I think it was @lovejoy who was telling me recently about a Chinese saying that roughly translates to "the air of freedom." His friend lives in a major city and tells him that she can go anywhere at anytime of the day or night and feel perfectly safe. Here in the US, we "breathe the air of freedom" and have rampant crime and other social problems. I don't think China's way is better in general, but it does do a better job of holding people accountable for their actions.

I would love to see a truly free market in the US. Instead we have unfair monetary policy, corporate welfare and captured regulators constraining the actions of individuals and small businesses at every turn. What results is a heavily manipulated market, not a free one.

Despite our air of freedom, our society as a whole is likewise heavily manipulated rather than free. Maybe a more nuanced definition of freedom is called for. But I'm inclined to think that we all know what freedom means while the opportunities to truly exercise freedom have been systematically stolen from us by a control regime that keeps us too befuddled to even realize what we've lost.