[mindslight]

> many in other countries consider it a form of neo-colonialism where you undermine their sovreignity and self-determination.

Only if by "their" you mean the ruling class, and by "self-determination" you mean their ability to control others. You can't really say their opinions represent the will of the people, especially when it's the people themselves ultimately choosing to engage in "illegal" activities.

And sure, "the will of the people" bakes in two very western individual/collectivist values. But as I get older I'm learning to not play the relativism card as much. We should certainly be critical of our culture - but to the point of making it better, not handicapping its spread.

Plus there's still a very easy answer for the poor oppressed tyrant who doesn't like freedom of communication - shut down all Internet connections.

[_8j50]

The will of the people is relevant only in a democracy. The neocolonialism part is when you force it in a foreign country. There is absolutley nothing superior or special about democracy. If the people of a country through whatever self-determined means acheive democracy then so be it. The thing people like you don't seem to understand is that individualism is a very western thing, this idea that the individual's will is where a government derives its power from is a very new and western experiment(relatively speaking).

Take a look at Iran, they are religious as a nation. Their religion supersedes any individual's will. Or china, the will if the party supersedes individuals' needs. You in your post-colonialist luxury worry about your own will but historically people worry about the well being of their children and society which means not getting killed/raped, having economic and academic opportunities,etc... and beyonf that also, the will of their god being implemented. Which people? The people with weapons just like in a democracy (else the US would still be under a monarchy). They self determined through violence and politics the state they are in. In China the economy is good so the CCP is actually popular, so they self-determined communism (at least by name).

There many countries where the US exported a revolution or a democracy and they are in shambles now (who cares so long as they are under western influence?) name one nation in europe that was did not prosper under a monarch before self-determining democracy? Yet your arrogant presumption robbed many nations of that opportunity. Because the people are unprepared and uninformed, the loudest asshole takes power by deceiving people and saying the right things the he gets super rich until they protest and he flies off with his money until the next asshole. This keeps happening and is your direct responsibility since it is because of your will your politicians are exporting chaos and installing puppet leaders in other countries. Civil war after civil war, genocide after genocide because humans are tribal by nature and there is no peaceful way a ruling tribe (see iraq) would peacefully let go of power.

Keep in mind that if it wasn't for the threat of violence by your own country's military you also would be part taker in the voiolence and chaos you are exporting.

Democracies cannot thrive when people are starving, destitute and uneducated and lack basic infrastructure by which they can be informed enough to critically analyze what their politicians are saying. "Your life sucks because of $tribe" does that sound familiar?

So you organize a revolt over Tor, I guess the other side will also use Tor to organize the civil war or genocide?

[mindslight]

> The thing people like you don't seem to understand is that individualism is a very western thing

Read my comment again - I explicitly acknowledged this.

I'd say that most of your comment is attacking a top-down "exporting democracy" whether covertly, led by the State Department, outright invasion, etc. I agree that these things are evil, especially when "democracy" is used as the marketing for the primary concern of implementing USD-denominated markets.

So where we differ is the bottom up emergent behavior of people making their own choices.

> historically people worry about the well being of their children and society which means not getting killed/raped, having economic and academic opportunities,etc... and beyonf that also, the will of their god being implemented.

And yet, those are the same exact people choosing to use technology that provides things like (very imperfect) communications privacy. Your argument implies that their choices are wrong, so what you're really saying is that the larger population needs to be paternalistically protected from themselves. Which brings us to the huge unstated assumption of your comment that for every society we should respect some ambient "values" of the society, with some more powerful in-group protecting those values against the larger population.

I agree that's a descriptive statement about the power structure of basically every society. But I don't agree that it's a prescriptive model with inherent moral value.

And yes, I do know this viewpoint is a very "western" philosophy. I put "western" in quotes because it seems like a strong general attractor, as communications technology enables human-to-human communication unmediated by traditional top-down power structures. I'm also learning not to handicap myself by getting stuck in the doldrums of relativism. To the extent that it may be inherently western, spreading our own culture through arms length communication and voluntary buy in is a hell of a lot more defensible than the traditional ways of spreading culture - violent conquest and subjugation.