Cam Nivag wrote:A baby that's born anywhere tomorrow will need to consume food and will need clothing and shelter and will grow up to buy things. I guess you could call any baby born anywhere a "customer of the world." It's just a strange way to look at life.

I don't see any analogy at all.

1. There can be no child without parents, and which parent would bill the child for sustenance?

2. You have completely ignored the factor of a non-citizen staying in a foreign country, upon which the whole argument/perspective is based.

Without the foreign visitor aspect being included, further conversation is absolutely ridiculous.

I personally think any individual should have aright to criticise anything that impacts them, the issue of criticism coming from a non-national in no way absolves a foreign government from wrongdoing.

It's a philosophical question, really, is criticism from a national more meaningful than criticism from a non-national, and why?

In regards to criticism, i don't see what difference viewing yourself as a guest or customer makes. OK, seeing yourself as a customer might give you more reason to complain. But if you where to stay in a hotel and every time you come back at night, the guard wont open the door for you unless you pay him, or the receptionist wont give you the key to your room unless you pay a little tip. Then you are going to complain. In my view, if you then repeatedly stay in the same hotel and every time you leave you complain about these things, after a while people are going to say, well stay in a different hotel then. You know whats going to happen and you know you are going to have problems when your there, it makes sense that if this is a major problem for you you should stay somewhere different. We are all repeat customers here and we all know what to expect, so hearing people complain about the same things over and over can get tiresome as we all have a choice of where to stay. It could be viewed that by giving such a hotel your repeat custom you are implicitly agreeing with the way the hotel operates.
So i think criticism from a national is more meaningful than that of a non national as if what we criticized was a serious problem for us we would leave, whereas the majority of indigenous peoples will have to grin and bear it.. At best we are paying to experience life here, so if people dont like that experience, why stay.
Now don't get me wrong, i like to bitch and moan about shit too, but i don't think its unreasonable for somebody to retort that if you dont like it, there is an airport up the road to take you home.

Unfortunately, if you take that to its logical conclusion, no one should ever criticise anything in any foreign country, so we can just abolish the UN missions, international law, and any idea of international human rights.

How about when we didn't have electricity, and no scientist ever bothered to do something, simply because he was told to leave?

Foreign criticism is beneficial to citizens in many cases. Take it away, and things would get worse.

I don't think the guest/customer analogy is particularly good for exploring whether tourists/expats should openly criticize the foreign country they are in. The guest analogy makes sense. 'Guests' do not criticize their host out of courtesy and respect, and that may be analogous to why some argue foreigners should not criticize the ways/foreign country they are in. The other half of the dichotomy seems less applicable to the problem. 'Customers' can criticize because they have paid for a something/some service and therefore have the right to complain if they don't get what they paid for. But is that analogous to what give foreigners the right to criticize the foreign country they are in? That we pay to be here? As if our right/duty to criticize was a function of ownership/having indirectly paid for it. I don't think so. The right to criticize, if there is one, does not derive from having paid for it, whether directly or indirectly. While the 'we are customers' analogy does serve to weaken the 'we are guests' analogy, and correctly so, it does not provide a analogous basis for why we do have the right/duty to criticize.

It's a philosophical question, really, is criticism from a national more meaningful than criticism from a non-national, and why?

This is a key question I think, and points at the basis for the right/duty to criticize. Criticism from the national is more meaningful than from the non-national. The national has a greater right to criticize, to criticize more deeply and vigorously and to be considered more meaningful, not because he has paid for it like a customer, but because, unlike the non-national, he has a much greater, perhaps even unavoidable stake in the country and in the consequences. If the non-national causes too much trouble or change or gets bored with it all, he can always leave and go home. The national OTOH is home and must live with the consequences, and as such the national's stake is not just greater but is categorically different than the non-national. His right to criticize is therefore fundamentally greater and more meaningful than the non-national, though there are plenty of foreign busybodies around who seem think their criticism should be equal to or greater than the national, often for very neo-colonial sounding reasons.

LTO wrote:If the non-national causes too much trouble or change or gets bored with it all, he can always leave and go home. The national OTOH is home and must live with the consequences

That assumes lots of things, including:

1. The foreigner will be allowed to leave

2. The national either wants to stay, or cannot leave.

3. There are no consequences in either leaving, or going back home for foreigners

It also ignores the fact that a lot of foreigners here have Khmer families here.

A lot to assume.

The right to criticise should be based on the principle that all men are equal.

We're not really discussing that. We're discussing the validity and right to criticise.

vlad wrote:The right to criticise should be based on the principle that all men are equal.

Disagree. Foreigners are not equal to nationals in their own country in that nationals have a greater stake and connection to their country. This is part of what I was alluding to when I said "though there are plenty of foreign busybodies around who seem think their criticism should be equal to or greater than the national, often for very neo-colonial sounding reasons." There are some who imagine they are part of some sort of world wide revolution in which we are all equal everywhere in every respect, or should be under some universal law they want to impose on individual countries (rather like the white man's burden.) Leaving aside whether there really is or should be such a revolution, in reality, nationals still have a greater stake in their own country than foreigners, who almost universally have more options than the national, whether it is inconvenient for some small subset of them or not. People will always have a categorically deeper relationship to their country of birth and citizenship than some foreigner, and thus rightly should and do have greater rights in their own country, including the right to stir shit (or not.)

Screwed up edit. No change.

LTO wrote:

vladimir wrote:The right to criticise should be based on the principle that all men are equal.

Disagree. Foreigners are not equal to nationals in their own country in that nationals have a greater stake and connection to their country. This is part of what I was alluding to when I said "though there are plenty of foreign busybodies around who seem think their criticism should be equal to or greater than the national, often for very neo-colonial sounding reasons."

LTO wrote:and thus rightly should and do have greater rights in their own country, including the right to stir shit (or not.)

So now we are talking stirring shit, not criticising? And this from a defender of HR?

Turning into a bit of a conservative, we are, or are true colours coming out?

You've done your share of 'shit-stirring' as you call it, and when you got threatened for it, we all heard about it, and rightly so. Are you now saying that your criticism was 'shit-stirring' and you didn't have a right to do it?

A universal standard for rights is BS?

We are not dvalidating reality, we are criticising it, because seldom does mankind act properly and apply what should be applied.

But maybe you're not the right person to be talking to about this anymore.

vladimir wrote:And this from a defender of HR? Mmm...too much time with business people, LTO? etc

You spend too much of your time on what you imagine to be ad hominems and not enough thinking though the issues. That is why you lose these debates so quickly and end up having to resort to shallow rhetorical devices and fallacy like this rather than substantive reason.

Yeah, whatever you say. I have my faults.

It's better than spending time/energu sabotaging a thread for a reason other than doing what is right, right?

The only issue is, and will always be, is who SHOULD be allowed to criticise, not who is presently allowed to, under a system we all know is almost universally faulty.

Your whole argument completely denies that, and as such, is inherently wrong.

We are arguing against 'what is' to adjust it to 'what should be'. End of.

If you don't understand that/pretend not to see it, pffft.