Everything is going wrong for Muhammad bin Salman
economist.comHe get the Darwin award for restarting the current conflict in Yemen
It's quite a lesson in unintended consequences: trying to bring about regime change in Iran may end up achieving exactly that in Saudi Arabia instead.
This is the problem with having a king, all it takes is one moron and you destroy your country.
Anyone could have told you his genius ideas like “turn a city into a thin line across desert/mountains” were the stupidest thing anyone had ever said. But you can’t tell him because he’s the king and he’ll kill you.
I worked on this project for a little under a year and it was fractally stupid. The top-level concepts are stupid, but so are the details. The whole thing has a cyberpunk aesthetic because that’s what MBS likes. The ski resort has a dam that’s made out of failure modes because that was the only way to combine that aesthetic with the requirement that the lake be able to host international rowing events. One day we had to work out how to freeze the lake over because MBS liked a render someone made of people ice skating on the lake. And so on.
The stupidity of the whole project is fascinating. Do you have any other wild examples?
If you haven't seen it Boyle's thing is entertaining https://youtu.be/Ak4on5uTaTg
I'll echo this! More stories please!
"Fractally stupid" is a hilarious descriptor, as is "dam that's made out of failure modes".
Perhaps he was trying to get line of sight into the desert by building the line...
Fun fact, MBS is a big fan of Age of Empires 2 and plays it in the mornings. Also funny story, I once saw a match being played, around US night time, where one player built a line of houses into the enemy territory so that the opponent was forced to micro their soldiers manually. Think of that what you may.
Insane how the plans dove straight into being so grand and expensive.
The location itself is kinda decent for development. It could've been pretty feasible if the plan was to pump desalled water up the mountains and let it flow down like rivers through smaller developments, while pumping out water laterally for irrigation.
Could've slowly greened their side of the Red Sea, hooked themselves up with a bridge to Sharm (and onwards to Cairo I believe with Egypt's HSR plans), built a few marinas, resorts, and stuff, and become quite a popular destination for a fraction of the cost.
Didn't they have a whole plan for processing the brine into concrete for development, too?
The plans were kind of nuts. There have been some successful developments in that part of the world, Dubai being the best known. El Gouna is also nice in a more modest way.
> This is the problem with having a king, all it takes is one moron and you destroy your country.
Can happen in democracies just as much.
Not "just as much".
The more functional the democracy, the less "just as much".
Democracy is not perfect but it's the best alternative we have right now.
I think that a two-party system is more vulnerable than a multi-party system however Yes parties can still form collations and push their agendas but it's more difficult.
You can see this in action in Canada for example.
Yes, but a democracy isn't stuck with the moron until he dies.
That's what snap elections are for, except in the US.
That's what "limited government" and "three branches of government" is supposed to be for, in the US.
And it's working... somewhat. Less well than I'd like, and less well than it did in Trump's first term, but he is at least somewhat restrained by the system.
I'm hoping something kicks in after the midterms.
Less so functional ones.
It’s functional until it isn’t.
The UAE is also an absolute monarchy and a police state to boot, but unlike Saudi Arabia they are very efficiently run, and rank better than Israel on the Transparency International corruption index.
Trump is not a king and is destroying the country. Charles is a king and is doing a great job.
Yeah king is the wrong word really. Having an unaccountable autocrat is really the problem.
The Repugnant Party abdicated their responsibility. So do did the Wealthy Elites. They all have no values except money and power. And the DimboDumbo-crats are nearly as bad.
I’m going to be pedantic and point out the titular role of “king” in the UK is now ceremonial, and only harkens back to historical absolute rulers. Still, even from modern a political standpoint, the definition of a king is typically defined as an autocratic position, with absolute rule the de facto function.
The British monarchy has far more powers than is commonly thought, even if they are held in reserve.
And they also get to exempt themselves from laws they don't like, like racial discrimination laws (well into the 1970s, brown and black people were deemed unfit for anything more exalted than cleaning toiletsat Buckingham Palace). Or the Cornish or Lancastrian tenants of the crown who have far fewer protections than any others in the UK.
A king? My man, you can just get a President who does the same thing.
But he would have been allmost king by now, if his wars would have succeeded. And obviously his wars did not succeeded because he did not get the support a king deserves!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Trump_-_...
No, not if his wars had succeeded. If the courts had rolled over, or if Pence had on January 6.
After Venezuela worked out - he was going for Iran, then Cuba, then Greenland, maybe Canada already. If succesful, I doubt there would have been many courts daring to attack him. Power is with those who succeed. He failed, fortunately.
And I hate to use that overused analogy, but in WW2, after the initial success of Hitler with the Blitzkrieg, there was not much criticism of him anymore (unlike popular believe, he was not a absolute Dictator but under serious pressure at various points). That only started again after they began loosing.
> stupidest thing anyone had ever said. But you can’t tell him because he’s the king and he’ll kill you.
"Let's exit one of the largest and most powerful economic and diplomatic unions"
"Let's give away control over our country to real estate agents"
There have been strong stupidest vibes all over in the recent years.
the king has no clothes and stuff, yeah...
Yep, same for a president, who we all know started a 10× worse version of Yemen war.
Someone called Putin started 100× worse war and enjoyed the close to unanimous support domestically.
Someone committed genocide in Palestine who cannot not be voted down.
I think I really don't see any better political systems.
It takes work by the citizenry to keep the political class in check, regardless of the configuration. Kings don’t rule in isolation, nor do elected governments. In a lot of countries we’ve abdicated that responsibility, likewise the political class has abdicated its responsibility to its citizens.
Read any government document from almost any department and the language for citizen has become customer. Language matters, I’m not a customer, but no one cares.
> enjoyed the close to unanimous support domestically
That’s what Russian propaganda wants you to believe. And I see no reasons to trust it. Assessing public opinion in an autocracy is from hard to impossible - people afraid to tell what they think and they have good reasons for this.
It's definitely not unanimous support in reality. Maybe majority support but I remember the meetings when Putin launched the thing and most people in attendance looking horrified but scared to say anything.
“All that money and no idea what to do with it.”
Keep laundering some of it via the PIF to mobile gaming companies?
Keep getting inundated with Monopoly Go / Scopely ads because McDonald's is funneling money back up the chain for McDonalds Monopoly. It's that time of year again!
Little thug who took power through brute force then thought he could bully the world like he bullied people all around him his whole life. Too bad the spot is already taken by the Don.
Imagine a whole country of nepo babies ruled by a nepo-baby hierarchy and nepo-baby ruler.
There are 25,000 princes and princesses. Forty percent of the population are imported workers who do all the hard work. Citizens work in government or government-owned companies, with good job security, good wages, and short hours. Low- and middle-income families also receive monthly cash transfers through the Citizen’s Account Program.
I consider Paywalled an ad, flagged.