531–540 of 560 posts
Surprised nobody has mentioned Little Brother by Cory Doctorow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel...
Download the book for free: https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die... . Does the news reflect what we die from? No Death from terrorism is 4000X over represented in the news
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Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars. And to the most common objection: yes they are. Gun control proponents often bring up and praise the UK (near total ban) and Australia (significant limitations compared to the U.S.) as examples to emulate. And in Chicago and DC, before the Supreme Court cases, there were effectively total bans. And when the plaintiffs sued, they didn't say, "well I guess we wen…
> Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars. That's actually wrong. Gun control isn't banning guns, and if you consider background checks a "ban" - then driving licence requirement is a "ban on cars" :) If someone had the bright idea to put the right to drive a car in constitution - Americans would be now arguing whether countrywide requirement to have a driving licence to drive a car is ok or not :)
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All things considered, I think the US is a fine country by global standards. Canada is significantly better in many ways, but the US isn't exactly Syria or El Salvador.
I've never understood the fascination with comparing the US to developing or undeveloped countries. It's a waste of time, and only causes more inaction because "everything is fine, it's better than x,y,z" Next you're going to tell me your pro football team is doing just fine because they're better than a high school team. (Even though they're literally on the bottom of the pro ladder) Surely, what is ostensibly the b…
I’m just confused about this attitude about the United States. I don’t see people being as smug about the entire spectrum of countries. I don’t see endless threads on message boards about how unbelievable it is that Eritrea and North Korea are governed poorly. And I think if you went to a forum filled with people from one of those countries and constantly talked about how it’s not as nice as yours, people would get annoyed.
We know our country has a ton of problems. Lucky you for being born in one that doesn’t, but that’s not a license to constantly lecture us about something we have zero power to change.
I bring up countries that people don’t hold to as high a standard despite them being so clearly worse-off than the US to invite you to reflect on why that is.
I think for most the most part it’s one of a few reasons: (1) people conflate geopolitical power with development, and think it’s abnormal that the most powerful country isn’t the most developed; (2) people conflate wealth with development, and think its abnormal that the wealthiest country isn’t the most developed; (3) people are just racist and think a country with a mostly Western culture should naturally be highly-developed and well-governed; (4) people see the unwarranted patriotism of a loud fraction of Americans and want to knock them down a peg.
Not sure which it is in your case, but I suspect based on your comments that it’s some combination of (2) and (4). But both are total fallacies.
Wealth is not particularly strongly correlated with quality of governance: Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE are all deeply corrupt yet richer per capita than the US. Hong Kong is one of the richest territories in the world and not a democracy at all. Uruguay and Botswana are vibrant, well-functioning democracies despite being developing countries. So it’s actually not very surprising that the US has a more poorly-structured political system than Canada, Australia, and most countries in Western Europe despite being monetarily richer.
As for point (4) it is obviously a fallacy because at no point did I ever claim the US is the greatest country in the world or that we have more freedom than anyone else or that Canada is a Stalinist shithole or anything else, regardless of the fact that some percentage of Americans might believe those things. On that note...
> what is ostensibly the best country in the world.
Your words, not mine. I think the US is better than most countries in the world, but worse than Canada, Australia, or most countries in Western Europe. Why is that so surprising or confusing?
> Next you're going to tell me your pro football team is doing just fine because they're better than a high school team.
I don’t follow football at all. I find baseball and soccer much more interesting. Funnily enough the political discussion parallels the soccer standings. Can’t tell you how many Europeans have a smug attitude about how “bad the US is at soccer” (as if that’s some sort of moral failing!) despite us having a FIFA ranking of 22 out of 210 federations. Funnily enough I’ve never heard anyone smugly shitting on the national soccer teams of China, India, Canada (sorry!) or Palau.
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You were not comparing the US as a whole to Europe as a whole. It is not clear to me what point your are intending to make with this array of different comparisons.
My overall point, I think, was adequately well-stated with my first comment in this thread: America has been one of the freest countries in the world for 150 years. Your counterarguments seem to consist of, “so was Britain” (which is insufficient to refute my point) and “Britain didn’t disenfranchise based on race” (which is factually dubious when you consider colonization as well as insufficient in terms of proving…
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Yes, people adapt. I'm saying you can't look at someone and determine whether how things are for them are good, just because they look fine. An animal raised in captivity looks fine, but maybe it would be better if it was raised in freedom. Or maybe it wouldn't. The point is you can't tell by looking.
Sure, but that's a critical difference between animals and people. In addition to sampling a whole host of metrics related to a person's health, life expectancy, purchasing power, &c, you can also just ask them how they feel about where they are in life and where they're going. You can't do that with an animal. Sweden, for example, is showing an OCED Better Life Index of 8.5 for safety and 8.9 for life satisfaction […
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> Where all the guns are, the shootings aren’t. So there are shootings without guns? Norway and France both have vastly fewer shooting deaths per year than the US.
Are you arguing crime or events? France and Norway beat US in events, gun control doesn’t seem to work there. If you are talking crime, yes USA crime is higher - in the areas with more gun control. I’d argue the cause of the crime is our poor handling of drug and poverty and not focus on the tool used. Guns have increased DRAMATICALLY since the crime highs of the 1990s, but crime has dropped to just above the lows of…
There are obviously lots of confounding factors in relation to crime statistics in different areas of the USA. It's more revealing to look longitudinally at the positive effects of gun control legislation in e.g. the UK and Australia.
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You work on whatever problem you like. I simply pointed out that the US has a singular problem with school shootings. You appear to agree with that assessment. You have no idea what would happen if Hong Kong had "2A rights".
> You have no idea what would happen if Hong Kong had "2A rights". Right, because they don't. Just like every other country that slips into tyranny. The absence of 2A rights in countries ruled by tyrannical regimes is deafening.
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The figures in the article are literally school shootings , i.e. shootings on school grounds.
Maybe you should reread the comment you are responding to in order to understand why your objection is meaningless in the context of the discussion. All mass shootings in schools are school shootings, but not all school shootings are mass shootings.