Economic And Political Freedom

I stumbled across a website today that is just too cool. NationMaster is a central data source that graphically compares nations using statistics on just about everything. Bookmark it now and have fun playing around with it.

Here's a chart correlating life expectancy and economic freedom. This might be a handy reference the next time some "charitable" politician (say, maybe Hillary in a couple years) starts yapping away about the viability of nationalized health care.

I've only begun to fool around with the statistics here, but I thought this page was even better. It simply lists countries by economic freedom. Interestingly, the U.S. ranks seventh. But what's even more interesting is that you can read bottom up for a good indication of how economic freedom directly correlates to political freedom. It's no coincidence that North Korea - currently the world's most brutal and repressive regime - ranks last.

Here's one of my favorite passages from Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom:

Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Clearly political and economic freedom are not mutually exclusive concepts. But here's an interesting question: Why does Friedman say that economic freedom is a means to the end of political freedom, and not the other way around?

Political freedom originates with the state. In the early 20th century Fascist Italy and Fascist Spain were hardly politically free societies, yet in both countries capitalism was the primary economic arrangement. On the other hand, economic freedom originates with the individual. A nation that grants its people the right to vote - that operates essentially as a democracy - can nevertheless continually centralize its economy to the point where its citizens eventually become wards of the state.

By definition, economic freedom ensures that each individual can pursue his preferred occupation absent limitations imposed by the state, where one becomes most politically free and therefore achieves maximum total freedom.