Why are so many Muslim countries poor countries?

[dimreepr]

15 hours ago, zapatos said:

Which of my posts was frustrating for you and why?

Not your post's, my inadequacy at communicating; my intent was to suggest a victim of prostitution is no different to a victim of rape, likewise a vistim of poverty.

If I don't get my thought's down quickly I lose my train of thought, hence the brevity.

[iNow]

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

my intent was to suggest a victim of prostitution is no different to a victim of rape, likewise a vistim of poverty.

Thanks for clarifying, mate. It is appreciated. It feels like maybe you're saying we should always strive to do better and avoid victimhood in all of its many forms.

That's a laudable goal for sure! What I struggle with is the suggestion that there are no differences. Of course there are differences. The magnitude of the assault is different. The severity is not the same. The impact and longevity of these events far from equal... 

Poverty is bad and we should seek to alleviate it wherever we can. It also causes psychological trauma, but not in the same way that a brutal attack or a rape does. Prostitution often results in psychological harm, but again... not for everyone. Some women and men choose to engage in this voluntarily, are quite happy to do so, and reject these paternalistic and condescending notions that they are victims. A great many simply are not.

So... we need to avoid grouping all "victims" together in one bucket. The effects a "victim" of eggs being thrown at their house are hardly equivalent in scale or magnitude to the effects of a "victim" of kidnapping, for example... even though both can be lumped into a single label... we should not conflate them all as if they are the same.

Anyway... thanks for re-engaging in the discussion with a bit more clarity. It's appreciated, and I hope my post here is received with the comity with which it's intended. 

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

It feels like maybe you're saying we should always strive to do better and avoid victimhood in all of its many forms.

That's a laudable goal for sure! What I struggle with is the suggestion that there are no differences. Of course there are differences. The magnitude of the assault is different. The severity is not the same. The impact and longevity of these events far from equal... 

No, I'm saying we can't avoid being a victim, severity and/or equality are purely subjective; isn't it possible that a rape victim (even a brutal one) can go on to live a fruitful life, while a victim of name calling decides to end their's? 

[iNow]

Just now, dimreepr said:

isn't it possible that a rape victim (even a brutal one) can go on to live a fruitful life, while a victim of name calling decides to end their's? 

Of course it is. That does not, however, translate into there being "no difference" between those two events. 

[dimreepr]

Just now, iNow said:

Of course it is. That does not, however, translate into there being "no difference" between those two events. 

Of course there's a difference, but that's from the perspective of an observer.

[iNow]

Just now, dimreepr said:

Of course there's a difference, but that's from the perspective of an observer.

I can't disagree, and appreciate your clarification, but that's not the argument you were previously making. Thanks. 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, iNow said:

I can't disagree, and appreciate your clarification, but that's not the argument you were previously making. Thanks. 

That's why I need a conversation, with clever people, to focus my argument.

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

Some women and men choose to engage in this voluntarily, are quite happy to do so, and reject these paternalistic and condescending notions that they are victims. A great many simply are not.

Then they aren't a "victim" of prostitution, much like consensual sex, isn't rape.

[dimreepr]

On 6/20/2021 at 9:14 PM, MigL said:

Aww, cut Dim some slack; Dim will be Dim.

All of his posts have the added benefit that you can play a game trying to guess what he means. 
And I think his game is trying to make his posts shorter and shorter, just to confound us 😄😄 .

I don't need or want some slack, just honest discorce; read all of my post's in this thread and tell me which one confounds you, or my point.

Like I previously mentioned, not all criticism is constructive when you only focus on a limitation that can't be corrected. 😪

I could retort with, Aww cut Mig some slack, he knows not what his bias is.

Now, that's constructive; if one can build on that... 😉

[MigL]

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

read all of my post's in this thread and tell me which one confounds you, or my point.

You could make that argument if I was the only one confounded by your posts.
In numerous threads.
Clearly I'm not.
But I do aplogise for my condescension.

And I know perfectly well what my biases are.
What you call 'biases', are expectations/observations that the same circumstances lead to the same results, and are the basis for the scientific method. There would be no point to experiments/observations if they led to totally different results every time, and no scientific principles could be based on them.

So 'biases' are a good thing ( and an evolutionary trait ), and sometimes the difference between thinking for yourself, and thinking according to what is popular at the time.
Just like anything else, however, biases are bad/dangerous when taken to extremes, or not properly based on observational evidence.

So here we go on another tangent in this thread ...

( oh, and I expect a 'verbose' answer/rebuttal, Dim )

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, MigL said:

So here we go on another tangent in this thread ...

( oh, and I expect a 'verbose' answer/rebuttal, Dim )

It's not a tangent.

16 hours ago, MigL said:

And I know perfectly well what my biases are.

You may know perfectly well what your culture teaches you, it doesn't follow that that's also true of a bias, that you don't know you have.

Hence a double blind study.

[iNow]

See now why I was so glad this decade old thread with a ridiculous easily proven wrong opening premise got necro’d?

[dimreepr]

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

See now why I was so glad this decade old thread with a ridiculous easily proven wrong opening premise got necro’d?

I have to ask?
 

[iNow]

sarcasm

[dimreepr]

19 minutes ago, iNow said:

sarcasm

No, I'll explain tomorrow, when I'm not stoned...

[dimreepr]

In a global economy, poverty is caused by people who fear the future.

At least to the question, why are so many people in poverty, in a rich country?

Wealth is caused by people that don't fear the future...

[John Cuthber]

On 6/25/2021 at 2:23 PM, dimreepr said:

Wealth is caused by people that don't fear the future...

You seem to have that the wrong way round.
The wealthy don't need to fear the future, but the poor do.

[dimreepr]

15 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

You seem to have that the wrong way round.
The wealthy don't need to fear the future, but the poor do.

In this instance wealth is a measure of one's contentment and a key component of that, is a lack of fear.

Besides, if the rich don't fear the future; why do they spend so much money/time/effort to make sure they don't lose what they have now?

[dimreepr]

I work just enough each week to earn enough, to eat and drink, usually 4 hour's (£40); when I want to feel really wealthy I put in an extra hour (for a bottle of hooch) 😉.

[ScienceNostalgia101]

I mean, many African countries that are predominantly Christian aren't as wealthy as, let's say, Qatar or the UAE. It's partly down to luck (Qatar and the UAE lucked into having a lot of oil revenue per citizen) and partly down to resource management (they didn't have their oil exploited by corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens to the same extent as, let's say, Nigeria) with the ill effects of religion (how many western lives could have been saved by embryonic stem cell research if Christianity didn't get in the way?) being only one of many factors.

 

Islam might be slightly worse than Christianity, in and of itself, but I think it's down to chance that the countries that sprung forth freedom and prosperity happened to have a lot of Christians. The founding fathers of the USA ranged from atheists to "secular first, Christian second" so whatever achievements in freedom and prosperity flowed back into Europe were in spite of their Christianity, not because of it.

 

That and the slavery aspect too, but that alone is inadequate to explain western prosperity when Europe adopted the best aspects of the USA and rejected (most of) the worst ones.

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

I mean, many African countries that are predominantly Christian aren't as wealthy as, let's say, Qatar or the UAE. It's partly down to luck (Qatar and the UAE lucked into having a lot of oil revenue per citizen) and partly down to resource management (they didn't have their oil exploited by corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens to the same extent as, let's say, Nigeria) with the ill effects of religion (how many western lives could have been saved by embryonic stem cell research if Christianity didn't get in the way?) being only one of many factors.

 

Islam might be slightly worse than Christianity, in and of itself, but I think it's down to chance that the countries that sprung forth freedom and prosperity happened to have a lot of Christians. The founding fathers of the USA ranged from atheists to "secular first, Christian second" so whatever achievements in freedom and prosperity flowed back into Europe were in spite of their Christianity, not because of it.

 

That and the slavery aspect too, but that alone is inadequate to explain western prosperity when Europe adopted the best aspects of the USA and rejected (most of) the worst ones.

That's just as wrong as the OP, and please explain the best and worst aspects of the USA?

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

That's just as wrong as the OP, and please explain the best and worst aspects of the USA?

What exactly is wrong with his post?

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

What exactly is wrong with his post?

The bias he brings to the table...

[ScienceNostalgia101]

13 hours ago, dimreepr said:

That's just as wrong as the OP, and please explain the best and worst aspects of the USA?

Best: Freedom of speech. I know Europe doesn't hold it as absolutely as the USA does, but it still treats it as an overall guideline. Europe wouldn't coerce retractions from doctors who warned colleagues about new pandemics like China would, or torture someone over "blasphemy" like Saudi Arabia would. By comparison, before Europe adopted American ideals like freedom of speech, it had its own cases of torture over blasphemy.

 

Worst: The fanatical worship of the free market. America knows it could alleviate a lot of poverty if it embraced Scandinavia-esque unionization policies to protect the working class, and give people something to lose by resorting to welfare or turning to crime; and then they could afford to treat prisoners and welfare recipients better without risking outflow to both crime and the welfare rolls. They just refuse to, because as far as they're concerned, that strategy is somehow more morally reprehensible than causing massive poverty from stubborn refusal to embrace it.

[CharonY]

26 minutes ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

Best: Freedom of speech. I know Europe doesn't hold it as absolutely as the USA does, but it still treats it as an overall guideline.

That is a cliché that US Americans believe and which is unlikely to be true. Idea of free speech and related concepts are ancient and did not start with the USA. Moreover, the US had many, many issues with it. McCarthy, anyone?

 

26 minutes ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

Europe wouldn't coerce retractions from doctors who warned colleagues about new pandemics like China would, or torture someone over "blasphemy" like Saudi Arabia would. By comparison, before Europe adopted American ideals like freedom of speech, it had its own cases of torture over blasphemy.

Not that the US under the last administration did not try that. Instead they muzzled the agency responsible for keeping folks safe. I am not saying that China did the right thing, but at least eventually they openly declared that the outbreak was an issue and did something (whether it was the right thing might be debatable).

In the US meanwhile, the officials offered mixed messages and were not able to clearly communicate the severity of the disease. The differences in countries that did that and the US is clearly visible in the death counts (which is even worse when one also includes undercounted cases).

In short, freedom of speech is an ideal that many American hold dear in principle. In effect, there are many mechanisms that undermine it, which tend to show up when the system becomes more authoritarian. 

This is basically also true for Europe, looking at some countries who recently have become more authoritarian (e.g. Hungary or Poland), some of the measures almost always include limitations of freedom of expression of some sort.

[iNow]

16 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Moreover, the US had many, many issues with it. McCarthy, anyone?

Even just this week the courts had to strike down a law related to social media posts that got passed by the Republican legislature in Florida and signed by Republican Governor Ron Desantis for being against the first amendment. Once again our nostalgic friend is posting based on fictions and mythologies