[EGreg]

Ironic. The "right to express discontent against the government" seems to be being curtailed in the UK, and all of London is under CCTV surveillance, so maybe the EU should label its exports "unfair" as well?

https://x.com/thelouperez/status/1852126581872881711?s=46&t=...

And in any case, if your citizens fought for rights for themselves, and won those rights in their own country from their own government, why does that mean it is "unfair" that others in other countries leverage their lack of such rights or privileges for an advantage? Perhaps it is much MORE "unfair" that you are trying to impose your own framework and guarantees on others, who may not have the same per-capita wealth, or the same cultural values!

For example, the "third world" is complaining that you "first world people" cut down all your trees over centuries, used a lot of fossil fuels and built up your economies, and now you've put in place standards that you expect them to follow, so they can't build up their own economies. You want Brazil to preserve its rainforest, but you didn't preserve your own forests. This concept of "unfair" that you're espousing is quite dubious and hypocritical!

[frabert]

If you don't think it's a good thing to recognize your own mistakes and try to warn others about them, then I don't think I have anything else to discuss.

[EGreg]

Okay, you cut down all the forests in your country, and you "recognized your mistake", and try to warn others about them.

But you don't just try to warn, you try to impose rules on them which pull up the ladder behind you. It's like the big cartels of corporations that lobby the government for licenses and regulations, because they "recognized the mistakes" that can happen in an unregulated environment which allowed them to grow so quickly, and lo and behold, it becomes far more costly for anyone to disrupt them.

How convenient. Something might be a "good thing" but not an "unmitigated good". You can wax poetic cherrypicking only your good motives, but it turns out that your rhetoric also hides ulterior motives. Well, if we don't have anything to discuss, I guess you won't answer me on that point.

===

Or somewhat similar: When the USA bombed Laos, we were doing them and Vietnam a favor of course, because we recognized the mistakes of Communism and didn't want them to become Communist. Because the "Domino Theory" stated that allowing communism to spread would make mankind more miserable. So we had to nip it in the bud, even if it meant killing a lot of people. Same in South America etc. In this case, we hadn't even "realized the mistakes", but we were so sure we didn't want others to have a different economic system, that we were willing to kill them to prevent it.

Btw, they resisted, we withdrew, and to this day Vietnam has a Communist government, and is relatively prosperous. But in Cuba and North Korea we still keep crippling sanctions on them, to "prove" that their system is harming their people. Even if Cuba presents zero threat to us, we will continue total sanctions on the entire country. And we will welcome Cuban refugees with open arms, while refugees from Colombia etc are turned back, because the former can spread the word about what a terrible system they have in Cuba.

We can export the costs of our war on drugs, our industrial waste, etc. to Mexico and other countries, and "fairness" somehow is not mentioned. Anglophone countries can occupy India for centuries, cause famines and repress opportunities, but then say it's "unfair" that Indians with H1B visas are taking our jobs for lower wages. European empires could establish protectorates and extract resources, and then lament about the "immigrants" from those territories polluting their culture. There is no "fairness" in geopolitics, is my point. At bottom it's all self-interest and hypocrisy, dressed up in crude attempts at some kind of moralizing language that any decently-informed person would have massive cognitive dissonance swallowing.

Many people who blame Putin for annexing Crimea would then applaud Trump for annexing Canada or Greenland. They'd look past USA's invasions and occupations halfway around the world as "mistakes were made", but hyperfocus on another country's invasions of a neighbor or putting pressure on their neighbor. All I can say is, don't have a double standard. Every superpower pressures their neighbors, but since the 50s, only one country goes halfway around the world to bomb, invade and occupy faraway countries that present zero threat to it. And the government of that country is also the one moralizing to everyone else to stop doing what they're doing. So yeah, I take the moral arguments with a massive grain of salt.