There are three things I like about the idea of focusing on freedom measures for progress. First, I think all of these can be collected in relatively objective numerical ways. Second, even without a formal time series that someone has already put together they seem to foot well with the sense that we are better off than say in the Middle Ages, i.e. that we have de facto made progress. Third, on many of these measures there is still a lot of progress to be made and we also see how we can easily locally regress.