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Five years after killing a journalist in cold blood, Saudi Arabia is stronger than ever
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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How much good has your criticism of the government done?
Do you have affordable housing? Are your healthcare needs covered? Is your taxpayer money going to help improve your life? Is the homeless issue solved? Has your government avoided going to war? Has your government fixed the rampant racial inequality in the prison system?
I say this like it's to an American, but really it applies to most Western countries.
Well, some of those point have improved in some countries of the western block. Not everyone is American btw. And I'm not saying the west is perfect, but when making a statement like "this is why the west is the worst" you also need to tell me who is better.
Lots of these issues are extremely present in other non-western countries as well and even more so. Or are you telling me that outside of western countries everyone else has affordable housing, free, good and available healthcare, a good and fair justice system, no racial inequality and no wars?
Sure, I'm not denying that conditions aren't perfect, but the argument being made is that having a democracy influences government policy to align with citizens' interests.
Looking at per-capita wealth, the West should be doing much better on these key issues under the assumption that the government exists to make people's lives better.
Who is doing so much better though? It seems like most countries have similar issues and it's not really a West vs East thing. Costa Rica seems like one of the nicer places to live in the world right now, but it's a "Western" country and it's also tiny.
I look at Eastern countries like Korea and Japan and see a ton of problems with workers being abused and authoritarian legal systems. Better than the US in some ways but worse in others. I would rather live in the US despite the worse healthcare cause I don't want to work 12 hours a day.
US labour law exists in spite of democracy, not because of it. Also, I think it's hard to argue that Korea and Japan aren't Western democracies (in that, they value Western democratic ideals and structure their governments around the Western concept of democracy).