Democracy Index by country (2017)

Yeah, agreed. It´s amazing how they somehow dampen this un-democratic way of rule to co-exist with western tourist money. It´s like the smiling people and the food are to much of a factor that we forget to actually raise a voice or 2 to adress the ultra corrupt rule that is Thailand. Something Burma could learn something from.

Oeshon. How are you doing? Long time no see. Where in Thailand are you staying? Do you have a woman in your life now?

Hey man. doing good. Still based in Bangkok. Bought a place but I've got it rented out atm and I'm living in a super pimp place just outside the city center in Thonburi. Got a girl in BKK but I don't think the married life is for me. Too much fun traveling around the world to fit wife/kids into that. You used to live in Samui yeah?

Planning to fly to Europe in a few weeks. Spend some time in Prague / Germany / Hungary

Here is the digs

v2.jpg

v1.jpg
 
Hey man. doing good. Still based in Bangkok. Bought a place but I've got it rented out atm and I'm living in a super pimp place just outside the city center in Thonburi. Got a girl in BKK but I don't think the married life is for me. Too much fun traveling around the world to fit wife/kids into that. You used to live in Samui yeah?

Planning to fly to Europe in a few weeks. Spend some time in Prague / Germany / Hungary

Here is the digs

v2.jpg

v1.jpg

Yeah, I was the Samui guy!

As I suspected. I remember you as a cool guy traveling alot, and you got me in to vietnamese food (thanks!). Were you not a moderator aswell?

Man, that looks dope. I was very close to (in my mind still) buy a condo in Hua Hin as renting project. (mostly for vacational thais)

Stay cool brother! And any people liking Sakuraba are cool.
 
It's strange to me that Uruguay is ranked about the same as Malaysia in economic development, yet everything I see and read from there comes across with an air of vintage style which makes me think of Cuba.
Compared to Malaysia which has embraced modernism as much as possible (faux tudor monstrosities not withstanding).

Uruguay is basically an European colony, too few natives in there and a crapload of immigration from Italy and Spain.

So of course its going to feel more vintage like since its basically little Italy.
 
Yeah, that was my first thinking. After reading some more, I´m glad to see Chile and Uruguay having a positive feedback from their efforts in the economic development. Maybe my mind is clouded by the fact that through the years I have met many people from Chile (we have a large community in Sweden) and they fled cause of authoritarian rule. And the story goes on country by country in South and latin America.

Well, Chile has made huge leaps in the economic and social department since the days of Allende and Pinochet.

And I don´t know where I heard it before or if it is any truth behind it. Is Brazil one of the most capitalist countries in the world? Few ultra rich owns most of the land?

@Rod1. How come you are so well versed in the English language?

I think @Cuauhtemoc can tell you better, but i think Brazil is plagued by crony capitalism and burdensome bureacracy so i wouldnt say the most capitalist country, at least no more than Russia and other corruption plagued countries.

As to my english, it was simply necessity, i dont really speak english really well, i just read and write it well because of videogames, internet and college.
 
As to my english, it was simply necessity, i dont really speak english really well, i just read and write it well because of videogames, internet and college.

I´m impressed!
 
Haha. To my defense. My wife is not a product of the sex industry. Sadly, if you come from poor areas, it is easier for a young girl to travel to tourist areas to feed the family, and for boys it is the sad story of being a subject to human cockfighting in form of Muay Thai, and this because of the gamble sick thais.

Edit. Love me som Futurama

Wait how is muay thai human cock fighting?
 
I´m impressed!

As everyone should be. He's being modest. His control of English diction, syntax, and grammar is extremely impressive for a non-native speaker. I had previously just assumed he was raised bilingual, as is common in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
 
Wait how is muay thai human cock fighting?

It´s a shame the Thai-thread I created 12 years ago isn´t in the archive anymore. I have explained life in Thailand as I lived in that country for many years.

When I was young and strong I was doing boxing and Muay Thai. Sports that has never been accepted by my family who are more to Tennis, swimming and soccer. But contact sport was my thing. As with most foreigners going to Thailand for serious training, it is really something you must want to do, or you can just do your ordinary holiday trip if you don´t want to invest in the amount of training from belonging to one of myriads of camps all around Thailand.

I remember my first time in Thailand. The summer of 1997 and I felt ready for step up in my training. 2 months of training that gave me more appetite for it, and also why I started to love Thailand. The thais that I met was curious and asking why I was doing MT. I told them I burn for it and I love to train. Thais have a different view when choosing a sport. It´s okey to go to a gym and do fitness and do light weight lifting. Badminton, tennis, golf and soccer are also sports that are accepted if you should have the interest for it.

But as a foreigner and in their eyes a person with money, they could never really understand why I choose to do boxing(most causual thais say boxing not thai-boxing). For them Muay Thai is something that are a product of the poorer areas in Thailand. For instance, Issan is a rural area with many young thais doing MT since they are 2-3 years old. For the urban Thai(Bangkok), people who train thaiboxing are poor. And in a country such as Thailand where dark skin(rural outdoor agriculture, training under the sun(running)), is correlated with poverty in the eyes of the rich, educated thais. People don´t give you much respect if you tell them you are training Muay Thai.

Long after I stopped training, I met the woman of my life, and when she found out that I had been training Muay-Thai from old photos, she was shocked. And then came the derogatory questions. LOL

People in Thailand love to gamble, and if it is Water buffalo fighting or bird singing contest, cock fighting or Muay Thai, it is always big money involved. Hence Muay-Thai is human cock fighting.
 
The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Uk-based company the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 165 are UN members.

The index was first produced in 2006, with updates for 2008, 2010 and the following years since then. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises countries as one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Before any of you click the link of source. I would like to ask you to do a little test. Can you name 15 countries that are ranked inside the category of full democracy?(out of 19)

Furthermore, what country have you traveled to(transit is not valid) that is included in the category of authoritarian regimes?

I have been to Guinea-Bissau that has the rank of 157 out of 167. To sit here today and reflect the past, it is quite amusing to think about it.

Uruguay is a country I don´t know much about, but is by far the biggest surprise for me in this list.
Kind of funny that the most democratic countries are also the countries with the highest standard of life... and they are all also countries with heavily socialized public services, such as universal healthcare and free/ cheap college tuition.

images
 
It´s a shame the Thai-thread I created 12 years ago isn´t in the archive anymore. I have explained life in Thailand as I lived in that country for many years.

When I was young and strong I was doing boxing and Muay Thai. Sports that has never been accepted by my family who are more to Tennis, swimming and soccer. But contact sport was my thing. As with most foreigners going to Thailand for serious training, it is really something you must want to do, or you can just do your ordinary holiday trip if you don´t want to invest in the amount of training from belonging to one of myriads of camps all around Thailand.

I remember my first time in Thailand. The summer of 1997 and I felt ready for step up in my training. 2 months of training that gave me more appetite for it, and also why I started to love Thailand. The thais that I met was curious and asking why I was doing MT. I told them I burn for it and I love to train. Thais have a different view when choosing a sport. It´s okey to go to a gym and do fitness and do light weight lifting. Badminton, tennis, golf and soccer are also sports that are accepted if you should have the interest for it.

But as a foreigner and in their eyes a person with money, they could never really understand why I choose to do boxing(most causual thais say boxing not thai-boxing). For them Muay Thai is something that are a product of the poorer areas in Thailand. For instance, Issan is a rural area with many young thais doing MT since they are 2-3 years old. For the urban Thai(Bangkok), people who train thaiboxing are poor. And in a country such as Thailand where dark skin(rural outdoor agriculture, training under the sun(running)), is correlated with poverty in the eyes of the rich, educated thais. People don´t give you much respect if you tell them you are training Muay Thai.

Long after I stopped training, I met the woman of my life, and when she found out that I had been training Muay-Thai from old photos, she was shocked. And then came the derogatory questions. LOL

People in Thailand love to gamble, and if it is Water buffalo fighting or bird singing contest, cock fighting or Muay Thai, it is always big money involved. Hence Muay-Thai is human cock fighting.

Thats an interesting story but i still dont get why you think its human cockfighting. Even weirder that youre calling it that as a practitioner. Are you saying thats what people think of it as? People can be idiots so im not surprised by that.
 
Spanish to english isnt really that hard though.

I always thought you were a american living and working in Mexico. I´m here to learn english and your posts are always among the ones I read. It is easy to understand. And it doesn´t feel like a big mouthful like @Trotsky . No doubt he is intelligent and a defendor of the opposite that "makes America great". But more often than not, my eyes are bleeding after reading his advanced texts.

I take of my hat for you Rod1!
 
Thats an interesting story but i still dont get why you think its human cockfighting. Even weirder that youre calling it that as a practitioner. Are you saying thats what people think of it as? People can be idiots so im not surprised by that.

When young thais are bought to a camp, he is owned by the owner of the gym. In many cases it is exploitation of the poor and gambling is always a part of the game. The boxers themself can have 4-8 fights a week for pennies. They don´t get rich from fighting, the gym-owner does. And they are treated as an investment and cattle.

So yes, Muay Thai in Thailand is very much a part of the screwed class system in Thailand, where the big mass will always be treated as something lesser.
 
Yeah, I'm really struggling to understand how they are classifying "hybrid regime." For instance, Iran is listed as "authoritarian" (seemingly more so than China or Russia) despite it seeming to epitomize a hybrid regime, with a democratically elected head of government and democratically elected local officials, all subservient to an unelected Ayatollah. Also, Venezuela being in "authoritarian" is strange too since they had internationally reviewed and approved elections leading up to the most recent one and still retain the structural color of a representative democracy.

EDIT: Their definition of "hybrid regime" is basically an ultra-corrupt democratic system, too corrupt for "flawed democracy," which is really misleading and not at all precise. The terminology seems to imply structural fusion of democratic and nondemocratic government.

I simply think they just created the tags merely as a way to determine it through the sliding scale. If you see the methodology they are simply scoring different factors and giving an aggregate score, the tag that comes afterwards is merely a threshold.
 
I simply think they just created the tags merely as a way to determine it through the sliding scale. If you see the methodology they are simply scoring different factors and giving an aggregate score, the tag that comes afterwards is merely a threshold.

What do you think of Mexico's score(s)? I'm obviously not very knowledgeable on Mexican governance, but I haven't heard great things about government functionality. So I was very surprised to see its government functionality rated higher than China and Cuba.

Likewise, I was surprised by its decent marks in electoral process, since I've heard so much about corrupt elections.
 
What do you think of Mexico's score(s)? I'm obviously not very knowledgeable on Mexican governance, but I haven't heard great things about government functionality. So I was very surprised to see its government functionality rated higher than China and Cuba.

Likewise, I was surprised by its decent marks in electoral process, since I've heard so much about corrupt elections.

I think flawed democracy is a good score, i didnt saw the aggregate factors but we have a lot of security mechanism in the ballots themselves.

There are lots of issues with illegal campaign financing, tons of money embelezzed or outright taken from cartels influence elections, we also have vote buying and the such. But overall everything is moving forward even if it is at baby steps.

About government functionality i wouldnt be able to tell much without knowing what exactly is being measured.
 

Yeah, that article is BS, Lopez Obrador styles himself as an outsider but he is still the product of the Mexican political system and i doubt he will shake the foundations of it.

Also 2006 wasnt a fraud, it was merely a pretty damn close election, it was the aftermath which was a mess, but a lot of laws were created in order to avoid a similar issue from happening again.
 
When young thais are bought to a camp, he is owned by the owner of the gym. In many cases it is exploitation of the poor and gambling is always a part of the game. The boxers themself can have 4-8 fights a week for pennies. They don´t get rich from fighting, the gym-owner does. And they are treated as an investment and cattle.

So yes, Muay Thai in Thailand is very much a part of the screwed class system in Thailand, where the big mass will always be treated as something lesser.

Right so its not the sport itself but the practices of how its managed and run. Human cockfighting has different connotations.
 
MORENA is clearly a left wing party that was created on the backs of AMLO popularity (he is been campaigning non-stop since 2000) but then again. AMLO is the one carrying the party not the other way around, and he will do whatever the fuck he wants.
 
Back
Top