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I know this is a late response, but I want to point out that non-democratic high income countries with fairly robust civil freedoms exist and, more importantly, are not China. Singapore, the UAE, Liechtenstein, are not democracies and are much freer than China. Note that these are not based utopias, either- they're real countries. And they don't aspire to global power. In these places getting arrested for anti-government activities takes being incredibly annoying, not merely irritating. But they're also small countries that know their place in the global order. They have cooperative outside backers, guys. They don't aspire to be superpowers, which necessitates some internal stabilization mechanisms. The record of these in non-democracies is not good.
Singapore? The country where they literally whip your ass for writing "fuck PAP" on a wall?
If only it were so easy to have such a good time on the cheap. Mistress Xu charges by the stroke and the ball gag is extra.
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As is good and proper. Punishing vandalism is one of the very last things the state should still manage to do before we just shrug and let everyting collapse into utter anarchy.
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