14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal • Hacker News Board

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#221

Post by don_esteban » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #173

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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hard disagree, many OG and influentual socialists came from rich backgrounds. There's also lots of poor people out there who are simply waiting their opportunity to be corrupt. Anecdotally I've experienced many people from working class backgrounds who are extremely proud of their tax evasion. The key dividing line is those who follow the rules and believe in the system and those that don't and are just looking out f…

The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody.

No need to go far, just look at the result of lobbying in the USA.

Btw, while there are many famines caused by despots (Stalin's, Mao's, Red Khmer's), there is also Bengal's famine of 1943.

One must also point out that China in the last 40 years have done perhaps more regarding the poverty mitigation than anybody else in the human history (capitalism, especially the wild one, has actually quite patchy record...)

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#222

Post by 1234letshaveatw » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #189

perihelions wrote: post #7

Hard-earned freedoms are wasted on societies who don't have memories of what it took to earn them. Freedom is a ratchet: slides easily and frictionlessly one way, and offers immense resistance in the other. This is all so disheartening.

Even the memories are no antidote. In the Philippines the memory of Marcos didn't stop autocrats from rising to power. Even in Europe, countries with relatively recent memories of autocracy and fascism, such as Portugal and Spain, have far-right parties with >20% seats in Parliament, just like in France or Germany. What is to be done?

celebrate?

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#223

Post by seneca » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #156

bhickey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corruption is simply incredible. About fifteen years ago I found myself in Kathmandu after getting altitude sickness. The team's fixer brought me to lunch with some government officials. The topic of discussion? How to steal from a hydroelectric project. One of his guests outright asked, "should we be talking about this in front of this guy?" The fixer shrugged it off saying "he's a Westerner, what is he going to…

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

That's probably a healthy way to see things. Ideally all people that are actively working to create or improve should be on the same "side" against those that are destructive. The second order conflict then becomes what the rules are, and how we guide that side. That is, I think, where most of the factionalism historically plays out. It does feel like we're regressing to fighting that first order conflict more often now though.

In reality, it may be more complicated than that though. Most people don't see themselves as destructive, they just have a very different view of what the right rules are and what ought to be done to progress things. That can appear destructive from the outside.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#224

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #161

Quarrelsome wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

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In a socialist system you still need a government, which is a group of people who are empowered to enforce the rules of socialism. As a result, they end up having access to most of the collective wealth as well.

If they are very good socialists they will redistribute it all. If they are not-very-good socialists they will redistribute some of it and reserve some to support a nice lifestyle for themselves and their families. They won’t personally “own” mansions, airplanes, factories, etc. like capitalists do, but they still control them legally so the practical effect is very similar.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#225

Post by jay-barronville » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #208

foxglacier wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a huge leap from directly instigating genocide that actually happened to "We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens." which is severe censorship of all sorts of political ideas, including ones which we already enact and most people agree with. There's a lot of widely-accepted government-enforced inequality (foreigners, prisoners, convicts, chi…

I don’t know man? You need moderation both ways. Yes to the First. But also yes to the cops arresting a kid who posts on social media that he’s gonna kill all his classmates tomorrow morning. Bonus points if the cops arrest him before he goes to school tomorrow. Couching threats of violence in political language shouldn’t change anything in that regard. (Well, it does these days. But it shouldn’t. That’s how you get…

> But also yes to the cops arresting a kid who posts on social media that he’s gonna kill all his classmates tomorrow morning.

I think that everyone (yes, literally everyone) would agree that direct incitements and threats of violence such as this would be fine to censor and deal with appropriately. As a free speech advocate, I know a lot of folks with free speech absolutist views yet I don’t know a single person who’d be against any of that.

The reality though is that, in practice, these extreme examples tend to be used to justify censorship only to end up making the rules vague and subjective enough that, sooner or later, folks start being censored for wrongthink.

Also, “moderation” is just a soft term for censorship.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#226

Post by tocs3 » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #170

barbazoo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite see how this is indicative of corruption

I believe the implication is that those seats would in fact be available to you if you knew who to bribe. And the fact that they were all on the Everest-facing side of the plane suggests that whoever controlled those seats realized that they could get a premium for them.

Also, (speculation warning) it could be the government paying for airline seats to "keep them available" is a kickback. That is, lobbyist paying government officials for a contract that is not needed.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#227

Post by mytailorisrich » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #25

perihelions wrote: post #7

Hard-earned freedoms are wasted on societies who don't have memories of what it took to earn them. Freedom is a ratchet: slides easily and frictionlessly one way, and offers immense resistance in the other. This is all so disheartening.

I'm totally ignorant of the human right situation in nepal. In the copy I found of their constitution, it only mentioned freedom of speech for the government. On their house floor. What was it like there in recent times? Much state repression for political thought or unapproved opinions?

A Constitution is just a piece of paper.

I think Westerners and perhaps especially Americans think it has intrinsic power because they have a strong rule of law and effective independent courts so they are used to their Constitution being well inforced.

However, in a country where this is not the case the Constitution is just a piece of paper...

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#228

Post by dmbche » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #108

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protests are rarely effectual False “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change” [1]. Exhibit A: the same region, literally last month. First protesters in Bangladesh lead “to the ouster of the then-prime minister, Sheikh Hasina” [2]. Then Indonesia “pledged to revoke lawmakers’ perks and pr…

I think when people, particularly in America, think "protest", they think of people walking around with placards and other such relatively low effort involvement. That article is talking about incidents where you have 3.5% of people (that would be 12 million people in the US) engaging in things like organized and real boycotts (as opposed to 'Yeah I'm boycotting [this place I've never even heard of, let alone shopped…

Then again, Canada had a whole convoy that tried to protest but that got stamped out.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#229

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

snapcaster wrote: post #180

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a conspiracy theory that every revolution of the past 100 years was caused by the cia.

I don't like comments like this, because while you're right that many people think everything happening everywhere is the CIA. The CIA (and US gov) _has_ been involved in an absurd amount of regime changes (that we know about). CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

If the CIA was even close to being that competent our foreign policy and intelligence wouldn’t be so horrible.

A lot of authoritarians just like to blame their self grown domestic problems on the CIA. China having another stock market crash? The CIA must have done it.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#230

Post by Quarrelsome » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:54 PM UTC

uncircle wrote: post #216

Quarrelsome wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

Yes, because all rules have been created for your own good, so you must follow without ever questioning them. The world is more nuanced than your silly black-and-white duality, unless it's a Twitter argument and it's all about dividing the world in convenient us-vs-them boxes.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. Either you believe in the society you live in, or you don't. The story specifically speaks of people high up within that society that do not believe in it and are using their position to undermine that society in order to benefit themselves.. That, for me, is the #1 problematic archetype of person.

Its not just about the rules and if you follow them or not, its about the belief in turn-taking, in other people having the same rights as you, a belief that in society; everyone is important, everyone is mostly equal and that the society should be fair. Perhaps my phrasing could be improved? For the most part I am simply trying to define the difference between people being selfish and not.