When do they stop executing gays?
that will never happen in any muslim country at all
Way to make broad generalizations. Homosexuality is not illegal in Jordan or Bahrain, and socially tolerated in many other places.
Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
131–140 of 225 posts
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
that will never happen in any muslim country at all
When do we stop tying religion to geography?
Probably when geographic boundaries no longer determine whether one will be subjected to religious law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_system_of_Saudi_Arabia
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#133Posting as anon because I don't want to be condemned, honestly, you can't marginalize half of your population and be successful and you don't need a degree in econ to understand that. It's simple math.
But a degree in history would show you that yes, indeed you can marginalize half your population and be quite successful for a very long time.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#134Just today I had someone casually mention that he thought women should not be allowed to vote. This is the Netherlands, the person is Dutch, not muslim or some other culture that I might not be used to, we're master's students... nothing out of the ordinary. And the third person in the conversation apparently agreed, calling it bad to prohibit it in principle but "seeing the effects of allowing women to vote" he agre…
I downvoted you because your post is anecdotic and doesn’t really bring anything to the conversation
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laws related to firearms are often similar. The current example is the effort to make suppressors more available. Those opposed are already pushing tales of dramatically increasing crime rates and poaching instead of acknowledging that even suppressed firearms are still very loud or that many other OECD countries (which have more strict regulation) allow or even encourage the use of suppressors. The sad part about us…
> many other OECD countries (which have more strict regulation) allow or even encourage the use of suppressors. Now this piques my curiosity. Could you perchance name some examples?
Some European countries where, if you can buy a gun, you can buy a suppressor: UK, Norway, Finland, and France (rimfire only).
EDIT: Removed Germany from list
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#136Just today I had someone casually mention that he thought women should not be allowed to vote. This is the Netherlands, the person is Dutch, not muslim or some other culture that I might not be used to, we're master's students... nothing out of the ordinary. And the third person in the conversation apparently agreed, calling it bad to prohibit it in principle but "seeing the effects of allowing women to vote" he agre…
Yeah you're right that is weird especially that both agreed, are you sure they weren't trolling you? But I do agree with voting irrationally being a problem in democracy. I just don't think it's only women that do that. I'd love it if, in order to vote, you had to name one policy position that the party you are voting for holds. I know we want everyone to vote so we can say participation is high but I'd rather only t…
We already had these, known as poll literacy tests. They were intended to weed out undesirable votes known to vote emotionally and irrationally.
I hope the dark sarcasm isn't lost on readers of my comments.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#137Don't know whether to be happy this happened or sad that it took so long!
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that "capitalist democracy" is an oxymoron, but I come from the exact opposite side from Thiel; I believe that a democracy cannot function within capitalism when politicians can be bought off, and there is no democratic control over the economy, the economy being half of the societal coin; we accept democracy in matters of politics, but not in matters of economy, the economy having just as much if not more ef…
It can and does function. It's just that buying off a politician means they use the money to buy off or fool voters. Voters still make the ultimate decision about who's in power. American voters have a tradition of refusing to vote for any candidate that isn't enormously wealthy. They somehow equate advertising spending with "will do what I want". That's their own mistake though, and they experience the consequences…
Quite often people don't get what they ask for; if they did then my point about politicians taking money would be completely moot; this is why direct democracy is gaining traction; having a direct democracy with rotating or random delegates seems to be a much better plan for democracy as it helps to rid ourselves of this problem.
Voters rarely make decisions as to who is in power; they are forced to select from a small group of candidates which have come so far already, and then a committee choses which candidate is best and makes them compete for election. I do not think that a system based on the agency of people rather than the agency of ideas is a good system.
Sometimes the voters don't actually get their say; a national organisation overrides their will. Sometimes the democratic pathways are blocked by media misinformation. These are problems of the situation in which democracy is placed, and they have been recognised at least as far back as Marcuse wrote in the 1960s. The problem is less to do with whether people get candidates in power, it's more to do with how well people are informed as to the true nature of their reality. It may sound as though I'm saying "people don't know what they want", but my intention is to advance to the super-democratic status of "people must obtain the information they need".
Marcuse puts it better than I ever could:
>The liberating force of democracy was the chance it gave to effective dissent, on the individual as well as social scale, its openness to qualitatively different forms of government, of culture, education, work--of the human existence in general. The toleration of free discussion and the equal right of opposites was to define and clarify the different forms of dissent: their direction, content, prospect. But with the concentration of economic and political power and the integration of opposites in a society which uses technology as an instrument of domination, effective dissent is blocked where it could freely emerge; in the formation of opinion, in information and communication, in speech and assembly. Under the rule of monopolistic media--themselves the mere instruments of economic and political power--a mentality is created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined wherever they affect the vital interests of the society.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
that will never happen in any muslim country at all
When do we stop tying religion to geography?
Probably the better question is when we stop tying it to politics. These two can be either related or not. But some countries are practically single-religion based, so it's fair to describe them in that context.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol, this is so incredible. You've essentially suggested the reintroduction of a voter literacy test... now consider the context of that suggestion.
To be honest I'd never heard about voter literacy tests. I'm not in the states so the context is not something I'm aware of. I know it creates more problems than it solves, I just wish people would take the time and effort to have an informed opinion before voting. Even if that informed opinion is opposed to mine. To split hairs you don't have to be literate to name a policy.
There is a real issue these days (any days really) that involve a lack of awareness of history and our place in it. From the reason votes are private to the voting rights act to keynesian economics to why Nazism is actually bad, a lot of these "edgy" /pol/-tier ideas are crop up in an environment without input from history and why the systems we have are the way they are.