In the past, I’ve referred to Switzerland as the world’s most sensible nation.
Does that make it also the world’s best nation?
I actually won’t try to answer that question, but we can say that Switzerland is the world’s most libertarian nation and a role model for others.
At least according to the Human Freedom Index, which ranks nations based on both economic and personal liberty.
Here are the 25 jurisdictions that lead the rankings.
For what it’s worth, Switzerland also was in first place the previous year.
New Zealand, which had been in first place in earlier years, still ranks very high. Estonia is in third place and several other European nations round out the top 10.
The United States, meanwhile, fell to #23, which is disappointing but predictable given the subpar politicians that have governed the nation this century.
But Hong Kong has suffered an even bigger fall. It’s now ranked #34, which is not good for a jurisdiction that used to lead the rankings as recently as 2016.
For those interested, here’s a description of how the Human Freedom Index is calculated, along with some of the grim findings.
The Human Freedom Index (HFI) presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraint. This eighth annual index uses 83 distinct indicators of personal and economic freedom… Human freedom deteriorated severely in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Most areas of freedom fell, including significant declines in the rule of law; freedom of movement, expression, association and assembly; and freedom to trade. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 represents more freedom, the average human freedom rating for 165 jurisdictions fell from 7.03 in 2019 to 6.81 in 2020. On the basis of that coverage, 94.3 percent of the world’s population saw a fall in human freedom from 2019 to 2020, with many more jurisdictions decreasing (148) than increasing (16) their ratings and 1 remaining unchanged. The sharp decline in freedom in 2020 comes after years of slow descent following a high point in 2007.
Here’s some additional analysis, most of it depressing.
The rating for France fell from 8.65 in 2007 to 7.8 in 2020, Brazil’s rating decreased from 7.61 to 6.86, the United States’ score dropped from 8.92 to 8.23, and Mexico’s rating fell from 7.27 to 6.6. … some countries that ranked high on personal freedom ranked significantly lower in economic freedom. For example, Sweden ranked 1st in personal freedom but fell to 33rd place in economic freedom, and Argentina ranked 29th in personal freedom but 161st in economic freedom. Similarly, some countries that ranked high in economic freedom found themselves significantly lower in personal freedom. For example, Singapore ranked 2nd in economic freedom while ranking 81st in personal freedom.
I’ll close by observing that Syria is the lowest-ranked nation, followed by Yemen, Venezuela, Iran, and Egypt.
P.S. Here are five more reasons to admire Switzerland.
International Liberty 
[…] nation with the least misery is Switzerland, which also happens to be the world’s most libertarian nation (needless to say, I don’t think that’s a […]
Switzerland may be hyped up remorselessly on this website as some kind of libertarian, low-tax paradise, but any resident foreigner will quickly became aware of a less appealing side to the country’s character – namely, its pervasive (and often petty-minded) social authoritarianism. I don’t think there’s anywhere else I’ve encountered where residents will shop you to the police for parking haphazardly (after leaving a passive-aggressive note on your windscreen), or where local by-laws prevent households from using kitchen appliances after 6pm or frying bacon on a Sunday. The curtain-twitching, Hyacinth Bucket mentality still seems to rule supreme among the Swiss, endowing their country with its legendary stability but enraging anyone with even an ounce of non-conformity. Frankly, these days I’d happily pay extra taxes not to have to live there!
(None of the details mentioned above are contemplated by those who construct “freedom” indices, of course, but all that highlights is how inherently limited such exercises are.)
SMApple
Maybe because they considered the Covid response to be an event too episodic to be taken into account
Describing New Zealand as being free after their behaviour during the Covid scare is clearly inaccurate.
Anyone can find videos online of Jacinda Arderne making the most appalling authoritarian statements. She ran the country as a de facto dictatorship.
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
[…] Is Switzerland the World’s Best Nation? — International Liberty […]
disappointing. discouraging.
Thanks, Dan! I think this post is spot on.
One interesting thing I would point out is that despite our good, but less than outstanding showing, people from really smart nations still want to come here.
Citizens of OECD nations are far more likely to move here than we are to move to their countries. This is a counting of people who lived in one country and moved to another, or what we sometimes call expats. You can see the data for yourself by Googling “Origins and Destinations of the World’s Migrants” where you will find a very user-friendly Pew Research map of the world that allows you to quickly see how many moved from country A to country B and vice-versa (their most recent data is from 2017).
Taking into account the populations of each country you discover some rather startling ratios. Australians, for example, are ten times more likely to move here than we are to move to Australia. And that’s the lowest ratio to be found. Germans and French are nineteen times as likely to move here as we are to move to Germany or France. And just a few other examples: the Canadians twenty-five times as likely to make the switch, the Swiss forty times as likely, the Swedes eighty-three times as likely, and Norwegians ninety-five times as likely to make the switch. Even though this data is six years old, the passage of six years of time is not going to overturn these rather staggering ratios. What makes these smart people from highly educated countries want to move here?
After what we witnessed during the COVID fiasco, I’m actually shocked that ANYBODY would have the chutzpah to put New Zealand and Australia high on that list. That very fact makes the entire list suspect at the least. Gotta wonder what were the points of measurement.
Hi Dan,
I’m disappointed to see that, as usual, not all the countries are listed, especially the smaller ones. Considering their economic freedom, I expect that Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Curacao, and Andorra should be on the list, as well as The Cayman Islands, although technically the last is a “self-governing British Territory”. I wish that New Hampshire could be a “self-governing US territory”! I see that Singapore and Taiwan are listed, and highly rated, and I would disagree on the improved rating of Burma, called Myanmar herein, which is currently a dictatorship bombing its own citizens.
This is unbelievable. You think New Zealand has that much freedom ? Have you been living in a cave somewhere the last three and a half years ? New Zealand’s lockdowns were/are horrific.