophies. Economic Freedom = Personal Freedom. You can not have one without the other. The major failings of the socialist is their unwillingness to accept this fact. A free society can not survive under a socialist regime any more that a totalitarian society can survive under a capitalist one.
I think the Nolan chart is flawed because the questions are all worded in a leading manner, personally. And Singapore survives quite well being a totalitarian capitalist society. Sure, you can pick nits and claim that Singapore's not entirely capitalist, but it's more capitalist than this country and certainly less free, too. The fact of the matter seems to me to be that most people are perfectly satisfied to be passive consumers. While they like to be free, that means free to make purchasing decisions. They also like to be safe, and if they have to lose civil liberties to be safe, then they're all for it. Just so long as they can buy what they want. That seems to me to describe the essence of the Singapore problem, and I'd bet it holds true for the U.S. (and many other places) as well. And, regardless of whether the two are actually separate, the Nolan chart is intended to measure peoples' _beliefs_ and _feelings_ about economic and political freedom. And those, as this discussion proves, are clearly separate. Jon -- Jon Lasser (410)383-7962 jon@lasser.org http://www.tux.org/~lasser/ PGP=2047/0x4CDD6451 "Flap your ears, Dumbo! The feather was only a trick!"