Redditors who have lived in both a dictatorship and a democracy, what are the differences in daily life occurrences between the two?

1. A native of Ethiopia here. The major difference I'd say is the media. The ruling party has total control over all media and communication services, including the internet, so you're constantly fed political propaganda every day. If protests erupt in some part of the country, it's common for the government to shut the internet down for a month or two. Corruption is rampant, inflation is ridiculously high and you see a small minority who control the government get richer. Interaction with the federal police is always a nightmare, cause if you use the wrong word or are percieved to have a 'bad' attitude things escalate pretty quickly and can get physical. And the government has fixed a minimum amount of income that a certain business should earn, so if you actually end up earning less than that amount, you get taxed for the minimum amount regardless. I've been in the US as a graduate student for over a year now and the difference is like night and day.
   — barbadoslim63


2. I grew up in a dictatorship. Religion was illegal. The dictator was a god. People kept a portrait of the dictator at home and basically worshiped it. No one was starving, but lets just say there were no overweight people. You could only buy so much food. Food rations existed. We were poor. Like poor poor, not 1st world poor. No balls for kids to play with. Gramps would make cloth balls for us to play with. Basically no toys. Most families had a TV. There was 1 channel and 2-3 hours of programming per day except for Sunday. We got 6 hours of TV on Sundays. People were brainwashed. Actually brainwashed. Go to youtube and find testimonials from NK defectors. It was almost the same. But NK looks much richer than we were. Edit: Yes this was pre 1990 Albania. Here's a few more: No one had cars. But if you saved 1 year's salary, you could buy a bike. Everyone finished high school. If you had good enough grades you could go to college. If not, you'd serve in the military. After that you would be issued a "work letter" and were assigned a job to work in for the rest of your life. You pretty much had no say in what that was. It was easier for me to come in the US from Albania in the 90s and become a US citizen, than it was for my father to get permission to move from his village to the city which was 3 km away. He did that by serving 10 years in the military. Crime was non existent. Everyone lived in apartments. You were assigned one based on where you worked. You never owned it. You rented. Everyone's apartments were the same. They were furnished the same. Because there was only one set of tables, sofas etc available. Even then you couldn't just buy them if you had the money. You needed to apply for permission to buy. Same goes for stoves, TVs and refrigerators. It was very difficult to get this permission. Buildings were the same design and they all were 5 stories tall. Except for one building in the capital. That building was 15 stories tall. It was known as the "15 story" building. When you went to the store, they had shelves, but they were all empty. If you bought bread or something, they'd go to the back to get it for you. You had one jacket and you were known by it. Better off people would get a new jacket every decade. Most had one their entire adult life. People were generally content. Edit 2: The response is surprising. Thanks everyone for reading! Let me address a common question. The last line is an observation. I'm not really smart enough to know the "why" or even explain my understanding of it efficiently. The best way I can put it is this. I have been fortunate in my life. The US is a great country and I live comfortably. I have a house, cars etc. I like having them. Its great to have them. But ultimately its my wife, my kids and family that are the source of my happiness, not things. As long you are surrounded by loved ones, that's all that matters. In any system. In my opinion.
   — zxcvbmm


3. I've said this before but the most striking for me is the freedom of choice. I grew up in communism and basically you had only one version of food, clothes TV station. My parents were both intelectuals with good paying jobs but there was nothing to buy in the stores.
   — lilyinthewater






4. For me, the biggest difference is how people just get used to fucked up situations. People are resilient, and even in the shittiest situations, sometimes even unconsciously, they adapt. I'm originally from Venezuela. What you see in the media, is mostly accurate, situation is really dire. People are dying from lack of medicine, for example, the lack of VIH antiretrovirals have been a death sentence for many. But people get used to all that. People get used to get into a line in the supermarket just because there is a line (something must be arriving, and you should buy it even if you don't need it, you can use it for barter later). People get used to seeing abuses of authorities (government officials often play illegal wiretap records of opposition politicians in national tv, for example). People start seeing every single fucked up thing as normal. Because that's the way it is and there is no way to change it, so you just try to get on with your life, and be happy with the little you have left. With crime, it's the same. A lot of Venezuelan prisons are controlled by gangs. And by controlled, I really mean controlled, no police or military allowed. They have pools, night clubs, hookers, barbecues and family living inside, along with AK-47's and heavy artillery. This is normal. One "Pran" took a famous madman called Dorangel Vargas, a cannibal, and made him cook his enemies in the prison. There is a video from another prison where the inmates chopped other prisoners fingers and fed them to themselves while being tortured. And no one bats an eye. Because people feel like there is no reason in trying to change what you can't change.
   — JPGarbo


5. [removed]
   — [deleted]


6. I lived in China until 14 years old, and still visit China annually. China's Internet regulations are the most annoying in the world * 80%+ of all non-Chinese websites are flat out banned * if you want to start a personal blog or any website at all, you have to register with the government, otherwise the Chinese hosting service will just refuse to host your site with out the registration # * many popular VPN service are IP banned, it's quite difficult to find a working VPN * any political dissidence online will be investigated by police, they knocked on my door once, luckily I was able to just slip him a few hundred RMB and he happily went away without trouble. * besides Internet bans, there's gun ban, gambling ban, porn ban, strip club ban, can't start your own political party, can't start your own religion neither. When I come back to the US, I seriously can feel I'm breathing freedom.
   — 6to23






7. I lived in China for four years. I remember one day I went to get a coffee at Starbucks and while I was waiting for my coffee I was reading through an article in People's Daily, an English-language state-run newspaper. There was an article about how the government was making changes to the history textbook to be used in public schools. There was a quote from an official which went something along the lines of "It is of the utmost importance that the next generation of Chinese be brought up with the 'correct' interpretation of history." I never forgot that quote. It totally underscores how in China you have no right to make your own interpretation, to have your view on events. In China, there is the party line, and then there is everything else. Dogma and blasphemy. I will qualify that by saying that I did travel to North Korea in April of last year. When I got back to Beijing after 3 days, China felt like a free country by comparison. The example I will give is the internet, which is excruciatingly slow and heavily censored. After the smog, the internet is what all expats gripe about most. However, after 3 days in Pyongyang, I was simply happy to be back in a country that had any internet at all, censored or not. There are plenty of other things that come to mind but I've already written a lot.
   — Victa_V


8. In Chile we had a dictatorship until 1990, it's a great thing not getting tortured or killed for thinking, but beside that almost nothing change. The same people that ruled the country before does it now, but with more friends from the other side. As an example Pinochet before leaving gave some of the biggest state companies to friends and family, like SQM (mining company) to his son in law, just the last year we knew that this guy paid for all the political campaigns of almost all the political parties, even sons of politicians killed by pinochet got illegal money from the the pinochet's son in law and now. Politics is a hell of a drug.
   — Andrei_Vlasov


9. Venezuelan here, so, sorry for my english, right now I'm living in Panama so I have an idea of what's the difference. I moved to Panama about 2 years ago, and immediately saw the difference, the people lived way different than how we live in Venezuela, mainly because of insecurity, as some of you may know, Caracas, the capital of Venezuela is the most dangerous city in the world. Last time I read about it we had more homicides than a country in war. Here I see people walking in the streets normally, even using their phones! which in Venezuela is impossible unless you want to get robbed or killed. Also, in Panama people actually believe in their election process, they go vote and actually they can win, something that in Venezuela just doesn't happens because the "goverment" has all the elections rigged (sorry I couldn't find a better word for it). So, if you want to know something else PM me, again, sorry for my English haha.
   — Abrask