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ChristianKl comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion
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When it comes to politics I don't think asking for labels is much help.
I would rather ask: Which country of the following list do you consider to be ruled best:
1) USA 2) Finland 3) Germany 4) France 5) Japan 6) Singapure 7) China 8) United Kingdom 9) Netherlands
Which do you consider to be ruled worst? If it's possible the survey taker could even order the countries into a list. The difference between US Republicans and US Democrats is very small. The difference between how different countries are governed is much stronger.
A few years ago I could have said that I supported US democrats but now they are for a president that has powers like killing his own citizens without a court trial. On the matter of social security Obama himself said that there isn't much difference between him and Romney. Both don't believe in persecuting high level figures on wall street.
I have adequate knowledge about how well Finland is ruled, some minor knowledge about how the USA is ruled, and basically no useful knowledge about how well any of those other countries are ruled (besides the fact that none of them is a third world hellhole, so none of them is probably ruled terribly badly). So I couldn't answer this question, and I wouldn't be surprised if nobody on this site was familiar enough with the governance of all those nations to be able to give a meaningful answer.
Or just that ruling an already-developed country isn't terribly demanding. I mean, Belgium didn't become a third-world hellhole despite this.
Related to your example: The Art of Governing without Government
Moldbuggian models of politics FTW.
-- Jack Nicholson, as President Dale in Mars Attacks
I agree, but I think that this exposes our ignorance on the matter; choosing a political label would suffer from the same lack of knowledge, but it wouldn't be as obvious.
I think it takes much more knowledge to confidently meaningfully answer the best-ruled-country question than the political-label question.
Downvoted for the last paragraph.
I like this question as something to ask in addition to political labels. Maybe add a parenthetical: "(if you aren't sure which is ruled best, pick one that stands out to you as being ruled unusually well compared to other countries)".
I'm not sure how you chose your list of nine, since a lot of countries that are often considered to be especially well-governed are missing (e.g., Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada). Having lots of options isn't much of a problem for data analysis, since we could convert individual countries into categories or ratings for analysis purposes.
Sweden and Denmark are the same as Finland for these purposes. Switzerland would be a good addition.
I have no idea how e.g. Japan or Singapore are ruled.