Finding Freedom in an Increasingly Unfree World

The think tank indicators are showing a diminishing level of freedom throughout the world, which requires individuals to carve their paths to freedom more surgically.

March 11, 2024

By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP

I remember a conversation I had with a non-American, and they were extolling how much freer Americans were in the US than where they were from.

I had to think about that. And I responded with, “You’re coming from a country that started with much less, and you’re marveling at how full the shelves of freedom are here. I was born and raised in the US. And I’m lamenting at how barren they’ve become over the years.”

It’s not to say that I’m ungrateful. I’m indeed fortunate to be an American. But that doesn’t excuse the decades of tyrannical mission creep I’ve witness over the years.

Anyone in marketing will tell you that if your only value proposition is not being as bad as the others, you’re probably not that great.

Imagine the curve you’d have to grade on when the best in the class scores 34 out of 100 and that’s not even the US.

A lot of think-tanks do an annual freedom audit, of sorts. Heritage Foundation, CATO, and Freedom House do assessments of freedom rankings in the world. The accounting is different, but the conclusions are corroborated: the world is less free.

Have some countries improved? Sure! But overall, even the best have gotten worse. Economic freedom and all that entails is usually the dealbreaker for people considering where to seek residency or settle next. In the US alone, the divestment from high tax states like New York and California to places like Texas and Florida are significant.

People considering expatriation or the nomad lifestyle weight economic freedom right up there with safety.

For all the people talking about how the US is still the “shining beacon on the hill”, get ready to be sorely disappointed.

The top ten economically free countries according to Heritage are:

The US came in at 25th, after Latvia, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. The albatross around its neck are Government Spending, Fiscal Health, Labor Freedom, Monetary Freedom, and Trade Freedom. All of which have precipitously dropped over the last few decades.

Something to consider: The US was 6th in 2009 and 12th in 2015 for the same audit by Heritage.

The only thing weighing the Scandinavian and Western European contenders down is their tax burdens and government spending, otherwise they do much better. But that’s the thing: each government will get their pound of freedom flesh one way or another.

On Cato’s Human Freedom Index, these are your top ten:

Taiwan, Singapore, and the UAE fall off due to their Personal Freedom indices, however all three rank quite high economically barring any other considerations.

Freedom House looked at Global Freedom from a slightly different angle. Here are the key observations they extrapolated:

The first point being the overarching takeaway, where small improvements were overshadowed by the considerable deterioration of freedom in over 50 nations.

I saw a recent article indicating that Bitcoin hit $69,000. Bitcoin is everything from the cloak of invisibility for money laundering to the red herring for why the economy is suffering. The reality is, both are attributable to government interference and a lack of economic freedom.

Modern Monetary Policy has been the economic doctrine of the US and other developed nations for a few decades now. Running high deficits and tempering it with inflation is how it ostensibly “works”, which is the economic equivalent of having two wild stallions pulling a carriage of glass vases.

The article made a striking observation:

The only thing that has kept the US dollar afloat as a reserve currency is that the fiscal and monetary imbalances of its competitors are worse. But that is only a battle between fiat currencies, in which all of them are eroding the value of printed money.

The bar is so low, you need not even be excellent to come out ahead. If you’re in a race against a bunch of people who are tripping and falling over themselves in slow motion, you need only walk a balanced moderately straight line to beat the lot of them.

The US isn’t strong. It’s just not the weakest… for now.

More importantly, when you’re thinking about your next destination as a nomad, or if you’re thinking about settling down in another country permanently, this offers some food for thought. It’s not the be-all-end-all, because plenty of people found life hacks to very peaceful and lucrative lives in countries not entirely known for their “freedom”.

And that’s the larger picture: a lot of the governments are heading into a dark direction economically, civilly, and in their foreign affairs. A time not too far in the future might very well require a new index that measures the ability and extent to which one can avoid the state.