The “Good Country”

I have been asking myself — “why some people prefer some countries or one country more than the other”. I began to do some research and to take some time to speak to some gigantic databases to get answers. The kinds of countries we prefer are good countries—not because primarily they’re rich, powerful, successful, modern, technologically advanced. We primarily admire countries that are good. What I mean by “good” in this context is that countries seem to contribute something to the world in which we live —something that improves the human condition. These are countries that actually make the world safer or better or richer or fairer. Those are the countries we like.

For any government in order to do well, they need to do good. If countries want to sell more products, get more investment, become more competitive, then they need to start behaving because that’s why people will respect them and do business with them, and therefore, the more you collaborate, the more competitive you become.

When you’re talking about a good country, you can be good, gooder and goodest. It’s not the same thing as good, better and best. The best good country is a country which simply gives more to humanity than any other country.

And the best country on earth is the Netherlands according to the www.goodcountryindex.org.  No country on Earth, per head of population, per dollar of GDP, contributes more to the world that we live in than the Netherlands. What does this mean? This means that as we go to sleep at night, all of us in the last 15 seconds before we drift off to sleep, our final thought should be like God!! damnit, I’m glad that the Netherlands exists.

In the depths of a very severe economic recession, I think that there’s a really important lesson there, that if you can remember your international obligations whilst you are trying to rebuild your own economy, that’s really something. Canada ranks at 14^th; The United States of America ranks, 25^th; Israel 53^rd; India 59^th; Kenya 63^rd; Egypt 73^rd; Uganda 77^th; Zambia 101^st; Ghana 104^th; Botswana 118^th; Pakistan 123^rd; Nigeria 126^th; Vietnam; 128^th; and Afghanistan 163^rd.

More at the https://www.goodcountryindex.org/results.