The most effective way to affect the change in KSA is to block KSA's citizens access to the non-KSA. It is that easy. The KSA is stable because its princess and princesses and its middle class enjoys unrestricted access to the West. For that they are willing to compromise with those that would stone women and cure homosexuality with whips.

Block that and KSA will fall apart within months as having hundreds of thousands of dollars means nothing if there's no access to Gucci purses and houses in London.

What replaces it if it loses stability or falls apart? Would it not be replaced by a government dominated by the people engaged in behavior you detest? It seems more likely that enacting more freedoms would instead result in civil war dominated by those who are more repressive, and likely the domination by the princes aligned with those perspectives.

Instead, we see a slow progress which is painful, but may be the best that can be hoped for.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of olympic level mental gymnastics I need to engage in to be able to view a butchering of a US permanent resident who works for a major US newspaper in a consulate on a territory of a NATO country and lying about it being a "progress" but I'm probably just not understanding the delicate picture

I was referencing the broader program of social change Mohammed bin Salman has begun to enact (driving, concerts, movie theaters, women working, anti-corruption), as contrasted to the more regressive opinions of his predecessors any likely successors.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-women-drivers-face-one-la...

So in this case the end justifies the means, right?

Why would it lose stability and fall apart? Saudi Arabia is about as stable as bad places come, which is what makes it is so terrible. This is exactly the sort of country you should pressure to reform. Otherwise might as well just come out and say that it was all just an excuse to freely meddle with countries we don't like.

I don't think it would, but that is what the parent comment suggested.

How has that strategy worked out for Cuba / Iran / North Korea?

> How has that strategy worked out for Cuba / Iran / North Korea?

It hasn't been attempted. Kim Jong-un, for example, has been raised in Switzerland, dito for MANY children of autocracies, dictatorships and other detestable regimes from all over the world. Their blood money (or, in earlier times their blood diamonds) was, is and always will be welcome for Western banks.

I don't think you'd even need to block the non-royals for this to be effective.

If France and/or the UK put anyone with "Al-Saud" in their last name on a no entry list, MBS would be gone in weeks.

well, you're already dead, Metheny.

Anyway, levity aside regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments.

As for me I'm hoping to get some investment on my new grocery list tracking app that uses machine learning on the blockchain to automatically buy what you want to eat before you know what it is!

>regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments

I don't really disagree with that but at the same time it doesn't really feel all that wise to whack a hornet's nest with a baseball bat. If anyone feels like taking the risk, then I wish them the best of luck in swindling them for as much as they can get away with, but playing stupid games can lead to winning stupid prizes.

but can it identify hotdogs?

not hotdog! (but most other things)