Afghanistan legalizes rape

[sketerpot]

Am I the only one who thinks that urbanization would do far more to encourage modernity than any Bush-like push for democracy? Rural people are notoriously backwards, but urbanization has shown itself to be a very liberalizing influence. People go to the city and suddenly they have economic opportunities (and usually lower birth rates) and they find themselves sharing a neighborhood with people who are actually different from them. And then education improves, and their children get to join the modern age.

[Samuel]

Am I the only one who thinks that urbanization would do far more to encourage modernity than any Bush-like push for democracy? Rural people are notoriously backwards, but urbanization has shown itself to be a very liberalizing influence. People go to the city and suddenly they have economic opportunities (and usually lower birth rates) and they find themselves sharing a neighborhood with people who are actually different from them. And then education improves, and their children get to join the modern age.

You mean like how Kabul is the part of the country that celebrated liberation and broke out the rock and roll? Yeah, it can work... except Aghanistan is so poor than crowding people together in an urban center is just asking for a disease outbreak.

[Darth Wong]

Urban areas have always been more cosmopolitan and liberal than rural areas; this has been true for far longer than any of us have been alive. But I don't see how you can just make Afghanistan urbanize itself further.

[sketerpot]

For urbanization to work, it should go hand-in-hand with economic improvement, which is non-trivial. I'm not trying to suggest that there's an easy answer here, just that there are ways to make real progress. As opposed to the Bush approach of slapping a democracy on a shithole country and declaring victory.

The problem is that the workable ways of improving crappy countries are all difficult, and they take time and effort, and they're messy compromises.

[Feil]

28% of Afghanistan's parliament is female. Either 81%-plus of the 62% of males supported this, or a number of the female parliamentarians voted in favor, too. Either option is troubling....

[Simon_Jester]

Urban areas have always been more cosmopolitan and liberal than rural areas; this has been true for far longer than any of us have been alive. But I don't see how you can just make Afghanistan urbanize itself further.

You'd have to make them less poor against their will, which is always difficult.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a mathematically precise definition of the entropy of a social system. But I'm reasonably confident that such a quantity exists, if nothing else because everything else in the universe seems to have it, including completely abstract blocks of information.

If the entropy of a social system is a meaningful quantity, then Afghanistan is a poster child for social entropy. Anyone trying to improve the place is fighting thermodynamics, and that's never easy.

[Samuel]

Urban areas have always been more cosmopolitan and liberal than rural areas; this has been true for far longer than any of us have been alive. But I don't see how you can just make Afghanistan urbanize itself further.

You'd have to make them less poor against their will, which is always difficult.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a mathematically precise definition of the entropy of a social system. But I'm reasonably confident that such a quantity exists, if nothing else because everything else in the universe seems to have it, including completely abstract blocks of information.

If the entropy of a social system is a meaningful quantity, then Afghanistan is a poster child for social entropy. Anyone trying to improve the place is fighting thermodynamics, and that's never easy.

Everywhere else on the planet cities are jammed with people because cities offer jobs and opportunity. It isn't hard to get people to come with the offer of a better life. I don't think they want to be poor so your statement doesn't really make any sense.

[Memnon]

The problem right now is that the educated youth are fleeing Afghanistan for other countries, like Iran or India. Since the population of Afghanistan is very young, that's basically removing potential leaders/white collar workers from the next generation. So really things won't be changing very quickly. Education, of course, is one of the biggest draws of a city.

[Samuel]

The problem right now is that the educated youth are fleeing Afghanistan for other countries, like Iran or India. Since the population of Afghanistan is very young, that's basically removing potential leaders/white collar workers from the next generation. So really things won't be changing very quickly. Education, of course, is one of the biggest draws of a city.

That has been the problem for a long time. Ever since the civil war there has been a string of refugee camps along the border. To fix this requires that the country be stable enough for people to return.