Rebellion and Character of Places

Rebellion is easiest in places where it's the least needed, and hardest in places where it is the most needed.

It is very easy to rebel in New York, Melbourne or San Francisco; and in these places there is the least need for rebellion. Whereas it is extremely hard to rebel in Iran or in North Korea, where rebellion is the most warranted.

The worse the place is, the more it needs to do in order to keep its people from leaving or rebelling. The Soviet Union needed to expend a huge amount of resources into keeping the Soviet citizens from leaving for better destinations or developing other-than-Communist ideation. Whereas say San Francisco does not need to do anything of the sort. The place is beautiful; people want to go there; and those who do leave are replaced by greater number of people coming in.

This means the following. The more we see the place do what it can to keep people from leaving, the more we see that as evidence of the place being bad. A good place does not need to use coercive tactics to maintain its population; and the place that does need coercive tactics is not a good place.

For this reason it is much harder to leave, or rebel against, the places that are terrible to people than it is to leave, or rebel against, the places that are not. Iran is hard to leave; New York isn't. That is because New York is much better than Iran and does not need to use oppression to keep New Yorkers inside the state.