The Chinese people today are struggling with having to use code words to discuss democracy on their Yahoo blogs. It's not really a free society yet, but personal liberty has increased with economic liberty there. The two go hand in hand, just as limiting economic freedom means limiting personal freedom. The state of liberty in China today doesn't even compare to that in North Korea or what it was 50 years ago. Your argument is asinine.
I continue to be utterly astonished at the statists crawling out of the woodwork. How can you actually say life in a "pure" free market is worse than under communism? That is ridiculous.
How quickly one forgets the soup lines of the 1930's and the misery that was Victorian England. Also all those who worked for, and were owned by, the "company" while digging coal out of the hills of West Virginia, Kentucky, and other places in Appalachia. And these weren't even under pure free market conditions.
The ONLY thing that got us out of the Great Depression was the massive deficit spending that FDR initiated on behalf of World War II. Just about every economist of every political stripe credits GOVERNMENT intervention on ending the Great Depression. It wasn't the free market that was paying for all those tanks, ships and planes.
My point is this: either extreme, communisim (central planning) or totally free markets are both undesirable. As you correctly noted, free-er than normal markets, like those in China, do allow for a tiny increase in liberty, when you're not locked in the factory during your eighty-hour work week. However, there is still CONSIDERABLE control exerted by the Chinese government, they just don't try to control everything anymore, just simple, unimportant things like politics and religion.
But the reverse is also true. You cannot have a truly "free" market without near anarchy. No controls means no controls. If you have well disciplined population that can maintain itself, fine. But as recent current events deomonstrate, that type of self-control simply does not exist, at least not anymore. Just look what happened to New Orleans within 24 hrs. of Katrina!!!
Lord help the man who lives at the mercy of the FREE MARKET. The reason we don't have one, is because we once did, and no one liked it--with the exception of a few rich folks who had the morals and ethics of the devil himself.
Just look at how the people cried for Uncle Sam to save them after Katrina struck New Orleans a glancing blow. Everyone cries to be free, until it's time to pick-up the check...then they can't have too much "help" from the government.
As some in this thread have been pointing out, free markets work very well in theory; in "controlled" environments; but once they collide with human nature, those benefits dry up very quickly. That's why human beings have always had governments of some type, and often very authoritiarian ones....because more often then not, they couldn't trust the guy standing next to them.
I lived under Communism and I assure you that life was much better than in free market Dickensian England.