(Edit: This was initially titled The Three Dimensions of Population Control, but in honour of Martin Luther King’s Measure of a Man, referring to the three dimensions of man, I’ve changed it. I think it’s also relevant because here too we’re trying to measure population control.)

Tolstoy proposed four ways that the people are controlled:

1. Intimidation
2. Corruption
3. Hypnotism – The use of religion and patriotism
4. Force – Use the first three to create a small group of the physically strongest people to enforce the control

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You, Leo Tolstoy, p192

I’m only going to focus on the first three (intimidation, corruption and hypnotism) as they support the fourth. If you reduce the first three you reduce the forth. Of these three we now have an international Corruption Perceptions Index. I see it as the best tool we have to see the real differences between countries. But as Tolstoy’s criteria show, this doesn’t capture the full spectrum of control.

The intimidation and hypnotism of the US population through police brutality and the US Churches paint a very poor picture. I would say the hypnotism in Russia and China is arguably less than in the US, but brutality is clearly higher. But I don’t have a concise, unbiased set of rules to back up my statements. I can however say that in 2021 the US (rank: 27) is (perceive-ably) less corrupt than Russia (rank: 136) and China (rank: 66) with confidence, thanks to the corruption index.

I propose the creation of a country by country Intimidation Perceptions Index and Hypnosis Perceptions Index this would bring a much clearer indication of which are the best countries to live in instead of the UN’s World Happiness Report which is so context dependent that it is useless. Then list these three alongside each other under a Population Control barometer. These three can’t really be summed up to a single index. They are individual dimensions. The only way to say that one country is less controlled than the other is if they have a better score on all three dimensions. Plotting these dimensions in a 3D graph will show the spheres that can group different parts of the world.