This morning I was reading a snippet about Hong Kong changing its drinking laws in order to curb “Club 7-Eleven” and it made mention of the “country” being the freest economy in the world according to the Heritage Foundation.

I was immediately curious and so I looked up their 2018 Index of Economic Freedom. Below are the top 10 countries. Apparently Hong Kong has been #1 for the last 24 consecutive years.

The Heritage Foundation describes economic freedom as “the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property.” 

And to measure this they look at 12 aspects of economic freedom, which are grouped into the following 4 categories: rule of law; government size; regulatory efficiency; and market openness.

If you’re really keen, there’s also this free book that was published alongside the 2018 index. But come to think of it, this index appears to have very little to do with lax alcohol laws.