Living outside America • Hacker News Board

Re: Living outside America

#211

Post by ralfn » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 10:59 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #129

ralfn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the natural resources curse? -- all right, ive read it I think the final paragraph gets it right: gov pending was at an all time high in that decade. And it sounds like, most of the supposed risks no longer apply, because of the Euro. But you are correct in that Holland isnt the best place for a startup.

One specific example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease Basically, once you discover natural resources (in the case of NL, natural gas), it crowds out all other activity. You can earn a great return from exploiting the resource, so the best people, best capital, etc. goes into that. With floating exchange rates, you get currency inflation, but you can have the same problems even with fixed exchange rates or…

But thats not the biggest reason Holland is a bad place for a startup. Its our mentality.

Americans are in favour of a person being extraordinary, the dutch are not. We cherish "acting normal". One of the most used expressions is "act normal, and you'll already be weird enough"

Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing. The amount of attention whores and drama queens is much lower than the states. But for truly remarkable people, this does not make their perfect habitat. Theyll need thick skins.

Re: Living outside America

#212

Post by 77ko » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 11:00 PM UTC

intellegacy wrote: post #79

To really understand America, you must not only live in it, but also live outside it. Note: I am from the USA, and "we" or "our" refers to us Americans. I spent 3 years abroad, recently returning to the USA this summer, and I will try to outline some of what I learned, although it is somewhat difficult as this knowledge has become ingrained in me and obvious as to seem to require no explanation. - English as lingua f…

I think you would be interested in reading this book about nations and their institutions: http://whynationsfail.com/

"Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it)."

A good review of the book: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/what-ma...

Re: Living outside America

#213

Post by philwelch » Tue, Jul 03, 2012, 5:14 AM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #210

philwelch wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with that adventure in Hawaii, the Spanish-American War was our one shot at European-style imperialism. Rudyard Kipling even wrote us a poem about it at the time. But it didn't work out and we gave the Philippines back to its own people by 1946. (Puerto Rico isn't independent because they don't really want to be, same as Hawaii.) The continental US west of the original colonies was an interesting case. We only…

Can you honestly think of a country the US has dominated against its will since the Philippines? There are many countries where the US has toppled one government for another, or propped up a leader the populace didn't like. That's where most of the criticism comes from.

Behind the scenes, sure. That's not dominating a country against its will, it's manipulation. That's why we propped up dictators in the first place--in most cases, a non-communist dictator was the only feasible alternative to a communist dictator. When we did dominate a country outright, we taught them baseball and democracy, e.g. Japan (which doesn't count because first, they started a war against us and lost, and second, we let them go as soon as we feasibly could).

Re: Living outside America

#214

Post by melonakos » Tue, Jul 03, 2012, 5:23 PM UTC

melonakos wrote: post #51

The jist of this article: "Hey, look at me! I'm cool because I am not patriotic, nor do I respect several of the rockbeds of American culture. I'm multinational." As real Americans would say, "Whoop-de-doo!"

How is it possible to have negative points?

Re: Living outside America

#215

Post by neilk » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 4:32 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #213

krschultz wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you honestly think of a country the US has dominated against its will since the Philippines? There are many countries where the US has toppled one government for another, or propped up a leader the populace didn't like. That's where most of the criticism comes from.

Behind the scenes, sure. That's not dominating a country against its will, it's manipulation. That's why we propped up dictators in the first place--in most cases, a non-communist dictator was the only feasible alternative to a communist dictator. When we did dominate a country outright, we taught them baseball and democracy, e.g. Japan (which doesn't count because first, they started a war against us and lost, and s…

You realize that's pretty much how the Soviets would describe their own interventions in other countries?

Oh yeah, we helped set up a leader friendly to the cause of righteousness, supplied him with advisors, gave him weapons or gave him access to buy them, ensured that he was friendly to exporting the mineral/oil/food wealth of his country via our companies and institutions, shared intelligence about his adversaries, installed a military base and ensured we had the right to conduct our wars using his territory.... but it's not like we took over the country! We are the friends of the common people!

Re: Living outside America

#216

Post by thetrb » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 12:14 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #38

rdl wrote: post #3

Living and traveling outside the US (Europe, Middle East, Asia) for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US (culturally, economically, etc.). Our government is broken, but generally the US lets problems get really inefficiently bad, then overcorrects, so I hope that will happen in the next 20 years. The threats to the US are not other countries getting better than us, but the decline of the natio…

> There are plenty of specific areas where other countries are better than the US, but no single country which is enough better on enough things to be a serious competitor. Germany. Better education, better attitude, more open-minded, less harassment for being weird/nonstandard, median level of critical thinking ability, healthier food, better transport, more cultural things to do/see, better solutions to the growing…

I'm a German citizen living in the United States (SF Bay Area) since 5 years now and I think your post is completely overstating Germany.

Better education - Kind of, although most of the top universities are still in the US.

Better attitude - Nope, not in my opinion

More open-minded - Nope, not in my opinion

Less harassment for being weird/nonstandard - Nope, not in my opinion

Healthier food - Yes, I agree on that

Better transport - Yes

More cultural things to do/see - Always depends on the area and there's enough to see in the SF Bay Area

Better solutions to the growing underclass problem - I only partially agree here. There's a reason why the Euro is on the decline in the last couple of months. Europe has many problems still to solve. Of course, the US also has many problems, that's why I partially agree.