Political Crossfire Forums

If you had to choose between being extremely poor in a tolerant democracy or having a good standard of living in a dictatorship, which would you choose?
Is freedom more important than putting food on your table?

To give some sort of context to this question, for this scenario extremely poor is akin to living in a Indian slum, and the dictatorship is authoritarian but not crazy genocidal; If you keep your head down and shut up, you can go about your daily life fairly unhindered.

LOL this isn't even a choice. Rich in a dictatorship of course.

Being rich in a dictatorship obviously. Pretty much every type of society works for rich people. While some societies are better for poors than others, none of them are actually good to be poor in.

Can I assume the tolerant democracy is also economically tolerant?
ie, decentralized or otherwise only moderately regulated


If so, poor all the way, its possible to change my own situation through effort.
Also, middle class in a dictatorship will be at the whim of tyranny, you can have your wealth as long as someone higher on the governments priority wants it.