America’s government - as in, the civil service - is neither corrupt nor bad. It is a very well-run country! You need only visit America to witness how excellent it is in many ways. There is a reason that, despite its faults, America is still the most innovative and economically powerful country in the world.
In terms of Europe, the level of corruption and competence seems to be highly variable depending on the country. So again it seems misplaced to make a broad assertion like the one you made.
IMHO the US government is extremely corrupt. Many important regulatory agencies are captured by industry and run with a revolving door of conflict of interest. Corporate donors have basically completely captured Congress. We have a melding of industry and government, seen most visibly through our foreign policy, that makes us a quasi-fascist authoritarian country.
It's well-run in some aspects and disastrous in others. The fact that the US is an economic powerhouse is due to other things, not the quality of its federal and local government.
Tons of natural resources and a huge pool of primarily Western European Protestant immigrants in the 1600, 1700s, 1800s, with a strong culture for independence and a continuous search for prosperity, these immigrants serving as the bedrock that instilled the current US culture.
Before anyone tries anything funny I'm neither American, nor Western European, nor Protestant.
I’m sure this is a nice founding narrative that brings comfort to a lot of Americans of Western European ancestry. I think USA is better off inventing a more inclusive one in the coming century though (I suppose they already have in parts)
The doors were never open to Chinese immigrants except for limited periods.
Mass Chinese migration to the US only really began after the Civil War, and was quickly locked down with the Chinese Exclusion Act [0] only a few decades after the doors were "opened". Even then, naturalization of Chinese citizens as US citizens was still restricted. There even had to be a Supreme Court case to establish that the children of Chinese immigrants born in the US were US citizens! [1]
The Chinese Exclusion Act was only repealed in 1943, when a small number (literally hundreds, almost nothing) of Chinese migrants were allowed in, with that increasing slowly over time.
Even today, Chinese and Indian (and others, but the impact is greatest for high population countries) migration is limited by the H1B cap and multi-decade green card queues. If the queue to get a green card is so long that you'll die first [2], you have effectively been banned from permanent residency and naturalization.
My point is simple: doors were open to European migrants, so European migrants built the US and formed its national character. Other methods and types of migration may have also worked to build the US, but we'll never know because the US restricted them heavily and still does.
Chinese laborers, for example, built the western part of the transcontinental railroad. A pretty substantial contribution.
And FDR interned 110,000 Japanese Americans in WW2. My dad who lived in Long Beach at the time said much of this was motivated by envy, as the Japanese Americans ran prosperous farms and businesses.
Practically irrelevant. Brazil and Peru opened their doors to Asian immigrants but just like in the US, they were second wave immigrants and they couldn't save either of those countries.
You need the initial immigrants to do the heavy lifting, plus they majorly control politics.
Consider the descriptive part about the immigrants to be an example of the following cultural archetype: "ambitious, motivated, solid work ethic, respect for education and legitimate entreprise".
Any other settlers of the same kind would have succeeded. As a counterexample Spanish and Portuguese settlers largely failed to establish similar societies.
A fundamental issue is overlooked here. The US was established as a free market country. People of all backgrounds thrive in a free market economy. The proof of that is many countries have switched to free markets, and promptly started thriving.
Countries with unfree economies, like South American ones, do poorly. Chile seems to go back and forth between free markets and socialism, with the consequential ups and downs of its economy.
> A fundamental issue is overlooked here. The US was established as a free market country.
The playbook for a succesful free market economy is to use protectionism at home and (if applicable: if the state can be called imperialistic) impose free market principles on subject nations so that domestic corporations can exploit them.
Look at South Korea for an example of a country that was built with protectionist capitalism.
> People of all backgrounds thrive in a free market economy.
Look at the Gini coefficient of the US.
> The proof of that is many countries have switched to free markets, and promptly started thriving.
Not Russia.
> Countries with unfree economies, like South American ones, do poorly. Chile seems to go back and forth between free markets and socialism, with the consequential ups and downs of its economy.
Chile had a coup in 1973 which removed the social democratic leader from power and installed a neoliberal government. Neoliberalism is the modern free market incarnation. Why didn't they thrive?
> The playbook for a succesful free market economy is to use protectionism at home
Nope. Protectionism hurts the economy because it is an impediment to free trade.
> South Korea for an example of a country that was built with protectionist capitalism.
Protectionism hurts the economy, but not enough to sink it. Free markets are remarkably resilient to damage.
> Not Russia.
Russia's economy is a kleptocracy.
> Chile
Installing a neoliberal government doesn't mean they actually instituted a free market. Chile has, as I said, gone back and forth between free markets and socialism. The country would get on its feet with the free markets, then switch back to socialism until it was on its knees again.
To be fair (although I don't agree with him in the slightest): he did say “free market” to begin with, which in the common vernacular is contrasted with more state intervention.
C'mon, be serious and name an actual "total communism" entity, please.
I have no love for nominally Communist States - they're authoritarian centralised party states a gnats arse or less from full dictatorships perpetrating the lie that they're on the path toward some socialist | communist goal - but they are all far away removed from such things.
> and a huge pool of primarily Western European Protestant immigrants in the 1600, 1700s, 1800s, with a strong culture for independence and a continuous search for prosperity,
That's a long-winded way to say Settler Colonialism.
The key "crossing of the rubicon" that America has not yet reached is the normalization of everyday corruption (bribes, local corruption as a rule, etc).
We have done that in the federal political sphere for quite a while. The last vestiges of actually doing political right for the moral principle was probably back in the 80s or 90s.
There is a lot of corruption in the backwaters, and again at the high levels of large city government, but in general in the civil service there isn't corruption.
Likewise the military is still relatively uncorrupt in its administration, outside of the outlandish contracts of the military industrial complex.
It's probably because functionally speaking the "elite" capture most of the corruption money at the highest levels, and won't tolerate the inefficiency of low level corruption.
In terms of Europe, the level of corruption and competence seems to be highly variable depending on the country. So again it seems misplaced to make a broad assertion like the one you made.