Monday, February 05, 2007

Who's the Freest in the World?

John Redwood's blog has an interesting post on the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom.

The seven most free countries in the world are based on the US/UK free enterprise model, led by Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the USA and New Zealand. The least free countries are North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Zimbabwe and Burma.

More HERE.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dale knows nothing about economics, so this pretense of Economist-style elevated reporting is just, well, a load of crap.

Check out the previous post where Dale's channel is planning gay-bashing attack ads directed against Ken Livingstone - this is more the Real Dale!

Sabretache said...

'Economic' freedom is one thing 'Freedom' quite another.

According to Kings College, the Good Old US of A 'Land of the Free' has the highest prison population, by a per head of total population - and by a wide margin - in the entire world.

Not entirely sure this qualifies them for their customary role model status eh?

Mike Wood said...

6.14: If you're going to make nasty personal attacks on the host, then at least have the balls to use your own name.
I don't know whether Iain knows anything about economics or not - it's not really relevant to this post. He's simply reporting a post by John Redwood (who certainly does understand both economic policy and theory), who in turn is reporting a publication by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal (who know shedlaods about economics).
I've watched the proposed anti-Ken adverts and can't see what you're complaining about. None of the ads are gay-bashing. Its not homophobic to say that there's a contradiction between Livingstone's words on gay rights and his support for those who preach hate against gays - or do you think that gays should only have rights in the western world?
If you respond to this, perhaps you'll be big enough not to hide behind anonymity and treat the host with the same respect that he extends to you in letting you post here.

Chris Paul said...

Good to see that Iran, Afghanistan and Palestine have not made it into the drop zone. Apart from Saddam and his chums. But Iain - tell that to the Iranians, the Afghanis and the Palestinians ...

Sabretache said...

Anonymous 6:14:

Dale IS gay you bloody moron

Anonymous said...

Yes, well done, Dale is gay. So why the fuck is he busy trying to smear Ken Livingstone for supporting gay rights?

Anonymous said...

"Not entirely sure this qualifies them for their customary role model status eh?"

Depends whether those people deserve to be in jail.

Anonymous said...

God, I love Hong Kong! The heady smell of untrammelled free enterprise and capitalism and everyone busy, busy, busy making money. It has the highest per capita ownership of Rollers in the world. The wealth has spread over the Guandong Province like a flood tide.

I love that place!

NuLab would hate it.

Anonymous said...

BTW - at one time the people in neighbouring Guandong Province in China, at around the time of the hand-over, were getting rich, but there weren't enough luxury cars for sale. So they would specify what they wanted to gangs in Hong Kong and get cars stolen to order. Stealing cars to order was big, big business for awhile.

Anonymous said...

Dale is gay, which is a good reason to campaign against Livingstone.

Livingstone is a knob, which is another good reason.

These anonymous posters are real fuckwits eh?

Anonymous said...

"Dale is gay, which is a good reason to campaign against Livingstone.

Livingstone is a knob, which is another good reason.

These anonymous posters are real fuckwits eh? "

I think the above is final proof of the intellectual quality of the typical Tory supporter. No wonder they haven't won an election for about 50 years, even with the entire press slavering for them. Cameron had better come down to the street level a bit more though to appeal to the highly decayed individuals who hang around this blog.

unothordox behaviour said...

Verity - so true. I was in HK last autumn for the third time and what a contrast with London. Over there, the whole place is set up to make life and business as easy as possible.

London under Livingstone is, of course, designed to put as many obstacles in your way as possible as well as setting up one group against another...

Funny that in such a capitalist place that the public transport is so massively better than Livingstone's socialist paradise.

The place is teaming with LPG-powered taxis, and it's very hard to spend more than £5 per journey. Why can't we have that in London?

Or do we all have to use the bus because the subsidy for the great, lumbering beasts has now reached £1bn per year?

Anonymous said...

One thing that is notable about the list is that the countries that are held up as examples of economic liberalisation gone wrong, such as Argentina, Russia and Thailand, are in fact nothing of the sort. The basketcases are generally the countries which failed to reform sufficiently.

Andrew Harnwell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I am a retarded Labour troll who thinks that inviting Islamic clerics who believe gays ought to be executed does not contradict a supposed support for gay rights.

Andrew Harnwell said...

Measuring freedom, economic or otherwise, strikes me as a very subjective.

Is is possible to break freedom down into categories. Can you be economically free, but not politically?

Certainly it is hard to think of a carefully-controlled country like Singapore as free. Rich, of course, but you try opposing the government there if you want a clear demonstration of your freedoms.

Mike Wood said...

Anonymous 7.22/8.58: You're really not in a strong position to question other people's intellectual qualities if you think that criticising Livingstone for giving a platform islamofascists is somehow the same as smearing him for supporting gay rights.

And you're still not big enough to use you're real name. What are you afraid of? Is poor little anonymous scared that the big bad Tories will know who he is? Or is he worried that his friends will find out that he supports Ken Livingstone?

Anonymous said...

"Comment Deleted" - I think we know that it's Dale who can't take the heat.

I hear the attack videos are being cleared by Fox experts and that Doughty Street has been secretly purchased by Murdoch as part of his campaign to remove NL who he no longer likes because they refused to grant his request to pay no tax anywhere at all on the planet as opposed to just in the UK, where he already of course pays - absolutely no tax. This is called Neoconservatism.

Anonymous said...

Andrew Harnell - Singapore has regular elections. It has opposition parties. They are superb planners, so everything works. The country is run with the approval of the voters who keep voting the government back in.

They have the death penalty for murder and peddling drugs and it is used unhesitatingly. Some crimes attract the rotan. Trials are open.

It is safe to walk down any street at 3 in the morning, alone, looking for a taxi. The traffic flows well. The roads are well maintained. There are plenty of police and if you call them, they are round at your flat in about five or six minutes. There is no fear of crime, which is an important part of the liberty of the individual.

Education is excellent. They haven't degraded it to get more passes. People keep voting this government in because the government has delivered on every one of its promises.

And their immigration policies are very strict are draconian.

Also, the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is a babe.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Tim. Which bit of Murdoch becoming a Brownite fits in with your manically deranged view of the world?

Anonymous said...

""Comment Deleted" - I think we know that it's Dale who can't take the heat."

It was removed by the author, not the blog administrator.

Guido 2.0 said...

towcestarian:

This is Manic's first contribution to this thread, right here. As Iain might say; "Keep your smears to yourself."

Anonymous said...

Mark Steyn has made the point rather better than the boring Mr Redwood, and with due emphasis on the specifically British root of liberty’s success story:

Today, three-sevenths of the G-7 major economies are nations of British descent. Of the twenty economies with the highest GDP per capita, no fewer than eleven are current or former realms of Her Britannic Majesty. ... Eliminate all territories with less than twenty million and the top four is an Anglosphere sweep: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The key regional players in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived - South Africa, India - and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you're better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: try doing business in Indonesia rather than Malaysia, or Haiti rather than St. Lucia. And of course the pre-eminent power of the age derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.[p.167]

From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

Andrew Harnwell said...

Verity,

I am as familiar with the state of Singapore's taxis and roads as I am aware of their draconian policies, which include the use of the rattan cane and retention of the death penalty.

These things impress me less than they do you, but the point I made was about political freedom in Singapore.

Are the political opposition routinely intimidated with lawsuits? Are voters bribed or otherwise induced to vote for the government? Is the press free? Has the international press ever been silenced through lawsuits? Is the judiciary independent? Have citizens been detained for up to 23 years without trial?

Clean streets are important, but some things are much more important than that.

Anonymous said...

anon@6:14 - do you know any economics? Can you read a graph, know anything about regression lines? Read the article (it's only a few paragraphs) and then click on the link to the graph - all will be revealed. At least to those with eyes to see.

Anonymous said...

Verity: New Labour actually RUN Hong Kong. Didn't you know? Not sure why they have to dish out peerages given they are swimming in HK$s. Perhaps the peerages just a cover for the swimmage of Cantonese mullah.

Anonymous said...

anon@8:58

"No wonder they haven't won an election for about 50 years, even with the entire press slavering for them. "

Err, about ten years actually. Have you just left school? It would explain an awful lot.

Anonymous said...

anon@9:26 - your tinfoil hat has slipped. Please use a chinese takeaway container in the meantime. Up to you if you eat the contents first.

Anonymous said...

verity@10:14 - works for me.

Anonymous said...

Andrew Harnell: "I am as familiar with the state of Singapore's taxis and roads as I am aware of their draconian policies, which include the use of the rattan cane and retention of the death penalty."

What's not to love?

Mr Osato said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.