Freer places have happier residents

When my colleagues and I call ourselves Freedom Conservatives, it’s a pretty good tell that we believe freedom is essential to human flourishing — and that we place a high priority on conserving freedom for future generations.

Notice I labeled it a “high” priority, not the “only” priority. FreeCons champion other principles and institutions, too, including fiscal responsibility, the separation and decentralization of government powers, the rule of law, strong families, and American leadership in an ever-dangerous world. We commit to defending them against all encroachments, foreign or domestic, Left or Right.

Still, our focus on freedom is evident and deserves explanation. We seek to maximize the freedom for individuals to make decisions for themselves, to buy and sell goods and services with whomever they choose, to rear their children as they see fit, and to live according to their own religious or ethical values.

We do so not because we believe in human infallibility, or perfect information, or flawless markets.

We cherish freedom precisely because we know humans are fallible and fallen creatures who require great effort to sustain virtue and resist vice — and whose vulnerability to temptation makes it imperative to limit the coercive power entrusted to government officials. We cherish freedom because we know perfect information is impossible. Government officials are no more capable of possessing it than anyone else. And we cherish freedom because we know all human institutions, including markets, necessarily reflect the passions and limitations of human beings.

Free societies aren’t perfect societies. No such societies exist. What freedom actually protects is the right of individuals not only to make their own decisions but to learn from them, to build ethical and intellectual muscle, to avoid repeating our worst mistakes while doubling down on good decisions.

Free economies can be messy, unpredictable, even frustrating. But they are also dynamic, creative, and, in the best sense of the word, progressive. Over time, their residents grow  richer, healthier, and happier than residents of places with larger governments, heavier tax and regulatory burdens, and fewer choices among service providers.

This isn’t just my opinion. It is what the preponderance of scholarly research on economic freedom suggests. There are hundreds of such studies in the academic literature at this point, testing not only the effects of fiscal, regulatory, and monetary policy on economic performance but also relationships between economic freedom and broader social or political outcomes.

The latest edition of the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, for example, contains several new papers on economic freedom. A study by economists at Illinois State, Oklahoma State, and Eastern Michigan universities found that countries with high rankings on standard economic-freedom indexes tend to have lower levels of corruption. One likely explanation, they write, is that places with fewer regulatory bottlenecks present “fewer opportunities for corrupt bureaucrats to garner rents” — which is econ-speak for demanding bribes or other unearned concessions.

In another paper, scholars from Fayetteville State, Texas A&M, and Southern Methodist universities compared local measures of economic freedom to survey results on “subjective well-being,” which is probably the best approximation of personal contentment that public-opinion research can offer.

The authors found that, all other things being held equal, relatively freer places tend to be inhabited by relatively happier people.

“Policies targeted at reducing the share of government spending relative to personal income and reducing governmental impact and control of labor markets may be the most effective at increasing individual well-being,” they concluded, because “such reforms may make their jurisdiction relatively more attractive to residents and businesses, which should lead to an increase in population in-migration and the health of the local economy in general.”

Did other variables in the study correlate with contentment, as well? You bet. Single respondents had significantly lower levels of subjective well-being than married respondents, as did the unemployed vs. the employed. Just as prudent governments shouldn’t overspend and overregulate, they also shouldn’t disincentivize marriage and work.

That’s more advice with which Freedom Conservatives strongly agree!

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.