In 2022, the nations that are free, partly free, not free

[ancianita]

https://www.axios.com/2022/02/24/global-democracy-index-freedom-house-2022-map


Below the graphic, Freedom House's interactive map link shows freedom measures for "Global Freedom," "Internet Freedom," and "Democracy Status."



https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fotn&year=2022


Based on corporate history, my theory is that corporate autocracy rises as it captures democracies and their structures.

Corporations have accomplished their wealth building through their objectification/exploitation of all humans as profit centers or, when they fail or humans fight back, humans become expendable “collateral damage” and their deaths become ledgered losses and tax write offs.

The untaught history of corporations reveals their 21st Century goal of “privatized freedom.” Because to them, money and wealth ARE freedom. Charles Koch — past president of the Mont Pelerin society, executive planner of the yearly Aspen Institute conference, yearly participant at Davos -- has explicitly said those words.

[Marcus IM]

1. Freedom House is funded by the IRI.

IRI = International Republican Institute

[Backseat Driver]

2. Marcus IM, can you cite the location of this information, please.

Last edited Sat Oct 22, 2022, 04:46 PM - Edit history (3)

From the FAQs: Where do you get your (IRI) funding?
I did see this anywhere on Freedom House site, but...

"IRI is a 501(c)(3) and receives funding through grants from the U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other aid agencies. Less than one percent of IRI’s funding comes from private donations. We do not receive any money from the Republican Party or any other U.S. partisan entity." Emphasis mine.

Wow, there is even a laddered hierachy of 503(c) funding??? Maybe their page hasn't been updated to reflect funding for a good many years during my adult life--just who then are these non-partisan humans without bias? I don't see this corporate personhood making much noise. FPS, definitions are important, people - The GOP is a cult of conspiracy, corruption, and grift that have little to none interest in democracy. I need more than popcorn , like safe housing, transportation, and food to sustain my life in the future.

So let me get this straight - they monitor democracy being weakened/strengthened in countries, even ours, across the globe but take no active participation in keeping it strong with their corporate or personal money-funded endorsements. Who do they think they are? Monarchs enjoying the resources??? Executive last words??? Overreaching SCOTUS judges??? Federal Reserve economists? Academic historians? Stereotypical bun-headed librarians??? Everybody wants to rule the world but not us? - This group, the IRI, have to have, take, and hold a position beyond the acute "on the spectrum" preference for tracking world changes... WHICH SIDE IS IT?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Wikipedia disagrees ...

Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.[4] Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt served as its first honorary chairpersons.

It describes itself as a "clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world", although some critics have stated that the organization is biased towards U.S. interests as it is government-funded.[5] The organization was 66% funded by grants from the U.S. government in 2006, a number which has increased to 86% in 2016.[6][7][8]

[Hortensis]

4. Do note how [i]many[/i] of those red and yellow states are failed attempts at socialism.

What you think you're seeing is just not what is. Go ahead and count. Include the ones that are managing to hold onto some shreds of socialism and feed their people by bringing back capitalism. Those that call themselves socialist but have actually been dictatorships for decades (under either RW or LW leaders, often hard to tell a difference) have to be counted also -- it's a ommon and natural progression.

Btw, organized crime and corrupt socialist governements can do the same things you're attributing to corporations. And do, but far, far worse than any corporations have managed in a functioning democracy.

REGULATED capitalism is the possibility anticapitalists always leave out. For good reason! We used to have it, did spectacularly well that way, and can again. Dismantling it is OUR fault, not "the corporations." WE created regulation and then voted to eliminate it.

Unlike socialism, capitalism allows people sufficient freedom to "pursuit of happiness" without breaking the system, but it does require setting limits to protect others.

I love Mexico and hate that it's "partially free," but this is not a good era for democracy to be able to overcome massive crime, corruption and political extremism to fully establish itself.

Mexico has been an electoral democracy since 2000, and alternation in power between parties is routine at both the federal and state levels. However, the country suffers from severe rule of law deficits that limit full citizen enjoyment of political rights and civil liberties. Violence perpetrated by organized criminals, corruption among government officials, human rights abuses by both state and nonstate actors, and rampant impunity are among the most visible of Mexico’s many governance challenges.

[ancianita]

5. Thank you for your thoughtful post. Freedom House criteria allow for the

variances in what's considered partially free. While I appreciate your examples from the US, and Mexico, are you saying that what Freedom House is seeing isn't what's happening? I don't know of any other source to gauge freedom, unless you link one?

History shows that capitalism allows the freedom that's profitable. Capitalism just tells you that it's the "freeest" form of human activity. That includes the US, considered "free." But we know that socialist corporate subsidies were designed by and for corporations so that they wouldn't have to compete in the alleged "free markets." Socialism is defined the way corporate socialist wants socialism defined for the rest of us.

There are Fintech billionaires like Sam Bankman-Fried (top billionaire who owns TFX) who once had worked for the Centre for Effective Altruism, a group full of youthful future builders who try to get billionaires to move the privatizing needle toward win-win capitalism. Doesn't mean because Bankman-Fried lives in the Bahamas and runs FTX, that he's a bad capitalist, since by one measure of democratic support, his ratio of political giving is 300 times to Democrats and Biden than what he donates to Rethugs. They all have some redeeming qualities. It's the cumulative effects of capitalism's oligarchs and their corporate fronts that have to be monitored.

So while "we" can fault ourselves (or our elected corporate bag men) for not keeping our Big Corps more tightly regulated, it's because big corps move elsewhere, and a lot are offshore -- outside our regulatory/legal/ jurisdictional control -- and now we hold back on anti-trust regulating, imo. Remember, too, all that defunding of regulatory agencies during Rethug administrations. That didn't help. We still can't fund it appropriately, and big corps is always there to shove our agencies into court (WV vs the EPA, as Whitehouse explains).

But it's not just that goods and services corps create our inflation through pricing and supply chain choking. It's also that Big Finance are also part of the global capital problem through the networks of data, currency, credit swaps and human trafficking that float all around.

There are all kinds of corporate hubs on the globe, in regulated and unregulated environments.







A lot is changing now that Big Corps has captured the freedoms of what THEY consider "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Even millionaires migrate with no care for the regulations of nations, though Koch stays here to keep watch over his particular territory targeted for corporate capture.

[Hortensis]

7. :) Hi. I'm saying that socialism cannot be a viable answer to the

dangers of the development of uberwealthy, uberpowerful classes -- because socialism doesn't work and people don't want it. Most simply are not suited to it, above all because of its limitations on personal freedoms and possibilities. We know that.

While the huge problems arising from far too much wealth and power being amassed by a few are horribly real, the answer to the threat of that kind of authoritarian control simply cannot be any system that won't work well. (!)

Most of the problems being attributed to capitalism to make it seem unsustainable (beyond its genuine well known drawbacks), are actually problems of bad management of capitalism. By people. All of whom would still be here under any system. (Just look at the aggressive macro-authoritarian mischief what "socialist" China became is making around the planet, btw.)

Reality is that capitalism done even partway right is proven many times over to work far better, make far more freedom possible, and suit the wishes of far more people than any other system.

I know I'm being redundant, but it matters enormously that capitalism has never had to be imposed on "the masses" by ruthless leaders, lied about to trick people into voting for it, pushed to desperate people as a last option, or kept in place by increasingly harsh authoritarian controls. It happens naturally. Like any system, it does need to be controlled, directed, adjusted, and perhaps even remade to fit to new realities.

As for blaming attacks on freedom on capitalism itself, rather than failure to control the attackers, check the OP's map? It's not a coincidence that the world's free nations all have capitalist or at least free market economies.

The institution of capitalism helped lift whole populations, large majorities, out of the previous abject poverty that was the human condition and helped make possible the personal choices that are the essence of freedom. It's what we do with it.

Under any system, the answer to the problems you describe all too well has to be putting a leash on those people who would (and do!) abuse any system to amass far too much wealth and power -- and relieving them of both.

I'm all in with completely eliminating uberwealthy classes that didn't exist 50 years ago and vastly shrinking income disparities -- and good news is that not only is capitalism no barrier, but we've done it before before. Also that the danger's grown to the point that there are increasing national and international efforts to get that leash on.

Thanks for the interesting graphs. I'm always a sucker for them.

[ancianita]

6. Sorry, I also forgot to link this FAQ, which might further detail how Freedom House measures.

In no way do I say they have a 100% accurate map. They have the only map I've found that, at least over decades, gives us a look at yearly outcomes they measure.

https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/faq-freedom-world#A9