I don’t want to go into politics, and this will be more of a meta-political idea.
We all know the political compass, and it’s fine as it is. However, I want to look at it in a different way, or sort of transform it to a different spectrum, namely one in relation to (social) power. I don’t care how the spectrum is originally interpreted, I will use it for my own idea.
I’ll just start with Wikipedia’s definition of power (social and political): “In political science, power is the ability to influence or direct the actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors.” And I want to note that I will speak of power that is solely over humans, so the “actors” does not, for me, refer to other animals etc.
Now the first important idea is that all the power everything holds altogether– so the sum of all power or the total power – is the power over the entire lives of everyone alive.
That total power is spread over many different people, institutions, systems, ideas, books, and whatever follows the definition above. I want to distinguish 3 groups: the government, companies and the population.
Governments and companies are pretty trivial. Population includes primarily individual freedom but for simplicity I consider power held by religions, ideas, ideologies, art and so on, to be powers held by the population as well; it’s simply the residue of power. You could of course divide it over as many groups as you want, but in today’s political landscape governments, companies are present the strongest. A few centuries ago we would probably have the church and possibly the nobility in their place.
Now, it’s a simple idea. Let’s just say the total power is equal to 1, then the total is divided under these 3 groups. So in an anarchy the distribution would be: G:0, C:0, P:1. In a communist system companies (C) would have a low share, and in a totalitarian system the government (G) would have a pretty big share.
Note that the value for P will never, at least realistically, be 0. That would basically mean a person can’t decide anything, I mean literally anything, himself.
Well, now I’m gonna misuse the political compass.
The political compass only has two axes so lets start with that.
Under the left-right-axis, the x-axis, I see as the company-power-axis. More left is less power for companies, such as in communism, and more right is more capitalistic.
The totalitarian-libertarian-axis, the y-axis, I see as the governments-power-axis. More totalitarian is bigger government and vice versa.
Now let’s say, hypothetically, for the sake of clarity, that these two, governments and companies, have all the power, so there are no other power holders. Then we can draw a line from the top left to the bottom right, and every point on there is possible. (Basically it’s G+C=1, with G and Q in [0,1], note that the origin is in the bottom left corner). Any point that is not on this line is not possible, because the sum of all power doesn’t count up to exactly 1.
But there was also the population-axis (I can’t really be bothered to come up with the two spectrum opposites to name the axis), which means we get a structure in 3d-space.
As before, let’s use G,C and P for the power values of respectively governments, companies and population. The structure would be that of G+C+P=1 with G,C,P in [0,1], which is a plane. Every point on that plane is possible.
Would you want to add another group of power holders, you’d get a 3d-volume in 4d-space, and you could go on.
It’s just a new meta-political model to place yourself on, specifically for your views on the distribution of power.
(Well now comes the important part, where am I? Well I’m at G:0, C:0, P:0, #$@%:1.)