14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

It was absolutely not just social media ban, it was mostly youth protesting against the corrupt government and unfairness, social media ban was one element that was against the freedom of speech, but it was right around the time where everyone was documenting the rich politicians, their business connections and their families that have been living lavishly and just inheriting the election seats from generation to generation and spinning beurocracy to their sides.

I was there a few hours ago. It was a class struggle, but it was bound to be spun up as "kids don't get facebook and throw tantrum".

The corruption is simply incredible. About fifteen years ago I found myself in Kathmandu after getting altitude sickness. The team's fixer brought me to lunch with some government officials. The topic of discussion? How to steal from a hydroelectric project. One of his guests outright asked, "should we be talking about this in front of this guy?" The fixer shrugged it off saying "he's a Westerner, what is he going to do about it?" And, well, he was right. It wasn't like I could go report it to the police.

Years later the fixer was finally jailed for gold smuggling. https://english.khabarhub.com/2022/16/232667/

Edit: add link

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

That's probably a healthy way to see things. Ideally all people that are actively working to create or improve should be on the same "side" against those that are destructive. The second order conflict then becomes what the rules are, and how we guide that side. That is, I think, where most of the factionalism historically plays out. It does feel like we're regressing to fighting that first order conflict more often now though.

In reality, it may be more complicated than that though. Most people don't see themselves as destructive, they just have a very different view of what the right rules are and what ought to be done to progress things. That can appear destructive from the outside.

I think tax cuts are possibly a decent enough proxy for this subject? While there's certainly a case to be made for tax cuts in very specific use-cases (e.g. where they're strangling demand/innovation/living costs/government-corruption/etc); a general belief in tax cuts is a constraint that makes it very hard to believe in society.

If you believe in tax cuts as a principle (i.e. 0% is a goal), then generally its hard to support government spending, which means its hard to support solving problems within your society, because doing so makes it harder to cut taxes. So with that in mind, I personally think people who believe in the Von Mises model of taxation (i.e. "all taxation is theft") are ideologically incompatible with any sort of society that tries to solve its own problems.

You seem to be assuming that government action is the best way to solve social problems. Is that really true or are there better approaches? I think government has a role to play but often it overreaches, causing negative second-order effects and wasting tax money. For example, in the USA government subsidized student loans were intended to make higher education more accessible to deserving low-income students. But in practice we now see a lot of students going to college who don't really belong there just because they can finance it, and much of the money goes into the pockets of useless administrators who contribute nothing to actual education. So naturally taxpayers are skeptical about turning over even more money to the government.