The Political Compass: page 2

[minionofmidas]

No enterprise can oppress anyone. Any exchange in the free market is optional.

Free markets require full information.
No company is interested in providing full information.

Any exchange in the free market is optional? Right. The rich and the poor are equally free to sleep under the bridge.

You don't need full information about a product to buy it.

A Free market as per the models underlying Friemanesque declarations that the market will work out fine requires full information.
If people are misled into buying an overpriced product, obviously that means no "perfect" distribution of goods is going to ensue.

[A18]

Well, of course, to an extent. There is no way to have full information on whether or not you'll like a product, but you're free to only buy goods that have a return policy on them.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, there are crutches to get closer to full information, and some of the more honest neoclassical economists support these.
Note that the problem is just the same for the companies: They cannot possibly know how many items of a certain product they'll be able to sell in a certain place several weeks in the future. (Obviously, the more perishable the product, and the longer producing and delivering it to market takes, the more noticable this becomes. Farmers are a classic example.)
My take on things is that since a perfect allocation is impossible, except once upon a time, by accident, the concept is misguided. I have the same to say about Marxism, which promises to create the perfect allocation by state planning.

[Jake]

People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.

Strongly Disagree. I think of myself being American with all Americans, not Upper middle class with British middle class or German middle class

Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.

Disagree

Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.

Disagree, Companies can be trusted as much as normal citizens can be.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need is a fundamentally good idea.

Um, yeah, in 1920 maybe

It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.

Like Philip said, don't buy it.  Not all water is the same. Mine tastes like crap.  So I drink Wal Mart water sometimes. No big deal.

Land shouldn't be a commodity to be bought and sold.

Yeah this would work

It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.

Agree, George Soros makes his money manipulating currency. Bastard

Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.

In some cases when there is clearly a problem.  In the US now, only small amounts.

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.

Strongly Agree, what else is there?

The rich are too highly taxed.

Rich, poor, middle class, evryone could use a tax break

Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care .

of course, that's capitalism

Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.

agree

A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.

Sure, I guess

The freer the market, the freer the people.

It all is relevant