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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (72165)2/7/2003 8:23:18 PM
From: JohnM  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Thomas,

We are definitely on different wave lengths. Let's say you seriously wished to argue the case for one of your categories. Let's pick fairness because it's the easiest to operationalize. Let's say, we might mean by that the degree to which all citizens within that country were treated "fairly." One step. Now what does "fairly" mean? One way to measure that might be to see how the worse off in the society were treated. If the vulnerable were badly treated, that would be unfair.

So we might look at comparative health statistics, at comparative education statistics (making certain that high scores among the wealthiest didn't swamp much lower scores among the poor, in fact, we would want to compare scores--and opportunites for the poor, the vulnerable minorities, across nations), perhaps literacy rates, if there were cross national education measures that were useful, we would wish to take a look there; comparative longevity rates and how they varied across strata. Perhaps you get the point.

I don't ask you to agree with the way I took "fairness" and worked it into measures that could be compared so you could argue the US is tops in fairness. I simply wish to suggest that operationalizations in the social sciences work that way.

Unless you are arguing on some different plan such as personal preference or some sort of ideological one.
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