If you put someone into a situation that isn't optimal, they generally have the means to adapt and not look disadavantaged. This is true for caged animals and humans that lost some of their rights. If you do it slowly enough, you can strip away basically all freedoms without the victim even noticing.
Yes, people adapt. I'm saying you can't look at someone and determine whether how things are for them are good, just because they look fine. An animal raised in captivity looks fine, but maybe it would be better if it was raised in freedom. Or maybe it wouldn't. The point is you can't tell by looking.
Sure, but that's a critical difference between animals and people.
In addition to sampling a whole host of metrics related to a person's health, life expectancy, purchasing power, &c, you can also just ask them how they feel about where they are in life and where they're going. You can't do that with an animal.
Sweden, for example, is showing an OCED Better Life Index of 8.5 for safety and 8.9 for life satisfaction [http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/]. This is compared to the US's rankings of 7.5 and 7.4, respectively.
If the Swedes have sacrificed their freedom (assuming "freedom" is a quantifiable that the US hasn't sacrificed), I wouldn't draw the conclusion they haven't noticed; I'd conclude they actively don't miss it.
My point is that you can't tell, because people adapt. You could come to the same conclusion about people without Internet access and then come to the conclusion that we should ban Internet access, because people without it are happier.
