By Alejandro Antonio Chafuen
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at Forbes.com.
“If it matters, measure it” is the motto of the Fraser Institute,
the leading Canadian think tank, where I have been a trustee since
1991. More than a motto, the focus on measurement permeates and guides
all the work of the institute. As few things matter more than freedom, it is only fitting that Fraser has embarked in its most ambitious methodological effort: measuring human freedom.
Fraser was a pioneer in the elaboration
of economic freedom indices. Its first index was produced in 1996. A
newly released book, produced in collaboration with the Liberales
Institut of Germany, is cautiously titled: “Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom.” All the chapters in this book (almost 300 pages) deserve careful study by those interested in human liberty.
Before releasing the first edition of
its economic freedom index, Fraser ran a series of symposia to discuss
the possibility and nuances of measuring economic freedom. They involved
Nobel Laureates, such as Milton Friedman
and Gary Becker, and other economic experts. To my knowledge, no such
lengthy debates preceded the production of this index. Most of the
authors, however, have an extensive career focusing on economic freedom.
This new book is enabling many of those
who have devoted their life to the study and promotion of freedom to
engage in the debate of how to measure a more elaborate concept. Ian
Vasquez and Tanja Stumberger, who prepared the statistics, write “Our
hope is that the current paper will stimulate a more focused discussion
about the suitability of the data and about a sensible approach to their
use.” I offer my comments below:
Human freedom, in Fraser’s methodology,
encompasses personal as well as economic freedoms. I define political
economic freedom as “the right of adults to try to use what they own as
they please.” This definition fits very well with Fraser’s measurements
of economic freedom. There is another freedom which also motivates human
beings. It has more to do with the spirit than with economics. In the
Christian tradition this concept was expressed beautifully and simply in
the Gospels: “Know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John
8:32). Those who focus on politics and economics sometimes shun this
concept, “so defined, one can be free in a jail.” Correct! It is a
legitimate choice to prefer to die in a jail for an unjust cause, with
the freedom of knowing that one has a clean spirit, than dying as a
slave of addictions surrounded by material riches. Those who choose to
drug themselves might be exercising their economic freedom by going to
the top of a skyscraper and jumping to their death while shouting, “Look
how free I am!” However, calling this action an example of personal
freedom seems a misnomer.
It is not surprising to see New
Zealand, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong at the top of this ranking. The
countries scoring worse will not alarm anyone either: Myanmar (was
Burma) and Pakistan. It is when we look at specific cases and regions
where some of the results cause surprise. Singapore, for example, which
ranks in at number two in economic freedoms, falls to number 39 in human
freedom, behind El Salvador and even Albania. Argentina, a country that
has squandered countless riches by restricting economic liberties,
improves from number 94 in economic freedom to 56 in human freedom.
Checking the region that I know best,
Latin America, we see the index coming with logical winners and losers,
with Chile as the champion and Venezuela as the worst. But Venezuela
appears as the nation in the Americas which improved the most during the
period of the study (2002-’08). If we remove Venezuela as an extreme
case, and we make a statistical correlation of all the other countries
in Latin America, this preliminary data set shows a very low correlation
between personal and economic freedom. Countries with low level of
economic freedom, like Argentina and Brazil, appear to have high
personal freedoms.
Future versions of this index might
want to consider that often legal remedies for discrimination against
minorities, as for homosexuals, which are given special focus in this
study, go hand in hand with restrictions on free association and free
speech for religious and other organizations. This has happened in
Brazil, and people fear it is happening in the United States as well.
Michael E. Walker and Fred McMahon, the two outstanding economists who
led this effort at Fraser, deserve much credit for launching the most
serious effort to date to measure what matters, and giving us so much
material to ponder.
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