I agree with you, that's why I put the "free" in quotes.

I am not deluded to the point that I think everyone had a great time in the last 30 years or so but since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties.

If the last 30 years have only been a blip in terms of freedom acquired by some parts of the global population, does this mean that we are just returning to the mean value of freedom and that we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime?

> since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties.

The fall of the USSR is the victory of capitalism and most above all the spread of neoliberalism, definitely not an upward trajectory for human rights, democracy or civil liberties. If you think it's been going up, it's because you were not in the group that has been crushed by it, which means you were in the group that, on the global stage, was crushing the other. Our collective well-being always depends on exploiting someone else, unless you're one of those who is simply exploited

> we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime?

No, we are not doomed to live under a semi-authoritarian regime because we are not doomed to live under a "regime", or more precisely, a State. Alternatives have existed and have all been crushed by conservative, usually capitalist movements but also Stalinism. They failed not because of their inner issues but because they didn't have enough power in the balance to survive against antagonist movements. Which is enough for me to believe there is some good in it, and it's worth fighting for it

> If you think it's been going up, it's because you were not in the group that has been crushed by it, which means you were in the group that, on the global stage, was crushing the other.

Which is the group being crushed by capitalism? The major complaint against it is inequality, which in practice has meant that it has benefited some people a lot and some people only a little. There are very few people worse off under it than what came before.

Its biggest failings are government failures to appropriately price externalities and the enactment of rules that constrain competition when a government is captured by industry.

But how do you want to fix that? Government-operated commerce certainly doesn't, the environmental record of state-operated industries is catastrophic -- you're essentially asking the industry to regulate itself. Anarchy can't price externalities, how does it propose to prevent anyone from dumping in the river?

So what do you want to do instead?

> Which is the group being crushed by capitalism?

The workers who are barely paid a living wage, the workers who are currently in a row with Meta because it used their work for mediation but exploited them, the workers who are currently doing all the not-artificial job of teaching AI. Capitalism works by exploiting people, globalization has just made it less visible

> So what do you want to do instead?

I want people, those who wield tools, those who build tools, those who use resources, to be the ones to decide what we build, how we build it, how much we build it. I don't want industry to regulate itself, I want the users to be their own industry, or if they don't want to/can't, to control the industry.

> Anarchy can't price externalities, how does it propose to prevent anyone from dumping in the river?

Contrary to popular belief, anarchism doesn't mean the absence of rules. How does capitalism proposes to prevent anyone from dumping in the river ? It doesn't, there are rules outside of capitalism that block it from dumping. The trick is to work out who decides the rules.

Anarchism is about taking control of our lives, of our futures. It's about doing for ourselves rather than complaining and hoping someone else does it better for us.