Where are you going to go? People playing up third world countries don't know shit. The day-to-day corruption in nearly every such country is so bad that after awhile you'd rather have someone reading your e-mail but otherwise leaving you alone. And let me tell you from first hand experience--it is soul sucking to live in a country like that where you're constantly surrounded by people living on the edge of subsistence (or if you aren't you've segregated yourself into 1%-er bubbles, which is its own kind of bad).
Look at the BRIC countries, which are supposedly on an upward trajectory. Russia, India, and China are out off the bat. Russia and China do not have functioning democracies, and while India does, it is corrupt from top to bottom. Someone commented about Brazil yesterday how debts are inherited in that country, not to mention it's got outrageous income inequality.
Out of the big European countries, you've got the U.K. with cameras on every corner, and France where until recently it was a crime to insult the President. It has come out that Germany spies on people too, though apparently less than the U.S. to a degree (I guess just because of shorter retention periods).
Libertarians like to put up Hong Kong as some shining example, but that's just proof that libertarians don't really value democracy (since Hong Kong doesn't even pretend to have democracy). Hong Kong apparently does less internet surveillance, except if you're a pro-democracy activist in which case all bets are off.
That leaves the Scandinavian countries, I suppose, but I have a hard time seeing a lot of libertarian-minded people fleeing the U.S. for that collectivist utopia.
> That leaves the Scandinavian countries, I suppose, but I have a hard time seeing a lot of libertarian-minded people fleeing the U.S. for that collectivist utopia.
As a pragmatic libertarian, I am willing to pay many more dollars in taxes to provide services I don't agree with so long as little to none of my tax dollars go towards bombing brown people and spying on citizens.
I hear Human Rights Watch maintains a rank-order list. Probably Amnesty Internation does as well. But I'm about to leave to go home or otherwise I'd dig it up myself.
