Bi-Weekly Discussion - Human Freedom & Social Progress Measured

Details

We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, not too far from our summer meeting spot in Washington Square Park. The cafe is near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

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HUMAN FREEDOM & SOCIAL PROGRESS MEASURED

INTRODUCTION:

This meetup will look at the idea of measuring the extent to which different countries are successful in pursuing various public policy goals. In the first three sections, we'll analyze the "Index of Economic Freedom", the "Human Freedom Index" and the "Social Progress Index" in that order. In the fourth section, we'll assess the foggy, multi-peaked "policy landscape" revealed by comparing various indices, and we'll look at arguments by some political philosophers which suggest that hunting for pragmatic, incremental improvements may be a better strategy than idealistic notions of revolutions that instantly solve all our problems.

Some of you may remember that our first meetup of 2017 (https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/235135044/) was devoted to the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" (IEF). The IEF measures "economic freedom" based on 12 (formerly 10) quantitative & qualitative factors, grouped into 4 broad categories, or pillars, of economic freedom: (1) Rule of Law: property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness; (2) Government Size: government spending, tax burden, fiscal health; (3) Regulatory Efficiency: business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom; (4) Open Markets: trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom. This meetup will only briefly review the IEF and various criticisms that have been made of it, but it's important to understand the free market policies it measures because it relates to the Fraser Institute's "Economic Freedom of the World" index (EFW) which is included in the "Human Freedom Index". The Fraser Institute's EFW appears like a condensed version of the IEF and has 5 factors: (1) size of government, (2) legal system & property rights, (3) monetary policy, (4) international trade policy, (5) regulation of credit, labor & business. The way in which the EFW measures these 5 factors differs a bit from the IEF, leading to slightly different country rankings. Notably, the EFW gives higher rankings to some oil-rich Arab states (UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait) than the IEF, at least until this year when they factored in women's economic freedom which pushed the rankings of all of these Arab states down.

The Heritage Foundation's 2017 IEF can be found here: http://www.heritage.org/index/

The Fraser Institute's 2017 EFW Index can be found here: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/economic-freedom-of-the-world-2017-annual-report and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom

The "Human Freedom Index" (HFI) is put together by several free market think tanks -- the Cato Institute in the US, the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Liberals Institut in Germany. The HFI is composed of 2 indices -- the Fraser Institute's "Economic Freedom of the World" index (EFW) and the Cato Institute’s own "Personal Freedom Index" (PFI). The PFI has 7 factors: (1) rule of law, (2) security & safety, (3) freedom of movement, (4) freedom of religion, (5) freedoms of association, assembly & civil society, (6) freedom of expression, (7) freedom of personal relationships. The HFI's 12 factors are in turn based on 79 empirical indicators.

To check out the 2016 Human Freedom Index, look here: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index

The "Social Progress Index" (SPI) can in a sense be considered the left-wing alternative to the "Human Freedom Index", although it focuses more on desirable policy outcomes rather than the policies that causes them. It's published annually by the non-profit Social Progress Initiative, and the ideas behind it come from the writings of 3 progressive economists: Amartya Sen, Douglass North & Joseph Stiglitz. The SPI measures 3 broad dimensions, each of which includes 4 components: (1) Basic Human Needs: nutrition & medical care, water & sanitation, shelter, personal safety; (2) Foundations of Well-being: access to knowledge, access to info & communications, health/wellness, environmental quality; (3) Opportunity: personal rights, personal freedom & choice, tolerance & inclusion, access to advanced education. The 12 components above are in turn composed of 3-5 specific outcome indicators, with a total of 54 indicators forming the empirical basis. As you can see, there's some considerable overlap between the freedoms listed in the "Opportunity" section of the SPI and those listed in the Cato Institute's PFI, and both indices look at safety & security as well.

To check out the 2017 Social Progress Index, look here: https://www.socialprogressindex.com/

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of the ways that indices try to measure economic freedom, personal freedom, and social progress. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles & watch all the videos prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just read the numbered videos linked under each section - this should take about 37 minutes total to get through. I know that's a lot, and if you can't watch all of the videos, don't worry - just watch as much as you can. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the 4 topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section. I've listed questions under each section which we'll do our best to address.

COMPARING HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S "INDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM" & THE FRASER INSTITUTE'S "ECONOMIC FREEDOM OF THE WORLD" INDEX: HOW CORRELATED ARE THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF "ECONOMIC FREEDOM"? IS THE CORRELATION BETWEEN HIGH GOVERNMENT SPENDING & GOOD SOCIAL INDICATORS CAUSITIVE OR MERELY A PRODUCT OF BLOAT CAUSED BY "WAGNER'S LAW"? CONSIDERING THAT MOST OF THE ADVANCED HIGH-TAX SOCIAL WELFARE STATES DON'T HAVE LOWER ECONOMIC GROWTH THAN THE U.S. BUT DO HAVE LOWER MEDIAN INCOME (ADJUSTED FOR PPP), SHOULD THEY BE PENALIZED MORE OR LESS ON ECONOMIC FREEDOM INDICES?

Antony Davies, "What's So Great About Economic Freedom?" (video - 4:24 min.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yqA6-ukmfg

We discussed the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" at length in our first meetup of 2017, so we'll just briefly review it here. I found some articles that critiqued the Index and provided my "Cliff Notes" summary (https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/50456708) of them in a series of posts in our meetup's message board. The basic takeaway from these articles was that while business conservatives & pragmatic libertarian policy wonks tend to like the IEF, anarchists & more radical libertarians tend to find the IEF way too tolerant of welfare statism & crony capitalism. More centrist & progressive critics of the IEF doubt that the IEF provides a truly workable model of "economic freedom" for large nations like the US that can't fill specialized roles in trade & banking like smaller developed countries like Singapore & Switzerland. They also suspect that certain aspects of "economic freedom" are harmful. For example, most progressives tend to think "labor freedom" (i.e. little labor regulation) & low government spending lead to worse outcomes for the average person, while other factors like "financial freedom" & "investment freedom" (i.e. low regulation of the financial sector) make an economy unstable. Nevertheless, some more business-friendly liberals & "liberal-tarians" have noted that the surprisingly high ranks of social democracies on the IEF should be taken as proof that the welfare state is compatible with free market capitalism and that the IEF more or less works once the penalties for high government spending & high taxes are removed.

Ryan Murphy, "A Comment on 'Measuring Economic Freedom: A Comparison of Two Major Sources'" (article)

http://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=business_accounting_research

Ed Dolan, "The Way Economic Freedom Indexes Measure Regulation is Deeply Flawed" (article)
https://niskanencenter.org/blog/elusive-regulatory-state/
Walker Wright, "Quality vs Size of Government" (summary of Ed Dolan's other articles)

http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2017/05/03/quality-vs-size-of-government

ANALYZING THE "HUMAN FREEDOM INDEX": IS THE GROWTH OF "PERSONAL FREEDOM" POSITIVELY CORRELATED WITH "ECONOMIC FREEDOM" -- AND IF SO, WITH WHICH ASPECTS OF "ECONOMIC FREEDOM" ARE MOST IMPORTANT? DOES BIG GOVERNMENT APPEAR TO BE THE FRIEND OR FOE OF PERSONAL FREEDOM, I.E. IS THE CORRELATION POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE? IS AMERICA REALLY BEHIND CANADA, AUSTRALIA & MUCH OF WESTERN EUROPE IN TERMS OF PERSONAL FREEDOM?

Ian Vasquez, "The Human Freedom Index 2016" (video - 9:53 min.)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/human-freedom-index-2016

James Slate, "Debunking Americas Poor Ranking in the Human Freedom Index" (article)

https://medium.com/@JSlate__/debunking-america-is-the-23rd-freest-country-in-the-world-8deb988687a1

Ed Dolan, "Freedom, Prosperity and Big Government" (article)

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/freedom-government-part-one/

Ed Dolan, "Does Economic Freedom Promote Social Progress?" (article)

http://www.milkenreview.org/articles/does-economic-freedom-promote-social-progress

Hugh Whelan, "Human Freedom vs Social Progress" (article)

http://disciplinedthinking.blogspot.com/2016/12/human-freedom-versus-social-progress.html

ANALYZING THE "SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX": HOW CORRELATED ARE THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF "SOCIAL PROGRESS" WITH EACH OTHER? ARE RANKINGS ON THE SPI MOSTLY EXPLAINED BY ECONOMIC FACTORS (E.G. GDP PER CAPITA OR MEDIAN INCOME) OR DOES IT TRANSCEND ECONOMICS? WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE OF THE NEGATIVE CORRELATION BETWEEN RELIGIOSITY & SOCIAL PROGRESS?

Michael Green, "What The Social Progress Index Can Reveal About Your Country" (video - 14:56 min.)
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_what_the_social_progress_index_can_reveal_about_your_country

Maitreyi Bordia Das, "Can An Index Ever Be A Good Measure of Social Inclusion?" (article)

http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/can-index-ever-be-good-measure-social-inclusion

Lant Pritchett, "Turns Out, [National] Development Does Bring [Social] Development" (article)

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/turns-out-development-does-bring-development

Tom Rees, "Countries free of religion are the most socially advanced, data show" (article)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2015/04/countries-free-of-religion-are-the-most-socially-advanced-data-show.html?

POLITICAL INDICES AS MAPS OF FOGGY POLITICAL LANDSCAPES: IS WILL WILKINSON RIGHT THAT THE MIX OF WELFARE STATISM & NEOLIBERALISM, CIVIL LIBERTARIANISM & SOCIAL PROGRESSIVISM IN NATIONS THAT SCORE HIGH ON THE HFI & SPI DEFIES THE "IDEAL THEORY" OF MOST POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES? SHOULD THIS MOTIVATE US TO ADOPT AMARTYA SEN'S "NON-IDEAL THEORY" & PREFER KARL POPPER'S "PIECEMEAL SOCIAL ENGINEERING"? WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THINKING OF POLITICS IN TERMS OF "FITNESS LANDSCAPES" AND "COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS"?