The Koch-funded, libertarian-minded Mercatus Center is out with their newest effusively silly pronouncement as to which of our states allows the most "freedom"—and this year, it even comes with a spiffy cartoon. Did past years have spiffy cartoons? I don't know, because when it comes right down to it I really, really don't give a flying damn.
As Alex Pareene rudely and shamefully observes (tsk), "Almost any Liberty issue that wouldn’t concern a straight, white, male capitalist is wholly ignored."
Mercatus doesn’t take reproductive rights into account at all. In fact, no issues specifically related to women’s rights are taken into account. Same-sex marriage is included, but not housing employment anti-discrimination rules. They do weigh “‘smoker protection’ in employment,” though.
You know,
liberty! Rights for brown people and the like, forget about it, but if you're, say, a wealthy industrialist looking for a nice place dump a few million gallons of ebola-laced arsenic or arsenic-laced ebola or genetically modified ebola that spits arsenic, you're in luck, because these rankings are made for you, you fracker. And according to that ranking, it's American paradise North Dakota in the lead, with notable hellholes California and New York (i.e. the places where people actually live) bringing up the very rear.
I have nothing to say here other than libertarians are among the most willingly scammed people on earth. Nihilistic corporatism passing itself off as "freedom," and groups like the Koch brothers are keepers of the libertarian flame? Sure, libertarian movement, y'all knock yourselves out on that one. I'd think the free market would spring for better production values, but pfft. I guess we should be happy that supposed serious thinkers are bothering to produce creepy-ass cartoons about their supposed super-serious findings at all, right?