Here is a chart of the traditional political chart https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:919/1*yn-tJMwT0gdu3HwfpWMa5A.png

Here is a chart of the political trichotomy, which I learned about from TFM: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fqsnxaptds1b51.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D1f15f7baf80fdfe1dc38918099844db76fd7ff4e

Here is a youtube series where TFM talks about the political trichotomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL1FnWiF5T0&list=PLlcjRWT27kLvVk3pBuJ6wnGXOwtM93WOz

The Model in General:

The political trichotomy was created to address the fact that the libertarian left practically doesn't exist. I think the trichotomy makes a lot of sense from an empirical standpoint. It explains why communists think that everyone else is Hitler, why fascists think that communists and capitalists are the same, and why libertarians think that fascists and communists are the same. It also explains why the political right is divided.

The 3 axes of the model are communism/equality, individualism/freedom, and authoritarianism/stability. I thought a lot about whether these 3 axes are really the correct ones. Are these 3 axes really mutually exclusive and complete? Could there be (theoretically) be political viewpoints other than these? And there don't seem to be clear definitions (like does "freedom" include both personal freedom and political freedom? Does "equality" mean equality of outcome or equality of opportunity?). Also, does it make sense, for instance, that the opposite of communism is Darwinism, and that Darwinism is halfway between freedom and stability?

As for the Darwinism question, it makes sense that both individualists and authoritarians share a common view on this. The authoritarians could say, "It is right that the best should rise to the top and rule," and the individualists would say, "We can't find out who is the best unless people compete in a fair playing field." But is Darwinism truly the opposite of equality? People could theoretically be unequal because God made different castes of people (this is a totally different explanation for inequality than Darwinism). But I suppose no one today believes in God-given castes. So, I don't think Darwinism is strictly speaking a unique opposite of communism/equality, but in today's political environment, most people who believe in inequality would do so for Darwinian reasons. So, I conclude that this chart doesn't make sense from a strictly logical perspective, but practically speaking, it does a good job of describing the current political landscape.

It seems to me that in theory, there could be an infinite number of possible political values, and that without making assumptions about how the material world works, they wouldn't usually be related to each other (except when "value B" is defined to be the same as NOT "value A"). So, there is no way to prove that the 3 axes in the political trichotomy are complete (able to describe the full range of political values), nor describe how they interact, without making some assumptions about how the material world operates.

It seems to me in practice, that any value other than freedom itself implies not freedom. For instance, I made up the completely arbitrary value that we like to paint pink elephants on the walls of buildings. If a government were to try to implement this value, it would take away people's freedom to do things other than paint pink elephants. I expect it would be the same with virtually any other value you could think up; valuing one thing means not valuing people's freedom to not do that thing.

Communism seems to inherently imply tyranny. To prove this, I thought about 3 different ideas of "equality". Note that the first 2 are moral precepts and the last one is a factual statement.
1. Equality of outcome
2. Equality of opportunity
3. Equality by nature

It seems to me that usually communists believe in #3 (that people are equal by nature), so that if you have equality of opportunity, you'd expect equality of outcome. Individualists tend to disbelieve in equality by nature, which means that if there is equality of opportunity, they do not expect equality of outcome.

If 3 is true, then 2 implies 1. If 3 is not true, then 1 implies not 2.

I do not believe in equality by nature. So, I believe that when the communists try to force equality of outcome, they are destroying equality of opportunity. "Equality of opportunity" seems to be roughly equivalent to "freedom". And if "tyranny" is the opposite of "freedom", then communism is inherently tyrannical, ie, NOT free. But in the political trichotomy, "tyranny" is seen as being halfway between communism and absolutism. So, in my view of the world, the political trichotomy is wrong for seeming to suggest that it's possible to have an untyrannical communism. In order to force people to have equal outcomes, the communists have to take away people's freedom, because by nature we are not equal.

I started thinking about this simply to try to verify/refine the model, but couldn't do so without introducing my own values and my own views about how the world works. So, much of my thought ended up pointing me towards a particular political philosophy, rather than comparing political philosophies. I think alignment with one political ideology or another would probably always depend not only on one's values, but also on one's view of how the world actually works.

In my case, I started off thinking that my primary value was "survival", which seemed to me to be more aligned towards Darwinism than towards purely freedom or purely authoritarianism. But the kind of government I thought up is basically the same as historical authoritarian governments, so perhaps what others would call "stability", which leads them towards authoritarianism, is what I called "survival", and these are really the same thing.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I think it may be the case that communists believe that people are by nature equal, and the right disagrees. It may be that those who believe in freedom believe that humans are not by nature equal, but we are on the whole good and smart. Authoritarians are pessimists who believe that we are not equal and that most people are stupid and bad.

My own Political Preferences:

Going more in-depth into my own beliefs, the primary political value I believe in is survival. I also believe in the following facts about the world:

• Many people are fools (ie, they don't know their own interests)
• Survival can sometimes be difficult and require wise choices
• Most people are selfish
• Practical decisions require detailed knowledge of one's circumstances

If many/most people are fools, and if survival requires wise choices, then it follows that if everyone is allowed an equal say in politics, then the state will likely make foolish choices that result in its own destruction. I would rather that the state survive, so, I am against political freedom for the general public.

In a vote, you need to convince the majority. The majority will not vote for the best idea/person if they can't understand it. That means that you consistently get the average in a democracy. If the average is stupid and bad, however, then you consistently get stupid and bad. In contrast, if government is taken by subterfuge or force, then that's a filter which stops people who are altogether foolish from getting power. It's random in that case whether the person who gets power is benevolent. The distant descendants of the founder of a dynasty are probably more or less similar to the general population, and therefore it's random whether the one who inherits a kingdom is good or bad. So, I believe that the leaders of democracies are consistently bad, the founders of monarchies are at least wise (if not always benevolent), and it's hit or miss whether the monarchs who inherit a kingdom are good or bad.

I also believe, however, that individuals need to be able to act in their own interests in order to survive, so that I am largely in favor of personal freedom. This may seem contradictory to what I said before (in that people are fools), but I believe an individual is more likely to know what is good for him in his personal life than to know what is good for him politically. The individual is also familiar with all his personal circumstances, and it's not possible that the state could be familiar with everyone's personal circumstances. I also believe that it is better to allow an individual to destroy himself with his own foolishness (which is what personal freedom would allow) than to allow him to bring the whole state down with him (which is what political freedom would allow). Likewise, if the state focuses on the issues of the state and doesn't interfere in personal lives, then when the state is foolish, there is some hope that the people as a whole may not be too badly harmed. But if the state interferes in people's personal decisions in a foolish manner, then the people may be very badly hurt (such as when communists cause famines). So, I believe that individual people should mostly focus on their own personal lives, and the state should mostly focus only on things pertaining to the state (like collecting taxes, punishing criminals and rebels, and repelling foreign invasion). In this case, foolishness in one entity will less likely cause harm to entities outside of itself.

The fact that most people are selfish also means that when there is a conflict between his own interests and the interest of the general public, a ruler will usually choose his own interest. This means that it's generally better to be ruled by principles (whether they be religious or legal) than by men. This is also an argument in favor of monarchy, because it causes the personal interests of the sovereign to be more closely aligned with the public interest.

All these thoughts together produce the following concept of a government. There is a monarch which has absolute executive power. There is no legislature at all, because the law is simple and immutable. The king executes the immutable law. However, if there is no power to rebel against the monarchy, then in practice, the law has no power over the monarch. So, there must be an armed populace and some local political organization in order for there to be a threat of rebellion in the case of abuses by the monarch. But the monarch would be supreme in ordinary circumstances. I tried to derive this from first principles, but I ended up producing a form of government that looks basically the same as feudalism.

I have heard it argued that feudal kings actually had very little power for a variety of reasons. One is that the populace was very religious and had good knowledge of its traditions, so that the whole population would reject novel abuses by the king. Another was that the king relied on vassal lords to raise armies for him, so that there would be a threat of rebellion in the case that the king angered his vassals.

I have also heard it argued that feudalism was very robust. One of the reasons for this was that a kingdom actually contained many semi-independent bodies, so that the failure of any individual piece did not mean the failure of the system as a whole.

It makes sense that I came to like feudalism. My primary political goal is to ensure the survival of the state and the people. Feudalism arose out of the collapse of the Roman empire. It must have been a time of total chaos, in which the people were happy to stick with whatever worked to bring stability to their lives. Feudalism perhaps is not an outgrowth of any particular ideal, but simply what arose spontaneously and managed to survive in a very unstable environment.

It also seems to me that Feudalism actually is very similar to the American republic in some respects. It seems to me that both systems like rule of law, but whereas the law in feudal kingdoms is often implicit and/or expressed in religious language, the law in the American republic was explicit and expressed in legal language. Feudalism also relied on local political organization that could threaten rebellion, same as with the original vision of the USA. Both systems also put the executive authority in hands of a single person.

It seems to me that the ideas of the enlightenment did not produce only benefit in the political sphere. It is true that the rights of the king were arbitrary. But while it is a benefit that elected officials can be peacefully removed if they are incompetent, a monarch has the benefit of being able to guide the nation in a single direction for a whole lifetime, and of being above bribery. Democracies in contrast flip flop constantly and are plagued by bribery.

As for the arbitrariness of royal authority: if most people are too stupid to be trusted with government, then this is how it has to be. If a person were wise enough to understand why he would wreck the state if he were given the reigns, then he'd probably actually be wise enough to have some say in government. So, the only way to explain to fools why they should stay in their lane is that the king has special authority and you don't and you just have to accept it.

I also had the thought that if there truly was no way to update legislature (as I suggested above would be ideal), then any mistake in the law, or any novel situation, could be a threat to the survival of the state. Given Goedel's theorem (which states that a system cannot be both complete and consistent), one ought to expect that mistakes are found or that novel situations eventually occur. But leaving the door open to revision also opens the door to foolishness, which occurs much more frequently than genuinely novel situations. I don't have a perfect solution to this problem.

I suppose the greatest problem of social organization is how to create stable social systems that last multiple generations when most people are fools and wisdom seems to be poorly heritable. I have argued that something like feudalism is a good answer, but it is not perfect because it still relies on imperfect people to execute it. Maybe other political forms would be better if people were different than they are.

I will end this essay on a disappointing note. If it's true that it's better to be ruled by principles/laws than by the arbitrary whims of men, and if it's also true that many/most people are fools, then you ought to expect that democratic processes rarely/never produce wise laws. Therefore, if wise laws ever do appear, they appear most-likely from men who take government by force. Being able to take a government by force is a filter which ought to weed out very foolish people. But it's a matter of chance whether the man who takes government by force is benevolent. In conclusion, whether a person lives in a just society is mostly a matter of luck, and we ought to expect some degree of injustice more frequently than we would expect wise laws that are faithfully executed, and so the typical person simply has to endure whatever his state would do to him.