231–240 of 275 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where should that be? Same in Germany. Corruption seems a noble crime and goes unpunished.
Er, what do you mean by a "noble crime"? Seems like a very ignoble crime to me...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn’t clear about an underlying assumption: I thought it was obvious the topic is corruption at the state level, and my arguments revolve around whether the state of California can do better... I am not arguing anything about the USA as a whole. California could compare itself with other countries and improve some of its governance. I believe that a major roadblock to that path is the ambiance of American excellen…
California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries. Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them. That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally. Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything. Ind…
Strawman. No country can adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries - they are always modified to fit.
> Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them.
Strawman. I am arguing comparisons should be made, not blindly discarded because of . Look at what works in other countries, and see what can help your own. Don’t just blindly discard everything as irrelevant because the country is different (for example, a different size.)
> Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything.
Nitpicking.
> Do you even have an understanding of the problems? It seems like not everyone would agree on what they are. Otherwise it just seems like your position is essentially just a claim that because there is another country that you think is run better, there are some ideas that you don’t actually understand yourself, that could help.
Those are starting to smell like personal attacks. Nobody understands much, but we all have some understanding. Yes, I have specific beliefs about what could help, but I have epsilon interest in beginning that particular conversation with you.
Edits as follows:
> Edit 2: oh - I see you have changed a whole bunch of things about your earlier comments to make it look as though you made points that I failed to respond to.
Ummmmm, nope. I didn’t read your child comment first. I did add an edit against the most obvious attack, I should have marked the edit, sorry. I made the edit within a short time, so I didn’t expect your immediate response. The edit (last para) merely reiterates the theme, it doesn’t add anything of substance.
> You are completely intellectually dishonest and as such have nothing to offer to political discourse about corruption.
If you get flagged, it wasn’t me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn’t clear about an underlying assumption: I thought it was obvious the topic is corruption at the state level, and my arguments revolve around whether the state of California can do better... I am not arguing anything about the USA as a whole. California could compare itself with other countries and improve some of its governance. I believe that a major roadblock to that path is the ambiance of American excellen…
California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries. Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them. That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally. Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything. Ind…
I understand that “look at what other countries do” is hand-wavy meta-advice. However, that is the best advice I have to give.
I could drill down on a particular policy, but how does that help?
The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, and is what most every other country manages to do for breakfast. Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude, and perhaps California can learn from the rest of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries. Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them. That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally. Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything. Ind…
> California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries. Strawman. No country can adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries - they are always modified to fit. > Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them. Strawman. I am arguing comparisons should be made, not…
“You mentioned Covid. Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.”
As well as lying about not having edited your comments, this comment is contemptuously anti-American and unconstructive. You can always find citizens of a country saying stupid things.
It’s also a non sequitur to what I was commenting on.
Covid numbers across Europe as a whole have been comparable to those across the US as a whole.
The two blocs are of comparable size, so this is an interesting statistic when evaluating effectiveness of governance of a large bloc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries. Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them. That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally. Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything. Ind…
> If you think the comparison is valid then why not tell us what could California or the US adopt from NZ that would make things better? I understand that “look at what other countries do” is hand-wavy meta-advice. However, that is the best advice I have to give. I could drill down on a particular policy, but how does that help? The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, an…
If most every other country managed to do this for breakfast, most every other country would be ahead of even the best parts of the US. The fact that the US and Europe as a whole are roughly comparable proves this simply can’t be correct.
“Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude..”
I’m not dismissing other countries. What I’m dismissing is this claim of a fix that everyone else is applying and that the US is not.
You mention strawmen in another part of the thread, presumably you must realize that the idea that California’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ is a strawman.
As I point out elsewhere, the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.
When asked for a single idea about how others are doing better, you simply say ‘look at other countries’ and admit that this is a vague handwave.
Have you considered asking people why they think there is nothing better? You might discover they have different values to you.
Drilling down on policy would be much more meaningful than claiming America’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ you don’t like.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have missed the point. GP’s argument wasn’t that the Scandinavian model is better, they were instead forcefully rejecting the idea that everyone is as bad or worse than America. It is very common for liberals to point at Scandinavia as the ideal model, but that is not core at all to their argument. Furthermore, while you might have a point about the geographic size of the US, as an individual it’s not cle…
GP said: “Have you really opened your eyes to how some countries have much, much better governing systems?” You said: “GP’s argument wasn’t that the Scandinavian model is better” Are you trying to gaslight the parent?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not clear why the size of the area should matter much to the individual. If you feel like you live in a corrupt state, then "but it's very big you see" will do absolutely nothing to reduce the negative experience. And if one felt like they should leave their current country and move somewhere less corrupt, then size doesn't really matter either. If the hypothesis is "living in the US is unpleasant due to corrupt…
I’m not commenting on leaving. I’m commenting on the idea that the US could just copy ideas from other arbitrarily selected states, or that the cause of those states present condition is well understood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
GP said: “Have you really opened your eyes to how some countries have much, much better governing systems?” You said: “GP’s argument wasn’t that the Scandinavian model is better” Are you trying to gaslight the parent?
The definition of “gaslight” is not “I disagree with that”. Read more carefully and then respond substantively or don’t bother to respond at all.
Telling the parent that the GP is not making an argument that they are plainly making, looks like an attempt at gaslighting.
I did read what you said. It would be valid if the GP hadn’t written what I quoted.
The parent was responding reasonably to what was written, and you seemed to be trying to persuade them that the GP had made a different argument to the one they actually did, by denying the presence of the quoted section.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The definition of “gaslight” is not “I disagree with that”. Read more carefully and then respond substantively or don’t bother to respond at all.
Gaslighting is about undermining someone’s perception of what is going on, and then using that to manipulate them. Telling the parent that the GP is not making an argument that they are plainly making , looks like an attempt at gaslighting. I did read what you said. It would be valid if the GP hadn’t written what I quoted. The parent was responding reasonably to what was written, and you seemed to be trying to persua…
Furthermore, if you're going to accuse someone of gaslighting, then do everyone the favor of actually paraphrasing their arguments correctly. It is deeply hypocritical to run around accusing others of gaslighting while misrepresenting their arguments.
> You said: “GP’s argument wasn’t that the Scandinavian model is better”
What I actually said is that their main argument is that other countries are plainly run better. You can tell because that's their first sentence. Yes, they point to Scandanavian countries as an example, but their core argument is that "the US is more poorly run than other countries".
Furthermore, you can tell that their core argument isn't about Scandanavia, because they spend most of their post talking about New Zealand. If their core argument was about how great Scandanavia is, then they probably wouldn't have spent their entire post talking about New Zealand, now would they?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not commenting on leaving. I’m commenting on the idea that the US could just copy ideas from other arbitrarily selected states, or that the cause of those states present condition is well understood.
Are you asserting that US governance cannot possibly be better than it is due to its size, or are you just arguing against the specific examples provided?
I don’t preclude the possibility of learning from other countries, but I think it’s meaningless to say that just because a small country happens to be running better right now, there must be something it is doing that the US could be doing that would help.
It’s possible that there is, but there is no prima facie evidence of that. If someone wants to make that argument, they need to explain what is being done better and how the US could adopt it. Otherwise it’s just nationalism.