printStatists stateside have come down harshly on me for even suggesting that your average Egyptian under Mubarak or Libyan under Gadhafi was probably less likely than his American counterpart to be jailed, harassed or have a threatening encounter with the state’s emissaries.
Do you think these former dictators retaliated against “Their People” with diabolical efficiency for selling raw milk and homemade lemonade? Or unintentionally violating Honduran law of which the Hondurans themselves were ignorant? Or attempting to erect a structure on their land?
It’s the difference between organized and disorganized crime: Uncle Sam runs an organized criminal syndicate; Third World despots run disorganized criminal endeavors. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it’s easier to live off the grid in those tin-pot dictatorships America is forever overthrowing, than in the USA, the land of the “free.”
“Illegal Everything,” as John Stossel sees it. He “argue that America has become a country where no one can know what is legal.”
Kids who open lemonade stands are now shutdown by police. I tried to open a lemonade stand legally in NYC. That was quite an adventure. It takes 65 days to get permission from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
With government adding 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year, it’s no surprise that regular people break laws without even trying.
A small businessman spent 6 years in federal prison for breaking Honduran regulations (and, to make it worse, the Honduran government said he didn’t). A family in Idaho can’t build a home on their land because the EPA says it’s a wetland-but it only resembles a wetland because a government drain malfunctioned and flooded it.
MORE.
UPDATE: “The US Is More Authoritarian Than China,” writes Lew Rockwell:
China is nowhere near as authoritarian as the US, and where authority is exercised it appears to be with more restraint. There is no TSA at Chinese airports. My son has entered the country when the customs and immigration checks were simply closed (because it was outside normal working hours) and walked off the plane and into Beijing.
On the surface, there are a lot of “rules” in China, but no one pays any attention and the authorities don’t enforce them.
As I’ve written, “US In The Red And Getting Redder”:
It’s time we came clean about our economic system. The Chinese are honest about theirs; they call it “socialism with Chinese characteristic.” We call ours free-market capitalism, when in fact it is a Third Way system too: “Socialism with American characteristics.”
The picture of China to emerge from behind those pretty Chinese screens is complex. The embodiment of feng shui it is not. The trend, however, is unmistakable: China is becoming freer, America less free. The devil is in this detail.
I noticed some of this walking around Peking and Canton years ago – China was not “totalitarian” … although maybe the people were a bit cowed to act within some norm – but then go to an American airport and what do you see – bahhhh (sheep).
The great “difference” is that we amuse ourselves with two party politics where minor rhetorical differences between the two factions of the duopoly get blown out of proportion to give us the delusion of a “democracy”. China does not bother with that aspect of “freedom”.
“a bit cowed”? Via thousands of people being run over by tanks in the main square. This hasn’t happened in America yet, where the degree of public freedom still exceeds China’s Red Fascism by orders of magnitude. Just try posting something critical on the Chicom controlled internet and see what happens. True, the bogus W.O.T. is being used by the DC/Wall Street globalists to boil-the-frog-slowly…but at some point – probably the gun-grab – there’ll be a violent and extended uprising against the regime. Here in America. Not in China.
What an excellent article. If anything, I think you may have understated the scope and intensity of American micro-management of it’s individuals, businesses and everything. I could tell you stories. Glad I found your blog.
The US has 6 times the incarceration rate as the evil China so either our government or our people (or both) are a bit kablooey. When I was in China, there were pictures of a military leader on nearly every block but it was Colonel Sanders!! (of Kentucky Fried Chicken) – posted on garbage cans. Here we would have Mayor Bloomberg raiding them for french fries and transfat doughnuts! I did not see surveillance cameras at every street corner in China – try driving around Northern Virginia!
Yes, China had Tien-A-Mien but what would this country do in similar situations? How about “free speech zones” at the national conventions, Waco, Ruby Ridge ….
OK, you have Lew Rockwell and Ilana Mercer web sites here and not there – but non-political items like starting a business or eating/drinking/smoking are not “orders of magnitude” worse in China. We delude ourselves about our freedom.
Dear Reb,
Can you say Waco or Ruby Ridge? We are that frog in the slowly boiling water and, I fear, it’s already to late to jump free. It’s in the Cannibal’s Pot we now find ourselves and the future seems bleak indeed.
Poor, unhappy Redman…another “Conservative Pessimist” a la Derbyshire. By contrast, my optimist friend CompassionateFascist envisages a dazzling future for America and White Western Civilization; a profound restoration of Art Deco politics and culture.
[LOL. Glad you’ve owned up to that Alter Ego and are keeping CF in check.]
It’s a daily struggle; CF, like his cousin Svengali, has violent impulses…tho I’ve noticed that Trilby usually gets her way. On topic: Uri Avnery has a powerful historical essay, “Confessions of an Optimist”, posted at Counterpunch.