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I wrote about a few different things during February.

Does the concept of national character make sense? J S Mill's concept of national character is linked to his views about progress (see posts in January). Mill suggested that the success or failure of different societies depends to a large extent on national character. What he had in mind seems to be related to what Douglass North has referred to as informal institutions or constraints.

Who can tell the history of the future? This is a brief review of  ‘A brief history of the future', by Jacques Attali.

How far can Ayn Rand's ethical egoism be defended? This is a selective summary of a seminar in Cato Unbound which seemed to me to shed some light on relevant issues.

Does persistence provide a basis for morality? This is a review of Martin Walker's book, ‘Life, Why we exist ... and what we must do to survive'.

Is a great big new tax such a bad idea? Tony Abbott refers to Kevin Rudd's proposed emissions trading scheme as a great big new tax. My point is that a great big new tax might be worth thinking about as a ‘no regrets' policy if the revenue it raised was used to replace less efficient taxes.

During January I thought some more about the good society and the idea of progress.

I began the year thinking about whether communitarians and libertarians can agree about the good society. This was prompted by my surprise that I could agree with the views of Michael Walzer, often identified as a leading communitarian thinker, in an article on the good society.

My attention then moved to matters that I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last 40 years, namely the politics of policy reforms that increase economic freedom and hence facilitate higher economic growth.

My first post on this topic was on the question of whether the failure of some countries to adopt economic reforms can be attributed to so called ‘paradox of unhappy growth'. This is the term some people use to describe the tendency for people in countries with high economic growth to have lower average life satisfaction than in those with similar incomes and lower economic growth. The post provides an explanation of the apparent paradox and presents a chart showing that people in high growth countries tend to perceive that their lives are improving.

The following post addressed the question: How painful is economic reform? The evidence I look at tends to support the intuition that people perceive that their lives are improving in countries where economic reforms are associated with relatively high economic growth rates.

Is the rule of law under challenge in Australia? That question might seem to come out of the blue. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about the implications of the tendency in this country to give increasing discretion to regulators and law enforcement agencies.

Does brain plasticity have implications for the idea of progress? This question arose from Norman Doidge's book, ‘The brain that changes itself'. The idea that human nature is malleable is usually associated with socialistic utopianism. I wonder whether that might be just an accident of history.

Are J S Mill's views about progress still relevant today? Mill lived at a time when the idea of progress was at its peak and he assisted in the triumph of that idea. He viewed economic progress as inevitable but had concerns about the increasing power of uninformed public opinion. One of the remedies he suggested was that universities should foster an intense love of truth. In my view these views are still highly relevant today.

How much was J S Mill's view of progress influenced by personal experience? I find it hard to consider Mill's views on anything without getting side-tracked into considering how he arrived at those views. The strength of his conviction that education should foster an intense love of truth might be a reaction to his own education, which was designed to make him a disciple of his father, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham.

What will I think about this month? I am currently reading a book about forces shaping the future - so I should probably think about the poverty of historicism!

I wrote more on the ‘good society' theme in December. The main point emerging was that various indicators of well-being and quality of institutions tell a similar story about the characteristics of a good society. I ended the month - and the decade - summarising why I think ‘the good society' is a useful concept and starting to think about progress.

Where are people most satisfied with efforts to preserve the environment? Satisfaction with efforts to preserve the environment tends to be somewhat greater in countries with higher average incomes. The factor that stands out most, however, is government effectiveness. Countries which rate highly in terms of both satisfaction with environmental efforts and government effectiveness include Singapore, Austria, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Do all well-being indicators tell similar stories about human flourishing? This is the first of several posts in which I use my newly-acquired skill in creating tables which use colours to help the data tell a story. (Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?) The table shows that many well-being indicators tell a similar story about human flourishing in different countries. It also shows  the limitations of both per capita GDP and subjective indicators of well-being.

Do economic freedom and governance indicators tell similar stories about human flourishing? Yes. All the institutional indicators in the table tend to tell a similar story about performance of various countries. There are some exceptions, reflecting an absence of democratic institutions in some high-income and upper-middle income countries. All the institutional indicators are strongly correlated with per capita income levels. It seems that the only way to have high per capita incomes without a high level of economic freedom and good governance is to produce huge amount of oil.

Does economic security depend on average income levels? I argue that a good society would provide members with a degree of personal economic security against potential threats to individual flourishing, including misfortunes such as accidents, ill-health and unemployment. The average income of people at the lower end of the income distribution is used as a measure of economic security because it relates directly to the quality of life that people are able to lead. The table suggests that average incomes of the bottom 10% of the population depend strongly on the institutional factors that determine average income levels of the whole population.

Is the ‘good society' a useful concept? Yes. The post gives five reasons: nearly everyone could agree that a good society would have certain minimum characteristics; the concept is distinguishable from other similar concepts; the characteristics of a good society are measurable; it is possible to assess how good a society is without making subjective judgements that are likely to be controversial; and the concept is an aid to clear thinking about the kinds of societies we want to live in.

What is progress? In terms of public policy, if progress means anything it must mean movement toward a good society, or movement from a good society to a better society. The idea of progress also embodies optimism about the future of humanity. In my view, despite all the problems faced by humanity, there is a basis for optimism that advance of knowledge will continue to enable people to enjoy progressively better lives in coming decades.

 In November I continued with the "good society" theme in my main blog. I began considering the implications of a developmental approach to human well-being but spent most time considering indicators of a peaceful society.

How do preferences relate to well-being? If we adopt a developmental view of well-being we may have to accept that it is possible to have informed and rational desires that are not good for us. Does this open the way for more paternalistic interventions? I don't think so. Intervention cannot be justified merely on the grounds that humans are fallible. It is necessary to consider the overall consequences of changes in the rules of the game.

What does the Legatum Prosperity Index measure? The creators of the index define prosperity broadly to include a range of factors affecting human well-being. This index bring together a wide range of information in an interesting and useful way. My post was critical of the Legatum Institute for not being sufficiently transparent about their data sources. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough. The information I was looking for is certainly available now on the prosperity.com web site.

Is a ‘good society' index a good idea? This post recaps previous posts on the good society and sets the direction for future research. I make the observation that it would not be too difficult to identify indexes that others have constructed that measure various characteristics and institutions of a good society. After flirting with the idea of developing a composite ‘good society' index I conclude by proposing to attempt to identify the suite of indicators most relevant to assessing whether a society might qualify as a good society.

What does the global peace index measure? This index combines measures of international conflict, measures of internal peacefulness and measures of militarization. I argue that, for the benefit of potential users who are primarily interested in the internal peacefulness of different societies, it would be desirable for the creators of the GPI to publish sub-indexes which exclude militarization.

How closely does the global peace index reflect internal safety and security? In this post I compare the global peace index with the safety and security sub-index of the Legatum Prosperity Index. Both indexes present a similar picture of the peacefulness of the vast majority of countries.

Does the World Bank's rule of law index measure the quality of legal institutions? I think it does. The ratings of countries using this index correspond closely to ratings using the Legal structure and property rights sub-index of the Fraser Institute's economic freedom index.

What institutions explain the peacefulness of societies? This post draws together the threads in preceding posts about measurement of the peacefulness of societies and the quality of legal institutions. Readers who manage to get past the turgid introductory paragraphs might be interested in the empirical explanation of peacefulness in terms of quality of legal institutions and political stability. Poor quality legal institutions and political instability virtually guarantee that a society will not be peaceful.

Where to from here? This month I propose to continue to with the ‘good society' theme, moving on to consider empirically what institutions promote various aspects of human flourishing.

Last month I wrote mainly about ethics. I started by wondering how Ayn Rand could view selfishness as a virtue, then moved to discuss the characteristics of a good society. I ended the month considering why we shouldn't expect the rules of a good society to be good for everyone.

Did Ayn Rand regard selfishness as a virtue? The short answer is "yes". But I argue that she had a narrow view of selfishness.

Is there virtue is serving a purpose we do not know for reasons we do not question? The question arises from John Galt's speech in "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Galt suggests that if your answer is "yes" you are a zombie. In my response I confess some sympathy with Friedrich Hayek's view that it is unwise to reject customary rules just because we don't understand their purpose.

Is there such a thing as a good society? Yes. A good society is one that has institutions that are good for its members.

What are the characteristics of a good society? I suggest three characteristics:

• Its institutions enable its members to live together in peace.
• Its institutions provide its members with opportunities to flourish - to obtain the things that it is good for humans to have.
• Its institutions provide members with a degree of security against threats to individual flourishing.

Are the institutions of a good society the same as those of the "great society"? I suggest that there is a lot of overlap between the institutions of the good society and the liberal principles of the great society, or open society, as discussed by Friedrich Hayek.

Why is it wrong to coerce people for their own good? Richard Kraut raises this question in his book, "What is good and why". My answer is that it is wrong to coerce people for their own good because this is not consistent with living in peace with them.

Should we expect the rules of the good society to be good for everyone? Richard Kraut questions societal rules such as those discouraging theft and interference with other people because they are not always good for everyone. The point I make is that the rules for the good of all - rules that nearly everyone would agree to behind a veil of ignorance about their own particular interests and vulnerabilities - are not necessarily good for everyone.