Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse.

Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world.

Obfuscation is the name of the game in the 21st century, make absolute things grey areas, and add layers of abstraction to the extent that you can't really tell what's being done or whose fault it is so that the same kinds of exploitation can keep going on and it's not so easy to be opposed to it because finding the target is just hard.

> Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse.

“Real freedom”? “Fair salary”? “Decent working conditions”? What makes you think Chinese people can’t make their own choices? They’ve been leaving the countryside nonstop for 70 years. The pay for unskilled labor has been going up pretty much nonstop since Deng opened up. China has a lot bad about it but I doubt you would be pretending Thai people are unthinking automatons and they’re about as rich as Chinese.

> Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world.

Indeed. You could make children sit down, shut up and do as they’re told all day five days a week if you just told people it was normal. You could invade and bomb other countries with impunity. You could support other countries in intervening in civil wars to keep them going without end. Good thing we’re free. Good thing we right thinking people would never do anything like that.

It is not that different when the time you pee is measured and factored in pay