4 ms·

Freedom in the Fifty States - An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

29 points by wrrice 15y ago

Aloisius 15y ago
Clearly South Dakota and they should be killing it economically and culturally and yet shockingly, this is not the case.
- amock 15y ago
  South Dakota has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and during my few visits to the state I didn't find any problems with the culture there. Why do you think it isn't doing well culturally and economically?
  - Aloisius 15y ago
    It is in the bottom 50% of GDP per capita in the United States (26th). If economic or personal freedom were any indicators of success, I'd expect it to at least be better than average (it is quite a bit below, $47,275/person for the whole US and $37,375 for South Dakota).
    - hugh3 15y ago
      There's a loose correlation between freedom and economic/cultural attainment. It works on large scales and explains the difference between, say, the United States and North Korea. On smaller scales though, such as comparing different states within the US, other things tend to dominate -- in particular the presence of big cities, which are positively correlated with economic and cultural attainment and negatively correlated with freedom. Honestly, if this graph were the best case we have for the proposition that freedom is nice then it'd be a pretty weak case.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - michaelcampbell 15y ago
      How does its GDP/capita relate to cost of living/capita?
mw63214 15y ago
Thanks for posting this. I may be able to tie it into something I've been thinking about lately. Here's a link to my previous post. May seem like it's off-topic, but to me it's dead-on. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625009
asolove 15y ago
This is a very interesting report. I would add one anecdotal piece of information: having lived and visited all around the US, the places I would consider living permanently (California, Washington, New Mexico, Maryland, New York) all rank as significantly less free than their neighbors. I have no idea what this means.
- bhousel 15y ago
  It probably means that most people can't handle too much freedom.
- Steko 15y ago
  This is not a freedom index. This is a freedom from government index. Apparently it's cool if you're oppressed by your neighbor playing loud music all night or the company upstream dumping toxic waste into your water supply but we've stepped over the line if the government steps in and tries to actually price negative externalities like you know Hayek[1] and Friedman[2] endorsed. [1] http://businesspublicpolicy.com/?p=1186 http://businesspublicpolicy.com/?p=1186 [2] http://www.angrybearblog.com/2007/10/friedman-externalities-and-difference.html http://www.angrybearblog.com/2007/10/friedman-externalities-...
  - drewcrawford 15y ago
    All freedom can be understood in terms of the authority that is displaced [1]. The net amount of liberty, strictly measured, is always conserved [2]. Individual freedom is a restriction upon xenophobic groups; economic freedom shifts the needle in favor of those with the capital; emancipation grants rights to slaves and strips them from slaveowners. The water flows the other way too: you can talk about the "freedom" of Kim Jong Il or Stalin to murder their own people. The entire political discourse in this country (and, to some extent, HN) will be frozen until we can move past merely reciting mechanically that helping one group comes at the expense of hurting some other group. If we put half as much energy into either throughly examining the moral underpinnings of which groups should be elevated or abased[3], or empirically studying the possible utilitarian effects of this[4] as we spend reciting talking points at each other, we would have a great many of the world's problems already solved. [1] Understand that I'm trying to be morally neutral here, "freedom" and "authority" are being used descriptively, not prescriptively. Obviously a great many of us have strong opinions that slavery is bad, etc. [2] By this I mean in any individual exchange, you are taking freedom from one group and are assigning an equal amount of freedom to another group. Human perception can differ a great deal: punishing a murderer has an enormous negative burden upon an individual, but it has an equal and opposite impact to society at large, albeit amortized over a great number of people. This can be hard to see in some cases. Also, I am not claiming that a policy in the long run cannot raise all ships; that is a function of tenth-order consequences, and I (and the parent) are talking about first-order ones. [3] And by this I mean: is it right to take something from this group and give it to this other group? Under what circumstances? Is inequality bad? Is it bad in proportion to the amount of inequality? Is it still bad if everyone has a sufficient floor of resources that meets their basic needs? These are interesting questions; our current political discourse is not. [4] And by this I mean: What are some local maxima and non-local maxima for economic output as a function of regulation? If we plot creative output as a function of IP law, what will the graph look like? Can we do empirical studies to confirm or refute the underlying basis for legislation (controlling phenylephrine reducing methamphetamine production, for example)? These are elevating questions that inspire us to learn about our world. We are nowhere close to having this kind of conversation.
russell 15y ago
No thanks. CA is 48th. They can keep their definition of freedom. I appreciate the no smoking bans and the gun control laws and short term disability (which I had to use this year). They dinged the labor laws, but in CA you can move from job to job without being sued for a non-compete clause. If we are so unfree, how come we have Silicon Valley. This is off topic in the worst way.
- te_chris 15y ago
  I read their state summary of Cali and their "solutions" were just weird. They prescribed to just out-right cut spending, without specifying anything in particular, just the typical "cut spending". Also, gun control being a limit to freedom? What a strange way to view the world. Politics presented as research are not useful for anyone really.
spenrose 15y ago
See http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/06/12/243047/a-followup-on-the-mercatus-freedom-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/06/12/243047/a-follow... . "The Mercatus Institute’s freedom score was significantly linked to (by state)- lower educational attainment (measured by percent of Bachelor degrees or higher), lower population density, lower per capita GDP, increased infant mortality, increased accident mortality, increased incidence of suicide, increased firearm mortality, decreased industrial R&D, and increased income inequality."
- driverdan 15y ago
  So? Correlation is not causation. The publication has nothing to do with quality of life or income and everything to do with freedom. Another study investigating the link between the two would be interesting but is a non sequitur here.
  - nickff 15y ago
    It may also be interesting to study whether freedom is a leading (or lagging) indicator of prosperity, as it is likely that laws have a gradual impact, not an immediate one.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- reedlaw 15y ago
  While some of those correlations make sense (lower population density means less stepping on each other's toes, hence less need to regulate), others may not be so telling. Consider Hong Kong, the top rated city-state of the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, and one of the most densely populated places on earth. It would turn most of these supposed correlations upside down.
- uvdiv 15y ago
  Also, tornados.
nowarninglabel 15y ago
If you don't want to read the whole thing, basically in the authors' viewpoints: smoking, motorist, mandatory health care, and gun laws lead to a state being less free. To make states more free, get rid of any such laws. If you don't agree with how the authors measure freedom, then you probably won't agree with the conclusions they came to (I certainly don't).
- leot 15y ago
  Lack of money also restricts freedom considerably, but this is apparently irrelevant.
- driverdan 15y ago
  It's impossible to take into account every law. Many of those issues impact personal freedom. Government regulation of personal freedom is a fine gauge for overall freedom. How would you have done it? What issues would you have selected?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Steko 15y ago
    "Government regulation of personal freedom is a fine gauge for overall freedom." Some of us disagree. "How would you have done it? What issues would you have selected?" The most important things I would look at are education outcomes of the first and second quartile (of household income) and the diversity of employment available. I would also look at pollution levels, highway fatality rates, incarceration rates, certain crime rates, certain disease rates, services received for those dreaded taxes, entertainment and cuisine options, we could go on... Big towns don't become cities and cities don't become big cities and big cities don't turn into metropolii through coercion. They're big because people run away from South Dakota and never go back. Freely.
    - gwright 15y ago
      You seem to be listing a variety of quality of life issues, which I don't think is quite the same as 'freedom'. I'm not suggesting that it wouldn't be worthwhile to investigate those issues, just that it seems to be a different focus than the linked report. Your focus would seem to compliment rather than refute the goals of that report.
techiferous 15y ago
Want 100% freedom? Move to an uninhabited area and live by yourself. I think it goes without saying that when you have relationships with people, you give up a little bit of your own freedom. It's not surprising that areas with higher population density are scored as having "less freedom".
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

29 points by wrrice 15y ago

Clearly South Dakota and they should be killing it economically and culturally and yet shockingly, this is not the case.

amock 15y ago
South Dakota has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and during my few visits to the state I didn't find any problems with the culture there. Why do you think it isn't doing well culturally and economically?
- Aloisius 15y ago
  It is in the bottom 50% of GDP per capita in the United States (26th). If economic or personal freedom were any indicators of success, I'd expect it to at least be better than average (it is quite a bit below, $47,275/person for the whole US and $37,375 for South Dakota).
  - hugh3 15y ago
    There's a loose correlation between freedom and economic/cultural attainment. It works on large scales and explains the difference between, say, the United States and North Korea. On smaller scales though, such as comparing different states within the US, other things tend to dominate -- in particular the presence of big cities, which are positively correlated with economic and cultural attainment and negatively correlated with freedom. Honestly, if this graph were the best case we have for the proposition that freedom is nice then it'd be a pretty weak case.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - michaelcampbell 15y ago
    How does its GDP/capita relate to cost of living/capita?

mw63214 15y ago

Thanks for posting this. I may be able to tie it into something I've been thinking about lately. Here's a link to my previous post. May seem like it's off-topic, but to me it's dead-on. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625009

asolove 15y ago

This is a very interesting report. I would add one anecdotal piece of information: having lived and visited all around the US, the places I would consider living permanently (California, Washington, New Mexico, Maryland, New York) all rank as significantly less free than their neighbors. I have no idea what this means.

bhousel 15y ago
It probably means that most people can't handle too much freedom.
Steko 15y ago
This is not a freedom index. This is a freedom from government index. Apparently it's cool if you're oppressed by your neighbor playing loud music all night or the company upstream dumping toxic waste into your water supply but we've stepped over the line if the government steps in and tries to actually price negative externalities like you know Hayek[1] and Friedman[2] endorsed. [1] http://businesspublicpolicy.com/?p=1186 http://businesspublicpolicy.com/?p=1186 [2] http://www.angrybearblog.com/2007/10/friedman-externalities-and-difference.html http://www.angrybearblog.com/2007/10/friedman-externalities-...
- drewcrawford 15y ago
  All freedom can be understood in terms of the authority that is displaced [1]. The net amount of liberty, strictly measured, is always conserved [2]. Individual freedom is a restriction upon xenophobic groups; economic freedom shifts the needle in favor of those with the capital; emancipation grants rights to slaves and strips them from slaveowners. The water flows the other way too: you can talk about the "freedom" of Kim Jong Il or Stalin to murder their own people. The entire political discourse in this country (and, to some extent, HN) will be frozen until we can move past merely reciting mechanically that helping one group comes at the expense of hurting some other group. If we put half as much energy into either throughly examining the moral underpinnings of which groups should be elevated or abased[3], or empirically studying the possible utilitarian effects of this[4] as we spend reciting talking points at each other, we would have a great many of the world's problems already solved. [1] Understand that I'm trying to be morally neutral here, "freedom" and "authority" are being used descriptively, not prescriptively. Obviously a great many of us have strong opinions that slavery is bad, etc. [2] By this I mean in any individual exchange, you are taking freedom from one group and are assigning an equal amount of freedom to another group. Human perception can differ a great deal: punishing a murderer has an enormous negative burden upon an individual, but it has an equal and opposite impact to society at large, albeit amortized over a great number of people. This can be hard to see in some cases. Also, I am not claiming that a policy in the long run cannot raise all ships; that is a function of tenth-order consequences, and I (and the parent) are talking about first-order ones. [3] And by this I mean: is it right to take something from this group and give it to this other group? Under what circumstances? Is inequality bad? Is it bad in proportion to the amount of inequality? Is it still bad if everyone has a sufficient floor of resources that meets their basic needs? These are interesting questions; our current political discourse is not. [4] And by this I mean: What are some local maxima and non-local maxima for economic output as a function of regulation? If we plot creative output as a function of IP law, what will the graph look like? Can we do empirical studies to confirm or refute the underlying basis for legislation (controlling phenylephrine reducing methamphetamine production, for example)? These are elevating questions that inspire us to learn about our world. We are nowhere close to having this kind of conversation.

russell 15y ago

No thanks. CA is 48th. They can keep their definition of freedom. I appreciate the no smoking bans and the gun control laws and short term disability (which I had to use this year). They dinged the labor laws, but in CA you can move from job to job without being sued for a non-compete clause. If we are so unfree, how come we have Silicon Valley. This is off topic in the worst way.

te_chris 15y ago
I read their state summary of Cali and their "solutions" were just weird. They prescribed to just out-right cut spending, without specifying anything in particular, just the typical "cut spending". Also, gun control being a limit to freedom? What a strange way to view the world. Politics presented as research are not useful for anyone really.

spenrose 15y ago

See http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/06/12/243047/a-followup-on-the-mercatus-freedom-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/06/12/243047/a-follow... . "The Mercatus Institute’s freedom score was significantly linked to (by state)- lower educational attainment (measured by percent of Bachelor degrees or higher), lower population density, lower per capita GDP, increased infant mortality, increased accident mortality, increased incidence of suicide, increased firearm mortality, decreased industrial R&D, and increased income inequality."

driverdan 15y ago
So? Correlation is not causation. The publication has nothing to do with quality of life or income and everything to do with freedom. Another study investigating the link between the two would be interesting but is a non sequitur here.
- nickff 15y ago
  It may also be interesting to study whether freedom is a leading (or lagging) indicator of prosperity, as it is likely that laws have a gradual impact, not an immediate one.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
reedlaw 15y ago
While some of those correlations make sense (lower population density means less stepping on each other's toes, hence less need to regulate), others may not be so telling. Consider Hong Kong, the top rated city-state of the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, and one of the most densely populated places on earth. It would turn most of these supposed correlations upside down.
uvdiv 15y ago
Also, tornados.

nowarninglabel 15y ago

If you don't want to read the whole thing, basically in the authors' viewpoints: smoking, motorist, mandatory health care, and gun laws lead to a state being less free. To make states more free, get rid of any such laws. If you don't agree with how the authors measure freedom, then you probably won't agree with the conclusions they came to (I certainly don't).

leot 15y ago
Lack of money also restricts freedom considerably, but this is apparently irrelevant.
driverdan 15y ago
It's impossible to take into account every law. Many of those issues impact personal freedom. Government regulation of personal freedom is a fine gauge for overall freedom. How would you have done it? What issues would you have selected?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Steko 15y ago
  "Government regulation of personal freedom is a fine gauge for overall freedom." Some of us disagree. "How would you have done it? What issues would you have selected?" The most important things I would look at are education outcomes of the first and second quartile (of household income) and the diversity of employment available. I would also look at pollution levels, highway fatality rates, incarceration rates, certain crime rates, certain disease rates, services received for those dreaded taxes, entertainment and cuisine options, we could go on... Big towns don't become cities and cities don't become big cities and big cities don't turn into metropolii through coercion. They're big because people run away from South Dakota and never go back. Freely.
  - gwright 15y ago
    You seem to be listing a variety of quality of life issues, which I don't think is quite the same as 'freedom'. I'm not suggesting that it wouldn't be worthwhile to investigate those issues, just that it seems to be a different focus than the linked report. Your focus would seem to compliment rather than refute the goals of that report.

techiferous 15y ago

Want 100% freedom? Move to an uninhabited area and live by yourself. I think it goes without saying that when you have relationships with people, you give up a little bit of your own freedom. It's not surprising that areas with higher population density are scored as having "less freedom".

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]