Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

Human Freedom from Pericles to Measurement • 49
norms of social intercourse and individual conduct do not constitute
a serious infringement of individual liberty but secure a certain minimum
uniformity of conduct that assists individual efforts more than
it impedes them (p. 147).
This would argue against trying to measure societal limits on freedom. But
surely society can be coercive. In the 1950s, in many parts of the United
States, there were no legal restrictions on serving Negroes, but a black
person would have difficulty getting a room in a “white” hotel. Hayek
discusses this in a general sense: “We should be very dependent on the
beliefs of our fellows if they were prepared to sell their products to us
only when they approved of our end and not for their own advantage”
(1960/1978: 144).
When the civil rights law passed, federal officials worried about
massive disobedience through the south. Instead, thousands of businesses
quietly opened their doors to black customers. The speedy, quiet
acceptance suggests that many business owners would have voluntarily
accepted black customers earlier were it not for social constraints—and
that these social restraints limited their economic freedom to accept
black customers.27
Despite—and because of—these complications, the tentative recommendation
is to set aside social restrictions on freedom. There are intense
conceptual and measurement problems here. It seems reasonable to first
tackle government-imposed restrictions on freedom. This was clearly the
central concern of the enlightenment writers on freedom and remains
the central concern in most current commentary on freedom. However,
devising such a measure will ultimately help in clarifying whether social
restrictions are enduring without government support and whether such
restrictions can ultimately be measured.
Official versus unofficial limits on freedom
The annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, focuses on official limits
on freedom and this seems appropriate for a broader freedom index at
first blush, particularly if the index limits itself to government restrictions
on freedom, but the index does have a weakness.
First, even if we limit our measure of freedom to government coercion,
it is important to note that unofficial limits may be sanctioned by government.
Thus, a newspaper may be bombed or a journalist killed without the
perpetrators facing any legal threat, and perhaps with the encouragement
of government officials. The perpetrators may even be security officials.
27 This is a debatable point since owners were coerced by the new law to accept black
patrons, and maybe would not have done so if they had been economically free.
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