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14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

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Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#321

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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 mi…

Lobbying isn't used to exacerbate the social divide. It's used to achieve incremental policy wins and prevent incremental policy losses for the clients of the lobbyists. This is what the general public needs to do as well if they want the government to better represent their interests, but they have little interest in that. People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide, and the overwhelmingly negative sentiment to lobbying is evidence of this.

Colonialism is a form of centralized planning, which catastrophically fails for the same reasons that it does in communist regimes.

China is evidence of capitalism's incredibly successful record of poverty mitigation. They've retained some communist style central planning, but the "bad" part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of wealth, as mentioned upthread, which China allows just like any capitalist country.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#322
post #260
post #196

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I've found it to be the other war around. Protests succeed, and they crown (usually conservative) authoritarians as the new king. Arab spring & Bangladesh are the 2 recent examples.

George Washington's single greatest feat was not making the office of the president just another way of saying 'king'.

True! In fact, Augustus was the first to master that trick in Rome, he concentrated king like power in himself while carefully avoiding the title of "king" calling himself "princeps" instead.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s a shadow tax on non-government consumers. Imagine if you ran a restaurant and had to always keep a table free for the mayor’s family.

You used the word "always", the person I responded to didn't.

> I was flying from Kathmandu to Bangkok in 2000 and I couldn't book a ticket on the plane until the day it flew as 'half the plane' was reserved for 'Government Officials' 'just in case'.

The "just in case" sounds like speculation to me so all it sounds like is the flight they were on was reserved.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#324

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I actually don’t know if I agree with the last part. A chunk of the Rwandan genocide was a radio station instigating and advocating for the mass slaughter of a people. Atrocities in Myanmar also were originally advocated for in Facebook. On more personal levels, domestic abuse is also psychological torture and the wearing down of a person with words and it should be in someone’s right to file a restraining order to s…

> That is to say I broadly agree with the notion that speech should be relatively unfettered, but I do believe there must be exceptions for speech that actively aims to fetter people. We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens. While absolute free speech remains unattainable in practice due to inevitable societal boundaries, it should serve as an aspi…

Yes I agree totally with this, we should never open the door too widely to censorship. It should only be limited to speech to take away others rights as citizens and people. People can say whatever they want until they say “this person must not be an equal to me”.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#325

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Just went to look you up on your profile to see why you might be hanging out with government officials, and just fyi your website link seems gone.

It's not terribly unusual to end up with random government officials if you're a white guy going into a non-touristy part of the 3rd world. I went to a village in Paraguay, first thing locals did was take me to some government project creating an industrial cow milking operation where I was promptly offered an engineering job. Low-level 3rd world officials love showing off whatever they're doing to whoever will liste…

The first world version is local politicians getting their photo in the town newspaper.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don’t know if I agree with the last part. A chunk of the Rwandan genocide was a radio station instigating and advocating for the mass slaughter of a people. Atrocities in Myanmar also were originally advocated for in Facebook. On more personal levels, domestic abuse is also psychological torture and the wearing down of a person with words and it should be in someone’s right to file a restraining order to s…

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…

Wait what’s wrong with a restraining order? Do you think it should be legal for a person to stalk and mail threats to someone, go to their workplace to issue threats, phone them to issue threats, etc? I acknowledge stopping someone is censorship, but I also believe that it is important to both harbor free speech as an ideal in the ideal world, and also that it is important to acknowledge we don’t exist in the ideal world where no one will use their freedom of speech to egregiously destroy people.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#327
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Canada had a whole convoy that tried to protest but that got stamped out It was an anti-vax protest [1]. Canada isn't anti vax [2]. The protests were unpopular [3][4]. The convoy didn't go anywhere because it had nowhere to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#cite_not... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/measles-vaccination-poll-1.75... [3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/15/politics/fact-c…

Are some of your comments automated?

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s a shadow tax on non-government consumers. Imagine if you ran a restaurant and had to always keep a table free for the mayor’s family.

People really don't have an understanding of just how destructive this kind of corruption is. Extorting the current businesses is only the direct effect.

The longer term is literal desolation. People simply do not start business as time goes on so there is nothing to exploit as time passes. Business that exist simply don't operate in that country anymore so there is not even anything to buy if you have money. Then the violence and enslavement starts.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#329
post #203

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To be fair the people who care about a single nation, to the detriment of all other nations, are freaks

Aye, it sort of sucks. A global government that could also respect privacy would be a good thing, IMO, except for when it leans authoritarian.

A maintainable altruistic ruling class is a myth.

When you centralize power you’ve created a point of control/leverage with significant value. It will eventually be captured.

> except for when it leans authoritarian

Totalitarianism, Crony Capitalism, State Enforced Communism, Authoritarianism, etc. are all variations of the same root rot: centralization.

When you centralize power you will always get centralized power. A global centralized power is terrifying.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About china/india: Nope. This is objectively false.

surely needs some sort of citation. Is it not rather obvious that a small nation bordered by two bigger nations would be unduly influenced by them?

I think what they means is dismissing the student protests as instigated by either India or China is doing a disservice to them.

And I agree with them - the ongoing protests are a result of anger against the political establishment's corruption - while thousands of Nepalis go abroad to work in the Gulf and India as menial labor, the political establishment's kids go abroad to America, Canada, and Australia to study, party, and live their best life.

My point was orthogonal to that - I'm saying that Chinese and Indian influence on the political establishment has been strongly entrenched.

Even Nepali media calls out Sharma's pro-China leanings and Deuba's pro-India leanings, and Prachanda's "paltu Ram" antics.

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