Mexico doesn't have free speech in practice: If you speak out against the wrong people you get killed by the cartels. Also, we don't know what the quality of li

Mexico doesn't have free speech in practice: If you speak out against the wrong people you get killed by the cartels. Also, we don't know what the quality of life in China is, because ... you cannot talk about things which are critical of the government. That is technically correct, but being allowed to criticize the government without getting send to a prison seems to be a common denominator, so we could start with that. That assumes you cannot work on free speech and "other steps" at the same time. Free speech is so easy, blocking it costs more resources than just accepting it. These resources could be used for "other steps", so blocking free speech is detrimental to them.