I think middle-class Americans tend to overestimate human appreciation for freedom. In my experience, most people in the world, including US, will trade freedom for prosperity in a heartbeat.

Communist regimes collapsed not because they deprived people of their freedom but because their economies failed.

Autocrats like Putin and Xi are popular at home because their economies are growing and people's lives are improving, even though individual freedoms are slowly but surely eroding.

Trump was elected and is still in office because he gave hope for prosperity to people who had long lost it, and they will support him no matter how damaging he is for the rest of the country, the world, or their own freedom.

> Autocrats like Putin and Xi are popular at home because their economies are growing and people's lives are improving, even though individual freedoms are slowly but surely eroding.

Neither Russia nor China have free elections. The Russian economy is shrinking fast and Putin's popularity is disingenuous. That may not be true for Xi. The Chinese are riding a humongous economic growth, they don't question their party much because they like the results and don't want to rock the boat.

The hope may be, in the long run, a free society will eventually reject the burdens of a non-free society once it notices the cost. But the non-free society will catch and spread the idea of individual human rights like a virus. A good virus, of course, in my opinion.