Issue Brief
June 9, 2026 • 5:18 pm ET
Deng Liu
Introduction
As the world moves into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the connections between freedom and prosperity have become widely perceived as an unwritten norm. However, the common belief of the 1990s that an open market would lead to an open and free world where life would be happier and more prosperous is becoming increasingly blurred as residents of Singapore and China express high life satisfaction despite their countries’ authoritarian nature, and as citizens of Chile and Tunisia claim that life has gotten worse since democracy “opened up” society. While not fully reflecting the truth, this phenomenon exposes the existence of deeper causes, which are more than pure isolation and propaganda. This paper suggests inequality in developing states is romanticized by oppressive regimes using a “pioneer mentality” approach and enforced through existing traditionalist structures to prevent the benefits of the open market from reaching the entire public.
