Every year CATO researchers determine the level of freedom in each nation, by objective criteria. Here is the newest list. It shows that the twelve freest countries, in order, are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, Estonia, Sweden, Iceland, Luxembourg, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, and Taiwan.
All twelve of these countries use proportional representation. Canada, number 13 on the list, does not use proportional representation.
Their list is faulty to say the least.
FAKE NEWS
FOREIGN P.R. SYSTEMS — CLOSER TO INDIRECT MAJORITY RULE = DEMOCRACY
USA / UK / CANADA / INDIA —
ROTTED ANTI-DEMOCRACY MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDER REGIMES.
1/2 OR LESS VOTES X 1/2 G DISTS = 1/4 OR LESS = OLIGARCHY WITH TYRANT HACK BOSSES — PREZS / PMS / ETC
—
PR
APPV
TOTSOP
I am guessing neither White nor Bill read the CATO Report, which explains the methodology. If you disagree with the report, why? What is wrong with it?
Richard
Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.
What’s wrong with it?
The results, ipso facto. There’s limited value in examining methodology when results are so clearly off. That’s not to say there is none, but time and effort all have opportunity costs.
Many of the countries mentioned have very high taxes and regulations, surveillance of their citizens, and nitpicking interference in their personal and economic lives. All this despite having their defense heavily subsidized by US Taxpayers through NATO.
I’d venture CATO probably considers flooding of a country by uncontrolled numbers of hostile aliens, including terrorists and jihadis bent on a global caliphate, population replacement, and all manner of gangs and cartels having free rein to move people, goods and “services” across borders freely to be a positive indicator of freedom.
I doubt the free exercise of the people’s right to form militias and defend themselves against incipient tyranny enters their calculations.
If they count an unborn baby’s right to life at all, it’s probably in some negative sense.
Without a doubt, a key “freedom” in their estimates must be destroying one’s mind and body with poisons, as well as freely spreading them to more people, especially kids, as invariably happens when the laws against adult possession, manufacture, distribution etc of such poisons are not strict and/or not strictly enforced.
There’s little doubt they hold the same notion of freedom when it comes to activities which spread venereal disease, various infectious plagues brought in by population replacement from third world sources, or mental poisons such as pornography, tik tok, et c.
If they have any notion of religious liberty, it’s doubtful it extends to faithful Christians.
We can keep going and going and going,but there’s that opportunity cost of time and effort thing I mentioned earlier.
I’m going to bet every penny I have that the more rights criminal defendant’s and even convicted criminals have , and the more lenient the punishment of convicted criminals, the more “free” these catonians deem a country to be. It’s doubtful the freedom to live free of crime and free of fear of being victimized, as well as without its direct and indirect economic and emotional impacts, enters the calculation.
Is easy and commonplace welfare dependency from cradle to grave, frequently spanning multiple generations, a freedom, human right, mark of advanced social evolution…or perhaps a moral hazard, incentive to shirk work and betterment of self and family, poor example for children and peers, disincentive for those shouldering the burden, ultimately a lure to stop doing so and join the ranks of the takers, misallocation of resources job creators could put to better use, etc?
Maybe it’s just of no consequence at all?
I’m sort of a single issue guy sometimes, but in my opinion, any country that uses slave labor (conscription), like Switzerland, Denmark, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Taiwan, should rank near the bottom of any freedom list.
I’m 100% for proportional representations in the USA. A two major party tyranny is no good.
Proportional Representation elects commies and makes it easier to cheat while removing direct responsibility from one individual representative to their constituents, making it easier to pass the buck .
It hardly seems fair to put the burden of proof on critics to read a 433 page report to discover errors of methodology when the results are so clearly out of whack. By their fruits ye shall know them.
Some of the 12 were among the worst covid paranoia Fauscist regimes.
Most of the 12, and certainly 13, are not huge on freedom of speech/expression, press, assembly, or electoral participation for politically incorrect viewpoints.
FATAL PARL SYSTEMS IN HOW MANY OF THE 12 ???
SAME PERSONS HAVING LEGIS AND EXEC POWERS.
ANY ALSO WITH JUDIC POWERS = TYRANTS BY DEFINITION
Separation of powers within government doesn’t work when all branches of government begin to work in concert continuously to increase the funding, power, scope, complexity, staffing etc of government via a vis anything and any one not in government. The more significant separation of powers is between government and institutions outside government, and between the appetites of government and voters versus intentional impediments to them making immediate or drastic changes of any kind ever.
Interesting Richard Winger considers heavily regulated communist nations as “freedom”
At least they say that “human freedom deteriorated severely in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic”.
The US is not far down the list.
I heard that Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, did not censor Russian state media after the Ukraine invasion, while the EU did.
What is Russian state media? The definition is quite porous if you ask western sources
There is actual Russian state media , much like the western equivalents – BBC, NPR, Voice of America, etc.
Then there are mostly privately owned Russian based media outlets of all sorts with various levels of nominal or de facto government ownership and various levels of government connection among the various private owners.
Then you have media which may or may not be actually based in Russia and may or may not primarily publish or broadcast or post in the Russian language, but which reflects a wholly or largely pro-Russian viewpoint, uses the first and second types of media mentioned above as sources of information largely uncritically and without pejorative labels, uses Russian government spokespeople and other pro Russian sources as sources of information without derogatory framing, etc.
An exactly similar hierarchy of second and third level “state media” exists in the US, EU, NATO and other allies (ANZUS, etc).
Despite what you might think if you don’t consume a variety of media from a variety of nonwestern viewpoints regularly, most major mainstream US, European, British, Canadian, Australian etc media is “state media” in the same sense as various not explicitly Russian State Media outlets are described as “Russian state media” by governments and media outlets which are hostile to Russia.
That is, large shares of their ownership are by governments and government connected entities; other shares are by government contractors, covertly government owned or connected entities etc ; their private owners have various other interests which depends on government favor ; there could be explicit or implicit threats to their continued licensing, and certainly to various sources of otherwise explicitly or implicitly government connected advertising, distribution, access to government or government connected sources etc if they don’t take their government’s propaganda line on various subjects; they treat government and government connected sources of their own and allied nations without derogatory framing, but those of governments they don’t like such as Russia with derogatory framing.
I’m going to guess that the EEWWWW (“EU”) used and still uses a very expansive definition of “Russian state media” as far as their state censorship goes. I’m going to also guess the UK, although supposedly Brexited, probably does too, as do most primarily English speaking countries – the US is probably relatively good compared to the others in this regard.
In general, the EEEWWWWWW is a gigantic supernosy, ultra heavily laden with taxes and red tape blob of pure evil, as is the mostly but not entirely overlapping NATO and other US alliances like ANZUS, or whatever took its place ETC.
These nations are heavily militarily and otherwise subsidised by US Taxpayers, which probably makes them more “free” and the US relatively “less free” in CATO and other similar ratings.
They largely don’t have a high regard for forms of religious liberty, free speech, free press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly et. C if those take a form that’s not woke or politically correct, with censorship of “Russian state media” being just one of many examples.
They are among the nations which were and in some cases still are most totalitarian in their overreaction to covid. New Zealand, #2 on the above list is particularly notorious in that regard, but several others in the top 12 or 13 are not far behind.
It’s hard to imagine how any EEWWWW-NATO member nation, particularly one which is a member of both, could possibly be among the world’s freest.
Whatever is wrong with CATO methodology to suggest otherwise must be very seriously wrong. I’m not going to wade through 433 pages to figure out exactly what that is.
Fred,
You’re basically right, but even giving Mr. Winger every possible benefit of the doubt –
His putting the burden of proof on those who disagree with the quite evidently erroneous conclusions of the CATO report to study its 433 pages and identify errors in methodology is backwards.
Their conclusions are garbage. Thus, there’s evidently a slew of serious error on their selection and weighing of factors to evaluate. It’s no more our burden to show exactly what that error or errors were than it is that of those who would defend such methodology and its results to prove that it wasn’t.
If anything, it’s the other way around.
Mr. Winger is taking the results of this study as a given in making further deductions for the purpose of his own article or point. Thus, when the study is disagreed with or questioned, he’s the one making the positive claim that it is valid.
Ergo, by the generally accepted rules of logical discourse, it’s his burden of proof that the study he relies on to make his point is in fact valid.
To take an example he’d probably be more apt to agree with :
Suppose source Y issued a 433 page report on alchemy, or astrology, or based on hollow/flat earth and terracentric planetary system / universe presumptions, etc, and suppose that William Ringer wrote an article or blog post making further deductions from that study.
Mr. Winger might then comment that the study is obviously erroneous due to its obviously erroneous results. Our hypothetical Mr. Ringer would then rejoin, “I bet you haven’t read those 433 pages, which explains its methodology. If you disagree with this report, explain what’s wrong with it and its methodology.”
I submit this would not be a reasonable request, or a reasonable way to put the burden of proof. Even if we find many volumes of scholarly foot noted studies and reports relying on hollow or flat earth presumptions, terracentric planet system and universe, etc, it would still be garbage in, garbage out. I think Mr. Winger would agree in the hypothetical example, or am I wrong?
On the other hand, simply observing that garbage comes out is sufficient to infer that garbage went in, or whatever went in was subjected to something which turned it into garbage, or quite likely both.
I’ll join Eddie Brown in wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, although those of us using the correct Orthodox calendar will be celebrating Christmas on January 7-8.
I thought Eddie Brown and Richard Winger were Jews, which would mean Hanukkah has already passed, Christmas isn’t a thing, and the new year occurs around September or thereabouts for them? Perhaps I was misinformed.
So what y’all smart folks is saying is
Freedom is as freedom does
?
I guess that might be one way to put it.
William Wallace (~1270-1305), Mel Gibson in Braveheart, the American Freedom Party, and Freedom Parties in countries like Austria, Holland, Denmark, Finland, South Africa, Canada, Switzerland, and Ukraine, and historically in the UK, Germany, Hungary, and Israel, and Harry Turtledove’s Jake Featherston are amo.g those who have more accurate notions of what freedom means than does the Cato Institute.
Have you ever thought about what would have happened if Superman landed in Germany or Austria?
CATO are swamp creatures
Benny, they’re the wrong kind of orange. Trump is a better orange.
My examples above (1:37) should have included the US House Freedom Caucus.
General God, in that fictional universe the left wing Nazis would have won, I reckon. But what would that have to do with this particular discussion? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
Did you mean General Zod?
Of course.
The Ukraine Nazi Satanist scum have betrayed and insulted the Orthodox faith which most of them lie and claim to still adhere to. They are moving Christmas to December 25, showing that they are lying about their religion.
White Men Can Trump,
Sorry, I thought so. I was just making sure.
WMCT mentioned some freedom parties which actually support freedom, including in some of the countries on the Cato swampster list of “free” countries. I wonder if anyone here has time and inclination to contact some of those for comment on the CATO list.
That would specifically be the freedom parties in Switzerland, Finland, Holland, Denmark, and Canada, I wonder what if anything they would say about these ratings. Maybe the American Freedom Party too.
@Gen Z,
Is the Julian Calendar more accurate than the Gregorian Calendar?
Isn’t Christmas in the Russian Orthodox Church on December 25?
No, January 7, public holiday January 8 this time. This is due to the difference between Gregorian and Julian. The Julian calendar is used in the Church, wherein today is 12 December. The Gregorian calendar is used in civil society, due to dirty rotten commies. Julian 25 December is Gregorian 7 January, and that is Christmas.
https://apnews.com/article/britain-democracy-protest-arrests-unwritten-constitution-616078b918e27d5098890be6f9967b14
TYRANTS IN UK CONS REGIME– GEE UK NOW LIKE AMERICAN COLONIES IN 1773-1776 ???
SEE MOVIE–
V FOR VENDETTA
Gregorian calendar comes from the western church, which has been apostate since the 11th century, hence the moral decline of the west today.
Moscow is the third Rome. The true papal and imperial Roman authority passed to Byzantium when the Western Empire fell. It passed to Moscow and the Russian Orthodox Church when the Ottomans conquered Byzantium and the Russian Empire rose.
Russia did not adopt the Gregorian apostasy for civil affairs until the anti Christ Bolsheviks. Gregorian calendar is the calendar of atheists, Bolsheviks, fascists, Luciferian libtards, apostates, heretics and moral reprobates the world over. Julian calendar is that of the righteous, glorious Orthodox.
Ukrainian Nazi Satanists adopting fake western “Christmas” shows them for what they really are. Next they will tell you Christmas is all about worshipping a pagan German tree god or maybe an orgy of consumerism and debt to Jewish bankers and financiers, or a Siberian pagan priest drinking the urine of reindeer which had eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms and “flying” with the help of the intoxicated reindeer? May be all three?
The Gregorian calendar abomination comes from antiPope Gregory Xiii (Ugo Boncompagni), a corrupt Italian degenerate in the 16th century who is the last Roman pope acknowledged to have fathered a child (an illegitimate bastard born of illegal and immoral fornication, much like AntiPope Boncompagni’s equally illegitimate, bastard, immoral calendar).
You’re so right! Countries like Russia, Hungary and Belarus are so much more free than Switzerland, New Zealand and Denmark!
Let’s all pray from now until Julian Christmas that Putin, Lukashenko, Trump and other wise, legitimate leaders restore the Julian calendar in civil matters as soon as possible!
Yes, but unironically.
I may be up for trying to contact some freedom parties in the “freest countries ” for comment. Anyone else care to try?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
YEAR LENGTH — 4 DECIMAL PLACES
NON-TROLL MORONS CAN LOOK UP EARTH ELLIPSE CURVE MATH
Woke pedos love woke pedo Luciferian illuminati calendar? Figures.
I’ll look up “liberty party” for different countries next.
This week isn’t great for me, or the first half of January at least, but interested in what Freedom and Liberty parties in the “freest countries” think of that.
If nobody else helps with that project, I’ll see if I can elicit comments from them after the Julian Calendar new year. We’re a bit busy preparing for that and Julian Calendar Christmas here.
Fair enough.
Scott Kohlhaas makes a very legitimate point regarding slave labor in these allegedly “free” countries.
Next time someone brings up the topic of human trafficking as a form of slavery, ask that person if they also oppose the human trafficking known as the Selective Service System.
Selective Slavery is a very mild form of human trafficking for the time being because the draft in the US hasn’t actually been used in about half a century.
The quasimandatory registration system is certainly irksome and morally wrong, but to my knowledge no one has been actually forced to serve in the US military, imprisoned or even prosecuted or fined for refusing to do so in decades. It’s much more of an issue in other countries, where national service, not just registration, is in fact currently mandatory and strictly enforced, such as Ukraine and Israel to take two of many examples.
On the list of single issues, at least certainly in the United States, it would be far down my list from existential questions like:
inciting world war,
population replacement,
forced integration,
forced secularization,
forced feminization/national emasculation / tranny tyranny / gender blender bender mental cancer,
gun confiscation,
race mixing,
Fabian communism,
globalism,
trade balance,
foreign espionage,
massive election fraud,
drowning in red tape,
government employee unions,
Welfare moral hazard,
Social(ist) workers,
censorship,
Infowars / persistent propaganda / fake news infotainment / brainwashing / miseducation,
loss of parental rights,
destruction of patriarchy and family values,
wide spread treason conspiracy,
artificial stupidity,
socialist media,
venereal disease and other foreigner borne plagues,
covid fascism,
Burgeoning pension debt,
Banksters,
Addictive poison trafficking,
Sex trafficking,
Porn and sex addiction…
I can keep going , but hopefully you get my meaning here.
In my spare time, I will browse through that report.
At first glance, all of the countries listed implemented lockdowns and mandates during the pandemic. I know there were many libertarians (many at CATO) who didn’t think that these were violations of individual liberty because they were justified by “science” and medicine.
Marxism was based on “science” as well…just sayin.
Sarwark supported mandates. Not sure if Richard Winger did too.
Scientism is the polar opposite of the scientific method. To the ignorant layman and dishonest scientist, it’s a particularly pernicious form of propaganda / religion / big lie / infowar / brainwashing / faith, because it comes wrapped in the false potemkin village wrapping / veneer of logic and science, which is again its polar opposite.
Covid and “climate change” are two prime examples.
Science always questions everything, including all past and present scientific consensus.
Scientism treats current scientific consensus or majority opinion as established fact and questioning or minority opinion as dangerous “denialism” which must be viciously and mandatorily suppressed.
The religion of scientism is totalitarian and dishonest and brutally hostile to dissent, much like communism, fascism, Islam, medieval Christianity, ultraorthodox Judaism, globalist Luciferianism, etc.
Never, ever confuse science and scientism and never follow the scientism. Spread the word!
Naturally, left “libertarians” follow the scientism. Thanks, Super Scientist and John!
Morning, big talk bros.
Anyone tried to get a hold of any liberty or freedom party in “freest country’s” yet?
P.s. If you did. Any replys. If so. Jist thereof?
I don’t need to think for myself, I let science think for me. That’s why I am fully vaxxed and boosted.
Scientism religion is opposite of science. That boils it down. Longer version above.
Did anyone follow up with the Freedom Parties in the “freest” countries?
Give me about another week and a half if nobody beats me to it.