Freedom costs a buck-oh-five, oh yeah...

Via Yglesias, here's a Weekly Standard article bashing China:

[P]rosperity, while a great public good, is a meager substitute for the greater public good of natural rights such as the freedom to publicly oppose one’s government, to legitimate state authority through elections, and to worship God as one sees fit.

Blogger Kerry Howley pooh-poohs this argument:

Bangladeshis vote for their corrupt leaders and legally worship whatever God they wish. In what substantive sense is a kid born in Dhaka (GDP per capita: $2300) better off than a kid born in Beijing ($7700) or Singapore ($31,400)? Free to do what? Almost anywhere, prosperity brings with it the ability to educate your children, to enjoy a modicum of leisure, to leave. What’s freedom of exit worth if you can’t afford a plane ticket?

Yglesias pretty much agrees, writing:

[T]he improvement in human welfare associated with Chinese reforms and economic growth over the past 25 years has been simply enormous and to dismiss it like that purely in order to work oneself up into a greater fit of self-righteous fury at the PRC dictatorship is absurd.

Now, first of all, it should be noted that the Weekly Standard, being the quintessential neocon hack rag, is much more interested in sowing dissent in our biggest great-power rival than it is in actually promoting human rights or democracy. Bad motives definitely should make any claim from that paper suspect.

But is this Standard article wrong? Frankly, I'm a bit disturbed to see liberals make the argument that the state is justified in taking away people's civil liberties as long as it compensates them with enough cash. It makes me wonder - How much money would Kerry Howley accept in return for signing a statement that if she ever criticizes the Republican Party, she can be legally thrown in prison?

But suppose the Howley/Yglesias argument is right, and freedom can be bought for a dollar price. Does that make China's system OK? In addition to being something we enjoy, freedoms help ensure a functioning society. The millions of Chinese people dying from pollution, suffering horrible birth defects, or running out of water would probably like to have some kind of way to get the government to respond to their concerns without getting tossed in jail like Hu Jia. They would probably like some way to toss out their corrupt local officials and replace them with leaders who have more concern for public health. Are all those people adequately compensated for their suffering by China's growth?

Even if you have no ethical qualms with China's authoritarianism (and I do), you have to admit that China's system hasn't worked for all of its people. There are still hundreds of millions of poor farmers, poisoned villagers, and floating urban laborers out there whose welfare has been ignored and trampled. That doesn't mean we can do anything to help those people - China is too big and too strong for us to make much of a difference - but we shouldn't tell them to "let them eat the per capita GDP statistic."