Microsoft agrees to censor the service and user’s can’t talk about the banned words on the service.

Microsoft refuses to censor the service and user’s…..still can’t talk about the banned words on the service. Or any other words for that matter.

China, not Microsoft, deserves your ire.

The Chinese, it seems, have managed to avoid political liberalization precisely by providing economic liberalizations, creating a significant and powerful elite symbiotic with the current political system.

As long as Chinese rural folk (who, of course, couldn’t care less about internet access, they’ve probably never seen a refrigerator) tolerate this, the political system should remain stable, or, at least, it looks that way.

Given that the article linked to by Chris suggests pretty much the exact opposite, I would have to say no, it isn’t clear at all.

Isn’t it clear that the economic liberalizations are adding more pressure towards more political liberalization? Of course, they’ll try to block things somewhat, but it’s futile and now citizens can communicate with each other (and the rest of the world) like never before.

Microsoft should be praised for helping to enable these changes. Of course they have to comply with local regulations, but the tools they offer are hastening the reduction of oppression, not increasing it.

Is the alternative, no blogs, better?

But eventually market losers become more and more restive and the system, in order to remain stable and, often, simply to survive, has to transform itself into some form of egalitarian democratic capitalism.

And once that happens, capitalist economic model that is itself anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian becomes a hindrance and will have to be replaced eventually.

That’s how the theory goes, or one of them anyway. It seems logical, but is it going to pan out like this in the real life? Who the heck knows…

Helluva lot better than under Allende. And when the crisis struck in late 70’s it was a regional,
maybe even a world wide crisis that had little to do with Chile’s particular form of the political system.

” . . Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. . . ”
http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_p_2

freedom

“You have just used a forbidden word!”

liberty

“You have just used a forbidden word!”

not-oppression

“Message approved!”

There we go!

I don’t think abb1 was praising Chile—he was ( criticizing the notion that economic liberalism necessarily goes with democracy.

There’s a saying, that for every Lee Kuan Yew there are many Mugabes or Idi Amins or Kimg Il Sungs

Um, actually, economic liberalization works much better under an authoritarian regime than in a democracy. See Chile under Pinochet, Singapore under PAP, Taiwan, South Korea, etc. and – duh – China, of course.

Democracies don’t put up with too much of economic liberalization.