87.4% of population experienced a decline in freedom from 2020 to 2022

62 points by madihaa 6 months ago | 24 comments
  • Quaengos 6 months ago
    CATO's Human Freedom Index uses inflation as a metric.

    "87.4% of countries experienced pandemic related inflation" is a far less interesting premise.

    • phoe-krk 6 months ago
      If you consider inflation as a reduction of personal freedom, which is IMO quite a valid take, it becomes more interesting rather than less interesting to me.
      • darioush 6 months ago
        Inflation over the amounts needed to stimulate the economy (2-4%) is unauthorized taxation. Kinda whack how everyone is just "okay" with working hard, paying taxes, then having the value of their work spent without their authorization.

        Nice there are alternatives for saving.

        • dustyventure 6 months ago
          By alternatives, I suppose you mean pyramid schemes that have no underlying investment that could beat inflation?
        • mp05 6 months ago
          So personal freedom is equivalent to spending power? To what end?
          • phoe-krk 6 months ago
            Spending power is a freedom, not freedom or the freedom. It's not equal, it's a part of.
      • xedrac 6 months ago
        Freedom of Speech seems to have very minimal consideration in this index, despite it being what I would consider the most foundational freedom of all.
        • eesmith 6 months ago
          It should be co-equal to the freedom of association, not foundational, as that would deprive us of liberty. As Mills pointed out in "On Liberty" at https://gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm :

          > We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement.

          • dude187 6 months ago
            Not to mention the one most eroded by governments and private corporations in the name of "COVID"
          • alexwasserman 6 months ago
            Title should be "87.4% of world’s population experienced a decline in freedom from 2020 to 2022"

            "World's" in there is pretty important.

            • 6 months ago
              • AzzyHN 6 months ago
                Ah, the American burger institute strikes again.
                • romanobro56 6 months ago
                  Could you expand on this
                  • magic_smoke_ee 6 months ago
                    Libertarian "think tanks" are most often used as corporate tools to push an unpopular agenda for cynical reasons.
                    • southernplaces7 6 months ago
                      >"think tanks"? Because completely unlike libertarian think tanks, those with progressive or left and other agendas are not at all used as tools of any kind of corporate or political interest to push cynical agendas?

                      Why not look at the argument instead of cheaply, simplistically attacking the source based on your emotional, possibly ideological dislike?

                • Workaccount2 6 months ago
                  Personal freedoms decreased during a global pandemic. Also water is found to be wet.