I will argue against you, but let me first tell you that your exposure to this stuff means there is a lot of stuff you know that I don't know. I'll argue against to perhaps provide some support for some alternative approaches that might give a good idea when considered.
Many of those governments ardently desire their intelligent, rational people leaving, and will even facilitate that movement. They get in the way of a stable tyranny.
Unfortunately, there is probably no winning in the short term. Cuba is a case American's no something about. The US Gov't has tried starving Cuba (by embargoing trade) and their brains have been highly drained. Even so, Cuba persists in a very non-free state even as its dictator is old and weak.
It SEEMS to me that the community of rich and effective Cubans in the United States do much more towards putting pressure on the Cuban government than do any "dissidents" who stay behind and operate with few resources, and quietly enough to avoid arrest. I certainly don't know for sure.
More importantly, the more they appropriate a foreign culture, the more the locals will see them as "foreign". A "Return of the Elites" might not be welcome: see Iran after the Shah was deposed,
This is something you "fight" against by not fighing against it. Appropriate the foreign culture and stay connected to your friends and relatives back home. Be a "reasonable" non-Muslim. Give them all the reason in the world to see that a non-Muslim is not the devil creature they think. But it will take a long time, and there is probably no getting around that. Another path would be to pretend to be a moderate Muslim. Certainly many westerners pretend to a level of christianity that is so weak as to be nearly non-existent, because it doesn't cost much to do so and gains you some benefits. I would probably do that if I had to, I don't perceive the price I pay for being atheist-agnostic to be even vaguely high enough to make faking it worthwhile, but I live in California, not Morocco.
Capitalism as the source of a nation's prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
I believe a consistent practice of rationality will move you away from dogmatic fights. Of course you are right, places that could reasonably be called capitalist do not all do equally as well by any means. There are other principles at play that are important. In my opinion, having read a lot, markets are very important. Better to have relatively open economic competition in markets with few or no government granted monopolies. WHen the government does intervene, MUCH more efficient to intervene in a way that preserves markets (charging for licenses to emit pollutants instead of mandating certain levels of pollution or certain non-polluting technologies for example).
But of course the big thing is the extent to which the government picks winners and losers. If a friend of the king is getting rich in business, the less bad part is that his money is coming from overcharging the people, the more bad part is the overall drag this kind of interference creates reduces productivity to fractions of the levels achieved in western countries. Western countries certainly have problems picking winners and losers, but it is done from a baseline of so many openly competitive markets that its impact, while bad, is simply not on the same scale as what happens in a third world country.
The west's advantage is not ideological it is technical. Markets WORK to find optima and get the most out of all the economic inputs, that is a technology. To the extent that a call for Capitalism sounds like an ideological call, it is totally rational to resist it. Just don't replace it with an even worse ideology, an ideology that promotes the use of way inferior technologies.
Argue against? I can't find a single thing here that I disagree with. Except the bits where you argue in favour of mercantilism, but I never argued against that. I would (mostly along the lines of "freemarkets need specific cultural memes specific social and political infrastructures to function well: it's a great engine but you can't put it in just any car or in the hands of just any driver, otherwise people will die, and even in the right conditions it's still massively dangerous, but it's just so much more awesome than other crappier engines...&quo...
So I have been checking laws around the world regarding Apostasy. And I have found extremely troubling data on the approach Muslims take to dealing with apostates. In most cases, publicly stating that you do not, in fact, love Big Brother (specifically, that you do not believe in God, the Prophet, or Islam), after having professed the Profession of Faith being adult and sane (otherwise, you were never a Muslim in the first place), will get you killed.
Yes, killed. It's one of the only three things traditional Islamic tribunals hand out death penalties for, the others being murder and adultery.
However, interestingly enough, you are often given three days of detainment to "think it over" and "accept the faith".
Some other countries, though, are more forgiving: you are allowed to be a public apostate. But you are still not allowed to proselytize: that remains a crime (in Morocco it's 15 years of prison, and a flogging). Though proselytism is also a crime if you are not a Muslim. I leave to your imagination how precarious the situation of religious minorities is, in this context.
How little sense all of this makes, from a theological perspective. Forcing someone to "accept the faith" at knife point? Forbidding you from arguing against the Lord's (reputedly) absolutely self-evident and miraculously beautiful Word?
No. These are the patterns of sedition and treason laws. The crime of the Apostate is not one against the Lord (He can take care of Himself, and He certainly can take care of the Apostate) but against the State (existence of a human lord contingent on political regime).
And the lesswronger asks himself: "How is that my concern? Please, get to the point." The point is that the promotion of rationalism faces a terrible obstacle there. We're not talking "God Hates You" placards, or getting fired from your job. We're talking fire range and electric chair.
"Sure," you say, "but rationalism is not about atheism." And you'd be right. It isn't. It's just a very likely conclusion for the rationalist mind to reach, and, also, our cult leader (:P) is a raging, bitter, passionate atheist. That is enough. If word spreads and authorities find out, just peddling HPMOR might get people jailed. And that's not accounting for the hypothetical (cough) case of a young adult reading the Sequences and getting all hotheaded about it and doing something stupid. Like trying to promote our brand of rationality in such hostile terrain.
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it? Would you advise them to, in fact, do nothing at all?
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?