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Comment by lowbloodsugar | Hacker News Reader

"I lean extremely far right, but in this case, this seems like one of the few things that the federal government should be doing-- breaking up stout monopolies that can't be competed with."

Doesn't sound like you are far right at all then. I'm wondering if we're actually a good judge of our own political leaning. I think that I'm libertarian (little 'l'), but Facebook ad policy thinks I'm far left. Maybe Facebook knows me better than I do.

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Sounds to me like the GP believes in minimally constrained competition, where monopolism is one of the many undesirable constraints on their way of life. They are correctly identifying large corporations as analogous to overbearing governments. That, to me, is a classic right-wing belief, and one that I can empathize with, as a staunch Decentralist Green.

The original libertarians were actually far left. There is a large portion of the left that hates the State as much as American "Libertarians" do, but from a different perspective (which I believe is far more consistent). It seems to surprise a lot of Americans to learn that you can be socialist and libertarian at the same time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Eh, I think it is more a problem with "broad umbrellas" and simple labels being inherently incapable of accurately describing something as complex as ones own politics, rather than lack of self judgement. I know precisely what my politics are but the right/left dichotomy is to simple for me to even pick a side for example, both tribes have ideals that I very much agree with.

Spot on.

The test at https://www.politicalcompass.org/ works reasonably well.

That test was accurate in pinning what I do believe my political leanings are, but the questions were awful and loaded. In the surrounding exposition and in the questions themselves the authors demonstrate what I believe to be a staunch leftist / progressive leaning. A lot of questions I read thinking "just because of how they worded this I have to say X because they are making an absolutionist statement on something I'm not absolutionist about".

> That test was accurate

> the authors demonstrate what I believe to be a staunch leftist

Sounds like somebody is biased here.

> "just because of how they worded this I have to say X because they are making an absolutionist statement on something I'm not absolutionist about".

That's how and why the test works. It need to extract the user's leaning by choosing between extremes.

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