Their “economic freedom” index is a bit of weird one. If you look at their methodology section you’ll note they simply do not care that much about who exactly owns the industries, or at least it’s not weighted particularly significantly, as long as it is possible to invest in the country and that property is protected.
If you, in theory, had a country where 99% of the economy was controlled by the government but there was nothing stopping a capitalist building a factory or whatever there and trying to sell a better product that would presumably be a “free market” as far as the index is concerned.
The index doesn’t really care that much if the government does stuff, unlike your ancap types. It’s mostly weighted against regulation, sensible or otherwise.
Of course, one might note that some of their pillars are absolutely subjective measurements, and if you told me they put their fingers on the scales in favor of the whitest people alive that wouldn’t be particularly surprising.
I’ve read their methodology several times, the actual one on their page! It changes often! I used to defend them when I was a young libertarian lad, but even then I was frustrated by their subjectivity. They don’t even factor in government ownership of wealth.
Ben Burgis has a good takedown of both Heritage and Fraser’s “freedom” indices, the main point being that little of their methodology has to do with anything libertarians or socialists would argue about, and is instead heavily weighted around things like Integrity of the legal system and Impartial courts, and other metrics that aren’t unique indicators of a free market. Heritage will claim these as qualities for a healthy business atmosphere, but they bias the index toward functioning, high gdp-per-capita societies. I think that bias is intentional.
If you read the index and think “wow, all the most livable countries have high free market ratings” then it’s working as intended.
Ah, there’s the miscommunication.
https://www.heritage.org/index/pages/about
Their “economic freedom” index is a bit of weird one. If you look at their methodology section you’ll note they simply do not care that much about who exactly owns the industries, or at least it’s not weighted particularly significantly, as long as it is possible to invest in the country and that property is protected.
If you, in theory, had a country where 99% of the economy was controlled by the government but there was nothing stopping a capitalist building a factory or whatever there and trying to sell a better product that would presumably be a “free market” as far as the index is concerned.
The index doesn’t really care that much if the government does stuff, unlike your ancap types. It’s mostly weighted against regulation, sensible or otherwise.
Of course, one might note that some of their pillars are absolutely subjective measurements, and if you told me they put their fingers on the scales in favor of the whitest people alive that wouldn’t be particularly surprising.
I’ve read their methodology several times, the actual one on their page! It changes often! I used to defend them when I was a young libertarian lad, but even then I was frustrated by their subjectivity. They don’t even factor in government ownership of wealth.
Ben Burgis has a good takedown of both Heritage and Fraser’s “freedom” indices, the main point being that little of their methodology has to do with anything libertarians or socialists would argue about, and is instead heavily weighted around things like Integrity of the legal system and Impartial courts, and other metrics that aren’t unique indicators of a free market. Heritage will claim these as qualities for a healthy business atmosphere, but they bias the index toward functioning, high gdp-per-capita societies. I think that bias is intentional.
If you read the index and think “wow, all the most livable countries have high free market ratings” then it’s working as intended.