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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world.
A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs.
Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do.
And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone.
But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something.
If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high.
You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich.
It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it.
But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately.
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On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately.
Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. Put a democracy where it doesn't belong and it will fall apart faster than you can say "Mission Accomplished." That's not a hypothetical, because it has happened before.
Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The real issue is that if the rule of law cannot be respected, democracy is worthless. Sometimes you have to strong-arm a populace and kill off those who pose an existential threat to the nation (e.g. ISIS sympathizers).
Democracy is an idea that is more than two millennia old, and only recently have the conditions to make it work developed. Let's not confuse ideals with the reality that strong-arm dictatorships really are what works for keeping radicals in line.
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On September 09 2015 05:01 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 03:36 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 03:24 dismiss wrote:On September 09 2015 03:18 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 03:05 dismiss wrote:
I haven't read the entire website, just what kwizach highlighted for now, but they just seem to like calling things that aren't in line with their findings arbitrary and subjective, also it's sort of disregarding that there might be other reasons for higher genetic diversity than just people running around the continent some.
I've read a bit more, essentially Relethford says "I can find that these certain groups have different clines for different characteristics, but if you mash them all together they're one big group with a huge cline and you're supposed to do that because I say so." Thanks for debunking their entire body of research with your expert analysis. It really sounds like you have a great grasp of what they're saying. I'm not an anthropologist but to me these at least seem questions worth answering. This study for example introduces the idea that differentiation between certain regions might in fact not be "completely arbitrary" based on regionally differences leading to varying selection pressures. But please, continue to be so condescending to anyone with a differing opinion, at least you have read 3 of those papers.  The problem is not your differing opinion, the problem is that you completely misrepresent the contents of papers I linked you to because you have no understanding of what they're saying. Did you read the conclusion of the paper you just linked? It starts with "The results of the present study could be misconstrued as support for the existence of biological races of Homo sapiens". The author studies the impact of regional factors on human diversity, which is not controversial -- my last sentence two posts ago was that variation among humans obviously exists. That is not the same as saying that there are biological races that would be based on objective clear-cut cutoff points between groups. Variation exists, but races are socially constructed. Okay, so we have geographical regions which correspond with clusters of morphological/genetic attributes. We even have lots lots of them, have a looksie at Tang et al for example. They are capable of essentially flawlessly matching specific genetic clusters to people categorised by traditional racial groups. Here is another one for the lulz.So we can establish a correlation between ancestral origin and race. It now appears that my opinion was not as unfounded as you claimed it to be after all. Whoops.
1. The two studies you linked to are based on statistical analyses done through algorithms like that of the program Structure. Several papers have been published on the methodological and theoretical limits of analyses using such algorithms, the most important of which is that the parental populations that the programs output are actually abstractions derived from the type of parameters entered by the programs' user, abstractions that may very well not reflect actual groups of ancestors. This is explained at length in Kenneth M. Weiss and Jeffrey C. Long (2009), "Non-Darwinian estimation: My ancestors, my genes' ancestors", Genome Research, vol. 19, pp. 703-710:
This raises the question as to what the evidence for the ancestral populations inferred by structure-like analysis actually represents. If the user has supplied their allele frequency definitions from other samples, the user has made decisions as to what and how many they are, their genetic definitions, and their “parental” status. Commonly, as in the case of Figure 1, the program has identified these populations statistically from the given data set, and a user-specified criterion for determining K, which is why we portray them as circles separated from the individual results. It is clear that in all cases these populations are statistical constructs that depend on the sampled data, not literal ancestors which is why we refer to them as platonic, and we should question how well, and even whether, they represent actual populations that existed in the past.
2. It has been shown extensively in the scientific literature that "extensive allele and haplotype sharing across continents is the rule, not the exception [...]" and therefore that "genetic variation between populations tends to be continuous, without clear boundaries." (Guido Barbujani et al. (2013), "Nine things to remember about human genome diversity", Tissue Antigens, vol. 82, pp. 155-164. See also Mattias Jakobsson et al. (2008), "Genotype, haplotype and copy-number variation in worldwide human populations", Nature, No. 451, pp. 998-1003).
3. There have been attempts to identify genetic clusters and link them to geographical ancestry, and the articles you linked to are examples of that (although you should really have cited research by Noah Rosenberg). Geographical distance does play a role in variation among humans, but two things need to be said here. First, the very authors behind the research that you're trying to use to prove your point themselves argue that the said research should not be taken as support for the idea of "biological races" (see Rosenberg, 2005 for example). Second, these attempts at identifying clusters have in reality resulted in differing classifications, far from the picture you are trying to paint. From Guido Barbujani et al., loc. cit.:
Attempts to identify major human groups by clustering genotypes have yielded inconsistent results. Different numbers of groups, and different distributions of genotypes within such groups, were observed when different datasets were analyzed. The inconsistencies in these results reflect a well-known feature of human diversity, that is, different genetic polymorphism are distributed over the world in a discordant manner. This variation reflects in part response to different environmental pressures and in part the different impact of demographic history upon different genomic regions, but in both cases leads to differences in the apparent population clusterings.
You can also read the rest of the article if you're interested in learning about the problems posed by the use of the concept of race in medicinal research, and about why it is largely ideological to assert that it is useful "to infer individual genome characteristics".
4. The references I listed earlier address the research you tried to use to defend your position, and they survey way more than this particular strain of research on clusters (for example, with regards to genetics still, they mention the extremely high levels of within-population diversity found among humans, which plays a much larger role in genetic diversity than diversity between delimited populations, thus putting your essentialization of "race" in perspective). Perhaps you should have read them more carefully.
5. You did a google search and linked the first two articles that seemed to support your views. Your opinion remains just as uninformed, and you still have no clear idea of what you're talking about. "Whoops".
edit: I had left the tab open after leaving home earlier and didn't refresh the thread when I came back, so I did not see the mod warning, apologies. To come back to the topics being discussed in the thread these days, the dichotomies presented by some here between "stable dictatorships" and "bloody civil wars" are misleading (and sometimes caricatural), and they fail to capture the different other situations that can arise, including forms of democracy. Although the situation in Tunisia is still difficult, for example, it can hardly be argued that the country is in a state of civil war compared to Syria. To sit comfortably in your armchair and declare that dictatorships are by far the best option for the populations of these countries is ignorant and insulting.
User was warned for this post
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On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me!
Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship!
To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society.
In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position.
If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin.
To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical.
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On September 09 2015 12:53 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me! Show nested quote +Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship! To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society. In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position. If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin. To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical.
Well, it's not untrue, but it presumes that there are at present more viable alternatives. There are not.
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On September 09 2015 13:21 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 12:53 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me! Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship! To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society. In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position. If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin. To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical. Well, it's not untrue, but it presumes that there are at present more viable alternatives. There are not.
Except there are. Is Tunisia a dictatorship or in a state of civil war? Was Egypt a dictatorship under Morsi, despite all of the tensions and problems related to his rule?
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On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do.
You keep talking about winning a lottery by being born in the right country. Okay, so that's their right. They have the right to take advantage of the prosperous institutions of *insert country here* because they were born there. People who did not win that birthright lottery do not get to take advantage of those prosperous institutions and will instead have to do the best they can with what they've got.
Do you expect a lottery winner to give away all of his winnings just because other people didn't win? Have you personally given away everything that's been given to you because some poor guy in some other country never had the opportunity that you had? Of course you haven't, you're typing on an online messaging forum with some sort of technological device (computer, tablet, cellphone, or other). You're educated enough to at least speak English and presumably Portugese based on your listed country of residence. There are people all over the world that have never had that opportunity. What gives you the right when they don't have it? Give away your computer. Give away your housing. Give away all but the clothes on your back and the smallest amount of food to live on and begone from here because someone else never had the opportunity that you have. Or do you only talk the talk and not walk the walk?
However, you won't even be able to give away that education you received. So even if you give away everything else, you'll still have a birthright advantage over many people.
Me personally, I'll just appreciate that I won a birthright lottery. I may even recognize that my "greatness" is a product of my environment more than a product of me and that I'm no better than someone who's struggling through life in a crappy country. However, the fact that I won that lottery doesn't mean that I need to give away all my winnings to those who didn't win.
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On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do.
I'm not the one you asked, but I'll chime in. It's not that someone has the right, it's that it is simply how it is. Why not ship every single dying African child to denmark? There is a hell of a lot more tragedy with kids dying than Syria. It is senseless to try to correct this just because it is getting the most publicity. There is a reason Denmark doesn't actively ship the absolute maximum number of dying African children that it can.
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On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do.
I would go one step further than the man above me, and simply state that the prosperous institutions of Denmark or [insert country here] exist, in large part (likely a majority of them), because the inhabitants of that country, over many generations, built those institutions based on that assumption.
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On September 09 2015 13:47 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do. Have you personally given away everything that's been given to you because some poor guy in some other country never had the opportunity that you had? Of course you haven't, you're typing on an online messaging forum with some sort of technological device (computer, tablet, cellphone, or other). You're educated enough to at least speak English and presumably Portugese based on your listed country of residence. There are people all over the world that have never had that opportunity. What gives you the right when they don't have it? Give away your computer. Give away your housing. Give away all but the clothes on your back and the smallest amount of food to live on and begone from here because someone else never had the opportunity that you have. Or do you only talk the talk and not walk the walk?
This is a fallacious argument, since warding is talking about the systemic treatment of migrants and not simply individual contributions to their well-being. Your position is the same as that of the people who replied to Warren Buffet, when he said he thought taxes should be higher for the rich, "well why don't you just give what you have to the government?". The resolution of the issue needs to be systemic/structural for there to be an actual impact.
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On September 09 2015 13:34 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 13:21 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 12:53 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me! Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship! To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society. In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position. If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin. To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical. Well, it's not untrue, but it presumes that there are at present more viable alternatives. There are not. Except there are. Is Tunisia a dictatorship or in a state of civil war? Was Egypt a dictatorship under Morsi, despite all of the tensions and problems related to his rule?
Tunisia seems to have a much further-reaching secular tradition than most nations in question, and also it seems to have been spared from a fair bit of external meddling, with a pretty reasonable colonial arrangement from both the Ottomans and the French. I admit it's an interesting case, but a rare one and not one that I would use to make a point about the ME states because the two have not all that much in common.
If you presume to call Egypt stable, then I really don't know what to say.
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On September 09 2015 14:13 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 13:47 RenSC2 wrote:On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do. Have you personally given away everything that's been given to you because some poor guy in some other country never had the opportunity that you had? Of course you haven't, you're typing on an online messaging forum with some sort of technological device (computer, tablet, cellphone, or other). You're educated enough to at least speak English and presumably Portugese based on your listed country of residence. There are people all over the world that have never had that opportunity. What gives you the right when they don't have it? Give away your computer. Give away your housing. Give away all but the clothes on your back and the smallest amount of food to live on and begone from here because someone else never had the opportunity that you have. Or do you only talk the talk and not walk the walk? This is a fallacious argument, since warding is talking about the systemic treatment of migrants and not simply individual contributions to their well-being. Your position is the same as that of the people who replied to Warren Buffet, when he said he thought taxes should be higher for the rich, "well why don't you just give what you have to the government?". The resolution of the issue needs to be systemic/structural for there to be an actual impact.
The comparison to the Warren Buffet situation is close, but not quite there. Warren Buffet proposed a realistic solution that he believe would significantly improve the economy. The response of "donate your own money to the government", fails to create a realistic solution that would significantly improve the economy. To improve the economy, it would take systemic changes and thus his critics created a poor retort.
In the Warding case, this is a moral argument that centers around "birthrights". He's trying to stand on a moral high ground and criticizes those who have accepted and try to protect their birthright, yet he too is clearly taking advantage of his own birthright. This is much more of a moral argument than a practical solution and when it comes to morals, your own individual actions give or remove the high-ground. I just pointed out that his high ground has been lost.
Alternatively, I could ask him if he's lobbying his government to take away everything he owns and everything that everyone else in his country owns. Then give all of that away equally to everyone on Earth that has received less than what Warding was given as his birthright. That would be a more systemic change that seems to go along with the beliefs he's expounding. Perhaps he has been lobbying for it and I just don't know.
Going back to the topic at hand. When I look at problems of immigration, I tend to look more at what can be done to improve the situation in the country that people are leaving. Rather than lowering the average standard of living for the new country, why not focus on improving other countries and raising the standard of living worldwide? The United States used to be decent at raising the standard of living in countries through military measures followed by infrastructure building. However, we've gotten very gun-shy since Iraq. Perhaps it's time for Europe to step it up, make some decisions on Syria, pick some winners and losers, and then get the job done through overwhelming force.
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On September 09 2015 14:23 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 13:34 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 13:21 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 12:53 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me! Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship! To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society. In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position. If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin. To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical. Well, it's not untrue, but it presumes that there are at present more viable alternatives. There are not. Except there are. Is Tunisia a dictatorship or in a state of civil war? Was Egypt a dictatorship under Morsi, despite all of the tensions and problems related to his rule? Tunisia seems to have a much further-reaching secular tradition than most nations in question, and also it seems to have been spared from a fair bit of external meddling, with a pretty reasonable colonial arrangement from both the Ottomans and the French. I admit it's an interesting case, but a rare one and not one that I would use to make a point about the ME states because the two have not all that much in common.
Your lumping together of various states into the imagined "cannot become functional democracies" category completely obscures the factors behind the different trajectories of those states and is utterly ahistorical. There is nothing inherent to those states or populations that prevents democracies from emerging - only social factors, which can be subject to change and which can see their influence negated by other factors (for exemple a peaceful popular uprising that is not repressed/confiscated).
On September 09 2015 14:23 LegalLord wrote:
If you presume to call Egypt stable, then I really don't know what to say.
You need to stop looking at reality through ideal-types. I did not say Egypt was perfectly stable democracy, I said it did not fit into your "dictatorship/civil war" dichotomy under Morsi.
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On September 09 2015 14:44 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 14:13 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 13:47 RenSC2 wrote:On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do. Have you personally given away everything that's been given to you because some poor guy in some other country never had the opportunity that you had? Of course you haven't, you're typing on an online messaging forum with some sort of technological device (computer, tablet, cellphone, or other). You're educated enough to at least speak English and presumably Portugese based on your listed country of residence. There are people all over the world that have never had that opportunity. What gives you the right when they don't have it? Give away your computer. Give away your housing. Give away all but the clothes on your back and the smallest amount of food to live on and begone from here because someone else never had the opportunity that you have. Or do you only talk the talk and not walk the walk? This is a fallacious argument, since warding is talking about the systemic treatment of migrants and not simply individual contributions to their well-being. Your position is the same as that of the people who replied to Warren Buffet, when he said he thought taxes should be higher for the rich, "well why don't you just give what you have to the government?". The resolution of the issue needs to be systemic/structural for there to be an actual impact. The comparison to the Warren Buffet situation is close, but not quite there. Warren Buffet proposed a realistic solution that he believe would significantly improve the economy. The response of "donate your own money to the government", fails to create a realistic solution that would significantly improve the economy. To improve the economy, it would take systemic changes and thus his critics created a poor retort. In the Warding case, this is a moral argument that centers around "birthrights". He's trying to stand on a moral high ground and criticizes those who have accepted and try to protect their birthright, yet he too is clearly taking advantage of his own birthright. This is much more of a moral argument than a practical solution and when it comes to morals, your own individual actions give or remove the high-ground. I just pointed out that his high ground has been lost. Alternatively, I could ask him if he's lobbying his government to take away everything he owns and everything that everyone else in his country owns. Then give all of that away equally to everyone on Earth that has received less than what Warding was given as his birthright. That would be a more systemic change that seems to go along with the beliefs he's expounding. Perhaps he has been lobbying for it and I just don't know.
warding is arguing that being born in wealthy democracies grants us advantages that we did not earn, and that other humans which were not as lucky as us at birth should not be denied the kind of legal benefits that we enjoy. Again, his argument operates on the structural level, and his personal contributions to migrants/poorer populations are irrelevant to the point he is making.
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On September 09 2015 14:55 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 14:23 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 13:34 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 13:21 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 12:53 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 09 2015 10:53 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 09:13 lord_nibbler wrote:On September 08 2015 22:45 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2015 19:28 Faust852 wrote:
Welp, as terrible as Assad is, the current observation is that without a dictator leading the middle east countries, ton of shit happens. Lybia with Gaddafi, Syria with Assad, Egypt with Mubarak and now el-Sisi. Iraq and Hussein.
Every damn time the dictator is outed, fucking millions die. Apparently middle-east need to be taken in-check to keep secularism and fonctionning as a society. Unfortunately it seems that heavy-handed puppet dictatorships are the best way of dealing with Muslim nations and their inherent instability. The examples you mentioned are just a few among many; I could honestly think of more cases in which exactly what you describe has happened. What too many people don't understand is that a democratic system isn't always viable and only really works in a stable society that is capable of respecting decisions made through the democratic process. Sadly there isn't one government system that fits for all occasions in life. This line of thinking is the at the root of most problems we have in this world. A dictatorship is not a stable government! It is purely an illusion kept up at all costs. Sooner or later these constructs fall, they always do. And what happens then? Surprise, surprise, societies that have never learned how to deal with dissenting members other than brutal oppression do not simply 'flip the switch' to peacefulness and rule of law once the head of state is gone. But who was it, that set up the dictatorship? Who prepped it up? Who looked the other way when it build up a police state? And who implemented inhuman sanctions when the dictator started to get funny ideas of who to sell his oil to? Sanctions, that naturally do not bother the leadership much, but literally kill thousands of ordinary folk, who had it coming I guess, because they did not revolt against their brutal government or something. If you reduce the value of life in these regions so much (for example accepting to kill hundreds of thousands civilians directly and indirectly in Iraq because you want to get rid of Saddam), do not act surprised when they do not value your life or your security that high. You reap what you sow. To turn around and say "see, these people were not ready for self government, we should have kept up their dictatorship longer, with more effort" is a bit rich. It is also so convenient, because this way we will never have to look into the mirror. It is only ever their problem and their fault, nothing we can do about it. But deep down we know the truth. A truly democratic Middle East would be against our own interests. We like democracy and we wish they could have some of it, but not if we have to make real sacrifices ourselves just so that they can enjoy it as well. Our jobs, our power, our way of life trumps any of their concerns ultimately. Unfortunately, feel-good conjecture like this does not have a basis in reality. You did not understand what I sad. It is you that created a feel-good story for yourself, not me! Think a heavy-handed dictatorship is bad? Try being in a perpetual civil war. The civil war is created by the dictatorship! To the naive it might look calm on the surface, but in reality it is amplifying the rifts in the society. In a way a dictatorship is just a form of civil war, where one factions currently has an overwhelming advantage but has no interest to fully eliminate the other factions in order to legitimate its own position. If they lose their grip on power, open civil war breaks out, if they regain it back, they 'freeze' the conflict by brutal oppression. In the end these are two sides of the same coin. To accept dictatorship is to accept perpetual civil war! And to expect one can hold any society together in a dictatorship forever is ahistorical. Well, it's not untrue, but it presumes that there are at present more viable alternatives. There are not. Except there are. Is Tunisia a dictatorship or in a state of civil war? Was Egypt a dictatorship under Morsi, despite all of the tensions and problems related to his rule? Tunisia seems to have a much further-reaching secular tradition than most nations in question, and also it seems to have been spared from a fair bit of external meddling, with a pretty reasonable colonial arrangement from both the Ottomans and the French. I admit it's an interesting case, but a rare one and not one that I would use to make a point about the ME states because the two have not all that much in common. Your lumping together of various states into the imagined "cannot become functional democracies" category completely obscures the factors behind the different trajectories of those states and is utterly ahistorical. There is nothing inherent to those states or populations that prevents democracies from emerging - only social factors, which can be subject to change and which can see their influence negated by other factors (for exemple a peaceful popular uprising that is not repressed/confiscated). Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 14:23 LegalLord wrote:
If you presume to call Egypt stable, then I really don't know what to say. You need to stop looking at reality through ideal-types. I did not say Egypt was perfectly stable democracy, I said it did not fit into your "dictatorship/civil war" dichotomy under Morsi.
Perhaps you should have read my original post rather than snippets from it. "Not a viable democracy at present" is not the same thing as "can never be a democratic state." The idea that the current populace cannot support a democracy because the conditions for one aren't there is a valid one.
However, misrepresentations and strawmen seem to be a pattern with you specifically. I think I'll leave this as my last reply to you.
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On September 09 2015 15:03 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 14:44 RenSC2 wrote:On September 09 2015 14:13 kwizach wrote:On September 09 2015 13:47 RenSC2 wrote:On September 09 2015 08:50 warding wrote:
* More concretely, I'd like to understand why you believe that you have a right to inhabit Denmark and take advantage of the prosperous institutions that exist in your country but you don't believe these refugees do. Have you personally given away everything that's been given to you because some poor guy in some other country never had the opportunity that you had? Of course you haven't, you're typing on an online messaging forum with some sort of technological device (computer, tablet, cellphone, or other). You're educated enough to at least speak English and presumably Portugese based on your listed country of residence. There are people all over the world that have never had that opportunity. What gives you the right when they don't have it? Give away your computer. Give away your housing. Give away all but the clothes on your back and the smallest amount of food to live on and begone from here because someone else never had the opportunity that you have. Or do you only talk the talk and not walk the walk? This is a fallacious argument, since warding is talking about the systemic treatment of migrants and not simply individual contributions to their well-being. Your position is the same as that of the people who replied to Warren Buffet, when he said he thought taxes should be higher for the rich, "well why don't you just give what you have to the government?". The resolution of the issue needs to be systemic/structural for there to be an actual impact. The comparison to the Warren Buffet situation is close, but not quite there. Warren Buffet proposed a realistic solution that he believe would significantly improve the economy. The response of "donate your own money to the government", fails to create a realistic solution that would significantly improve the economy. To improve the economy, it would take systemic changes and thus his critics created a poor retort. In the Warding case, this is a moral argument that centers around "birthrights". He's trying to stand on a moral high ground and criticizes those who have accepted and try to protect their birthright, yet he too is clearly taking advantage of his own birthright. This is much more of a moral argument than a practical solution and when it comes to morals, your own individual actions give or remove the high-ground. I just pointed out that his high ground has been lost. Alternatively, I could ask him if he's lobbying his government to take away everything he owns and everything that everyone else in his country owns. Then give all of that away equally to everyone on Earth that has received less than what Warding was given as his birthright. That would be a more systemic change that seems to go along with the beliefs he's expounding. Perhaps he has been lobbying for it and I just don't know. warding is arguing that being born in wealthy democracies grants us advantages that we did not earn, and that other humans which were not as lucky as us at birth should not be denied the kind of legal benefits that we enjoy. Again, his argument operates on the structural level, and his personal contributions to migrants/poorer populations are irrelevant to the point he is making.
You're talking morals/philosophy again, not structural solutions. First of all, who says that we didn't earn what we have? Inside of each of us is the genetics of our forefathers. You have a piece of your father and your grandmother and great-grandfather et al inside of you. It is the human form of immortality. In most cases, those people helped contribute to build the society that you now live in along with the others around you. You carry your ancestors with you and they earned your birthright. In some cases, people might not like how those people that you carry inside you earned your birthright (illegal immigration, violent conquest, etc), but it still has been earned.
The argument then goes into should everyone be given everything exactly the same, no birthright, despite what our ancestors earned. That's another moral/philosophical argument. You seem to think it's such a simple cut and dry answer, yet it's actually not. People struggle their whole lives to give their children a better future. Do we just throw all that effort away? Does that seem fair to you? Perhaps the people of today want to protect what their ancestors worked so hard for.
Warding has been making a moral argument, but when we get to actual structural solutions, morality has little place. We need to get to the practicality of everything. When it comes to immigration, we need to talk about the economics of it. Historically, immigration has been good economically, but the way economies work are changing. Will this specific immigration wave work economically? Some immigration waves have created major cultural tensions. Will this immigration wave settle into a new culture or will it completely destroy the existing culture that peoples' ancestors have worked to create? How do we ensure that this immigration wave will become part of the melting pot rather than a destroyer of the local culture? The welfare state that people rely on exists on a precarious balance. Will this immigration wave be sustainable or will it lead to the entire collapse of the welfare state? How do we ensure that the welfare state remains stable through this wave?
There are very real risks to the economics, the culture, and the social safety nets of those who currently occupy a society created by their ancestors which they appreciate. Being concerned with the effects of immigration doesn't make you some evil racist Islamophobic monster. It just makes you a human who wants to protect what you have. Trying to beat people over the head with "you didn't earn it, so you should just give it away to everyone else that didn't earn it either" actually misses the mark in multiple ways (as noted above). So stop trying to guilt people with moral arguments and tell us how we can ensure that our society remains strong during this immigration wave.
As I said before, my personal preference is to find solutions and help at the source of the problem and not risk bringing new problems into my territory. That's no less moral than massive immigration and a lot less risky for Europeans. Unfortunately, Europe has refused to take action at the source. Now the issue of immigration has come to Europe. Allowing mass immigration likely will create a whole new set of problems. Saying it's the right thing to do won't actually solve those new problems.
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@warding: are you against inheritances too?; the whole lot of them?('cause it's pretty much what you're arguing against; any advantage passed on from predecessors).
- i claim that any wealthy democracy that exists today was made possible only because people thought of legacies, of passing on their ideals, values, credos, to their next generations. without those you'd have nothing to give now ...
you need someone to do the dirty work for you, to gather all that wealth(i also doubt that you care how that wealth came about - conquest, killings, theft, slavery...etc) just so you could feel all high and mighty on your fancy moral horse.
that's pretty fucked up dude.
a birthright is given/inherited, you're not born into it. it applies to personal wealth as well as to a wealthy democracy and it doesn't last forever.
if you give a shit and you have something good, you keep at it while helping others. you do not give it away because you're guilty you're rich or something.
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To try to answer everyone's point at once without making this post a sea of quotes:
- The implications of the 'lottery idea' are not that the lucky ones should give up what they have in order to be good people. This isn't about "I was born with a cake, you weren't let's share it half-half", because the world and the economy aren't static cakes, they're dynamic. What matters is opportunity.
- Opportunity is not a fixed quantity. Opportunity exist because we live in societies with institutions that protect private property rights, negative freedoms and with functioning legal and judicial systems. These institutions are scaleable, which is why they work with the 300M people of the US or with the 3M of Ireland. One more person in this system consumes resources but also tends to create them in the same amount - unless we have social systems that are misadjusted.
- cLutZ and someone else argued that these institutions were built by our ancestors and therefore we inherited the right to live in them and limit their access to others. While I agree with the idea that we have the right to take advantage of htem, I think there's a lot to consider given what we know about economic development and the works of people like Jared Diamond. What seems to be closer to the truth is that these institutions and the wealth that exist in the Western world are there through pure chance, including factors such as: the presence of easily domesticateable animals around; access to steel; exposure to animal microbes and viruses; geography; non-proximity to the malaria bug.
- Besides these completely random factors, the emergence of positive institutions themselves is highly random. The US only developed a democracy and institutions that preserved private property because the initial settles did not fight valuable minerals or other resources to explore and neither could they enslave the native population to work for them, as the Spanish and Portuguese were able to do. Because of that and in order to survive they had to establish the right institutions to create the incentives the colonists themselves to pursue agriculture and create a prosperous society based on private initiative and entrepreneurship. Similarly, and right now my knowledge of British history is limited but I've read convincing arguments over this, the industrial revolution in Europe had political beginnings and it had to do with a balance of power between the monarchy and a pluralistic parliament. Without the right conditions, that balance of power would not have been achieved and instead of creating institutions that had to treat everyone with a degree of fairness and that protected private property and free initiative, you could have ended up with more despotic regimes similar to what was happening elsewhere in Europe.
- Because of all of these factors are mostly random, I have a hard time agreeing that we're lucky because our ancestors were extraordinary people. In my view, they were just as lucky themselves. Look at the fact that India is a very poor place but when you look at Indian Americans you see tons of CEOs of major companies. They thrive because they moved to a place with the right institutions that allowed them to prosper. Native Indians were not/are not thriving because the right balance of power isn't there to create similar institutions yet, and that's been mostly down to luck.
- And even if we accept the idea of the inheritance of the right to live in the institutions that our ancestors created, that idea then leads us to the idea that we are responsible for the fact that much of the developing world is struggling in countries that live under despots that are merely taking advantage of the extractionary institutions that the European colonists themselves created. Institutions tend to last much longer than just a few generations and the legacy of the colonial regimes where countries in Africa, South America and Asia were explored for their natural wealth are still alive and kicking but now controlled by the natives themselves. If we accept the silly idea of merit over our institutions, then we have to accept the fact that our ancestors also built terrible institutions for others.
- Finally, I'm also a libertarian and I tend to not appreciate the idea that we should necessarily fight inequality. I believe in striving for equality of opportunities and I'm not blind to the obvious problems with the incentive structures of equalitarian political systems. One can believe that rich people were lucky but also believe that it's OK for them to be rich.
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The idea that we're all "lucky" in Europe is open to discussion. I have a very hard time accepting arguments that, in my mind, can be resumed to loving people who are far (and thus unknown) and hating those who are closer. There are plenty of misery in europe, not only in the poorest countries, but also in the richest : poverty has greatly increased in Germany and France since the crisis. Homelessness is a real problem in big cities, and unemployment a reality - 10 % in average in europe.
Great, welcome refugees because it's the only thing to do, but stop comparing the suffering and face the social question head on and not just at its margin.
What seems to be closer to the truth is that these institutions and the wealth that exist in the Western world are there through pure chance, including factors such as: the presence of easily domesticateable animals around; access to steel; exposure to animal microbes and viruses; geography; non-proximity to the malaria bug.
Not that I disagree with you - Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel is an important book - but I can't prevent myself from noting the discrepancies between the picture you are drawing of the way our collective wealth has been accumulated (that can be resumed to "luck" - something I disagree a little with, our wealth has also been accumulated through labor and exploitation, many people died in and for europe, J. Diamond talk actually touch this subject by the end of his book when he points out the number of state in europe and the ferocious competition that arose because of it) and your impossible defence of the wealth individuals accumulate.
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Damn, people are really oblivious about dictatorship. Nowadays even the US isn't that much of a democracy (it look like it was changing for the next election a bit) but a plutocracy were only wealthy and avid people are getting elected, in a way that would be considered corruption by a lot of people. A true democracy is ficking rare and doesn't always better than other system.
yeeaeey it represents muh people ! muh feeling ! Guess what, not even that much since a country could literally not give a shit about 50% of its population a certain point in time. Anyway...
I wanted to give some exemple on how fucking good some dictatorship are, as long as the head of the state is someone who like his country and want to see it prospers.
Singapore was garbage 50y ago, just leaving Malaysia.
its PIB went from $700m to $300bn
its PIB by inhabitants went from less than $1k to $55k
life expectation went from 65 to 83
IDH is at 87, which is quite good, better than lot of European countries.
And guess what, Singapore is authoritarian, with a monoparty. The guy behind all of that ? Lee Kuan Yew, he wasn't a greedy asshole and did the best he could for Singapore, which is now a fucking lead in the world economics for a lot of stuff.
Now what about our dear beloved pro-gamer country, South Korea ?
At which point in time did it raise among an economic leaders ? Yeah, you realised don't you ? 1962-1979, under Park Chung Hee, who hold South Korea under a military dictatorship.
Guys did so good you all know South Korea for being the new Japan in term of production of goods and stuff. I won't post data because it's annoying but you know I can provide them if you really doubt South Korea is best Korea.
Another good country which is dactatorial ? Oman, where people are peaceful as fuck. And even if mulsim, they respect the woman a bit better than the other middle east countries :3
I can continue the list in detail but meh, so here's 2 lists, of historic despote who did more good than bad, and another with more recent ones.
Catherine II of Russia[10]
Carlos III of Spain[11]
Frederick the Great of Prussia[12]
Frederick VI of Denmark[13]
Gustav III of Sweden[13]
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor of Austria[11]
Joseph I of Portugal
Maria Theresa
Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany[11]
Louis XVI of France[11]
Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of Naples[14]
Christian VII of Denmark (through his minister Johann Friedrich Struensee)
Bourguiba (Tunisia),[1]
Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia),[2]
Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore),[3]
Park Chung-hee (South Korea),[4]
Franklin D. Roosevelt (United States),[5]
Qaboos bin Said al Said (Oman)[6] and
Paul Kagame (Rwanda).[7][8][9]
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EPT
