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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

If you speak freely, and it is not powerful enough to cause any consequences, then are you freely speaking at all?

Sounds like a great way to make us feel like we have political power and that our speech has power, when in reality the moment our speech can disrupt the establishment it gets clamped down. One big difference here vs China is that the establishment is a bit more distributed.

The people in power here are just as eager to censor as the people in power in China. The only difference is the people in power in China are mostly the people in control of the government. But the one bigger difference is that we only seem to think the government is capable of censorship, when really it's a matter of the people in power.

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As someone who has lived in dictatorships and now lives in the US, I don’t see the point to your (rhetorical?) question at all. I’ve seen firsthand how much more relaxed people become when they don’t need to constantly worry about government informants (I’m from Tunisia).

Of course, for the vast majority of people, living in a poor democracy is objectively worse than living in a rich dictatorship.

I can't speak for Tunisia but people in China generally don't have such worries. I'm really trying to compare two relatively stable governments, with one employing centralized censorship and power preservation and one employing decentralized censorship and power preservation.

If you throw say a less well off and also oppressive government then it's a different matter.

Well, your statement was quite general :)

My point is that free speech without impact is vastly better than no free speech at all, which is why I don’t see how it even makes sense to ask that question.

I think the key point is that free speech is the basic mechanism the public has to make societal or political changes. If speaking or protesting against the government is a crime, it means the public is lacking the basic mechanism to even propose such changes, let alone make them.

Speech in the US is powerful enough to cause consequences, not really sure what you're talking about.

The US just changed administrations & congressional leadership twice in 4 years based on nothing more than ballot speech, which involved the humiliating defeat of one of the most well funded "establishment" politicians in favor of a non-politician that made a mockery of establishment practices for 4 years. Congress has representatives reviled by practically all of their colleagues and party management, yet they consistently get re-elected through ballot speech.

A series of news reports took down an entire presidency and the whole government couldn't do anything about it.

Allegations of sexual misconduct alone have sunk the careers of some of the most respected and powerful figures in multiple industries.

Protests & news reporting have directly led to historic civil rights legislation, and more recently: local council votes on police spending measures.

Sure, US politicians can be eager to censor but there are political & legal mechanisms that restrict and stop them. There is no such thing for the CCP. I've yet to see any checks on its power or speech about the CCP's atrocities & coverups affect the CCP's permanent leadership.

Yes? Freedom is speech is not equivalent to complete political equity. Those are separate ideas. You can be in a free, open society and still feel or even be powerless. You can be in a free society and be destitute.

In western countries, speech is free, but the microphones are controlled tightly by a privileged few. Not saying china is better, but just different ways the political elites are controlling the masses

yes, that’s speaking freely without convincing anyone of anything.

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