We were told the West was the home of free expression and limited government, yet the lived reality is drifting in the opposite direction. A post-truth politics has fused with sprawling surveillance, and the result is a system that polices speech, watches wallets, and treats citizens like revenue streams. You can feel it in the laws that keep arriving, written with sweeping, vague language, and enforced through financial choke points.
The new squeeze, speech first, money next
In the name of safety and misinformation control, governments have expanded their power to pressure platforms, throttle content, and deputise regulators to “manage harm”. The rules sound narrow, they are drafted broadly, which is exactly how you chill lawful speech without ever saying you banned it. At the same time tax and financial surveillance has gone from targeted to totalising. Bank KYC, payment-platform reporting, crypto transaction dragnet rules, automatic information exchange between countries, it all adds up to a presumption of guilt that you must constantly disprove.
This is the modern playbook. Censor with “safety”, monitor with “compliance”, enforce with “access to the financial system”. You do not need to kick in doors when you can freeze an account, you do not need to jail a publisher when you can quietly downrank and demonetise.
Concrete examples, not theory
United Kingdom, online-speech regulation now comes with real penalties for platforms that fail to police “harmful” content, while the investigatory powers regime allows broad data collection and retention. Encryption has been in the crosshairs under the banner of scanning for illegal material, which puts private communication at risk whenever “lawful access” demands collide with mathematics.
European Union rules like the Digital Services Act hand Brussels leverage over what platforms must remove quickly, and national laws layer on top. Germany’s NetzDG pioneered the remove-first ask-later model, which predictably leads platforms to over-censor to avoid fines. On the tax side, new directives expand reporting on platforms and crypto, with automatic cross-border data sharing that catches freelancers, small sellers, and retail traders alike.
France has authorised remote activation of device cameras or microphones for certain investigations, a power civil-liberties groups warn is ripe for abuse.
Spain has prosecuted artists and users for “glorification” or “insults”, with jail time in high-profile cases, a stark reminder that vague speech crimes invite political use.
United States retains sweeping surveillance authorities under foreign-intelligence statutes, while the government’s back-channel pressure on platforms to police speech has become a running constitutional fight. The First Amendment still bites, yet the informal pressure architecture keeps growing.
None of this is hypothetical. The statutes are on the books, the fines are real, and people have been charged and sentenced under laws framed around “hate”, “harm”, “insult”, and “misinformation”, terms that are elastic by design.
“But China is worse”, yes, and that matters
China is an overt one-party state with explicit censorship and extensive surveillance. On any serious index of civil liberties and press freedom it ranks near the bottom. Western countries still score far higher. What has changed is not that China became free, it is that Western systems are importing softer-spoken versions of the same controls through regulation, platform coercion, and financial surveillance. Day to day, many Western citizens increasingly self-censor online and structure their finances to avoid tripwires, which feels less free even if the constitutions have not changed.
Why people are checking out
Layer high and rising taxes on top of speech-and-surveillance creep and you get exit. High earners and founders relocate to jurisdictions that promise lower or zero income tax, simpler rules, and predictable enforcement. Remote work and digital-nomad regimes make exit easier. Capital follows talent. Governments react with tighter reporting and broader definitions, which accelerates the feedback loop.
What can you do, fight, wait, or leave
You have three levers, they are not mutually exclusive.
Fight
Support civil-liberties groups in court.
Push for bright-line speech protections and narrow, clearly defined criminal statutes.
Demand that any surveillance power be targeted, judicially supervised, and sunsetted, with annual transparency reports that name the numbers.
Harden
Reduce dependence on gatekeepers, use end-to-end encrypted messaging, self-host where practical, diversify your payment rails.
Keep part of your savings in assets outside the banking system, gold you can audit and hold, Bitcoin you self-custody, neither depends on a platform toggle.
Understand the reporting rules that actually apply to you, organise your affairs cleanly, do not give the system easy mistakes to punish.
Leave
If your work is portable and your priorities are clear, consider jurisdictions with lower taxes, straightforward residency, and explicit free-speech norms.
Do this legally and thoughtfully, second-order effects are real, from family ties to healthcare to contract enforcement.
Waiting is a choice too, but drift is not neutral. Laws rarely repeal themselves, powers rarely shrink on their own. The post-truth world is not just about lies, it is about architectures of control built to manage narratives and money flows. If you value liberty, act like it. Build resilience, defend the line in public, and keep a door open to walk away if you must.