Is there anything special about being an American?

@helenS as long as you follow their rules and do as they say and don't question anything.

@AceOfSpades My reply was about America, not China 😏

@AceOfSpades and yet here you are saying this. Sounding paranoid

@helenS USA isn't even in the top 10 freest countries.

@Kazuya69 What sort of list is that, please, where does it come from?

@helenS There are many. This is one. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries

@helenS Perhaps this one:

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Civil%20Liberties

@Zeusdelight I have no idea how a "human freedom score" can be assigned to a country at a precision of three significant digits...
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Norway's score is better than the Netherlands by 0.12% 😏

@ninalanyon The score you've shown places Switzerland at position #12, whereas it's #1 according to the score referred to by @Zeusdelight 😏

@helenS I wasn't claiming that any of them were definitive, merely that they exist. But Switzerland doesn't appear at all on the screenshot you posted.

@helenS Sweden is far freerer for foreigners than citizens. The foreign men have raped Swedish with impunity there. Citizen seem to have ther hands tied and their voices muffled

@helenS Having family in America, visited there very often, and worked with Americans in the oil industry I think it very much depends on your definition of "freedom". I certa8nly wouldnt rate it as the most free country in the world. Certainly most Americans I worked with, socialised with, 8n the UK rated it as being a far more free country - and I wouldn't rate the UK as being the most free.
America being a bastion of freedom is to me a myth, similar to the every American born child can grow up to be President. It's a nice thought, but we all know that it isn't, and never has been, true.

@22Michelle [quote]I think it very much depends on your definition of "freedom"[/quote]
Yes exactly, that's why those scores should be taken with a grain of salt, and I really can't fathom how anyone can publish a three-digit-precision score.

@ninalanyon [quote]Switzerland doesn't appear at all on the screenshot you posted.[/quote]
Yes that's true, I copied another section from the table, so the US is included. Just open "https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries" and you'll find Switzerland at the top of the list.

@helenS The real problem is not the reported precision but the lack of any indication of standard error, sampling procedure, etc.

@helenS There are always discussions around the definitions, but I think the table does demonstrate that there are serious questions to be asked about why so many Americans believe they live, not only a in a "free" country, but the most free country in the world.

@ninalanyon Significant digits include, intrinsically, a standard error. Three significant digits mean you can differentiate between 8.58 and 8.59, so the relative error is on the order of 0.1%.
The whole thing is absurd. Nobody can assign such a precise number to something as vaguely defined as "freedom".

@helenS The number of digits reported has little to do with standard error. It's a cosmetic decision on the part of whoever designed the web page. The standard error is a property of the errors in the underlying data and the size of the sample.

@ninalanyon Scientific standards require that the number of significant digits be in accordance with statistical experimental errors. I think you are right, the authors of those "freedom score" tables use three digits simply because it [u]looks[/u] scientific... 😏

@helenS I suspect that it's much worse than that. The creator of the web page might not even be aware of the concepts of experimental error or how such errors are quantified.

@helenS I don't either, but you asked about tables and I gave you one and there are lots more. None of them shows the US as a pinnacle of freedom.

I know many people who are afraid to visit the US because they do not want to be a random victim of gun violence. That would seem to me to be an indicator that it is not a safe country and surely that impacts on, for example, freedom of movement.