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The NYT again reveals its inability to look at anything outside of its comfortable Western bubble. The global trend of the past 10 years has been a wave of effo

The NYT again reveals its inability to look at anything outside of its comfortable Western bubble. The global trend of the past 10 years has been a wave of efforts by entrenched rulers to suppress free elections, free press, and a rise in corruption. There is a rough consensus among most watchdog organizations that track this sort of stuff on a global level that measures of freedom are getting worse or in the best case holding steady. The majority of the world's population does not live in democracies with honest elections and justice systems that are free of corruption. Sure you can argue that maybe on some 50+ year long trend things are getting better but to write a column like this in 2016 is just tone deaf. This is why no one wants to pay for the news.

berntb 10y ago
Interesting, do you have some serious references? I've seen the argument that as the general economy increases for an industrialized society, democracy becomes a necessity? (What seems scary is that with increasing 1984 Big Brother technological capabilities, it seems more possible for e.g. China to combine economic freedom and harsh political oppression.) So, it is not like that?
- apatters 10y ago
  Freedom House is probably the most relevant watchdog/measuring organization I can think of for the general case of "equality, liberty and justice" that this article's author was handwaving about. They try to assess the state of several different types of freedom in every country around the world and produce a complete index. Their view is that the world has been getting less free for about ten years now. Many other organizations monitor and rank countries by their degrees of various kinds of freedom - for instance Reporters Without Borders ranks countries based on press freedom and the Heritage Foundation ranks them based on economic freedom - the general character of the assessments of these organizations is that the world is getting less free, not more.

berntb 10y ago

Interesting, do you have some serious references? I've seen the argument that as the general economy increases for an industrialized society, democracy becomes a necessity? (What seems scary is that with increasing 1984 Big Brother technological capabilities, it seems more possible for e.g. China to combine economic freedom and harsh political oppression.) So, it is not like that?

apatters 10y ago
Freedom House is probably the most relevant watchdog/measuring organization I can think of for the general case of "equality, liberty and justice" that this article's author was handwaving about. They try to assess the state of several different types of freedom in every country around the world and produce a complete index. Their view is that the world has been getting less free for about ten years now. Many other organizations monitor and rank countries by their degrees of various kinds of freedom - for instance Reporters Without Borders ranks countries based on press freedom and the Heritage Foundation ranks them based on economic freedom - the general character of the assessments of these organizations is that the world is getting less free, not more.