Just because an authoritarian government made a decision doesn’t necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian.
In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything. Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
Why should the government control how I manage my time? I'm pretty sure this site would be pretty outraged if the government decided we could only code 3 hours a week.
And please don't use the "but coding is constructive!1!" argument. A good use of time is defined by whoever spends it, not whatever someone else's idea of wasting time is.
As a case in point, playing hours of Splitgate has kept me sane during the pandemic as a college student locked in a room for 1.8 years. I meet on Discord with friends and discuss topics while playing. I've made more friends gaming than physically in the past year. That's pretty constructive if you ask me.
I live in the state of Georgia where most of the state belives in the "smaller the government the better". Alcohol sales can't happen during certain hours on Sundays...all because of...wait for it...religion. LOL.
Why should the government tell stores & restaurants when they can or cannot sell alcohol? How can the government tell me when I can, or cannot buy/consume alcohol. How is that a benefit to society? Why is it in a country codified for separation of religion and government are they allowed to have this in law?
The government is controlling how children spend their time. In the U.S., the government mandates a lot about how children spend their time. They need to go to school and they aren’t allowed to buy alcohol or tobacco. Children under 16 aren’t allowed to spend any time driving an automobile, etc.
To justify any arbitrary regulation imposed on children.
No child owns his own life or decision making. Typically parents make most decisions, the government makes some others e.g. mandatory schooling, setting standards that parents most abide by if they don't want their children taken away from them (sufficient food and shelter etc.).
there is a strong correlation between strong government and higher GDP. Weak economies are weak because of corrupt and weak government. So that would be my case for government action - collectively or through a good dictator.
Your logic seems good but is removed from history and reality.
And if you look at the past 200 years that we've made large progress towards all the things you mentioned, with each of those accomplishments have been enabled by...GDP growth
But China is better than the US in all of those things. They don't wage war, they have better health care (no massive drug monopoly charging obscene prices for cheap insulin), higher life expectancy, way fewer people in jail per capita, less of a drug problem (no opoid epidemic), less obesity, not nearly as much violence, practically no school shootings (as opposed to weekly shootings), etc.. this iist is LONG.
But is China better than Norway? Or New Zealand? Or Switzerland?
The US (pockets at least) are dysfunctional but other countries demonstrate the model of not having to live under a dictatorship that commits genocide and restricts liberties and have high values in the things you mentioned.
Not to mention that obesity comes from… consuming too much food. Chinese will be obese too soon as they become wealthier. Well, unless the government mandates calories or something like they do hours playing video games..
China will probably become much better than Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland once they increase their GDP. They have made major strides already despite their relatively low GDP per capita.
The US is the only country committing genocide. They have killed over a hundred innocent civilians in Afghanistan just the past few weeks. Over the past decodes they've killed around a million innocent civilians in the name of the hyper-aggressive and hypocritical "war on terror". Indirectly, they're responsible for several millions criminal murders during the same timespan, and they've not once been put to trial. They're not only failing their citizens, they're a genocidal, terrorist state.
Hard to have a response to something so far removed from what I'm seeing. Not really any reconciliation possible here I think. Have a good day/evening!
That's an odd, but unfortunately not uncommon, way of forming convictions. What are you unconvinced about? You openly admit that instead of uncomfortable information triggering your curiosity, it strengthens your already made up convictions to the contrary.
There's plenty of research, and leaks have uncovered much of the extent of US war crimes. The proportion of civilian casualties in Afghanistan (and Iraq) are immense, bordering 80%. This is because of the extremely low bar for claiming someone are enemy combatants.
A "suspected" car bomb (not a car bomb at all), triggered the US to kill 10 innocent civilians. They claimed they targeted ISIS, and that no civilians were known to have died. This is the rule rather than an exception, which leaks and whistleblowers have extensively shown.
Why would I reverse statements that are made on the basis of facts and research, of leaks and serious news reporting? Wikileaks is a thing for example, look it up. Not sure why you choose to refuse doing research into the topic and ignore evidence-based reporting to the contrary of your opinion that is presented to you, which you've been insulated against by a world of US & UK corporate media. You got to admit that you choose to live in that world, which is probably comfortable to you.
I don't think that was the statement made, just that strong government is correlated with strong economies. Strong economies/governments are a necessary, but not sufficient requirement for those other things.
GDP is the thing we should measure because without it, you can't have all the things you mentioned - you might be able to not start wars but you still need a strong army.
To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury
I never said it wasn't important, but we literally have the largest GDP - we won, game over! And we don't have universal healthcare.
It's like we've confused a metric (GDP) with success; we maximized the metric and can't even wake up and realize it's not what we were actually trying to accomplish.
what is success then? what are you trying to accomplish?
I'd argue the best way to accomplish whatever you're thinking about that we should be accomplishing - something that is hard to measure - is by maximizing GDP. Because GDP is correlated with everything you're thinking about accomplishing.
I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought here. Maybe you can help?
You say that people can't be left to the own accord, but then you also want people that you can't trust (leave to their own accord) to be in charge of you and managing a country?
Yes, I do think people can't be left to their own accord and some people should be allow to make rules for others. How we determine who those `some people` are is a matter of what we tried already and what was effective.
I don't really have a good suggestion. I wish I did. I kind of believe in the "democracy is the worst form of government except all of the others" statement because it appears to be so. You can probably make better democracies though but they require education and participation. Education you can do at scale, but participation is hard to achieve amongst heterogeneous populations, especially when they're large.
IMO that's why we're seeing problems with the U.S. that simply will never resolve. The long-term future is balkanization in some fashion. Either outright via secession or implied via arbitrary restrictions that make certain places undesirable to go to. Contrast that with a country like Iceland where the population is more homogenous and the democracy seems to work better.
And it's not a race thing so much as a belief/culture thing. Just in case someone mistakenly believe that was what I was implying, it's not.
But I do think it's hard to reconcile saying that you fundamentally mistrust people but then you still want to give them power to make rules for you. The safer bet would be to have less or no government in that scenario unless you trust that you can create a process that really weeds out those who are not trustworthy. It's hard to do that too. Even people who are highly credible (scientists, doctors, etc.) often aren't people you would want making rules for you because they're not philosophers...
I disagree that the safer bet is to have less government - look at the macro picture, things are better than ever as governments are exerting more controls, so there must exist a process of which allows for better prosperity for all by allowing government to modify our behavior.
Making rules is a function of government, and government is a function of the collective will of the people. So rules are nothing more that what I, and most of my neighbors, believe how everyone should behave, and the process is ultimately a trial and error; an experiment.
I know why you made this comment about race, but even Aristotle hundreds of years ago noticed that multi-culti does not work with democracy, simply because it breaks homogenousity of citizens.
Because in the US a large number of us value the freedom to live our lives as we choose. Given that a policy like this one effectively allows the government to intervene in an activity that does not harm others (only oneself) it stands that we in the US view it as appalling.
Other societies may look at it differently and feel ok delegating decisions about how their lives should be lived to their government. I, for one, would never be OK with that.
Oh please, the US government actively intervenes trying to prevent minors from seeing adults having sex, an activity that does not harm others (and even whether it harms minors who view it is questionable). But I've yet to hear an American state that they view it as "appalling" that children can't watch porn.
> Just because an authoritarian government made a decision doesn’t necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian.
True.
> In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything.
Amongst some people and some topics. Liberals don't think the government should do anything about heroin needles and homeless people, and conservatives don't think the government should do anything about gay conversion camps (arbitrary examples). This is the core of how democracy works. What you're seeing here actually is a breakdown in homogeneity when you have 300+ million people trying to make decisions when they have different values.
> Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
Which depends again on factors such as demographics, etc. and is largely a function of the lack of homogeneity. Not to mention all sorts of compelling arguments. Like we have people who won't take a vaccine, but we were also one of the first countries to roll out mass vaccinations. It's not simple.
> You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
I think many people do reflect on that. It's a precarious balance of liberty, management of a nation state, and many other things. I don't think it's wise to try and over-simplify these things into "well the government just wants you to be healthy". Ok. Let's ban all junk food, alcohol, cars, high-end restaurants, skydiving, and make everybody walk 10,000 steps/day or else they go to jail. I mean, why would you view the government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing?
Your examples are awful. Liberals, if there was such a thing as a monolithic block, are the ones that want to use government resources to combat people using dirty needles, and want to provide shelters for the homeless. Some conservatives probably want to make conversion therapy mandatory, some want it to be allowed, and some probably want it outlawed. I think I understand what you're saying with the rest, but you're overally generic and incorrect examples makes it really hard to actually support your point.
In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything. Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.