The conservative Heritage foundation and Wall Street journal released their annual Index of Economic Freedom. At the top of this year's index are Hong Kong and Singapore, two countries not exactly known for their freedom and democracy of its people... and that is my point.
What exactly does this index measure, is it freedom or corporate fascism and control by the money powers? Is it the freedom of the vast, wage-earning majority to determine the nature of their economy and culture? Or is it the freedom and force of the few to determine the fate of the majority?
It is clearly the latter wherever the people have no National Initiative process to overrule their elected officials, assuming they aren't already ruled by overseers and powers given to appointed bodies. It is clearly fascism where big money buys big political power and the freedom to move about the world without any constraints or input by the vast majority.
What the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal call "freedom" is clearly freedom for the few, freedom for big money, freedom for corporations to call the shots, to virtually devastate any economy and culture, and to imprison it within its amoral dictates and environmental ruin.
The measures of undemocratically-determined "economic freedom" are clearly skewed, lacking, and tied to ever-improving the power of capital over labor, culture, and economy. This is a sick and twisted measure of "freedom" reflecting the authoritarian mentality of the Heritage foundation and Wall Street Journal . These agents of fascism have utterly no use or respect for the freedom of the majority to determine the nature of economy and culture, and thereby preserve greater diversity and democracy.
Any Index of Democratic Economic Freedom would reflect a completely different picture... and become a measure of real freedom we desperately need.
