

WTF is wrong with Americans? - ngorenflo
http://www.shareable.net/blog/wtf-is-wrong-with-americans

======
chasing
As an American, I apologize. Like all of us, I am a mendacious and predatory
economic sociopath. The United States contributes nothing positive at all to
the global economy or culture. If only we could be like Norway -- which is, as
I am told, perfect.

[Edit to counter a bit of my snark: I'm not saying these aren't problems, I'm
just complaining about the stupidity of listing all of these more-or-less
known issues and then grouping all Americans into a lump and asking us why
we're all such idiots. The United States is a gigantic, complex nation of
hundreds of millions of people whose voices need to be filtered into some kind
of governmental consensus. It's not at all fair to compare the US to a
Scandinavian country.]

~~~
ekr
The main point of the whole thing is not that Americans would be idiots, but
rather that the way the United States is being governed is very suboptimal to
the wellbeing of the average citizen and average inhabitant of this planet
(yes, the way Americans live, how much they consume, has a great impact on
every single human being on this planet).

Many points made are very clear, and well supported (e.g. income equality:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html](http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html)).

As it happens, I have similar political views with author of the infographic,
and I admire Northern European countries. But that doesn't mean that I have
something to criticise about the USA. My home country is way behind in terms
of government transparency, and liberal, free-thought of its population.

~~~
hga
" _Very_ sub-optimal"???

You think it doesn't matter "to the wellbeing of the average citizen and
average inhabitant of this planet" that we e.g. keep the sea lanes open and
the price of oil lower than many producers would like it? Or prevent another
hot world war?

------
bostonpete
Other than the insulting title, this isn't really making any points that
haven't been made innumerable times. Education is getting far too expensive,
too many people are thrown into prison for non-violent crimes, we spend way
too much on military.

These observations aren't all that profound -- in fact I believe a majority of
the younger generations agree with all of these points.

~~~
ngorenflo
well, it's an infographic, which usually don't introduce new findings, rather
summarizes existing info in an easy to digest way, they provide perspective.

~~~
bostonpete
Maybe so, but this didn't come across as an infographic whose purpose was to
summarize information. Rather, it seems like a lecture to Americans about
certain well-known and thoroughly discussed problems -- a lecture whose points
the majority of Americans who read HN undoubtedly already agree with.

~~~
ritchiea
While the way to change things as an engineer is often to make something
better than the alternative, one way to change things in politics is to keep
the issue actively in discussion until public perception reaches a tipping
point that something must be done. There are posts on HN about a new version
of Rails or an interesting architecture used by a startup not just because
it's new but also because it's the state of the industry and we want to
dissect it and respond to it. We hear the same arguments about American policy
because it remains the state of the country and we want to respond to it.

------
beat
The basic American cultural value is equality of opportunity, not equality of
outcome, or predestination by social class. At least in theory, the American
Dream means your success is the result of hard work and talent, not your birth
or social class. And to a fair extent, this works - our current president is
the mixed-race child of a teenage single mother, who grew up in obscurity and
near-poverty. Barack Obama is the embodiment of the American Dream. Many of
our political, business, and cultural leaders are entirely self-made.

So the modern failures of American society are the failures to provide
equality of opportunity. Three stand out in particular for me - substandard
primary education, crushing debt for secondary education, and a health care
system that traps people into working for large corporations rather than small
businesses or entrepreneurship.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I would contest that anyone claiming America has equality of opportunity must
necessarily show a correlation between recognizable Life Choices and the
divergence of outcomes, and a lack of a correlation between personal
background and the divergence of outcomes. Or in other words, equality of
opportunity is measurable as social mobility (How many people wind up
somewhere different from where they started?) and sociological significance of
achievements (How are outcomes different between people who did X and people
who did Y instead?).

~~~
beat
To be sure, it's an imperfect correlation - mostly in that those who start on
second or third base have a much better chance at a home run. But the point is
that anyone can, in theory, hit a home run. In most historic cultures, that
was not true.

To put it in presidential terms, someone like George W Bush becoming president
isn't outrageous - he started on third base. But for someone like Barack Obama
to become the most politically powerful figure would require an actual
revolution in most historical situations.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_In theory_ means absolutely _nothing_. Baseball metaphors tell us nothing
about the real world.

Stop regurgitating badly digested Americana claptrap. Statistics on economic
mobility: put up or shut up.

------
eli_gottlieb
I cannot possibly pour enough irony tags onto the following words.

DAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA, you think human development and well being are
important to the ruling class! WHAT A NAIVE IDIOT!

If only!

Now for the more serious talk.

Firstly, Americans have been convinced that freedom is property, and property
is freedom. Since every good American knows that Americans love freedom, this
means Americans love not only capitalism (in the sense of an unplanned market
economy with free entry/exit of markets) but _True Capitalism_ (this being the
total elimination of all institutions that do not derive from private
property). The process of this moral and political transformation of the
American people has, ironically but quite predictably, started to make the
predictions of Karl Marx come true. Ayn Rand, after all, was a Marxist in
every detail except that she was _on the other side_.

In addition, a fundamental shift is happening in the world. It's going slowly
enough that the general public aren't much noticing it, but it's certainly
quick enough that by this time I think the entire intelligentsia everywhere is
thinking about it. To cut to the point: _productivity_! It's rising so far, so
quickly now that while we won't have a "robots do all the work" situation any
time soon, the days are ending of most of the population having a productive
job where their labor can out-compete sufficiently developed capital.

This shift goes much, much deeper than a _mere_ economic crisis. This is a
_civilizational_ crisis. _What do you do when most of your population is
unproductive excess?_ Well, what seems to be happening in most of the world is
that the "productive" elite (that is, the remaining elite who either hold
appreciating capital or whose labor can still out-compete capital, _this means
us guys!_ ) has begun to disregard the mass of the population entirely. Most
people no longer matter. In fact, even most holders of traditional capital
(factories and such) are being out-competed now. It's coming down to holders
of land, robots, fuel, and money being the only ones with any actual pull.

Turns out capitalism doesn't collapse and bring about an inevitable socialist
revolution; that was a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the Left. No, it
collapses into rentier-driven neo-feudalism because "without these hands, not
a wheel shall" _stop_ turning.

None of which is to say that this is some inevitable process. It's not. We can
change it tomorrow, _if we want to_. The problem is that this is the outcome
of the _deeply-rooted moral choices_ our societies have made. Capitalism can
only behave this way because despite having abolished all other Grand
Narratives our societies still worship at the alter of Productivism.

So make yourself useful, stick up for the useless, or die.

------
schtev
Ignorance is strength!

