>>29
Are you claiming that the exact same technological advances would be made in a heavily censored world? Or even the same commercial products would be created?
An example of a major improvement that could happen given current progress would be increasing lifespans for much longer (this is just an example, but you can pick others which you find more probable - I can think of quite a few more). Now imagine a heavily censored world where progress is much slower, thus it may be imaginable that the world is troubled by other problems and they didn't develop that particular technology or make some particular scientific discovery that would have happened in a more open world (if not this particular example, consider all the stepping stones that are needed for greater results/development, those would take a lot longer to reach).
In the open world, the rich guy has a chance to live much longer than in the closed world.