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Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years, according to Pew Research Center's latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.
The share of countries with "high" or "very high" levels of government restrictions – i.e., laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices – ticked up from 24% in 2014 to 25% in 2015. Meanwhile, the percentage of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities – i.e., acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society – increased in 2015, from 23% to 27%. Both of these increases follow two years of declines in the percentage of countries with high levels of restrictions on religion by these measures.
Among the world's 25 most populous countries, Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Nigeria had the highest overall levels of government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. Egypt had the highest levels of government restrictions in 2015, while Nigeria had the highest levels of social hostilities.
Global Restrictions on Religion Rise Modestly
Does this reflect your personal experience ?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:48PM (12 children)
Acknowledging that humans cannot be angels is acknowledging that society should never be built around a monopoly on imposition (let alone a monopoly on violent imposition).
If a monopoly is inherently unworkable, then it must be a separation of powers (that is, there must be checks and balances); the most extreme and general form of a separation of powers is competition within a market, and such competition would be rendered all the more robust in the context of a culture that reveres voluntary interaction, where "voluntary" is defined as "according to well-defined agreements in advance of interaction".
Bastiat wrote the following around 1848 [bastiat.org]:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:03PM (4 children)
I wasn't expecting the violent imposition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:12PM
Good day, sir.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:45PM (2 children)
Nobody expects the violent imposition!
Fetch... THE COMFY CHAIR!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)
I am sick and tired of all the motherfucking violent imposition on this motherfucking plane!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @03:55AM
SNEKS!!?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:34PM (6 children)
With the continual threat of warlords, what other kind of structure could emerge other than another warlord that the vast majority of people can consent to? That is the system of government present in democracy. However, as we see the descent of constitutional democracy into direct democracy, the warlord becomes less agreeable to a growing minority until 49% of people under that warlord do not consent.
But what can they do other than band together and form another warlord? Even if we believe that the creation of this warlord and arrangement of this revolt were temporary, the minute the warlord the 49% banded together consensually for the sole purpose of waging war with the warlord who represents the 51% expires, no matter how angelic in nature the 49% are with an independent political system based only on voluntary contracts, the 51%'s warlord will come.
What I'm arguing is that a warlord called a government is what the market has decided.
Yet we see that not all people consent to democractic control of their warlord in any form, constitutional, republican (small r), or direct. When given the chance, these people engage in a mass negotiation called an election and consent, willingly and enthusiastically, to a dictatorship.
If men could be angels, religion robs men of the hope of ever being angels. Under religion, violent imposition is a given, and people consensually, voluntarily submit to a warlord they believe best represents their religion. If there is one thing that continues to motivate me to make these posts, it is the Abrahamic religions and their ability to defile what little angelic potential man has.
Why should I have the right to violently impose my idea of what a man should be on another man?
Of course I don't. However, men who want to violently impose their idea of what a man should be on me are never, ever going away. And unfortunately, they're the 51% of voters who reject a common market and a common currency, who want nationalism, who want theocracy, who want border walls, who want dictatorships.
All of these recent events have been 51% to 49%. I tend to think that such a pattern is beyond any kind of probability; it must be evidence that these "elections" are themselves faked. However, the 51% demonstrate that it is not fake at all by their continued support of a warlord many of us find abhorrent.
I now find myself at an impasse. Your system is not workable because men are not angels. My system is miserable because men are not angels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @03:09PM (2 children)
Statism is a religion. Just consider the hymns, the pledges of allegiance, the holidays, the pageants, the origin myths, the sacred symbols, and the irrational reverence coupled to one's own sense of identity, etc.
Democracy is a sham; it's not different from a dictatorship: One group is dictating to another group.
The natural progression towards liberty is one of increasing decentralization: One warlord is ripped apart into 2 warlords; 2 warlords are ripped apart in to 4 warlords, and so on, until there is nothing but individual pitted against individual, each one finding that there is more profit in agreement in advance rather than in ambush.
Let's not forget that technology is the enabler of such progress: For instance, the gun is known as "The Great Equalizer"—there is no such thing as a peasant when every man sports a foreboding sidearm (is it any wonder that the Universe's creatures tend to be constructed with lethal weapons such as teeth, spines, pincers, fists, and injectable or projectile poison?).
Logistically, a restrained monarchy seemed intractable, until the nobles realized that they could employ a new technology: A written document describing the constraints, which could be disseminated amongst the literate nobles.
Logistically, a representative democracy seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: A written document describing the constraints, which could be mass produced and thereby disseminated amongst the literate little people, who would thereby be able to check the decisions of their representatives.
The innovation of the voting booth, and the wealth (including literacy) required to pay for such things, should not be discounted in understanding how it came to be.
Logistically, a pure democracy seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: A network of supremely capable computing devices, which could cheaply collate their votes on any particular topic.
Yet, this leaves us at a dead end: One group dictating to another group. The insight here is that imposition has taken us as far as we can go; a new plane of organization must be reached before things can be improved further.
Logistically, law customized to each individual seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: Some kind of system for encoding, calculating, and interpreting contracts between individuals, allowing for "law" to be defined as the collection of all such contracts.
Of course, the "government" as it exists today will be the tool for enforcing such contracts, but eventually...
Logistically, a market of competing contract enforcers seemed intractable, until the population realized that contract enforcers comprise an industry like any other: The technology used for establishing contracts between individuals was also suitable for constructing relationships to enforcers, thereby allowing all parts of the market to exist under a culture of contracts, and thereby find their shape according to the most fundamental process in the Universe: Evolution by variation and selection, a process which finds workable solutions even to problems that nobody knew existed.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 21 2017, @04:11AM
Evolution by variation and selection is a process that modern societies seems to try do away with at any price. Better let it work and keep a minimum level for those that fail.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 21 2017, @03:37PM
You assume too much capability or ignore the complexity of the problem.
Collation is the easiest problem in voting.
What is hard:
The first two requirements are divergent in eVoting: first requires the voter's identification, the second imply the voting act privacy. While they are easy to satisfy in the real world, its not the same in eVoting.
The second and third requirement are divergent as well in evoting - a voter must be able to control her/his vote was not modified (while stored) without being able to show to anyone the way s/he voted (otherwise the second requirement will be violated).
Sorry, but we aren't yet at the stage of such sophisticated protocols which would allow reliance on only "supremely capable computing devices" - a paper trail of one sort or another is still necessary.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems [wikipedia.org] as a start and, if curious, see where it will lead you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:56PM (2 children)
The simple solution to the problem you see is separation: let the people who want nationalism, theocracy, dictatorships, etc. have their own nation, and stop bothering the rest of us. To do this, we need to work on splitting apart nations so that those people can have a large majority in their own districts, and then a minority in other districts.
So, for instance, if we could have kicked the South out of the US before the 2016 elections, Bernie would probably have won the primaries (Hillary had really strong support in the South), and there's no way Trump would have won the general.
Over in the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland need to leave the UK and rejoin the EU separately (Northern Ireland might want to just rejoin regular Ireland). London should also secede from England, and form a separate city-state, and rejoin the EU. They can even have a direct rail line under the Channel going straight to London so that no border checks are necessary between them and the continent, only if they leave the city.
Eventually, as the idiots either die off or see the error of their ways (as their economies turn 3rd-world), they might be allowed to rejoin, but under special conditions with lesser rights and privileges.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 20 2017, @11:53PM
Well, it was ol' Abe Lincoln who insisted on keeping the South in the Union. I always say the Union lost that war...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 21 2017, @04:15AM
It's already possible to vote against stupidity of government or your peers. It's called feet voting. No need to wait for next ballot or argue the case, just do it and let other suffer their implicit choices.