Would a good society be an equal society?
Figure 2
A good society also needs to be prosperous, so that everyone benefits, and everyone has the same opportunities to thrive. This also requires social responsibility to make sure that wealthier people are supporting poorer people so that poorer people are able to reach those opportunities. A good way to measure prosperity is with the Legatum Prosperity Index ™ . 5 The Legatum Prosperity Index ™ combines 67 elements, in 12 pillars, from 3 domains. Each of the 3 domains for prosperity are divided into 4 pillars. The domains of prosperity are inclusive societies, 6 open economies, 7 and empowered people. 8 The Legatum Prosperity Index ™ works out the average rank for each country in each of these pillars based on weighted elements, and then they work out the mean of the 3 domains, to arrive at a prosperity score which is used to calculate the final index. Using this, we can plot another graph, which compares prosperity with goodness (see Figure 2). Here, we can see a trend form, in that a good society is more prosperous than a society with a lower GCI. We can also see that once again, ‘good’ countries such as Sweden and Iceland are prosperous, whereas ‘bad’ countries such as Angola are not so prosperous. This shows that prosperity is also a major part of being a good society. As a prosperous society is not only wealthy, but also gives everyone the same opportunities to thrive, then we can conclude that a prosperous society, combined with social responsibility, is also an equal society, which means that a good society can be an equal society. However, a good society should also be functional. In order to be a functional society, you need to have a leader to ensure that the society does not collapse into anarchy. However, in order to have a leader means to establish one or more people as superior to everyone else. This goes against equality, as that person has the power to do things that other people are unable to, such as creating laws or deciding what area for the society to focus on. If everyone were to work for the same income, then people would surely be disgruntled if two people working for different lengths of time at the same job would end up with the same income, which promotes dissatisfaction, possible revolutions or strikes, which would cause a society to stop being functional. Much like communism, an equal society sounds good on paper,
5 Legatum Institute Corporation, 2021. 6 The 4 pillars are safety and security ; personal freedom ; governance ; and social capital . 7 Investment environment ; enterprise conditions ; infrastructure and market access; and economic quality . 8 Living conditions; health ; education ; and natural environment .
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