But the real problem is that this system is by its nature fragile. On the one hand, this means that you never know when leadership will no longer be so enlightened and shit will hit the fan with nothing you can do about it.
From another perspective, because of this fragility, it's not capable letting its crazy people reach their potential. Can you imagine what the system would have done to creative hippies or even Steve Jobs if he didn't toe the line? If you don't give free enough reign to these people, your society will hit a ceiling where you don't produce the most innovative culture or people.
The entire West went through this process at one time or another, along with some of the post-Communist countries.
Another thing to be considered is that freedom in the West gets more and more relative latterly. Say the wrong thing in public (or even in private, if it is made public), and you can easily be fired, even denied future jobs. Is the overall degree of freedom in most Western countries that different to that in, e.g., Singapore? I'm not sure it is (it's clearly better than China's, though... at the moment).
If saying something can essentially wreck your life and turn you into a pariah because you can't even get a job, what does it matter if it's a government or not doing it? When the church punished heretics, did it also not count as a violation of freedom of expression because it was not the government doing it?
Conversely, it's impossible to have a "marketplace of ideas" if all forms of criticism, regardless of their source or intent, are considered a violation of someone's freedom of speech, and this presents the paradox of only considering active speech to be defensible, but not reactive.
A marketplace of ideas implies that some ideas will be considered not worth buying.
Criticism is fine, trying to shut opponent's mouth is not, punishment is not.
Now define "criticism" in a way that can't be arbitrarily equated to "punishment" or "trying to shut your opponent's mouth."
Demanding the person to be fired is not fine, ad hominem attacks are not fine, sharing private information about the person is not fine. You get the idea.
To claim otherwise would seem to place business and company culture beyond the reach of the public interest and the scope of society, which is a position not even free governments enjoy.
Perhaps, you are confusing your own interest with the public's one?
The "right to be forgotten" that is being recognized in some countries is also an example of a government measure that can help.
By the way, you seem very confident that nothing should be done because these things only affect people with "awful" or "shitty" beliefs. But what is socially considered awful can vary a lot. There are societies that would place being gay, abortion or being an atheist under that umbrella; conversely, other societies in the past placed being religious under that umbrella. Even if you don't like the people being affected by this now, allowing freedom of speech to be eroded in this way can backfire in a big way in the long term.
The question is whether one thinks it's fine to forcefully lock up a certain group of society for one's own, arguably, material benefit. It is easy to preach material security when the cost is born by another group.
I like to think that the cocoon of my culture values all human lives equally.
Obviously it doesn't really (I'm Australian), but it feels nice to pretend anyway.
Does anyone have the right to remain poor? I think propably he does. Does anyone have the right to think that he has no chance but to stay poor and thus do nothing and stay poor? Well, is there even such a right?
Now, social benefit is a good thing, but it's also a very un-capitalistic thing. Do people have to work to earn their food and clothes and residence,etc, or can people wait for the government to give them food, or money to buy food? Or, if the government is not rich enought to provide said food or money, what should the poor people do?
If a person, for any random reason, say, without the resources or willpower to work, should he/she be given a chance, or should he be left alone? If the chance requires education and training, or some other involuntary effort, is it right to demand such effort from the person?
Now, some specific group of people in some certain country on this Earth, didn't know how they could get out of the poverty they're born to. They may feel insecure around other people that look different or even speak different languages. And there are other people who may look less different and want to exploit those poor people, to turn them into terrorists. You may even have evidence. Is waiting for them to get turned and then punish them really the right thing to do?
Mind you that country may not be China.
I think the bigger problem is people completely mischaracterizing what Singapore is.
Modern Singapore is nothing like a "benevolent tyranny". The best way to characterize it is probably to imagine a large, well-run city with strict laws, heavy bureaucracy, expansive regulation and government involvement in business, and whose politics are dominated by one political party. None of these are extremely rare traits for a city.
Yes, Singapore does have black spots in its record with respect to human rights. Most of this is in the past (primarily during the post-war period, where many other countries have similar black spots with regards to the treatment of communists), but I argue that this aspect has been incredibly exaggerated in the foreign perception of Singapore.
The reason why I raise this is that your comparison to Singapore is invalid: Singapore is already very much similar to a "Western democracy". It holds free and transparent elections (the fact that policies favor the incumbent party does not detract from the fact that the elections are fairly run, and next to no one questions this.) No one holds back criticism of the government in private or in public - they do hesitate for more official mediums (e.g. newspapers, television) because of legal repurcussions e.g. libel. I have never once encountered any instance of censorship with teeth (there have been instances where the government suspended the distribution license of a print magazine... in the age of the Internet).
Please stop using modern Singapore as an example of "benevolent tyranny".
- strict laws - heavy bureaucracy - expansive regulation - government involvement in business - politics are dominated by one political party
All of these give off a terrible impression. But I urge the reader to consider that none of these are unique to Singapore, and are in fact not uncommon among cities/town. Like it is not uncommon for city/state-level governments to be dominant by one party or another for generations. Nor is it uncommon for cities to have annoyingly or weirdly archaic and strict laws. (Singapore bans chewing gum? The US still bans the import of "Kinder Surprise").
I'm not the best writer for this sort of thing, but I just want to dispel this notion that Singapore is this magical, esoteric fascist paradise. It's just a city-state which leans more toward government regulation. Only once we stop treating it as exceptionally special can we actually discuss which policies and aspects of government work and don't work well.
(although it's a valid point that this was a colonial introduction)
If you set aside freedom as a goal in itself for a second, then it's actually worth asking: is freedom actually the most important factor leading to those other creature comforts everyone wants?
I traveled once to Singapore, where a number of people I met made the exact same argument Liu makes. They phrased it this way: sure, we don't have a free press, and we have a benevolent tyrant running the place, but:
I know how repulsive such a line of reasoning might sound to a western-educated mind, but try to step out of the cocoon of your culture for a second (the actual "brainwashing" that every culture basically make us undergo) and see if you can actually counter the argument with logical arguments.