The Good Country Index

[masser]

There is a TED talk by Simon Anholt about an index he created to rank the world's nations by their positive contributions to the world. There are a lot of questions about methodology and biases, some of which are discussed (by the speaker) in the comments on the TED site.

Looking at the latest results on the Good Country Index website, it seems natural to be curious about other ways of ranking the nations based on the results.

If we choose to rank the countries by their top score across the categories (breaking ties with their other high scores) the top ten countries are:
1. Germany
2. Georgia
3. Norway
4. Belgium
5. Ukraine
6. Switzerland
7. Netherlands
8. Sweden
9. Austria
10. Finland
Georgia and Ukraine seem anomalous?

The nations with the highest minimum score in a category are:
1. France - 41
2. Netherlands - 43
3. Ireland - 46
4. Spain - 48
5. Germany - 49(26)
6. Bulgaria - 49(36)
7. Norway - 50
8. Finland - 51
9. Sweden - 55
10. Italy - 58

It's also natural to ask about the least good countries; the authors of the work don't like to characterize these nations as "bad" preferring to consider them as pre-occupied with internal issues. The lowest scoring nations (by their minimum rank across the categories):
1. Libya
2. Tonga
3. Suriname
4. Congo
5. Bolivia
6. Yemen
7. Iraq
8. St. Lucia
9. Swaziland
10. Samoa

Alternatively, we can consider nations with the lowest maximum rank across the categories:
1. Angola - 78
2. Congo - 81
3. Guinea - 82
4. Libya - 86
5. Papua New Guinea - 90
6. Vanuatu - 92
7. Gabon - 94
8. Suriname - 97
9. Iraq - 107
10. Mauritania - 110

Is the Good Country Index just a fool's errand? Western values and perspectives giving western nations a pat on the back? Does any nation seem inaccurately ranked?

[Dr Sardonicus]

How about this ranking?

[R. Gerbicz]

Originally Posted by masser

If we choose to rank the countries by their top score across the categories (breaking ties with their other high scores) the top ten countries are:
1. Germany
2. Georgia
3. Norway
4. Belgium
5. Ukraine
6. Switzerland
7. Netherlands
8. Sweden
9. Austria
10. Finland
Georgia and Ukraine seem anomalous?

If you'd choose the first plane to go to Ukraine, consider (from Wikipedia):
'As of 2018, Ukraine has the second lowest GDP per capita in Europe. At US$40, it has the lowest median wealth per adult in the world (real estate not counted, but many Ukrainians possess real estate).'
add to that the gdp per capita is 3220 dollars. Georgia is also a poor country.

[ewmayer]

It's all in the choice of metric ... Ukraine has low GDP but lots of excellent neo-nazis, and GDP is a *very* poor measure of anything except perhaps contribution to global warming ... corruption metrics are business-oriented - contrast low-level-corruption-rife banana-republic-style nations vs ones with low corruption but which start "highly organized, unbribed" wars against other nations.

If one instead chose metrics based on e.g. the following you would see wildly different rankings:

1. How many other countries have you made war on in the past X years?
2. What is your country's per-capita contribution to global warming?

There's also the historical-depth aspect, how many years back does one choose to "integrate one's goodness function".

So, yeah, put me in the "fool's errand" camp on this one.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Even the most down-to-earth ranking -- by immigration -- is fraught with difficulties. Emigration -- people leaving -- is, it seems, not all that easy to measure. Immigration -- people moving in -- is influenced by accidents of geography. If your county happens to be near another country where things have gotten really bad, and things are comparatively better in your country, you're likely to see an influx of immigrants. Countries with lower populations tend to be affected more by a given number of immigrants than those with larger populations.

In absolute numbers, I suspect the good ol' USA has the most immigrants. In proportion to the population, though, countries with lower populations may well have a higher proportion of immigrants.

But it seems to me that, in ranking how "good" a country is, it would be arrogant to dismiss out of hand the question of how many people want to move in v. how many are getting the heck out of Dodge.

[LaurV]

That is true.

OTOH, people go from bad places to good places. Except for the train law*. Usually, bad places don't care. That is why they are bad. Good places care. So, it seems normal to me that the immigration (which happens at the good place) is more talked over than emigration (which happens at the bad place). Physics.


-------
*Train Law says that no matter how empty or how full is a train, there will always exist people going from the front of the train to the back of the train, and people going from the back of the train to the front of the train, in the same time, looking for seats.

[Nick]

New report:

...less than 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a Free country...

If you live in one, be careful who you vote for!
https://freedomhouse.org/report/free...cy-under-siege

[garo]

Originally Posted by Nick

New report:
If you live in one, be careful who you vote for!
https://freedomhouse.org/report/free...cy-under-siege

It is indeed deeply depressing to watch India become the latest domino to fall. It now resembles Turkey in that it has a majoritarian nationalist authoritarian leader while holding election.