In countries lacking an independent judiciary, business success can be arbitrarily nullified by political whims. As seen with Jack Ma in China, entrepreneurs can be 'disappeared' and major business initiatives like IPOs can be scrapped overnight for non-business reasons, such as making a statement a government dislikes.
An investment framework cannot simply isolate economic freedoms while ignoring civil and political rights. All three are deeply interconnected. Using the analogy of a car, a country cannot function properly for business if a key component, like civil rights (the steering wheel) or economic rights (the transmission), is missing.
The Freedom Index intentionally uses data from privately funded think tanks like the Cato and Fraser Institutes. This avoids potential data manipulation by governments, a lesson learned after the World Bank was forced to scrap its 'Doing Business' index due to coercion from China, one of its funders.
Beyond its moral importance, freedom of the press serves a critical financial function: third-party data verification. In autocratic nations without it, investors cannot independently validate corporate or government data, making fundamental analysis unreliable and susceptible to hidden risks as countries can simply stop publishing unfavorable metrics.