The video really throws the baby out with the bath water saying all abstract models are bad. The Sapply model addresses the original’s flaws well enough while still being readable.
Sapply model
So they just added another dimension?
I found this test online: https://sapplyvalues.github.io/
Yeah, the major difference is it has a dedicated social axis (progressive-conservative) that removes the ambiguity of the Left-Right axis. On the original people would associate social stances with economic ones.
There’s ones like 8 values that have more dimensions but they suffer in readability (IMO).
On the original people would associate social stances with economic ones.
However, economy is a social construct, so isn’t it completely OK to associate social stances with economic ones? If you believe that all people are equal and then say billionaires be billionaires, this is a contradiction.
The Sapply model runs into the exact same problem the video is focusing on.
When you take the quiz at https://sapplyvalues.github.io you get questions like “Agree or disagree: Only the government can fairly and effectively regulate organizations” — but what kind of government are we talking about? Who’s in charge? Are there corporate think tanks running it? Is there a fossil fuel lobby? Are we talking about corporations regulating themselves?
When I get a question like that, I don’t know how to respond, because I don’t have a blanket attitude toward all government. My opinion depends on what is actually happening in real life. Which is ultimately the central criticism of the video. What matters most to most people is the material context, not some blanket feeling about the abstract concept of government
Yeah - it’s definitely an improvement, but still has gaps.
For example, I’d say I’m a anarcho-communist (though not in any practical sense) - revolution without the significant pre-work to dismantle inequality in economic and political power, a reconsolidation of power into autocracy is near-inevitable. In practical terms, this pushes me right up the authoritarian axis in the short term (strong government power to counter and dismantle the existing authority structures), but more anarchist (libertarian) in the longer-term once democracy is shored up - the distinction is entirely situational, and I’m left at the middle of that scale.
