The "one and only ever democratically elected president" also had zero incentive to fix any of Egypt's financial problems and ... frankly ... was a terrorist candidate.
Sorry "islamist". Which is to say, he uses violence, massacres and even torture to achieve his political aspirations.
The first thing he did when elected was cancel elections, give himself unlimited power.
Ironically that was part of his downfall. Islamists believe there is only 1 islam. So did Morsi. And tried to ally Egypt to Iran. Tried to ally Egypt to the Syrian uprising (to ISIS, in other words). Islamic extremists in all these places, as it turns out, suddenly and violently disagreed with islam's "only one islam" fantasy, did not want to compromise and preferred to (physically) attack his government, with a few dozen dead as result. He lost control of that situation.
And then it turns out the Egyptian army, government did not like their president cooperating with islamists elsewhere, including Hamas, who were attacking and killing people left and right, with Morsi's support. Also he got terrorists inside Egypt, the "muslim brotherhood" to torture and kill his political opponents.
No offense, but Egypt, Egypt's people and the world dodged a SERIOUS bullet when this guy got deposed. A civil war would have been the minimum consequence of him remaining in power.
> he uses violence, massacres and even torture to achieve his political aspirations.
> The first thing he did when elected was cancel elections, give himself unlimited power.
Exactly like the current dictator of Egypt, El-Sisi the secularist, if you want to put things on that plane...
You act like Egypt dodged a bullet by having their own elected leader killed brutally in a violent coup. But the bullet was fired, and is still being fired on them as they're now led by a leader who is not beholden to them at all.
If Morsi was as terrible as you said and people hated him as much as you claim, he would have lost the next election. But there won't be a next election because the governments you didn't mention, who support the dictator, thought it would be better if Egypt never had another democracy so long as their political objectives are met.
I happen to believe in democracy, and I believe it is the best tool against terrible leaders. You may disagree, but don't try to paint your enemies as violent and irrational when you are the one who thinks force should be used to overturn the will of the people.
That's because a house 100km away from the nearest job is not cheap. Even rural area houses are very expensive compared to what jobs in those rural areas pay.
This makes them even more of a trap. The rents will go up. And yet, even more jobs will leave those places. And then you haven't saved up, because the amounts were tiny
It was the US starting and pushing the comprehensive test ban treaty, not the UN. The UN didn't even try until the US successfully pushed it for decades. And STILL, all relevant negotiations are conducted by the US, the relevant backing organization is thoroughly US. It's physically in the US. It's staffed by US people. It's really more or less a branch of the US military, and it's equipment is almost exclusively on US military bases.
Also, the comprehensive test ban treaty is based on mathematical research. Yes, seriously. Who did that research? The US, and they shared it, which changed the calculus of nuclear weapons and allowed the treaty to happen. In fact, a US mathematician is famous for ignoring the US president in an actual meeting with him while doing this research.
Nuclear nonproliferation is a pure US project, that, if we're being honest, does not even really have the support of the US's closest allies. All countries WANT nuclear weapons, and while they cooperate with nonproliferation, they maintain nuclear weapons. That EVEN goes for France and the UK. Hell, even fucking Belgium tried (and, one might add, only stopped once they were absolutely sure they could do it). And, let's face facts: Belgium, along with 100 other countries will try to acquire nuclear weapons again if the US guarantees are violated. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, for example. Likely, at least Japan and China are maintaining programs that at the drop of a hat, in months, can produce working nuclear weapons. And I'd be AMAZED if both of those countries aren't, at minimum, further along than Iran is. Hell, my money is that at least those two have working nuclear weapons ready. Untested, but ready. Frankly, I'd be amazed if Belgium and even Canada don't have the core of a nuclear weapon ready stashed away ready somewhere (because both countries have the infrastructure needed to produce Nuclear weapons, and they have that infrastructure IN OPERATION (for other reasons, and yes, both countries have valid reasons). Yes they say they're not using it for weapons, but the idea that they're not at minimum "at the ready" is completely absurd to me)
What did the UN do?
The UN tried to solve the Nepal situation. Nepal doesn't exist anymore.
The UN tried to solve the DRC situation. It didn't work, and hundreds of thousands to millions were massacred as a result.
The UN tried to solve the Iran/ISIS/Lebanon/Syria/... conflicts. Eventually the only thing that was solved was the US using it's remaining military force in Iraq to destroy ISIS. The other conflicts are still simmering. Nothing was solved by the UN.
The UN tried to solve the Yemen situation. Nothing was solved.
The UN tried to solve Somalia. The people they tried to protect are no longer there (and most are dead).
The UN tried to solve the Israel situation. You are constantly complaining about what happened, which can be summarized as Israel successfully protected itself with US aid.
The UN, the same people, but under the name "League of Nations" tried to prevent WW2. Germany and the US still claim their actions CAUSED WW2. I'm not sure it's 100% true, but they make a pretty good case.
Besides, it wouldn't even matter, since the UN itself is a US and Israeli project. It would fall apart, even now, without the US.
Oh and you neglect to mention "the other MAD", that also is provided by the US: the guarantee that if one country attacks another, the attacked country will receive at minimum humanitarian aid, likely military aid from the US, and sometimes direct military intervention by the US. This MAD is also a critical component of post-war peace, because many countries would win military conflicts against at least some their neighbors, and where it doesn't work (e.g. Russia) ... we see constant wars.
Your case that countries worldwide are depending and trusting the UN to protect them from military conflict is absurd.
The whole reason C code is used is that it can be used for free. In other words, infinitely more than they're spending now. More than even the CCP is willing to spend to protect state secrets.
Why would consensus against renewables work? Renewables work from pretty small-scale all the way up to industrial deployments (well, not in Alaska/Siberia but in Australia ...)
So consensus shouldn't matter because if Joe the hairdresser or Jane the mechanic decide they, personally, want to do renewables, they can. Just by themselves. Hell, in most Australian cities ... I bet it would work in anything but the CBD.
We are talking about major renewable projects not small scale solar panels on your roof.
Even small scale needs stability in government support because you need to invest in the grid and energy storage to handle the excess in power generated by solar panels during the day.
"The grid" is literally the thing that joins battery parks (eg: the massive one in Adelaide South Australia) to rooftop providers, wind farms, household and commercial electricity consumers
"Investing in the grid" means expanding capacity in order to meet increased electricity demands as electric vehicles replace fosil fuel vehicles and increasing switching and grid intelligence to better handle a more distributed supply and demand.
More solar + more batteries and thermal storage + better grid are all things that grow hand in hand.
Of course investment in the grid is required to meet large scale population demands.
It might be cheaper to waste it than to reclaim it, if integrating that source to the grid is too expensive. When generation significantly exceeds demand, that scenario will happen.
> The USSR/communism failed not because it is inherently evil and soul-crushing, but mainly because it lacked the all-permeating
This seems to be the hope of Marxists today. But if you talk to people who actually lived in the USSR, no, it wasn't lack of information. It was like in the show "Chernobyl". It was protecting decision makers, right up to the point of sending firefighters LITERALLY INTO a fissioning nuclear reactor in hopes of putting it out and blaming it on an electrical malfunction to protect the careers of the plant director and chief scientist.
This is the part of the argument that baffles me. The argument goes: liberal democracies are partially captured by capitalism (corruption, actual, but frankly part of the argument is "corruption" in the sense of "we have the right to medicine, why don't doctors/nurses/... work for the government for free? No I won't feed them from my money. How dare you ask that!")
Fine. This is actually true. Money captures government. Of course, the fact that we discuss it so freely does mean something is done about it.
And yet, everyone I've ever spoken who came from an autocracy, from the USSR, from Palestine, from Saudi, from China, from DRC, from South Africa, from India (tbh India is worse than Europe, but far less bad than Russia was) ... They all confirm that every one of these non-liberal states are deeply, deeply corrupt and WILL prop up corrupt companies at the expense of everyone in the country, in some cases (or "if necessary") with violence. Some have islands of fair play (essentially a few sectors of the economy the rulers really don't care about but are still needed, and thus are an actual economic opportunity), but 95-100% of the economy is corrupt. And most of these people agree that this corruption in turn causes mass poverty, which in some cases is endemic.
One big theme is that all autocracies really have one purpose for all this corruption: to sabotage social mobility. Yes there is competition, usually between entire families, and one gains a bit one loses a bit, but NOBODY is allowed to switch places. That's what illiberal states are fundamentally about. Rulers remain rulers (especially in Saudi Arabia, that can go pretty damn FAR. Families whose children MUST take a job as a house servant for another family because their parents did that job. But also in China, it's about having the right families running the government. You can become the richest person among your cousins, with roughly the same amount of wealth as your richest uncle ... that's the limit. No going above it)
And yes, I obviously know of deeply unfair instances of corruption, in the US, and in Europe (oil companies are pretty much guaranteed to be corrupt, including in "the west", with telecom companies usually close behind). But it just doesn't compare to these illiberal states. And social mobility, definitely in the US, and even in Europe, is far higher.
So I'm baffled. Liberal capitalism is, as far as I can tell, by far the best solution to minimize corruption and maximize social mobility, both of which seem extremely desirable. It's also what these protests seem to be calling for. And yet ... every time there's demonstrations (which I understand, are part of liberal democracy and obviously part of the reason corruption remains under control) lots and lots of people call for entire countries to become illiberal. When asked they are under some sort of weird impression that socialism will make sure medicine is free, without training doctors. That housing for all will be the norm, while, of course, not building anything. That islam will mean wars end, without, of course, explaining why the conflict in, say, Sudan, isn't yet resolved.
> The argument goes: liberal democracies are partially captured by capitalism
My argument was that corruption can collapse any society, no matter the economic or political system.
In reply to your post:
In an autocracy, the corruption is obvious to everyone and concentrated in a branched tree starting at the top leader. It is (was * ) very easy to remove it all in a revolution (though, that doesn't usually lead to a corruption-free society after). In a democratic capitalistic system, corruption is hidden, dispersed, systemic, very difficult even to demonstrate it's existence, much less remove it.
So, in a democratic liberal society, protests against corruption can't target the corrupt structure of government, because it's mostly invisible. When times are hard people want an autocratic leader to solve their problem in an autocratic manner ("iron fist", Hitler was actually voted!). The protesters only demand the removal of current corruption, not it's replacement with a top-down autocratic corruption, which is inevitable in an autocratic system, but even so, when the new corruption gets bad enough, it will be removed in a revolution and the process starts over again in a democratic system.
* This cycle is probably not functional anymore. With surveillance tech, protesters can't organize to bring down an autocratic governemnt anymore. The same surveillance can transform a democratic government in a fascist corporate-led one (think society in Robocop movies). No real examples yet, but I'm sure we'll get there.
Sorry "islamist". Which is to say, he uses violence, massacres and even torture to achieve his political aspirations.
The first thing he did when elected was cancel elections, give himself unlimited power.
Ironically that was part of his downfall. Islamists believe there is only 1 islam. So did Morsi. And tried to ally Egypt to Iran. Tried to ally Egypt to the Syrian uprising (to ISIS, in other words). Islamic extremists in all these places, as it turns out, suddenly and violently disagreed with islam's "only one islam" fantasy, did not want to compromise and preferred to (physically) attack his government, with a few dozen dead as result. He lost control of that situation.
And then it turns out the Egyptian army, government did not like their president cooperating with islamists elsewhere, including Hamas, who were attacking and killing people left and right, with Morsi's support. Also he got terrorists inside Egypt, the "muslim brotherhood" to torture and kill his political opponents.
No offense, but Egypt, Egypt's people and the world dodged a SERIOUS bullet when this guy got deposed. A civil war would have been the minimum consequence of him remaining in power.