Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

234 Scientism and Values
subject to yardsticks.. However, there are indeed fairly simple ways
of measuring freedom that will not degrade the entity being
measured. For instance, we have statistics at our disposal recording
year after year how many individuals, families, and people in various
occupations, choose freedom-they leave from behind the Iron
Curtain. We have such data for East Germany, Hungary, Red
China, Tibet, and other areas where individuals make a choice
from among relative degrees of freedom-such as, for example,
between the not-quite-so-oppressive communism in Tito's Yugoslavia
and their opportunity to escape into Italy.
Moreover, we can measure in meaningful units, if we want to,
the time persons have to spend in offices of the .authorities in order
to get permission to migrate, to leave a country, to change occupation
or residence. All these important segments of a man's daily
life are related to freedom. American readers may not be able to
see their importance at once because they yet know so few controls
over their personal lives. All we meant here is that just as well as
the UN can study the degrees of censorship of the press in various
countries on a comparative basis, we might try to get similar data
for other areas of human freedom, not just the journalist's.
H. Schoeck.