We all want freedom of choice: freedom to think what we wish to think; freedom to choose what leaders, policies, or programs which will guide our societies; freedom to choose  to marry whom we wish; freedom to choose which jobs we will spend most of our days time in the servitude of; freedom to speak out or work for the causes which we believe in; freedom to live where we wish to live; freedom to try to work for increasing the freedom we have. 

              But as stated above, power is the ability to limit freedom to your own acceptable guidelines, freedom within only certain bounds. You can think what you wish but not something which your society might find sick or extremely distasteful. 

             You can work for politicians and policies but not ones so radical they might be negative to the most wealthy or powerful of your society. You are free to marry either anyone among a few choices your parents select or approve of in some societies, to anyone except whom your government prohibits you from marrying in others.

              Freedom of occupation is non-existent without a multitude (or even more than one) of jobs all willing to hire you, and many cannot find any job and would starve or are starving without one. 

             The freedom to speak out and work for the causes which one believes in are often limited by law to what one is allowed to speak or work towards, not radical politics, "incendiary" speeches, or publications promoting something the largest or most influential of a society find distasteful or threatening to their power-base or culture which will result in jail time, beatings, or death. 

             Freedom to live where you wish is a nice concept but available in fact only for the wealthy. Others are limited by lack of money, tied to where only they can find work, and by borders which often mean they may starve or be hunted down like dogs on one side of the line and far less likely to die immediately on the other. Yet the obstacles to reach the other side are by design meant to be insurmountable while citizenship and being considered property are nearly synonymous.

           These listed thus far are the big freedom of choices, yet for many they are not thought of because their society does not wish for people to try to improve them further than they are established already, or because people believe whatever limits there currently are on them in these matters are acceptable. 

             But they are also blinded to even thinking about them due to another type of freedom which they are easily convinced supercedes all of the others and can make even the most oppressive thought-controlling dictatorship not so bad, even great: the freedom of choice in cars, fashionable clothes, jewelry, electronic goods, household appliances, nice furniture, fancy hairstyles, artwork or photos, music, video games, boats or sporting equipment, mobile phones/personal devices, anything which can distract one from the notion that they might be losing freedom in everything else or never had it and never will in the first place: Economic freedom.

           There is nothing bad with economic freedom. The more choices in anything except maybe torture and other bad things, the better off all members of a society are. It is just we have begun to lose sight that this one aspect of freedom of choice is not the be-all-end-all of freedom and has been used as a panacea for any real achievement in China, Russia, and Eastern Europe. 

             Even in the West, it is used to keep people occupied while generations of achievements in real freedom are lost. It is almost as if you offered a single small device that they could make calls on, control all the appliances and lights in their house with, get email on, watch video on, play games on, listen to music with, stimulate their genitals with, diagnose their blood pressure, temperature, and heartrate with, clean their teeth with, style their hair with, and warm their coffee by, then they probably would be completely oblivious to anything horrible their societies may be doing to others or their rights and consider themselves the greatest society on Earth for letting them buy such marvelous devices. 

             Undoubtedly their society would be the new pinnacle of human civilization! It used to be they only had to make available illegal drugs in large enough quantities to keep everyone happy. (Similarly, many laughed when a professor recently mentioned that based upon the statistics alone, the Dutch had a statistically aberrational level of overall satisfaction seemingly unexplainable.)

            For such nations, undoubtedly these technological advancements are advancements when they are developed economically, have no unemployment or social problems, have a high degree of legitimately democratic institutions, good protection of rights, and the right to work for ANY causes they wish without police harassment, then they can possibly succumb without much harsh consequences to a culture based on "stuff", having stuff, getting more stuff, showing off your stuff, and playing with your stuff. For the rest of the world, and undoubtedly we all are in one degree or another in that category, it is the classic bait and switch. Look,  Shiny...  New...  Cool...  Wham!

            No region of the world I think exemplifies this more than the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and Russia. Give a PDA ['smart phone' is a 2012 equivalent term] or a mobile phone to illiterate farmers in some impoverished region of the world where they already have nothing and undoubtedly you are doing a good thing because they are already going nowhere anyway, and they might amuse them or distract them from that fact for awhile how horrible their lives will always be. And maybe they might be able to use it to figure out how to improve their lives if the powers that be where they live will let them. 

             The so-called "Second-World" countries (former Communist states) were told they were giving up their economic benefits, their standard of living, guaranteed jobs and housing, free medical care, retirement benefits, all in exchange for real freedom of choice, but instead they merely got a culture of "stuff" with many unable to afford "stuff" and others doing anything in the world to screw them out of what little "stuff" they had left. 

             Between 20% and 40% of the people having lost everything, becoming destitute or homeless, impoverished as much or worse than those in any Third-World country, turned into countries of beggars, prostitutes, petty thieves, crime syndicates, corrupt police, corrupt courts and parliaments, and the only real freedom they got other than the freedom to complain about it, was the freedom to buy "stuff" if ever they could figure out how to screw each other over enough to be able to get some of it for themselves. 

             Sure, they lost all hope for knowing for sure they would be able to survive for more than a few weeks into the future, but they got lots of electrical gadgets, games, phones, and videos to amuse themselves with before many of them starve so others can get their stuff after they do. Pretty much a huge section of their retired people were wiped out of life due to lack of benefits, inability to survive without help, and if you were old and fortunate enough to have a nice big apartment in a major city like Moscow and no children to have to worry about, you were pretty much guaranteed an all-expenses paid vacation at the bottom of a lake.

            In what used to be literate well-educated societies, many individuals within them have progressed, their lives substantially improved, and have only benefited from the transition. Many many many more have not only been inconvenienced, their lives have been endangered, their suffering beyond imagination, and overall their societies are rapidly losing the stability, cohesion, and general civility and level of civilization they had before under what was undoubtedly a more repressive and inhumane system. 

             And ironically, one could say it was all deserved because they were so dazzled by economic freedom, the hope of having all that "stuff" that they were willing to be taken advantage of not only by con-men, but by politicians now all richer than millionaires, who one could say were the most talented con-artists of all.

            Political choice can be a hollow or non-existent choice. When all the political parties offer pretty much the same economic programs, the same cultural policies, the same foreign or trade policies, basically all affecting an individual's life within that society the same ways, it is a smokescreen, a sham. 

             When all the different arms, the parties, are all controlled by the same head, the corporations or oligarchs, it really does not matter who you vote for. When it does not matter who you vote for if none of them will improve your life in any way above the interests of smaller groups which control what laws will be passed, what the rules of the game will be, what the economic policies and benefits to others will be, you may as well be living under a dictatorship. In fact, you probably are and just don't think of it that way.

            The United Russia Party in Russia is best at playing this "multiple arms connected to the same head" game, at least within the context of a single party. Western countries at least name their different arms of the same beast as different parties. With the Nashi (Us) semi-fascist (by their tactics, targeting opposition parties as "fascists" and labeled as such or similar by their critics) state-sponsored or endorsed anti-fascist youth group, if you are a semi-fascist, you can join an organization that will help you feel at home and promote the United Russia party. 

             Now with the new Kremilin favored youth group, the Young Guard, a more genuine reaction against growing fascism (claims to actively work against growing anti-semitism, racism, etc.), if you are bothered by fascism you can join this new and also well-funded rival youth group which of course also supports and works for the benefit of the United Russia party. They are also working on a left wing of the party so pretty much whatever rival opinion or ideology you have that hates the others part of United Russia, United Russia agrees with you too. Just don't try to ask how it agrees with every conflicting opinion or why all those well-funded supposedly rival youth groups of different beliefs all support the same party, beyond just another shell game to win another election.

            At least in Western democracies, they have the decency to call all these sub-categories which all in the end support the same policies, they call them different political party names. They used to have different economic agendas to go with the different names, but like in Russia, our elites thought this amount of choice would be too confusing for most people. 

             Thus in Russia where you have extreme liberals, less extreme liberals, and liberals lite, in the West there are extreme Neo-conservatives, moderate conservatives, and conservatives lite, the Social Democrats. While some social democratic parties may indeed be a whisker beyond the center to the left, in general the left is considered to be a cliff which has only rocks and no means for politicians to get their daily infusion of cash needed to survive another day or another election.

            From the British Labour Party, the American Democrats, to the Social Democrats in Germany, corporations simply have hedged their bets and bought "shares" of influence in these "corporations" as well. On economic policies, political parties have become in effect wholly owned subsidiaries of different rival corporations. And as with the oil industry, the rivalry there too is questionably real. 

             By constantly moving the major "left" parties within their countries to the center, they have far more effectively padded their pockets than simply funding the "friendly to business" parties by throwing the whole political spectrum in their preferred direction. The Social Democrats in Germany only confirmed that by admitting that they have more in common with the major right wing party than to wish to form a similar coalition with a left-of-center party.

            What have some called the "End of History", the now universal all over the world acceptance of "business friendly" parties (read the party businesses like the most should always win) and systems of government based around only what its wealthiest members wishes or permits, it also (if this were to be true) would mean the end of real democracy, where all choices are different arms connected to the same head's wishes as the United Russia-Nashi-Young Guard-whatever else megalith monolith. 

             And the dilution of choices is not toward a center but toward where the wealthiest few wish to take it to establish where the new center will be. Whatever they can get away with, whatever the people can be drugged out to accept whether by actual drugs, manipulations, political structures and rigged elections designed to make irrelevant the opinions of the majorities, constant propaganda, the culture of ever new technological stuff to keep people busy and distracted, however much they can squeeze the dumbest into greater poverty, more desperate destitution, they will have earned the right to do so because in the end, people want to be treated as dumber than stumps and make it so endlessly easy.

            The best example I saw of "going too far", not that it will be extreme for long and far worse will one day make it look like being overly nice, was a US corporation being sold exclusive rights to provide all the drinking water in a village in Bolivia. All wells, even the rain that fell from the sky legally belonged to this corporation. 

             They could now charge whatever they wished and raised rates to levels that would have made people starve, 1/3 their income just for drinking water, because the people had no other choice. Imagine China having been allowed to control the rights to all drinking water sold in New York City and being allowed to charge New Yorkers whatever they thought they could get away with, that maximum profit which could be made compared to what would cause too many to die off and thus lose that future earning potential.

            Even in the glitter is gold world of Hollywood, advertising, PR, fashion, gadgets, and consumer cornucopia of the most superfluous irrelevance people can be made to want to waste their time and money on, there is a drive there to make sure all the arms connect to the same head. 

             Many choices of newspapers and television stations exist, yet all are controlled by the same few "parent" companies and those companies in turn are controlled by other companies whose interests decide what is and is not newsworthy in accordance with how the public's opinions on issues affect their various industries. This is not the kind of "bad censorship" Western democracies have a problem with. 

             This "good censorship", that the wealthiest groups of a society should be able to dump as much out of their piggybanks as it takes to buy up the media so they can influence or control what people see, hear, read, and think just as much as they wish. Journalistic truth and editing belong after all to the highest bidder and "public" broadcasting is just Communism in disguise.

            As child I was taught that free market capitalism is the greatest amount of competition possible which would result in the lowest prices possible. We are about as far from that definition in our corporatist age as the USSR was in having achieved a workers paradise, and we are moving further away every day from freedom for small businesses being allowed to compete equally in all markets. 

             Freedom of corporations to put anyone who gets in their way out of business with their greater resources is what they and their "owned" governments seek. The consolidation by corporations to be able to own and control whatever industries they choose, treating news, public resources like drinking water, public utilities, even farming and food, as just other commodities to be traded between themselves, this has made them so powerful, even politicians and governments are just commodities to them now to be bought, sold, and monopolized at whim or whimsy. 

             We have choices, but they are all by design made to be irrelevant. All arms connect to the same head, all choices made available to us are forever intended to water down true choices for freedom, to new brands of stuff we can pay for by getting more and more others to starve to death to free up more resources for us for new gadgets and games we will no doubt continue to be dazzled with. 

             Talking robots, people selling their organs for food, 3D computer displays, people choosing to be sold into slavery so they can eat another day no matter what they are forced to do, 700 horsepower cars with satellite TV's inside. Look,  Shiny...  New...  Cool...  Wham!