Im refering to this:
www.researchmethods.org/democracy-indicators.pdf
"Polity IV, Polyarchy and Freedom House indicators are highly correlated to each other
(Casper & Tufits 2003). This is a good base to assume these three indicators have very
small systematic errors, but cannot be used to further assume these indicators have no
random measurement errors. In other words, these indicators have acceptable validity, but
their reliability may be low as high correlation does not guarantee high reliability. A low
reliability can lead to biased estimation in regression modeling. As clearly demonstrated
by Casper and Tufis, these three democracy indicators are not interchangeable, therefore,
not reliable as indicators to measure democracy. In this perspective, the Casper and
Tufis’s article has made a great contribution by drawing our attention to the reliability
issue of democracy measures. Recently, more and more attention has been paid to
measurement error issues in political science (Adcok & Collier 2001, Munck &
Verkuilen. 2002). Many have studied the systematic errors of democracy indicators
(Bollen & Paxton 2000), but not much about the random errors of the democracy
measurements."
Good thing the data I'm giving isn't used for measuring democracy, freedom house is using it to measure measuring political and civil freedom. Your source criticizes a regression model that uses their data to measure democracy, not the freedomhouse analysis, methodology, and data gathering which does not use regression analysis. Your source itself acknowledges the data has "very small systematic errors" and is within "acceptable validity."
What your source is talking about is the inability to use this data in a regression model to measure democracy. This is because they are not interchangeable so they must all be used, however they are so highly correlated it brings up the problem of multicollinearity. Thus, this data can't be used in a regression model to measure democracy. There isn't a problem with the data, the problem is within reaching further conclusion from those already reached by freedomhouse because of the limitations of regression analysis.
Your source
gives credibility to the freedomhouse conclusions by stating that there is statistically insignificant systematic bias and the random error is accounted for from the repeated tests.
Yours, your whole perspective on what human dignity is and isn't...you just come off as one of those people who uses words "liberty" and "democracy" to explain away any wrong doing.
You mean like when I state "there are some glaring problems such as with mandating morality (fight over marriage, retarded hate crime laws, etc), what contracts are illegal (prostitution, drugs, some foods, etc), how you spend your money (high taxes, sanctions on Iran + Cuba, etc)" in the post I made in the last page? You mean when I make threads in the AS criticizing how fucked up America is right now? And where exactly have I said liberty and democracy explain away wrong doings or even implied so?
Uncle_Vanya said:
So they're ultraliberal and thus hate Bush's guts, they still have their spot on the political spectrum and its nowhere near the middle. And its not that what they're saying here isn't true, its that if one of the people they support was at the top they wouldn't be saying anything.
That doesn't make their data collection bias; I, for example, think Richard Dawkins is an idiot when he talks about religion, yet I don't dismiss his scientific work. I disagree with Paul Krugman on tons of his macroeconomic policies, yet I study, cite, and agree with his nobel prize winning (this year) international economic models. Everyone is bias; that doesn't make their science wrong.
Uncle_Vanya said:
Life in US is about consumerism, capitalism is about consumerism, freedom has nothing to do with it, freedom in US is a charade, so what if you can voice your opinion without prosecution (which isn't always the case btw since you can get sued by anyone for anything) your opinion doesn't have an ability to impact the government or the country unless you have the funds to run for office and even then you only usually going to win by playing the same old partisan tune.
That's takes a flawed assumption that there is a difference between 'economic' and 'non-economic' freedom. Because I'm lazy, I'll just copy and paste from an old AS thread about this:
"It's a matter of the intimate relationship between economic liberalism and social liberalism - one cannot separate the two. Someone else directing economic activity, the only current alternative we have to economic liberalism as a way through which resources are allocated, means that whatever authority controls this allocation controls the limited means we have to meet our ends. Thus, whoever controls the limited means we have to meet our ends has to decide which ends are satisfied and which are not. This decision sets which values are rated higher and which are rated lower and essentially sets what we should believe. It takes away the power from the individual and gives it from the community - hence, it is no longer individual freedom.
You can argue that in competitive capitalism the price we have to pay will deprive a member of society of their freedom (which is my guess as to what you are referring to, though I really don't know). Price as an obstacle to freedom within competitive capitalism, however, is not due to our chosen end being disapproved of, but rather by no conscious will, and thus leaves us open to other options of choosing our end - a choice not available if our ends are disapproved of in direction of allocation.
...The end result of any activity is from an economic motive, however an economic motive is merely the desire for power to achieve unspecified ends. Maybe it is money, on the other hand, maybe it is the power to want to help animals, people, the environment, and countless other aims that are not aimed at gaining something of monetary value, but that require money to do. For example, if I want to use my life to help animals and my money is allocated by an authority instead to subsidize farming, my individual freedom is being infringed upon because I cannot use my resources to meet the end I have specified.
When the government slowly takes away our ability to spend our resources, be it in big government or complete socialism, there is not merely an economic loss, but also the loss of our power to choose which of our individual likes and dislikes are effected, be it money, an individual's dislike of cruelty towards animals, or any other number of economic motives."
Freedom has
everything to do with it. The beauty of a market economy is that it serves as a further separation of power, a further constraint on the power of government. The beauty is you don't even have to be involved with the fucked up nature of my government to make a difference. True, the 'change' America is undergoing with Obama is nothing more than more Bush shit policies, but the US is full of political realignments that have altered the face of politics. You may look at the last election cycle and say the end result is pointless and the people had no say, but there's a famous quote that goes "some of us think that Goldwater lost in 1964...some of us think Goldwater won, it just took 16 years to count the votes." I do believe that this election cycle has helped America, it just isn't going to help it for the next 4 years. America isn't perfect, far from it or we wouldn't have Bush or Obama, but to say that America hasn't changed and isn't changing and people aren't changing the opinions of the masses is only to look at who is president at this moment, not the opinion polls on various issues and beliefs that set the foundation for who will be the presidents for decades to come.
) when I was younger!
