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View original postYeah, because the media's opinion is notoriously relevant to most American Conservatives Incidentally many of those countries have prominent public TV/radio/papers/etc which generally lowers my belief in their freedom of the press, and not very many outlets. But I wouldn't claim the US has the freest press, anything but, yet I'd also point out that we have a very free press considering the pressures we are under not to, which many of those others don't have. Iceland, for instance, does not have hundreds of thousands of soldiers and spies out there vulnerable to exposure, research facilities others nations would murder to get a look inside, and all the other luxuries afforded countries on the second or third tier of power and influence.

I'll move to table private v public media for a rainy day. Yes, there is a notably large quantity of "-" on that table (pages 94-103 of this doc for anyone else reading this) and I think that kind of underscores why I don't like these comparisons. That's one of the better ones for in depth looks, and I don't blame its shortcomings on a lack of effort. Rather I just think its unreasonable to assume these sorts of indexes can produce meaningful results. Even if we can achieve agreement on whether or not X=Free we always come back to the arbitrary weighting. e.g. why everything on that list is 0-10 but for some reason torture is alway (that I saw) a 0, 5, or 10. Surely if even slavery gets to use the other digits, and even decimal places, they could have done better than "yes, somewhat, and no." considering things like "Age of consent of homosexual couples" apparently is deemed of significant import as freedom of assembly especially considering I didn't see anyone on that list that didn't get 0, 10, or - for that entry. Apparently proving my hunch that countries that would consider having different ages of consent for gays probably are places that tend to have very iffy notions about 'consent' and usually think homosexuality is an illness best treated with Zyklon B.

There's not much one can do to avoid having to make a call on something like "Should legalized [abortion/heroine/suicide/etc] count into the freedom index?", mileage obviously varies, but not too many people would argue that legal heroine and legal slavery would equal a country with bans on both, and especially with so many parameters in there that effect can't just be handwaved aside.

It's the shack vs mansion thing. All these indexes ever do is point out the blisteringly obvious then achieve a hair-splitting list of who sucks most and least. That's why I liked the one Rana had where you could at least adjust your own weighting. That's all these are really good for, some amusing internet survey where you say if you think X=free then rate its importance 1-10 and when you're done it spews out your preferred countries in order.

Actually that might make a cool website, take the quiz then it gives you links to those countries complete with tourism and media ads, akin to 'which superhero are you?' quizzes, and almost as accurate