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14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

tribuneindia.com

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Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#381

Post by don_esteban »

Aunche wrote: post #321
don_esteban wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 senti…

Lobbying to create laws that benefit rich people/big corporations and make the life of ordinary people tougher directly exacerbate the socio-economic divide.

Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality.

The reality being that the system is designed by rich, for rich, to maintain and improve their position.

"People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide" What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless?

"Colonialism is a form of centralized planning" - no, colonialism (and neocolonialism) is a form of institutionalized looting, historically highly successful (see the graph of the GDP (as a percentage of the whole world GDP) of Great Britain vs India for a nice example)

No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power, by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state. I suspect one of the reasons China was able to maintain its upward trajectory was their ability to separate the political power from the wealth (see the case of Jack Ma what happens if the wealth starts to impinge on political power in China). From the point of view of West, they did some highly questionable decisions that costed them trillions (squashing the blockchain miners, bursting property bubble, going hard after excessive gaming and internet time by kids) and would not be conceivable in the west, but overall might be net positive for the society at all.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#382

Post by martin-t »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #345
martin-t wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is how they evolved relevant? When somebody protests against the government itself, the legal system doesn't even matter, unless it has a mechanism how people can secede legally. Do any have that? When I meant is that victimhood works when you need to gain support from somebody with more power than you. Either from the legal system or from masses of people. The latter can by foreign (putting political pressure on the…

> Is how they evolved relevant? Yes. You described a “primitive” legal system that in truth didn’t exist. Early legal systems didn’t have anything to do with victimhood beyond demonstrating harm. They didn’t have systems for the powerless because they didn’t concern themselves with them, they were a means by which elites peacefully resolved disputes. > unless it has a mechanism how people can secede legally What? > W…

> You described a “primitive” legal system

I didn't describe a legal system at all. But it is certainly a modern way of thinking that one always needs some higher "authority" to resolve disputes or to defend against injustice.

> What?

secede /sĭ-sēd′/

To withdraw formally from membership in a state, union, or other political entity.

Note, this is a low effort reply to a low effort reply from you.

If you wish to discuss this politely, we can discuss which states have a legal mechanism by which a land-owning individual, a town or region can legally vote to gain independence. I don't know of any.

---

Victimhood is perceived harm (by yourself or others). But I don't understand why you focus on separating victimhood from demonstrating harm so much. See my other replies on this article, I explained my views in more depth there.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#383

Post by don_esteban »

snowwrestler wrote: post #224
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 fam…

"As a result, they end up having access to most of the collective wealth as well." Umm, it does not work like that, look at the Scandinavian-type socialism.

The collective wealth is in the functioning education & health system, social support net, working public transport and such. Not a type of wealth that the government can usurp for themselves, to the detriment/exclusion of the remainder of the society.

Too much ideological argumentation here...

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#384

Post by snapcaster »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #217
snapcaster wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand Without evidence, yes, it should be. Just as it should be dismissed, if proposed without evidence, that this was the product of Indian, Chinese or Iranian meddling. Particularly when we have credible evidence going the other way of legitimate reasons a population would flip out.

Please go through the article I linked and find some 20th century examples. _at the time of the conspiracy_ there was no solid evidence of their involvement. That implies your method isn't actually a good way to be aware of the ones the CIA is _actually doing_ versus authoritarians coping for their own failures

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#386

Post by don_esteban »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #243
don_esteban wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody. perhaps "rules" was a poor choice of word. What I meant was more a belief in society in general, a belief in the nation, in fairness. I guess in one-word: selfishness. I believe the _real_ political divide is between those who are selfish and those who are not.

much better, thank you

still, ideological zealots really unselfishly believe in their case, whether that is fundamental christianity/islam/communism/capitalism (ok, maybe capitalism not, almost by definition, capitalism is about greed) and are willing to inflict unbelievable horrors in the name of their ideology

one should also not forget that there exist deep cultural differences and what is considered 'fair' and 'belief in society' is quite different e.g. between the western judo-christianism and eastern societies

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#387

Post by AnimalMuppet »

snapcaster wrote: post #384
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand Without evidence, yes, it should be. Just as it should be dismissed, if proposed without evidence, that this was the product of Indian, Chinese or Iranian meddling. Particularly when we have credible evidence going the other way of legitimate reasons a population would flip out.

Please go through the article I linked and find some 20th century examples. _at the time of the conspiracy_ there was no solid evidence of their involvement. That implies your method isn't actually a good way to be aware of the ones the CIA is _actually doing_ versus authoritarians coping for their own failures

When the CIA does something, we at the time don't know that the CIA is doing it (if they're doing it competently). That is true.

But run the experiment the other way. A friend of mine once said that if a light bulb burns out on Tierra Del Fuego, somebody claims that it's a CIA conspiracy. Of all the public claims (gated by some level of seriousness or authority) of CIA involvement, what fraction turned out to be true?

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#388

Post by keybored »

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.

This is naive to the point of not being addressable.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#389

Post by keybored »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #312
panic wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds nice until you think more closely about the framing implicit in “follow the rules and make the nation better”. Who makes the rules and defines what is good for a nation?

True, and yet... I think there is broad consensus that too much poverty is a problem, and (perhaps somewhat less broad) that therefore too much wealth inequality is a problem. I think there's fairly broad consensus that college costs are a problem, that healthcare costs and access are a problem. I think there's a fair consensus that fixing these things would make the nation better. Then you get to " how do we fix the…

Majority opinion can look like consensus. And yet things like wealth inequality make for an uneven distribution of opinion where the minority end up having the most votes in effect.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#390

Post by cbHXBY1D »

n3storm wrote: post #107

Negatives here we come: How can this post get to HN front-page and not any USAn turmoil, Gaza or Argentina libertarian downfall news?

I think it is a fair question: why is this allowed to stay on the front page while the deaths of people in Gaza is not? Israel just killed a bunch of journalists for organizations like the Associated Press in a double tap strike on a hospital and we're not allowed to discuss it?
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