It’s hard for me to over-emphasize what “economic development” means in the context of a third world country. When my dad was growing up in a village in Bangladesh, 1 out of 4 kids would die before age 5. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed during the independence war due to conflict between Urdu speaking Pakistanis and Bangla speaking Bangladeshis. To this day Hindus are fleeing Bangladesh to go back to India, and the Hindu population is under 10% now (compared to 30% in 1947 before Indian independence). The founder of the country was assassinated. His successor was overthrown in a coup. We left the country in 1989 during a military dictatorship. The current prime minister has thrown the opposition party leader in jail. The 10 richest Bangladeshis include both sons of both party leaders, who are nearly billionaires from corruption.
So caning people for public disorder? Well it’s relative. If an authoritarian government is what it takes to straighten out society and get it on the right track, it is what it is.
It’s not lost on me that the predecessors of the prosperous northeastern states were extremely repressive Puritan, Dutch, and Quaker communities.
You have to be careful to distinguish between freedom for distinct communities and freedom for individuals within communities. Pluralism doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with individualism. Quaker society was quite rigid when it came to enforcing norms and social order within communities, against individuals.
Similarly, Singapore has broad freedoms for its distinct ethnic and religious groups. But it aggressively enforces social order as to individuals.
What was the most repressive aspect of being a Quaker? The Puritans were throwing people in jail, and they had that whole Rhode Island thing. (Did Rhode Island flounder?) The Dutch, I'm ignorant of.
Let's say you're a Quaker and you come over as an indentured servant in southeast Pennsylvania in the William Penn era. After your servitude is up, you get 50 acres and another 50 acres from William Penn and become a farmer. How much less repressive would your environment or your children's environment be if you weren't a Quaker? You're still a farmer, farming, who crossed the ocean to a new world to be an indentured servant. Did the non-Quakers slack off?
So caning people for public disorder? Well it’s relative. If an authoritarian government is what it takes to straighten out society and get it on the right track, it is what it is.
It’s not lost on me that the predecessors of the prosperous northeastern states were extremely repressive Puritan, Dutch, and Quaker communities.