The Rubric

What the Numbers Mean

Every article is read on seven questions. Each question is its own axis, scored independently from -4 to +4. The scores describe what the article assumes, argues, or takes for granted. The table below gives every rung of every question, in the rubric's own words.

What does a score of 0 mean?

Zero is not neutral, not correct, and not "the norm." It is the centre of each question, fixed by the question's two ends and not by today's mainstream. The centre is a position of its own, and both ends have complaints about it, so an article that does not take a question up is marked No Signal on it, never 0. On Who owns, 0 is the rung called "Private and public ownership, both protected." On Who has a say, 0 is the rung called "Equal votes, protected rights."

That is why the prevailing arrangement usually does not sit at 0. If coverage treats a fortune passing on unbroken as the natural order, or a public asset passing into private hands as simply what modernisation looks like, or unlimited donor money in elections as how the system works, that assumption is already a position — and it scores to the right of center, not at it.

AXIS	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4
Who ownsWhat is privately owned, and what is held in common?	Nobody owns a businessNothing that produces wealth is privately owned; it is held in common and answers to the public, and no one draws an income from owning. Personal possessions are untouched here as at every other step: a person's home, savings, car and tools stay theirs.	The public owns a whole industryAn entire industry, such as coal, rail, oil or banking, passes into public ownership that answers to the public, and private holding of it is prohibited from then on rather than bought out once. Industries outside it stay private. A person who owns nothing holds a public share in that industry.	Holdings above a cap go to workersA cap limits how much one person may own, and what exceeds it transfers to the people who work at the business or to a fund holding it for them. It runs under standing law, year after year. A person who owns nothing comes to hold a share through their work.	The public or the workers take a shareA share of private business passes to the public or to the people who work there, by purchase or by law, without capping anyone's wealth or taking a whole industry: a government stake, a public wealth fund, an employee ownership trust. A public share counts here only where it answers to the public. A person who owns nothing comes to hold a share, as a citizen or as a worker.	Private and public ownership, both protectedPrivate owners hold businesses, land and buildings, taxed and bound by public rules, and the public holds what it holds in common, such as public land and utilities. Neither side takes what the other holds except by law: the public pays to take private property, and what is public is not sold off without public consent. A person who owns nothing keeps their belongings and wages.	Private ownership, exclusive and unlimitedPrivate ownership is the default, the public holds no share in private business, and no limit applies to the size of a holding. A fortune passes on unbroken, and money made from owning is taxed no higher than money made from working. A person who owns nothing keeps their belongings and wages, and no route leads from wages to a holding.	The public sells what it heldPublic housing, public land, a state utility or a public function passes into private hands, and the public may not take it back. A person who owns nothing gains no share of what was sold.	Limits on use must be paid forA public rule limiting how an owner may use what they own, such as a zoning limit or a wetland protection, counts as taking the property, so the public must pay the owner to keep the rule or drop it. A person who owns nothing gains no say over how an owner's land is used.	Everything privately ownedEverything is privately owned, including roads, courts, policing and the making of rules, and nothing may override an owner's claim. A person who owns nothing holds no share of anything, including the institutions that govern them.
Who providesCan people get what society requires of them, such as schooling and health care, without already having the money to buy it, and may everyone use that route?	Nothing may be boughtNothing at all is obtainable by purchase. Every route to every need runs through public provision, and buying and selling has no part in how anyone obtains anything.	No market where the public route runsWherever a public route operates, getting the same service by purchase is prohibited outright. The ban follows the public route rather than being general, so markets continue wherever the public route does not reach.	No buying a better versionBuying privately is allowed for what the public route does not cover and barred for what it does. A seller may not offer the same service privately, so no one may purchase a faster or better version of it.	Buy privately at your own costBoth routes are open to everyone, and public money follows only the public one. A person may buy privately, and receives no voucher, deduction or credit for doing so.	Both routes guaranteedA public route exists for what society requires of everyone, open to everyone whatever their means, and a market runs beside it. Both are guaranteed: the public route may not be starved to push people into buying, and the market may not be barred to push them into the public route.	A public route for those who prove needA public route exists only for people who show they cannot buy, through an application and a test. Everyone else uses the market, and eligibility must be established rather than assumed.	Public money, private sellersThe public pays and does not provide. Public money reaches people as vouchers, subsidies or contracts they take to private sellers, and no public route exists for them to choose instead.	Government may not competePublic provision is allowed only where no seller will supply, such as a remote route or an uninsurable risk, and government is barred from offering anything a private seller already offers.	Everything must be boughtNo route to anything exists except by buying it, including schooling, care, roads and policing. Public provision is not missing from one field alone; there is none anywhere.
Who pays for harmWhen something a business or a person does might harm other people, who carries the burden: the one acting, or the people exposed?	Any objection is enoughA person need not show harm, or even risk. Being exposed to something they did not choose is enough to stop it.	Banned at any levelCertain risks are banned outright, whatever the dose, the odds or the benefit given up. No showing of safety, however careful, can make them acceptable.	Prove it safe firstAnyone who wants to sell, build or release something must show it is safe before going ahead, whether or not anyone objects.	When in doubt, protect the people exposedWhere the evidence of harm is uncertain, the doubt counts against the one acting. Harm need only be likely, not proven, for a limit to stand.	Show the harm, repair the harmWhoever wants an activity stopped must show that it harms others, and the limit goes no further than the harm. Whoever causes harm pays to repair it. The same rule applies to everyone, so neither side starts ahead.	Prove the harm firstAn activity goes ahead freely until someone proves it harms them. The people objecting carry the whole burden, and ordinary risk to bystanders is accepted as the price of a free society.	Spread-out harm stays where it landsA business answers for directly injuring a specific person, but not for harm that falls on no one in particular: smoke, runoff, noise, a warming climate. Those costs stay with whoever breathes or drinks them, and the business keeps the gain.	A duty on paper, no way to collectThe law says a business owes care, but almost every route to collecting is closed. Any fault of your own bars the claim, or a rule or contract clause blocks the suit.	Taking part is accepting the riskNobody answers for the risks their activity creates. A worker who takes a dangerous job, or a customer who uses a product, is treated as having accepted whatever happens.
Who decidesHow much say do the people a decision binds, everyone it places a duty on or protects, have in making it?	No one rules anyoneEvery decision is made by all it binds, together, and no authority stands above those it binds, a government's or an owner's alike. Coordination happens among people deciding as equals.	Bound only by what they madeDecisions bind only the communities or councils that took part in making them. Larger questions go to federations of those councils, which hold no power except what their members send up and can recall.	Those bound decide togetherThe people a decision binds make it together, on what is theirs: workers run how their work is done, a community governs its commons, citizens vote directly on their budget, and a person decides about their own body.	Those bound hold a checkBeyond choosing who decides, the people a decision binds hold a check of their own that no authority can take away: a union that can strike, seats on a company's board, a community whose consent a project needs, a person's protected refusal of what is done to their body.	Answerable to those it bindsThose who decide are chosen by the people the decision binds, or answer to those who are, and decide through the stated process: under a law the legislature passed, with the notice, hearing or rulemaking it requires. Each can be checked by the others in time to stop what is decided, and those bound keep the refusals the law protects.	Overruled by someone no one choseThose who answer to the people bound decide, but a body those people did not choose and cannot replace routinely sets their decisions aside with its own judgment: a court remaking what an elected legislature or an agency under it had settled, an appointed board or a state-installed manager replacing an elected council.	Decided by someone they cannot hold to accountOne authority decides without answering to the people bound for this decision: an owner, an employer or an appointed official no one chose, or an elected official deciding alone, outside the stated process. A court can cancel the decision only for clear abuse. Those bound may ask, or leave, and leaving is open to them: there is somewhere to go, at a cost they can bear.	No one may refuse itOne authority decides, or one holder blocks, and nothing those bound can use stops it in time: no review they can reach before the decision is carried out, and no way out that costs less than submitting. Acting first, so that a court can only rule on what is already done, is no review at all. Leaving is closed, punished, or made so slow and costly that it cannot be used.	One authority, no sayOne authority decides and binds everyone, and those bound have no part in deciding and no way to refuse or leave. No court, legislature, union or person remains that could hold the decision up, because whatever might have objected has been shut down or never created.
Who countsMay some people count for less than others, by birth or by legal status, and can a person leave the rank they are given?	No ranking at allNo ranking of people is acceptable for any reason, earned or unearned, agreed or imposed, and every rank that exists is to be abolished. It names no trait at all, because it rejects the practice of ranking as such.	Ranking banned everywhereRanking people by the trait or status is prohibited outright, in private life as well as in law. The state has not merely stopped helping a ranking; the ordering is banned wherever it appears, at the employer, the landlord and the counter.	Take apart what keeps rank goingThe arrangements that keep a ranking going are taken apart, not merely the law that stated it: the institutions built around it, the money that flows along it, and the everyday practices that pass it to the next generation.	The law stops rankingThe law gives a trait or a status no different treatment, and everyone is treated alike under it. Whatever survives in everyday custom is left standing, and that limit is what distinguishes this step from the ones below it.	Rank earned, and a person can leave itRanking people is acceptable only when the rank was earned or agreed to, and only while it stays open to challenge and a person can walk away from it. A surgeon outranks an intern in the operating room; a permanent resident can become a citizen.	Custom ranks, the law looks awayA ranking already exists in everyday custom, and the law leaves it alone. A person can cross the line and pay a social price for doing so, but no legal penalty follows. The government neither enforces the ranking nor takes it apart.	The law sorts peopleThe law itself sorts people by a trait or a status and attaches different treatment to each group. The ranking is not merely tolerated: the government does it, written into statutes and applied at the counter.	Rank by natureA person's place follows from something they were born with and did not choose, and the ranking is presented as the work of nature or of God. A person who objects is not answered with a counter-argument but treated as mistaken.	Rank fixed at birthA person's place in society is fixed at birth and they may not leave it, the law enforces the ranking, and questioning the arrangement is itself treated as a crime. The rank is inherited, inescapable and protected from challenge.
Who has a sayDoes government answer to everyone equally, or to a few?	Every law the public's ownEvery law is made, or can be overturned, by the public's own equal vote, and no representative, donor or office stands between that vote and the law. The public governs itself in assembly or by ballot.	The public votes on lawsQuestions go to a public vote as a matter of course: citizens can propose laws, overturn laws their representatives pass, and recall officials, and representatives work alongside those votes rather than in place of them.	One gatekeeper removedOne named institution that weighs one set of voices over another is abolished, and the public decides directly in the space it filled. One institution is the target, not the idea of representation itself.	Every voice weighs the sameThe law makes each vote and each voice count the same: districts drawn by bodies the parties do not control, election money limited or publicly funded so that no donor outweighs a voter, and every eligible adult registered as a matter of course.	Equal votes, protected rightsEveryone has an equal vote in choosing who governs, proposals are debated before they are decided, certain rights cannot be voted away, and no minority can block a decision outright. The restraints fall on the powerful and the majority alike.	The law leaves voices unequalEveryone may vote, and elections decide who governs, but no rule keeps voices equal: donors may spend without limit on the organizations that carry public opinion into government, and the parties draw the districts they compete in.	Unequal weight fixed in placeA rule fixes one set of voices above another, beyond the reach of an ordinary majority: a minority's veto over what the majority passes, a chamber or a count that weighs some places more than others, or election spending put beyond any limit the public could set.	A few choose the choicesVoters still choose, but only among candidates a small group has already picked: a candidate reaches the ballot, or has any chance on it, only with the backing of a few funders, party bosses or officeholders.	Nothing reaches the decisionNothing connects the public to what the government does. Either elections are held and settle nothing, because the real decisions are made elsewhere, or the connection is refused outright and no vote is held at all.
Who sets the termsWhen people make a deal, such as a job, a lease, a loan or a sale, who sets its terms, including what it costs to get out of it: the stronger side alone, the two sides with a check on each other, or a public rule?	No bargaining at allNo term of any deal is bargained between the two sides. What a good is worth, who receives it and on what conditions are all settled by public administration, and agreement has no part in it.	Prices set by administrationWhat a good or a service exchanges for across a whole sector is set by a public body rather than by the two sides, who may not agree otherwise. Bargaining continues over quantity and quality, never over price.	A public body sets the figureA public body sets one term of the deal for a whole sector as a figure, such as the rent or the pay, rather than a limit on it: the two sides may not agree on any other figure, above or below. The rest of the deal is left to them.	The weaker side holds a check of its ownThe side that would otherwise take what it is offered holds a check on the terms: workers, tenants or borrowers bargain together, as a union or an association that can refuse as one, or a floor is set in law by what it costs a full-time worker to meet what society requires of them, such as training, health care and care for their children, and moves with that cost. The two sides bargain above it.	Each side bargains within public limitsEach side bargains for itself within limits set in public: a floor below which no one may contract, a ceiling above which no one may charge, each a fixed number tied to nothing, and a limit on what leaving can cost, such as cancelling as easily as signing up. Everything between the limits is bargained, and the limits fall on everyone alike.	Only lies and force undo a dealA deal stands unless it was obtained by lying or by force. Terms freely agreed are enforced however lopsided, and a gap in bargaining power is not by itself a reason to disturb them.	The deal is enforced as signedThe law's only role is to enforce the deal as made, including whatever it says about getting out: notice periods, penalties, automatic renewals. No term is void for being one-sided, and a side that agreed badly has no remedy: the buyer, the tenant or the worker takes what they signed.	Contract beats the statuteA legislature sets a wage, an hour or a price, and a court strikes the law down because it interferes with the freedom to contract. The rule may be enacted, and it will not survive.	No rule may touch any termWhatever two sides agree is the whole of the matter, and no public rule may set a price, a wage, a rent or any other term. A deal fails only where one side did not in fact agree, never because the terms were unfair.

Important: Each score marks the arrangement the article treats as proper, not the direction it pushes from today. Everyday fights such as guns, immigration, housing and wages are not axes of their own. They are topics, and an article about one of them is read on whichever of the seven questions it takes up.

Why seven questions instead of "left" and "right"?

Because "left" and "right" collapse seven independent questions into one label, and the questions move independently. An article can lean left on one question and right on another, and either side of politics can land at either end of a question. A conservative article defending parents' say over their children's schooling leans left on Who decides, and a progressive article defending an emergency order that no one it binds can refuse leans right. One label cannot hold that, and the combinations that surprise you are the most important findings.