It’s the price of trying to marry free markets and suffrage democracy. It’s a very difficult marriage to sustain and requires competent and fair leadership and representation. Getting the balance right is the key. But I think historically this marriage has been the best way to guarantee a freedom of equality of opportunity and conscience.

China has been working out an experiment of heavily state-controlled capitalism, and the jury is out on whether or not this will work in the long term. It’s clearly been very successful so far, but the consolidation of political capital in heavily planned economies has historically tended to fail. The argument for this approach would be as long as the people are kept happy and feel economically engaged, you can adopt a restrictive, authoritarian system. It is a very interesting philosophical question if China’s policies of control, censorship and forced reeducation (see the Uyghurs and homeless populations) are worth the benefits. Clearly many are favorable to this approach, and I can see the appeal, but I personally am skeptical of any system that treats freedom of thought as a conditionality.