> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people This is an apple & orange measure. Starting from first p

> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people This is an apple & orange measure. Starting from first principles, that is how people behave in society, we can at least temper superficial reading of bare metrics. Human beings self police under surveillance. This is the entire point of setting up surveillance states. US in contrast tends more towards police state: show of force to partition society in distinct 'social climates', directly informed by economic means. So, yes, a police state will attempt to partition, even to the extremity of incarceration, and a surveillance state (which is a super-set of police-state) applies psychological force and thus has a much reduced subset that it will deem 'problematic'. Ideally, a state like China will like to approach the limit of having every 'citizen' well trained and well behaved, as domesticated humans. Our problem over here is (given a generous disposition) that we struggle with reconciling freedom and order without resorting to brainwashing the population, or (less generously) that structural characteristic of our system where "freedom" is bound with at times grotesque wealth disparities naturally creates social hostility, and the economic incentives of a criminal life.