
America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28 - imartin2k
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-22/america-is-not-the-greatest-country-on-earth-it-s-no-28
======
kristopolous
Reminds me of a Michael Parenti speech on "Superpatriotism" from 1988. There's
no existing transcript I can find so I may be the first to do this:

"The superpatriots love of country seems predicated on the country being 'up
there', stronger and superior to other countries.

What happens if it's gonna slip? What about people from ... lesser lands? What
about somebody from...Luxembourg. I mean now, Luxembourg is #122, just barely
ahead of San Marino in its military might.

So what does someone from Luxembourg do? Do they go around shame-faced? Do
people tease them, "Are you from Luxembourg?", "No no, I'm uh...French". And
you say, "Do you love your country" and they say "well wha..what is there to
love ... I mean a few border police, no army, no navy ..."

Here's the mp3: [http://9ol.es/luxembourg.mp3](http://9ol.es/luxembourg.mp3)

The entire speech:
[http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/23514](http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/23514)

~~~
jnordwick
Why people only rip on Americans for being patriotic? Nobody rips on the
French when they say they have the best {food, fashion, history, literature,
country, *}. Everybody seems fine with European snobbery in all its variants:
French, Italian, and even English snobbery is accepted, but not quite as much
as the others it seems.

~~~
pipio21
"Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best."

Everybody does, it is called "chauvinism". There is nothing wrong believing
your country is the best, provided that you have actually traveled to other
countries and know it is a fact. You will find your country being the best "at
something", but could learn and improve a lot from other countries as well.

The problem with chauvinism is not understanding other countries(not knowing
other cultures or countries) making yourself prejudices that are not real, and
the mass of people being easily manipulated by the power establishment.

Given that the US has the biggest army in the world, with nuclear subs,
nuclear missiles, drones and stuff, American prejudices are extremely
important for the rest of the world.

For people living in Libya or Syria, Afghanistan , Iran or Saudi Arabia,
American prejudices and actions could be the difference between being alive or
dead, for you and your family, abandoning your country as a refugee with
nothing or having everything you have destroyed.

When people in charge want the gross of the people to support an invasion of a
foreign county and make a big business with the natural resources, they use
patriotism as the main tool(e.g Americans were "being Attacked" in Iraq
because 20 people from Saudi Arabia hijacked Americans planes).

~~~
majewsky
> There is nothing wrong believing your country is the best, provided that you
> have actually traveled to other countries and know it is a fact.

Yes, there is. No single country can be "the best" or "the greatest", because
this term is ridiculously underdefined. (The same fallacy applies to the
submission, btw.)

------
aryehof
When traveling in the US, I'm always amused at the reactions of disbelief,
horror, aggression, and utter incredulity when I propose that their country
isn't the greatest in the world.

After all, they likely hear or are told every day that they are not only
"free" (unlike everywhere else?) but the "greatest".

~~~
Hermel
Really? What kind of people are you talking to? Note that Bloomberg, the
source of the above news, is American. Note that the reaction you get might
not only stem from the message itself, but also from the way you deliver it.
How do you react when a foreigner critizes your country out of the blue?
Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants,
did you know that?" How do you react?

~~~
majewsky
> Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants,
> did you know that?" How do you react?

"I know, right?"

------
tonyedgecombe
"The U.S. is No. 64 in the rate of mothers dying for every 100,000 births, and
No. 40 when it comes to the rate children under age five die."

That is shameful for the tenth richest country in the world (per capita).

~~~
jnordwick
The real shame in that number is that other countries literally let premature
babies die without intervention so they can keep their health costs down and
infant mortality numbers down too while the US aggressively intervenes and
reports all births massively inflating our infant mortality numbers.

Basically, if you are going to be a premature baby, you would much rather be
born in the US than any other country in the world.

~~~
JonnieCache
Doctors stand by as babies perish because they're concerned about their
nation's WHO rankings? Citation needed.

~~~
jnordwick
I'd say its is more of an institutional bias again costs and perception that
drive policies that prevent intervention when babies are born too young or too
underweight. That's how the you get the horror stories of "my baby was born X
days too early/Y pounds too underweight and they refused to do anything."

~~~
croon
I've literally never heard any such story. Online or in my circles.

Again, [citation needed].

------
squozzer
I never accepted America as "greatest country in the world" as a literal
truth, anymore than I would say my Dad is "the greatest in the world" and
expect anyone to believe it. It's a statement of love, or belonging, or some
other sentiment, but some set up its literal interpretation as a strawman and
begin wailing on it.

~~~
ende
Bingo.

------
Randgalt
Hands up - who'd rather be in Iceland than the US?

~~~
richmarr
Me. Iceland is awesome.

~~~
erichocean
Not only that, your vote actually counts with only 331,778 people!

~~~
majewsky
You mean like in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV_O3BA5e28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV_O3BA5e28)
?

------
wtbob
I thought it was interesting that according to their numbers the U.S. has
fewer homicides than Germany (which is worse than Syria?!). That's quite
surprising.

~~~
f_allwein
The graphs are a bit confusing. higher = better, actually (there is a small
bit saying "safe levels/ unsafe levels" above the 1st graph). I was also
confused why Saudia Arabia would have such high issues with alcohol, whereas
in fact it is Russia that does...

~~~
j_jochem
I'd say they're more than a little confusing. Why would anybody from a western
cultural background choose yellowish orange for "better" and a range of blues
for "worse"?

~~~
vacri
Heatmaps are pretty common in western culture.

~~~
j_jochem
Heatmaps are used with continuous data. This map has 4 discrete values, so
it's really misleading.

------
Sideloader
Did the UN report actually set out to rank countries by order of "greatness"
or was that the mass media's contribution? The compilers of the report
probably stated something like "based on criteria x,y and z which are based on
data we obtained from organizations 1,2 and 3, or their equivalents, in
countries around the world we ranked these countries from 1 to 100 (or
whatever) according to their scores".

So...being #28 in the list doesn't mean that country is the 28th "greatest"
country in the world. Obviously there exists no objective definition of
"greatest" or "best" country/city/region in the world but every time I see
that written somewhere I cringe a little. It could be my inner pedant but it's
also because I know somebody will take this as meaning the researchers meant x
country is THE greatest in the world and argue why this is, or is not, the
case. Probably not so much on HN but preventative measures have been taken
just in case.

------
caub
Fun fact: America is not a country

~~~
CalRobert
Agreed. However this is something that most of the world (aside from Mexico,
Central, and South America) collude in. I try to say "the US" in conversations
with my European friends, but they will always just say "America" in response.
And of course, there is no English equivalent to Estadounidense.

~~~
nmc
The French language has "États-Unien" [0] but it is almost never used.

[0] [https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-
Unien](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-Unien)

~~~
CalRobert
Of course, even that _could_ be ambiguous given that my homeland's southern
neighbor is officially "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (Mexican United States).
That usage is so rare as to be pretty much irrelevant, though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico)

------
0verD0ses
Although there is a lot of local variation, after all America is the third
most highly populated country in the world, I would broadly agree with this
picture.

------
d--b
So? Is it about time someone makes it great again?

~~~
fake-name
Again implies it was great at some point, (or greater then it is now).

At what point, exactly, was the US "Great"? Was it when Women couldn't vote?
Was it when black people couldn't sit in the "white people" part of the bus?
Was it when you could get committed to a mental institution just for being
gay?

While there are many things wrong now, the rosy past that such rhetoric seems
to _assume_ exists was never a thing. America was never great.

~~~
allendoerfer
Great relative to others, not perfect.

~~~
croon
For one of the youngest countries on Earth, the US is (maybe because of that)
all too opposed to change.

The US constitution was written over 200 years ago. Other countries were
founded many hundreds or thousands of years before that, and have thus
realized that the core principles they were founded on were maybe not all
applicable today, and continually update their laws and government.

The problem with "the greatest country on Earth" is that it's unwilling to
adapt and learn and grow. Which is what every other country and human on Earth
tries to daily.

------
yousry
It should be metioned that the process of statistical data collection can vary
between countries.

------
return0
But it is #1 in military might. So, its the greatest

~~~
vacri
Mightiest is not necessarily greatest.

~~~
return0
History would suggest otherwise.

~~~
vacri
Really? The Mongols were fearsomely mighty, yet their empire lasted less than
a hundred years and their culture spread nowhere. The USSR was a military
superpower, yet it only lasted one human's lifetime, and it absolutely sucked
to live there. Alexander the Great was stupendously powerful in a military
sense, 'conquering the known world', yet his realms collapsed upon his death
at only 33.

------
jnordwick
I'm so sick of these articles:

1- poverty is defined differently in each country

2- so is infant mortality

3- so is life expectancy (who gets included isn't the same)

4- social justice issues have no clear definition

5- some of these stats aren't even quantifyable, such as hygiene.

...

How much is a percentage of obesity worth? As much as percent of GDP? Or why
isn't the number of top 100 universities accounted for?

can keep going and going...

These are political rankings given the veneer of rigor because they have
numbers attached to them. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are just busy
work for the Social Justice Warriors with nothing else to do but make up yet
another meaningless utopian index.

[https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs](https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs)

~~~
pmontra
Some indicators could be subjective but how can infant mortality and life
expectancy be defined differently in different countries?

~~~
jnordwick
Who is "born" is defined different depending on which country. E.g., most
European countries will not count premature babies if they don't make certain
weight or other metrics and no attempt to intervene, so this sets up some
really perverse incentives. These can make up more than 3 out of every 4
premature births so it can significantly tilt the stats:

[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/276952/infant-
mortalit...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/276952/infant-mortality-
deceptive-statistic-scott-w-atlas)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality)

~~~
richmarr
> ... most European countries will not count premature babies if they don't
> make certain weight

Factually incorrect, as shown by your own link which lists 6 countries that
have weight/gestation thresholds. Or maybe there are less than 12 countries in
Europe, who the hell cares, right?

~~~
jnordwick
You trimmed the rest of the sentence that said "or other metrics" that would
include things like weeks premature. That clearly changes the meaning the
sentence. But that's a minor thing when you are playing a game of Gotha, isn't
it.

~~~
richmarr
> ...That clearly changes the meaning the sentence

If you look at my reply I talk about gestation period.

Only 6 European countries have thresholds for either gestation or weight.

You can accuse me of playing "gotcha" if you like, but you're misrepresenting
data and it's fair for me to correct you.

[Edited for typo]

