On the two-dimensional political axis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass
The options given are:
This leaves a rather large portion of the spectrum totally unaccounted for and is going to artificially inflate the neighboring elements.
Adding the following items would fix this:
It's also controversial to conflate Communism as an ideology with the specific implementation of Marxism-Leninism that the USSR embodied; this also ignores wide variations between Soviet leaders (Kruschev in particular was highly revisionist and attracted the ire of other contemporary communists leading to the Sino-Soviet split).
Alternatively, going strictly for coverage, the following options should encompass the majority of political beliefs held by Westerners:
This has the side-effect of hitting all quadrants and achieving pretty good coverage on the two-axis political spectrum.
Other comments:
It's that time of year again. Actually, a little earlier than that time of year, but I'm pushing it ahead a little to match when Ozy and I expect to have more free time to process the results.
The first draft of the 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey is complete (see 2013 results here) .
You can see the survey below if you promise not to try to take the survey because it's not done yet and this is just an example!
2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey Draft
I want two things from you.
First, please critique this draft (it's much the same as last year's). Tell me if any questions are unclear, misleading, offensive, confusing, or stupid. Tell me if the survey is so unbearably long that you would never possibly take it. Tell me if anything needs to be rephrased.
Second, I am willing to include any question you want in the Super Extra Bonus Questions section, as long as it is not offensive, super-long-and-involved, or really dumb. Please post any questions you want there. Please be specific - not "Ask something about taxes" but give the exact question you want me to ask as well as all answer choices.
Try not to add more than a few questions per person, unless you're sure yours are really interesting. Please also don't add any questions that aren't very easily sort-able by a computer program like SPSS unless you can commit to sorting the answers yourself.
I will probably post the survey to Main and officially open it for responses sometime early next week.