The World's 10 Great Societies
Of all factors that make a society Great, two stand out: Economic opportunity and quality of life. Economic opportunity allows people to create wealth for themselves and society, while quality of life allows people to enjoy their wealth, advancing their personal and public lives, as captured in a host of popular country listings published by reputable institutions like Forbes,The Wall Street Journal and theHeritage Foundation, the IMF, and so on. The Index of Economic Freedom and the Index of Ease of Doing Business, for instance, measure the effectiveness of a society in providing citizens economic opportunities. TheQuality of Life and theSustainability indices provide the effectiveness of a society in assuring citizens quality of life. But what about a single listing that captures the effectiveness of a society offering both?
To address this question, we create the Economic Opportunity and Quality of Life listing that identifies the countries that stand out in both indices. Specifically, we review ten indicators (five indicators that measure economic opportunity, and another five indicators that measure quality of life), and we identify the countries that make it to the top 20 percent of at least five of these indicators -assigning them one star for each indicator.
As it can be seen from the list below, 10 countries satisfy these criteria. Three Western European countries, UK, Germany, and Netherlands top the list, receiving 9 stars, meaning that they make it to the top 20 percent in nine of the ten indicators deployed. Germany and United Kingdom miss on the Globalization Index, while Netherlands misses out on the Sustainability Index. Two countries, France, and Japan make it to the top of the list with 8 stars, followed by Australia, Canada, and South Korea with 7 stars, US with 6 stars, and Taiwan with 5 stars. But what distinguishes and separates these countries on the list from those that failed to make it to the list?
Each country has its own peculiarity and specificity. The U.S., for instance, began to address economic opportunity and quality of life in the late 19th-early 20th century within a libertarian democratic regime, a “civil society” that “creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce,” to quote Alexis De Tocqueville. The ingenuity and creativity of the American people was spurred and the quest for wealth creation gave rise to shrewd managers and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John Rockefeller. At the same time, liberal democracy made way for the compassion of the American people, who sought to protect the “commons” from the greed of Robber Barons. The era also saw social reformers and activists like Jacob Riis who helped build the MulberryBend Park and the Neighborhood House in New York, and Jane Addams, who founded the Hull House, the first community center in Chicago to provide food and shelter for the poor and care for the sick. Addams and Hull House also pressured the Chicago city government to take care of the commons through public services such as police protection, garbage collection and street cleaning. Reformers further managed to introduce legislation that made America more democratic by reinforcing the separation of powers and the relative independence of government from vested interests, giving every citizen a “square deal, a fair play under the present rules,” to quote President Theodore Roosevelt. Libertarian democracy also allowed muckraking journalists to expose capitalist greed at the workplace and corruption at the public office, which helped to constrain both. But what about the countries that they didn’t make it to the list?
Again, each country has its own peculiarities and specifics like geography, history and culture. One characteristic, however, that prevails is the existence of an authoritarian regime at the time these countries began to combine and mix markets and government that cannot provide for the development and enforcement of codified rules that allow each system to excel. Latin-American countries, for instance, began to mix market and government institutions in the post-colonial era within right-wing authoritarian regimes that never escaped the Iberian colonial legacy. Authoritarian regimes maintained and in some cases expanded economic and legal market barriers that supported and reinforced private and governmental monopolies and oligopolies rather than free markets, undermining the constructive destruction function of capitalism. Right-wing regimes further failed to provide for the separation of powers that allows for a mechanism to diffuse tensions among different groups, including tensions between different groups and the government. Most of North African, Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian countries began to combine and mix markets and government either within authoritarian regimes or institutions that are democratic in name only. India, Mali, Sri-Lanka, and Mongolia, for example, combined markets and government within political regimes that are plagued by tradition and religion and thus undermine individual rights and civil liberties. Not to mention China where a Communist Party has been nurturing capitalism.
What makes a society great is libertarian democracy that provides a forum for the development and enforcement of codified rules of the free market game. This means that libertarian democracy is more than a convenience for citizens. It is a necessity, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill.
* Panos Mourdoukoutas is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post. Abraham Stefanidis is an Assistant Professor at the Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John’s University.
To address this question, we create the Economic Opportunity and Quality of Life listing that identifies the countries that stand out in both indices. Specifically, we review ten indicators (five indicators that measure economic opportunity, and another five indicators that measure quality of life), and we identify the countries that make it to the top 20 percent of at least five of these indicators -assigning them one star for each indicator.
As it can be seen from the list below, 10 countries satisfy these criteria. Three Western European countries, UK, Germany, and Netherlands top the list, receiving 9 stars, meaning that they make it to the top 20 percent in nine of the ten indicators deployed. Germany and United Kingdom miss on the Globalization Index, while Netherlands misses out on the Sustainability Index. Two countries, France, and Japan make it to the top of the list with 8 stars, followed by Australia, Canada, and South Korea with 7 stars, US with 6 stars, and Taiwan with 5 stars. But what distinguishes and separates these countries on the list from those that failed to make it to the list?
Each country has its own peculiarity and specificity. The U.S., for instance, began to address economic opportunity and quality of life in the late 19th-early 20th century within a libertarian democratic regime, a “civil society” that “creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce,” to quote Alexis De Tocqueville. The ingenuity and creativity of the American people was spurred and the quest for wealth creation gave rise to shrewd managers and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John Rockefeller. At the same time, liberal democracy made way for the compassion of the American people, who sought to protect the “commons” from the greed of Robber Barons. The era also saw social reformers and activists like Jacob Riis who helped build the MulberryBend Park and the Neighborhood House in New York, and Jane Addams, who founded the Hull House, the first community center in Chicago to provide food and shelter for the poor and care for the sick. Addams and Hull House also pressured the Chicago city government to take care of the commons through public services such as police protection, garbage collection and street cleaning. Reformers further managed to introduce legislation that made America more democratic by reinforcing the separation of powers and the relative independence of government from vested interests, giving every citizen a “square deal, a fair play under the present rules,” to quote President Theodore Roosevelt. Libertarian democracy also allowed muckraking journalists to expose capitalist greed at the workplace and corruption at the public office, which helped to constrain both. But what about the countries that they didn’t make it to the list?
Again, each country has its own peculiarities and specifics like geography, history and culture. One characteristic, however, that prevails is the existence of an authoritarian regime at the time these countries began to combine and mix markets and government that cannot provide for the development and enforcement of codified rules that allow each system to excel. Latin-American countries, for instance, began to mix market and government institutions in the post-colonial era within right-wing authoritarian regimes that never escaped the Iberian colonial legacy. Authoritarian regimes maintained and in some cases expanded economic and legal market barriers that supported and reinforced private and governmental monopolies and oligopolies rather than free markets, undermining the constructive destruction function of capitalism. Right-wing regimes further failed to provide for the separation of powers that allows for a mechanism to diffuse tensions among different groups, including tensions between different groups and the government. Most of North African, Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian countries began to combine and mix markets and government either within authoritarian regimes or institutions that are democratic in name only. India, Mali, Sri-Lanka, and Mongolia, for example, combined markets and government within political regimes that are plagued by tradition and religion and thus undermine individual rights and civil liberties. Not to mention China where a Communist Party has been nurturing capitalism.
What makes a society great is libertarian democracy that provides a forum for the development and enforcement of codified rules of the free market game. This means that libertarian democracy is more than a convenience for citizens. It is a necessity, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill.
* Panos Mourdoukoutas is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post. Abraham Stefanidis is an Assistant Professor at the Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John’s University.
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