I’ve always been a big fan of Economic Freedom of the World because it provides a balanced and neutral measure of which nations do best in providing free markets and small government.
And I like it even when it gives me bad news. It’s somewhat depressing, after all, to read that the United States has dropped from the #3 nation when Bill Clinton left office to the #18 country in the most recent index.
But for all its many positive attributes, Economic Freedom of the World isn’t a comprehensive measure of liberty. That’s why I’m very glad to see that Ian Vasquez and Tanja Stumberger have put together a Freedom Index designed to measure economic and personal liberty.
And since they’re both sensible people, their definition of personal liberty is very sound – i.e., the freedom to be left alone and not harassed, persecuted, or annoyed by government.
Here’s their description of what the Freedom Index is designed to measure.
…we use indicators that are as consistent as possible with the concept of negative liberty: the absence of coercive constraint on the individual. We do not attempt to measure positive freedom…nor do we measure so-called “claim freedoms,” which often become government-imposed attempts at realizing positive freedoms (e.g., the “right” or freedom to a have job or housing). …This index of freedom also does not incorporate measures of democracy or “political freedom.” …Democracy may be more consistent than other forms of government at safeguarding freedom, but it is not freedom, nor does it necessarily guarantee freedom. …We combine economic freedom measures from the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index with measures of what we somewhat imprecisely call civil or personal freedoms. The economic freedom index and the personal freedom index we devise each receive half the weight in the overall index.
Here are some additional details on the personal freedom score.
For the personal freedom sub-index, we use 34 variables covering 123 countries… The index is divided into four categories: 1) Security and Safety; 2) Freedom of Movement; 3) Freedom of Expression; and 4) Relationship Freedoms. …We have tried to capture the degree to which people are free to enjoy the major civil liberties—freedom of speech, religion, and association and assembly—in each country in our survey. In addition, we include indicators of crime and violence, freedom of movement, and legal discrimination against homosexuals.
So how do nations compare with this system?
New Zealand is the nation with the most freedom, followed by the Netherlands and Hong Kong. The United States is #7
By the way, if you’re wondering about places to avoid on your next overseas vacation, Zimbabwe is in last place, followed by Burma and Pakistan.
And if you want to maximize your personal liberty, but aren’t as concerned about economic liberty, the top nations are the Netherlands (9.5), Uruguay (9.4), and Norway/Japan/New Zealand (9.2).
If you want to experiment with a life of very limited personal liberty, your “best” choices are Pakistan (3.1), Zimbabwe (3.2), Sri Lanka (3.4), and Iran (3.6).
Last but not least, here’s the video I narrated from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity that explains in more detail the economic-freedom component of the Freedom Index.
Hmmm…more growth and prosperity with free markets and small government. Such a novel concept!
[…] to know the world’s freest nation, the best option is to peruse the Human Freedom Index. First released in 2013, it combines economic freedom and personal […]
[…] referred to in the literature as “negative liberty,” which is just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual.” Statists, by contrast, believe in “positive liberty.” This means that you have a […]
[…] Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”? […]
[…] Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”? […]
[…] Libertarians, along with many conservatives, believe in the right to be left alone and not molested by government. This is sometimes referred to in the literature as “negative liberty,” which is just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual.” […]
[…] Libertarians, along with many conservatives, believe in the right to be left alone and not molested by government. This is sometimes referred to in the literature as “negative liberty,” which is just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual.” […]
While I find these results interesting, if you look at the report some of their criteria are highly debatable. Of course any index like this is inherently subjective, but I find some of their decisions quite curious.
This index penalizes countries for having large numbers of refugees, for being at war, and for having high crime rates. While I think we all agree that war and crime waves are undesirable things, it is not clear what these things have to do with freedom. Yes, governments sometimes restrict freedoms in war time, but not necessarily. Why not measure the thing you claim to be measuring rather than things that might possibly affect the thing you claim to be measuring?
The authors agonize over whether a religion being unpopular but not officially restricted should be considered a minus on freedom. That is, if there is strong social pressure to belong to one religion versus another, is that a lack of freedom, or an exercise of freedom of expression? Fair enough. But then they count “dress codes” as a restriction of freedom, which they explain means things like the social pressure in Muslim countries for women to wear veils. So if Muslims beat up people of other religions and burn down their homes and places of worship (as happens in many Muslim-dominated countries), that’s a debatable case. But if Muslim women freely practice the standards of dress of their religion and thus create social pressure on those who would like to do otherwise, that’s a clear violation of freedom. Sorry, no.
If a society traditionally gives fathers more authority over how children are raised than mothers, they count this as a minus on freedom. They say that they rate countries not just by laws that force a standard, but by “social custom”. So if they took a poll and a majority said that fathers should have more responsibility for raising children, even if the poll was completely free and fair, they would rate that country less free because of the outcome of this poll. Well, people have many different ideas on the best way to raise children. It is not at all clear to me how the allocation of responsibility between father and mother is a freedom issue.
Their measure of personal freedom is based on 34 variables. Of the 34, 4 are acceptance of homosexuality. They break it out into acceptance of male-male, acceptance of female-female, age of consent for homosexual relationships, and adoption by homosexuals. Freedom of religion shows up in two factors. Freedom of assembly and association is one. So acceptance of homosexuality is over 10% of any country’s score. Gay rights is twice as important as freedom of religion and four times as important as freedom of assembly. That’s absurd.
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@PaulT: Ah, another obtuse Rothbardian anarchist regurgitating more obsolete, adolescent anarcho-capitalist garbage. Look, you may not like the state, and I’m sure we all have a bone to pick with it, but that doesn’t mean it has to be junked.
Fact is, no one is buying what you’re selling (which, by the way, you’re not selling very well–though even if you did sell it better, you’d still have no customers.) It’s a dead end, a place fit only for immature teenagers who stomp their feet about how much they hate the government, but haven’t yet grown up to recognize how the world really works.
Naturally, since Cato is more minarchist (or even classical liberal) than anarchist, and is an antagonist of the Mises Institute (inhabited by a bunch of Rothbardian anarchists who don’t know the first thing about Ludwig von Mises) you lash out at them, but they’re doing a far better job of articulating liberty than you ever will. Maybe you should calm down and listen to them more.
Grow up. Learn how to write English (if it is your second language, I apologize if I came off a bit rude.) And recognize the political and social realities that we live in.
Dan, brilliant article, well done.
@PaulT. Dick’s observation of “obtuse” is the right word for your ramblings. You need to take a leaf out of Dan’s book and both precis as well as edit what you say to improve comprehension. In the words of that brilliant lapel badge: Eschew obfuscation!
Lastly, you seem to have a problem with both Cato and Dan. Do you disagree with their consistent message of economic and personal liberty? Or some other issue? Please restrict your answer to max hundred words, thanks.
Paul T.
I have a lot of time on my hands, but not even I have the time to render what you wrote coherent. I allowed for the possibility that I might not understand due to my own limitations.
I don’t normally go around insulting people; well except Dan and he pays me extra for that. I just couldn’t make sense of what you wrote.
Paut T, That’s because everything you wrote is so obtuse it is impossible to cognitively object.
Dick Richards and Katherine, neither of you has a cognitive objection to anything that I wrote, and this situation is what a reasonable person expects of any given conservative “troll”.
By the by, I have a photo of the program from the 1943 NFL championship. I took it myself just this fall at the site indicated earlier. It gives December 26, 1943, as the date of the game and proudly proclaims the “WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP GAME” of “THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. Only the drawing superimposed on the stripes suggests that the NFL was trying to be funny. A bear is tackling an Indian, and the ball is falling freely in front of the Indian. But there’s more. The Indian looks a lot like a white guy with rouge on his cheeks, although he does have a prominent, rounded nose. Could it be that the drawing was a crude, deliberate jab at the Jews? Or an unintentional one that suggests nonetheless something ironic about the role of Jews in American imperialism both at the time and during the coming decades?
Anyhow, since that time none of the NFL’s humility or globalism has abated. So maybe the NFL, too, needs to be turned upside down. If we do so we might find more evidence than is already known about the NFL being a useful crony capitalism racket for conservatives, both leftwing and right.
I hadn’t put Paul T. under the category of troll, but I may have been mistaken.
What baffles me endlessly is the connection between freedom and prosperity and central planning and poverty is/should be so well known that tbtb stop trying this foolish “experiment”.
And now they’re floating talk about giving Mr. Obama a shot at a third term. Yeah, ‘cus the thirties were so much fun, we want to do that again.
Paul T, forgive me, but I know not of what you speak, and it sounds like you don’t either. Your diatribe reads like the inane ramblings of an over-educated underachieving liberal intent on simply demonstrating his superiority. Fail.
(1) “And since they’re both sensible people, their definition of personal liberty is VERY sound – i.e., the freedom to be left alone and not harassed, persecuted, or annoyed by government.”
Except that Dan believes that everyone is necessarily obligated to support limited government, as through the payment of taxes. Submission, too, is expected, and if you don’t like Federalist submission, you can emigrate. Recall, now, that Dan has made clear his motive (i.e. inordinate desire) for using government as a tool to coerce other people to provide Dan with goods and services that he wants. Dan, you see, just can’t think of a better way to obtain those things. Of course, Dan’s desires require no market test. Further, Dan is entitled to get what he wants, and this is what you should expect to be true of someone with his upbringing.
(2) “but it [Democracy] is not freedom”.
Does not the phrase assume that the word democracy is a synonym for electoral politics? I think so, what then do you call a system of self-rule that must exist prior to any such system and which must be the foundation of a system of electoral politics? The term is not ‘republic’.
(3) The message of “personal liberty” is coming through loudly and clearly. So is the hypocrisy. Fyi, Dan’s Caplan score is likely still well below the theoretical perfect score.
(4) Cato would do the world a favor by lapsing into despair once again, and I like to imagine that suicide, in a figurative sense, is what Rothbard had in mind when he suggested Cato’s name. I don’t know exactly what his motives for choosing “Cato” were, but it seems likely that Rothbard was familiar with Cato the Younger’s naivete. So let’s imagine a number of Cato Institute’s scholars going rogue for democracy, in the proper sense of the word. Then the rogues attack the dirty hands that once fed them.
(5) Rothbard deserves to have another laugh at the expense of Cato and the Kochtopus. Do we have in Dan Mitchell the potential to be the foil of Rothbard’s next laugh? ‘Tis likely, I think. And have we in Dan potential to elicit that laugh? Seems unlikely. He doesn’t even have the courage to embarrass readers who think Midas’ touch was a blessing.
(6) Americans who oppose Federalism need a new flag that evokes traditions and values that deserve a little respect but which by the new flag’s contrast with Old Glory suggests radically altered expectations about the proper spheres of governance and commerce. The contrast of new with old will be useful also for stimulating discussions about taxation, defense, government borrowing, nationalized money, and governmental banking cartels.
So, imagine Old Glory with its blue field cleansed of the stars and with that field extended the entire distance of the hoist. Now the blue field spans all 13 stripes. Next, reduce the blue field to 1/3 the length of the flag.
The cover of the official program for the 1943 NFL championship is similiar, although it has unneeded clutter in the blue field. (The Chicago Bears beat the Washington Redskins at Wrigley Field. That program cost just $0.15, and a copy of the program can be viewed at the Chicago History Museum.) The new flag will not be useful for signaling distress, so anyone who needs a distress signal can buy a copy of Old Glory and display it in the usual manner, i.e. upside down.
Union Pacific Railroad, you need to find a new logo. And you had better give up any dream of government sponsorship or subsidy.
(7) A political rebellion against republican collectivism and its particular expression in the USA needs a fitting motto. I suggest ‘Out of One, Many’.
Fyi, beware of interpreting “pluribus” as ‘many’. In Latin, pluribus is not a positive but a comparative, so the popular explanation of e pluribus unum is nonsense. A correct translation is ‘out of more, one’, and Federalism could be summed up fairly with the mocking phrase, ‘e pluribus pluribusque unum’ which means ‘out of more and more one’.
Where is Singapore?