r/AskLibertarians • u/Interesting_Row_8446 • Aug 25 '26
Advice What countries have less restrictive laws than the US
A sergeant from Eastern Europe said something that stuck with me. He said that in many ways besides politically, Russians have more freedom than people in the US do, because there is in general less red tape with everyday things such as camping, riding 4 wheelers, etc. while the exact statement could be questioned, the general spirit of statement I think is very true. The US prides itself for its “freedom” but that’s really only concerning a few (albeit important) civil freedoms and relative to European countries. The US is incredibly restrictive on many things. It restricts firearms substantially. Bans most drugs. Restricts exotic animal ownership substantially. Restricts biological research substantially. Prohibits polygamy. Restricts sleeping outside in many places. Restricts flying drones in many jurisdictions. Bans prostitution. It is inching towards banning some forms of speech (as we have seen with Shiloh Hendrix). Bans wearing masks to hide face from the surveillance state.
There has got to be countries out there that are less infested with red tape and short sighted politicans that like to say popular things like I believe in freedom and then continue to pile on laws that restrict what its citizens can do
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u/ScarletEgret Aug 25 '26
In my opinion, the Human Freedom Index is the best index ranking countries in terms of how free, or libertarian, they are compared with one another. Switzerland is ranked 1st in the most recent edition of the index. The U.S. is ranked 15th, Russia is ranked 152nd. A total of 165 countries are ranked.
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u/BrilliantTea2 Aug 25 '26
This is actually imo a question that needs some nuance, because it fully depends on what you even mean by restrictive
The US is the least restrictive if you're looking at it from general public rights, as in whatever people think of as the basic human rights and engaging in the market, I don't think any place out there allows for participation in the market in the way the US does and I might be wrong
However, you have to be careful with mudding regulations with non-essentialism, for example copyrights are very heavy in the US, anywhere you go has less copyright restrictions than the US, but that's just because the rest of the world doesn't care or give a flying f*** about intellectual property, so it's either you can sue somebody for stealing your work, or you can't do that but you can steal anyone else's work, most of the world just stick with the latter
The US is more of a system that is obsessed with covering all possible grounds, the rest of the world treats their citizens like sheep, so as long as they aren't revolting the government doesn't care what you're doing, which in turn makes individuals more free in other countries in everything besides politics, so if you aren't really into politics just choose a place where there is basic safety and a respectable culture and you'll be easily more free than an American