That’s true. And how the Saudis choose to run their society is none of America’s business. The feeling that America is intruding into their societies is in fact a huge source of anger in the Muslim world.

But nothing about the principle that societies are entitled to decide for themselves how to govern themselves requires people in America to accept Americans doing business with other people who have very different values. That’s a completely different matter.

That would be fine if we didn’t selectively pick which countries we apply those rules to. China is an ethical nightmare but we have and continue to do business with them, why change that when it comes to the Middle East.

What makes you think people who disapprove of getting in bed with the Middle East approve of getting in bed with China? Did you ask them? Or did you want so badly to accuse them of hypocrisy that you simply assumed it to be the case?

There aren’t any people left in business in the US who don’t approve of “getting in bed with china”

- this message was made in china, like your shirt, your shorts, your socks, and so on snd so on.

There's no people who deny travel reimbursements that use Saudi gas.. Does that mean we all need to fly to Saudi Arabia to plan future businesses and garrison death squads in our houses?

I think there's a difference between doing the minimum that is not a disadvantage and making a relationship with an ethical discount country your competitive advantage.

The U.S. has done far more business for far longer with countries in the Middle East than it has with China.

I don’t think your example supports the point you think you’re making.

It is HNs business to speak about middle eastern countries except for speaking about Israel, it's suddenly very political and no longer HN worthy.

Except we have regular posts related to Israel with hundreds of comments in each.

> And how the Saudis choose to run their society is none of America’s business.

By "the Saudis" you mean the ruling family? Those are the only people who are deciding anything in SA.

And if a societal model causes catastrophe and collapse it contains that failure? If it wastes human potential and is a free loader compared to free societies? What then?

absolutely. it's a matter of perspective. thinking that you and only you have the "moral" high road, just leads to oppression. good and bad are relative to who's making the judgement

I mean, Plato may have a word (or a few thousand) about that idea.

You don't make many friends being a moral relativist

It seems that the "Global South" much prefer moral relativist than moral purists that cant stop lecturing others

The vast majority of philosophers don't believe in moral relativism. It's actually usually the amateurs early mistake and you can read alot of the critique of it easily online.

The vast majority of philosophers believed that men were superior to woman and that those of lighter skin were superior to those of darker skin and in general that philosophers were superior to anyone who was not a philosopher. They either didn’t spend time debating this because they all agreed, or in cases where they did, their arguments are not hovered in teaching material because we “want to focus on the pats that are actually true”.

> The vast majority of philosophers believed that (...) those of lighter skin were superior to those of darker skin

Source? We don't know the actual skin tone of Ancient philosophers, but it's likely that Greek and Roman philosophers (many of which were born in and lived in Middle East or Africa) were of darker skin than the Germanic barbarians, whom they considered inferior.

I wouldn't trust most philosophers' judgment on the matter at all unless they were also deeply familiar with evolutionary biology and game theory. I suspect most of them are not. I'd much prefer Richard Dawkins' opinion on the matter.

But philosophers from where?

Show me culturally dependent beheading please

I would argue that beheading is a more merciful execution than the electric chair or lethal injection.

Justifying the beheading done there is just evil. By Sharia if you're just an apostate or kafir paying jijiya who has done some miniscule mistake which might include affecting the feeling of an Imandar(i.e Muslims). Now anyone can be a kafir because the definition of being a muslim is extremely vague in Quran and hadiths, so that's why you see violence between shia, sunni, ahmediya and all others. Even different factions between Sunnis.

I'm not defending capital punishment in the Middle East, but pushing against the "culturally dependent beheading" quip.

how?

The electric chair and lethal injection have both resulted in torturous, prolonged deaths for some victims. If beheading is done correctly, you essentially die right away.

I would argue that the masses of people that flock to see the beheading also result in some stress towards the victim. But the fact that it is not a clean room beheading but a public one culturally dependent too ...

If we argue which type of death is more or less pleasant we've directly descended into not just the Middle East, but the Middle Ages.

I'd take a few beheadings for some of the laughable sentences given in 'leading democracies' for like rapist, child rapist, murderers.

Who would have thought that cutting someone's limbs off as a punishment would result in nearly very little theft in those countries too.

Until you realize that there's about a 5% error in the justice system and if you're unlucky you don't just spend a few years unjustly in jail, not you are also maimed for life.

People that don't realize that can just crawl back to their cave and live out the darwinistic dreams there. (Just speaking/ranting generally here now.)

> Who would have thought that cutting someone's limbs off as a punishment would result in nearly very little theft in those countries too.

Only people that don't read up on the science. Draconian measure affect crime rates much less than immediate negative feedback after the crime (which doesn't need to be draconian).

I mean Singapore has draconian punishments for crimes too but they correspondingly have next to no drug use. We lose tens of thousands of people to fentanyl every year, whole towns are devastated etc. Hanging a few drug smugglers is definitely the lesser evil.

That being said, I enjoy my individual rights in the US and wouldn’t live anywhere else but there is a valid argument to be made that our ethics are sometimes a little too short sighted/individualistic and not holistic enough.

(I’m also definitely against the death penalty, just trying to make a point)

The thing is, the death penalties in Singapore are in the single digits per year (out of a population of 6 million, effectively higher as this excludes non-citizens). People are not killed without thought, there is careful and lengthy investigations in each and every case.

The deterrence does work and saves countless lives that would have been taken from ODs and cartel-ish activities

Sure but it’s a smaller country and you’re making my point for me about the effect of draconian punishments.

Plenty of places with extreme laws have terrible drug abuse, also.

Not true at all, I worked there for a week. Clearly very wealthy African group on top of the marina Bay sands where we were paying like NZD$30 per vodka soda and these guys had multiple magnums of champagne, openly smoking weed.

Singapore = if you have money all of their supposed laws etc do not apply (just like so many other places).

Reading that article I'd say that ethics are easily displaced by money. No surprise there though, sadly.