Saudi woman jailed for 45 years for social media posts

No it will not. It'll be a shit show. Does not mean you have the right to mess with them. Mind your own business. You have your own country to run.

Obviously stealing a country's resources is frowned upon, just wondering if you meant anything specific

That’s not to say they shouldn’t be used or that trade should be stopped. Only that trade in and of itself is not the moderating influence it was believed to be, and that despotic governments are not strongly deterred by refusals to trade.

This is partially because those regimes put in a large amount of effort and money into ensuring that they’re as insulated as possible from slow downs in any trade area that western countries can easily refuse trade, while working to increase interdependence in areas where they have the advantage.

For instance, there’s a reason Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has such a huge defence industry component and why it focused first on being able to manufacture its own ammunition, bombs, missiles, etc (all the things easiest to cut off) and then on developing the skills to modify existing systems and substitute other components or elements if needed. The goal is to ensure the US (or another partner) can’t influence the kingdom by refusing to deliver bombs for a while. Much of the Middle East is moving in the same direction.

International economic ties do help to prevent war even if their ability to do so is limmited. They also serve as a warning for when a state desires to go to war because you will see the state trying to limmit ties in order to limmit the effect of sanctions.

Everything from your final destination for traffic to the physical origin point to which you're connecting to the network is known by somebody who is by default under no obligation to keep it a secret (unless otherwise legally bound).

Hate speech, "further up the spectrum" is not against the law because it doesn't violate the rights or the volition of anyone nor defraud them or hurt them. It's just stupid and offensive. In some context enough to be fighting words, but not in all contexts. Why? Because things that are against the law invoke the use of violent force by the government. Invoking violent force to deprive a person of their volition is harm done far beyond some offensive speech. It is disproportionate and makes things worse.

That's why things that are just speech are protected (from government use of force) in the USA by our constitution. Without this protection you end up with governments slowly drifting over to behave like the Saudis. It may take a while, but every nation state will get there without laws to prevent it.

There is what you "picture", and then there is what is.

There is also what other people "picture", and then there is what is.

And then there seems to be a sort of phenomenon whereby if enough people "picture" something a certain way, it ~effectively becomes what "is".

Regardless: there is how ~power is described to the population of "democratic" (free, law-based...."all the memes") countries, and then there is what is actually true.

In my experience, the vast majority of people not only believe in, but insist upon not-entirely-true narrative representations of what is going on, as opposed to considering what is actually going on. This phenomenon can easily be seen in others, particularly the members of one's outgroup members, but seeing it in oneself and one's ingroup members is...."not easy".

> However, I think as long as a nation strives for those ideals and consider them when taking decisions, I think it is on the good path to not fall into authoritarianism.

Do you think that "strives for", "those ideals", "consider" are true/false binaries, or spectrums?

Do you consider most Western nations to objectively fall into a non-authoritarian bucket, on an absolute scale? (This one is tricky, it's like the "This is Water" meme about two young fish swimming, and an adult fish swims by and says "How's the water boys?" and they say "Water? What's water?".)