I have personal memories of a world that allowed far more personal freedom than today.
I traveled the Hippie Trail in 1972, and I settled in Southeast Asia in 1982. Man, was life easy and free back then. I could run a shop or any kind of business through a nominee—nobody cared.
Tourist visas? You could stay for years in almost any country, simply by leaving at the end of your permitted stay, crossing a border, and coming right back. Unless you were involved in drug trafficking, the police had no interest in you.
There was no Internet at first, and in the remote places I lived, not even television. If I wanted to read a three-day-old newspaper, I had to travel an hour there and an hour back.
Safety? Of course, there was petty theft and the occasional brawl among drunken men. But I never feared being mugged or murdered. I lived with my local family, and even marriage was a matter of simple community acceptance—solemnized by local religious figures without paperwork or government involvement.
These communities were poor. They had rice, vegetables, and fish, but no luxuries. Still, people were, by and large, happy—and untouched by the constant oversight of a central government.
That level of freedom no longer exists, not even in the remotest corners of Southeast Asia.