One good metric of quality of life (which includes various freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate.

Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in. (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by threatening their families.)

▲ dmaa 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For me, this is the maxim that governs speaking with someone defending a totalitarian regime.

If the person has no issue that people have to be kept by force INSIDE for the country to function, then we have a fundamental disagreement on what is good and what is bad and any further discussion is a waste of time.

▲ mothballed 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If that's the case the theocratic monarchy in UAE takes the cake, I think, although maybe there are similar amounts elsewhere.

Pretty much all the highest % immigration countries are monarchy that I can think of, since in those country another tax payer is an easy win and immigrants that cause problem can be instantly booted so there is very little downside to taking anybody with $1 or a job who cares to come.

  Top Countries by Percentage of Immigrants (approximate recent figures):
  Qatar: Around 77% (or 76.7%).
  United Arab Emirates (UAE): Around 74-88% (some sources   show higher figures for earlier years).
  Kuwait: Around 69-73%.
  Bahrain: Around 55%.

Singapore not far behind (~40% from memory), a one party state but with voting, sometimes described as essentially an elected recallable monarchy. Also note most of those countries have relatively low emigration rates of native citizens.

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Terr_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think "immigrants" is the wrong statistic here, since it includes workers with no path to citizenship. (In some cases, they can't leave because their employer stole their passport.)

It confuses "this is a good place to resettle" with "here I can arbitrage higher wages in order to send money back home."

	▲	cs02rm0 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.

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martin-t 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's a good point. Perhaps a better statistic would be people who want to emigrate or immigrate. We're introducing a bias by measuring only those who actually do.