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To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

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Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#71

Post by smsm42 »

mbesto wrote: post #48
smsm42 wrote: post #36

"Imagine if a politician were to say, "France has a better health care system than we do." I can almost guarantee that politician would suffer electoral defeat " Which America this guy is from? In the United States of America in which I am residing, lots of politicians talk all day long about pretty much every developed country in the world having better medical system than US (even though those systems are radically…

> Which America this guy is from? Really? Can you give a little more evidence to support your claim? I'd love to see a clip of Romney or Obama saying "We're looking to copy the french healthcare system". They would get murdered for being "Un-American".

Romney and Obama are not the only people in US politics. There are multiple proponents of single-payer model (which is obviously modelled along the same lines as in countries where it currently exists), and they keep being elected. Of course nobody would just say "we are going to copy France" - that'd be stupid, US and France are different countries with different traditions, legal systems, economic and political systems, etc. But many politicians I've heard compared favorably health care systems in Canada, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc. to American one and I don't see why they would suffer electorally for it - the idea that American system needs reform is a commonplace among both left and right (they of course disagree as to what kind of reform it needs) and comparing favorably to certain aspects of foreign experience is nothing unexpected - in fact, in this case, there's not much choice to compare - if you want to argue "we want to change it", you'd need examples, and since you won't be able to find enough examples in the US (state experiments don't have enough timespan and may not scale well) you'd have to go international. If you wanted to show, for example, that single payer is a workable model, you won't have much choice but to refer to the experience of the countries where it was introduced.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#72

Post by asmithmd1 »

oofabz wrote: post #13

One area where we lag behind the rest of the world is our voting system. In 1992 Clinton was elected with 43% of the vote because Perot split the Republicans. In 2000 Bush was elected with 48% because Nader split the Democrats. This kind of voting system has been mathematically proven to create a two-party system (Duverger's Law). In many other countries they use runoff voting, so if no one gets 50%, they hold anothe…

Bush the Younger won in 2000 with fewer votes in total than Gore because of the "winner take all" electoral collage system. If you don't live in a swing state basically your vote is not even counted.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#73

Post by maxerickson »

dmpk2k wrote: post #44
ubernostrum wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've never seen answered: Has anyone actually stopped to figure out how multi-party systems really scale? India is the largest in the world, but also A) has Euro-style population density and B) is maybe not such a great example of a functioning representative government. France and Germany are better examples of governments that mostly work, but are dealing with a fraction of the US population and order-of-…

Perhaps we should eliminate parties altogether. The existence of party whips and cabinets in many countries tells us a lot about their "representative" democracies.

No matter what you label it, people with like ideas will end up working together.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#74

Post by dmpk2k »

maxerickson wrote: post #73
dmpk2k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should eliminate parties altogether. The existence of party whips and cabinets in many countries tells us a lot about their "representative" democracies.

No matter what you label it, people with like ideas will end up working together.

It's fine if they work together. I just don't think a formalized hierarchy, nor a populace voting for candidates due to their party association, is healthy -- it causes bad distortions, like the threat of political death if a member dares cross the floor.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#75

Post by 7952 »

ams6110 wrote: post #59
lmm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And is bankrupt France really a country to emulate Yes, it really is. Its people are happier, healthier, and better educated; they work less, eat better and have better relationships with their families. And are substantially less indebted than those of the US.

The French would all be speaking German today if we (USA) had emulated them in the last century.

And if it wasn't for France you would be driving on the left.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#76

Post by mbesto »

smsm42 wrote: post #71
mbesto wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which America this guy is from? Really? Can you give a little more evidence to support your claim? I'd love to see a clip of Romney or Obama saying "We're looking to copy the french healthcare system". They would get murdered for being "Un-American".

Romney and Obama are not the only people in US politics. There are multiple proponents of single-payer model (which is obviously modelled along the same lines as in countries where it currently exists), and they keep being elected. Of course nobody would just say "we are going to copy France" - that'd be stupid, US and France are different countries with different traditions, legal systems, economic and political sys…

> that'd be stupid, US and France are different countries with different traditions, legal systems, economic and political systems, etc.

> (state experiments don't have enough timespan and may not scale well)

You see, this is problem right here. America was founded on the idea that each state should govern themselves and that there should be minimal federal involvement (this is what Libertarians fight for). Furthermore, I'm not sure I agree with your line of reasoning. Your saying that we can't copy other countries because they're different, yet we can't copy ourselves because it doesn't scale well.

> I don't see why they would suffer electorally for it

I don't see why either, but that's the reality. Have you ever watched Fox News for more than 5 minutes? They would slander the hell out of ANY politician who said "let's be like France" in any capacity. Note - It's important to understand that neither I nor yourself need to watch Fox News. The point is, a VERY LARGE portion of America does, and they believe the stuff that spews out of these people's mouths.

I think the overall point of the article is that we are effectively "trapped" in the US because we are constantly reminded that "This is the America Way!" and to think otherwise is blasphemy. We are lucky in American to always have the ability to create a challenging opinion...always. However it doesn't mean it's popular. Popular gets you elected. Elected gets you legislation.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#77

Post by maxerickson »

dmpk2k wrote: post #74
maxerickson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter what you label it, people with like ideas will end up working together.

It's fine if they work together. I just don't think a formalized hierarchy, nor a populace voting for candidates due to their party association, is healthy -- it causes bad distortions, like the threat of political death if a member dares cross the floor.

I agree that there are problems with/from hierarchy and single-lever voting, I guess I don't think that it comes from formalized parties. I pretty much end up blaming the voter (I end up reducing a lot of complaints about voting systems to "If this democracy had more rules, people would vote better", which doesn't necessarily make much sense).

It would be interesting to see what resulted from removing affiliation information from ballots.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#78

Post by mbesto »

radicalbyte wrote: post #63

I'm probably going to be modded down like crazy for this; just remember it's not a rant, I'm just sharing my perception of America as a whole. Hopefully you'll see some value in an outside opinion :) DISCLAIMER: I'm writing this based in a view of "average" America. HN readers are most likely far from the average. It's a view shared by many younger ( TL;DR: European views US as being backwards, socially underdevelope…

Yankee living in the UK here...

I totally agree with your sentiment and let me play something out on the flip-side that I noticed about British life...

British people are brought up in a society that teaches them average is always OK and that life has dealt it's cards, so just deal with it. I know this is a sweeping generalization, and isn't how everyone in Great Britain operates, but this has been my general understanding of the motivation culture in this fine country. I've had this discussion with many people, either foreign or not, and they tend to believe this is a result of being in a class-system for hundreds of years.

You see, America was built and is comprised largely of the most motivated people on the planet. They (we) came to find the country because they wanted something better. Does the American Dream still exist? Of course it does, because it's an idea and will only die if we tell the idea to die. America is NOT for everyone. As you've outlined, not EVERYONE wants to live like that. I enjoy the same comforts as you, but I believe if I have the same superior means and the intelligence a you, I can earn vastly more money in the US and live vastly more comfortable. Does that mean I necessarily want that life? Not really, it's just that America provides and culturally accepts that plausibility of it, regardless of whether it's truly a reality.

This is probably going to be a radical statement - but I really wish the poor people of America had the ability to leave the country. They are really the only ones who complain about America not being suitable and backwards. If you're rich in America, there's little to complain about and life is good. What this would do is force the rich to provide better support to the poor, because without the poor the rich won't exist and we'd have a much bigger middle class (which is something that has made America so strong).

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#79

Post by sigkill »

mbesto wrote: post #43
mike-cardwell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never lived abroad, but everything you've said is obvious to me, because I interact with and learn about the World outside my country and have a natural tendency to question anything that politicians or people in power have to say. People don't need to live abroad to come to these conclusions. I suspect that you're probably mistaken that living abroad did this to you, and that it would have happened anyway. It…

> *People don't need to live abroad to come to these conclusions. Yes, yes they do. Actually you're right, it's not a panacea, and to most intelligent people they gain this wisdom with age and maturity. However, we have a serious media problem in the US that doesn't always tell the truth. So, it's extremely difficult to learn about the world outside the American bubble. Also, I did notice you are from the UK. It's mu…

>However, we have a serious media problem in the US

As an outside, who has briefly stayed in a lot of countries including America I would have to agree with you. In most of the countries, the news channel covers international news quite regularly, but when I was in the US it was very VERY difficult for me to get any kind of international news from the television. Most of them just glossed over it, which made it appear that they were just ticking the checkbox of the day.

Re: To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

#80

Post by _delirium »

punee wrote: post #50
firefoxman1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is such an excellent point. I don't know if this is an issue found in other countries as much as here, but I find (especially during election times) people take such pride in what they achieve, but blame the government for what they don't. It doesn't help when politicians are publicly using this attitude as a major part of their strategy.

It is an issue that is found in other countries proportionately to the prevalence of socialism. The French, for instance, will not only blame everything on the government (or people who have had success), but expect everything from it (find me a job, keep me healthy, save my company from bankruptcy, provide me with nice state-sponsored TV fiction championing the values of "diversity", etc.). You don't want America to…

Having lived in both the United States and Denmark, I think I would like America to go at least slightly more down that road. It frees up a lot of individual decision-making if very basic things are taken care of. Even in the U.S., nobody expects you to contract for your own police officers to investigate a crime if you get shot. Denmark just takes it a bit further and says you shouldn't have to contract for the ambulance and hospital that treat the gunshot wound, either. That frees you up to work on things that actually matter. Not having healthcare tied to employment frees up many options as well.
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