Despite the headline CBS gave the article, it seems the problem is not with happiness, but with the seductive appeal of materialism and the effects of exposing one culture to another.
Social comparison theory is the idea that our satisfaction with what we have isn't an objective measure, but is actually based on what we see other people have. Young people generally seem to have an innate desire to leave their hometowns and seek out what else might be waiting out there for them. When you add in globalization and media influence exposing them to what looks like a "better" life with more things, it's not surprising that they've seen ~9% of young people leave Bhutan.
The other question is, what will happen if Bhutan does increase their financial wealth as well as their happiness? Will they then see a net influx of people through immigration, looking for the lifestyle Bhutan promises? And will those new people be able to maintain the culture Bhutan has cultivated?
It sounds like the concept of Gross National Happiness is a successful one, on its own, but it brings new challenges that couldn't have been forseen originally. That doesn't mean they can't solve them without giving up their core values.
Nah, the issue is the one that many developing countries suffer from: brain drain.
The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why countries like the US keep being so successful while developing countries stay poor.
It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is what moves humanity forward.
Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations.
The solution is to either keep the population ignorant, hamstringing their education so they are less useful abroad and implementing a strict censorship regime so they don't get "corrupted" by the West or well force them to stay.
We saw that all play out in the Soviet Block. There is a good reason there was a wall.
I think the fairest solution is to NOT make education free but instant offer a deal of having to stay in the country and work for X-years in the profession one has been trained in by the state. Once they get older and settle down they are less likely to leave anyway.
Being a developing country just sucks. There is a reason most never break the cycle of poverty.
This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay".
It seems to me that the smartest people would be far more motivated to leave a country where they are unable to find other people like themselves to collaborate with.
And they'd be far more likely to come back in future and reinvest their overseas earnings in a country that they felt warmth towards than one that had forced them to play life in hard mode and was actively hostile towards them.
>This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay".
Yes. I've seen it like this in a LinkedIn post:
CFO to CEO: What if we train our people, and they leave?
CEO to CFO: What if we don't train them, and they stay?
I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-birth.
It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of the real issue.
The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my birthplace. It just isn't welcoming to nerds or rich people. It doesn't lend itself to ever becoming developed.
When I compare and contrast to the New World: I find a much more welcoming culture that encourages personal progress. And not only are nerds welcome, but all sorts of productive folk. It's absolutely no surprise to me that the US is outperforming the rest of the world economically to a comical degree.
Yes, I've traveled to a good amount of countries and the overwhelming corruption or culture which doesn't support fair enterprise is soul crushing. You can say America has it to some extent, but in a lot of places you really don't have a chance at all unless you're born into the right family.
Travel is such an important part of a well-rounded education because it forces things into perspective. I’m glad it’s becoming cheaper. I dream of the day all kids can do it.
This is the more correct answer. It's also answers why developed nations became developed and undeveloped nations did not. The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior.
That being said, I wouldn't use the US as some bastion of progress. Technically, we haven't progressed much since the 70s? 80s? outside of GDP going up, but that's just a number on a chart. Most of us today could go back to the 70s and live not much different than now (compared to the any earlier decade). It's mostly a side effect of being the world's reserve currency.
Food has improved dramatically. Quality and availability. We now have fresh produce year round, not seasonally. Meat consumption is up something like 30-40lbs a year. For is also vastly more interesting (unless various jello molds are your thing).
Houses are much more comfortable, energy efficient, and larger. Air-conditioned in summer, heated to a reasonable temp in winter.
Healthcare while it has become unaffordable has greatly improved.
Car reliability/safety has improved insanely. The average car now has A/C unlike the 70s.
Compute power. The average person has the knowledge of the ENTIRE world at their fingertips. But totally no progress has been made???
We have weather satellites to prepare for meteorological disasters/storms saving so many lives.
We can talk to family whenever we want, not a 5 minute conversation the first Sunday of the month.
We have vastly more free time. My family made most of their close in the 1970s. Washed by hand. Hang out to dry. Now we have a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a microwave, an air cooker, all freeing up time to do other things.
Your comment is like the people that watch American movies white eating pop-corn, wear blue jeans and sneakers, and say 'America doesn't have a culture'.
> Most of us today could go back to the 70s and live not much different than now (compared to the any earlier decade). It's mostly a side effect of being the world's reserve currency.
There's been 50 years of technological innovation since then. The entire fabric of society has been changed by it and has affected how we communicate and do business.
> The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior.
Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on. The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.
Culture just reflects the underlying material conditions that people live in. There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. Wealth is cumulative and first mover advantages are strong. And if anyone threatens the current hegemony, there is always the use of force.
But yes, you are right there has been a stagnation since the 80s and things are slowly changing ins favor of countries like China and India.
> There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture.
I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this outright, but after having just spent a summer reading through the history of the collectivist cultures in Russia/China during the last century, all I could think of is how lucky I was not to be born into that.
So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly comparatively superior, in my opinion.
The locus of fast development will always develop superiority narratives. The fact is that there will always be a locus of concentrated development and it's not because it has a special culture.
> The locus of fast development will always develop superiority narratives.
True
> The fact is that there will always be a locus of concentrated development
Also true
> and it's not because it has a special culture.
I don't think this is always true. Why can't there be cultures that are more likely to serve as a locus of fast development? Sure, there are geographic and climatic factors, but there are also cultural factors.
Where would this cultural specialty sit? We're all the same naked apes everywhere. Culture develops on the resources available. The human particles are too homogeneous for a group of special human behaviors to cause development. It is much more likely that the overall configuration of economic forces to cause the storms of extra value falling somewhere to give rise to the development and following cultural assertiveness.
Kinda like the rain forest. It's the global rain patterns that cause them. It's not that the rain forests have a special rain attracting power.
Well that begs the question of why was China so weak that they could be easily colonized and exploited by the UK, Japan, and other foreign powers? At the time they didn't lack for population, natural resources, technology, ports, etc. Was their weakness caused by culture or something else? In other words, why were they the colonized instead of the colonizers?
I'm not trying to make excuses for the crimes against humanity committed in China by the colonial powers. But we need to look deeper into the root causes of historical events.
People in Russia and China are saying the same thing about the West, having read critical histories of the modern West (e.g. Wang Huning, America Against America).
Based on the data, a lower/middle class person born in PRC almost certainly has better prospects of upward mobility and avoiding poverty.
Interesting. I just read a long expose on Mao's party and the tens of millions of Chinese people they are responsible for killing. Can you recount a similar story of the West? Just trying to understand how it compares.
There's a huge amount of documented history of mass killings, destruction of institutions, and economic exploitation by the West and USA in particular. By American authors, too.
Frankly, I'm astonished that you aren't aware of this.
I never said I wasn't aware of the faults of the West. I'm not naive enough to think Western culture is anything close to being innocent of crimes (many which are, as you pointed out, documented).
However, I'm simply pointing out that the collectivist culture of these countries in the 20th century was responsible for killing vast swathes of their own populations. My question was, of the documented horrors influenced by Western culture, which do you see as being comparative to this unfathomable death toll?
Genocide of Native American peoples, enslavement of Africans, political subjugation of LatAm, largest modern gulag system (#1 prisoners per capita, prison slavery still practiced).
Unquestionably some of these were unacceptable acts. But the numbers don't stack up. There's also a huge qualitative difference.
According to [0] there was a population decline adding up to 4 million native deaths (from all causes, including hunger and disease) over the past half a millennium.
Russia and China killed 5-10 million of their own people just in the past century. They had cannibal banquets where they quite literally ate the rich in public ceremonies. China, right now, has more than a million Muslims in prison camps, churning out gadgets for the communist economic machine.
If the issue is that you hate the United States, you'll always find something to criticize, and I think we'll never find common ground.
I grew up surrounded by many anti-American ideas. But when I tried to examine that place from a neutral point of view, in the proper context, after traveling to and living in many places, I found it impossible not to become a raving fan.
I had a really hard time stomaching the cannibalism. I had no idea this all happened until I started digging into it more recently. The stories of people being disemboweled while still alive and having their intestines feasted on just seems incomprehensible.
And Wang Huning's political conclusions from that would also largely support most of the imperialist actions of USA such as the forceful integration of natives and a dominant, hegemonic culture to ensure total stability.
Like, as postliberals the CCP and Russia do not like the West not because they were once dominant empires that conquered the world, in fact they respect that. They hate the West because of their belief in democracy, in diversity, in individualism and the belief in human rights.
Well, Mao also “unified” China by systematically going into every province and murdering the opposition. Then of course they attempted to extend influence into Korea and Vietnam.
I don’t think it’s accurate to pin imperialism as a uniquely Western thing.
> So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south,
Slaves built the irrigation systems that made rice farming possible in the south. (People forget that the other huge slavery cash crop was rice).
Without the engineering and agricultural knowledge of slaves, many of the farms would have failed (and many did fail early on until the knowledge was spread around to plantation owners).
The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago.
> Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?
The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.
Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?
To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.
> The US's short history is absurdly violent,
Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?
> but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.
They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.
> Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?
This isn't some topic of debate. There is well documented historical proof of slaves designing and then building the rice field levees!
> To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.
The early economic success of the country was built off of slavery. That isn't something that seemingly needs discussion. The southern part of the US was a large economic power, even by European standards of the time.
> Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?
I have, and in general other countries had a lot longer to perfect being assholes. The British empire did many horrible, horrible, things, but they took awhile to work up to it, it wasn't part of their initial founding.
Leopold II was in charge of an existing kingdom when he went on a quest to be one of the biggest assholes in history.
France is complicated, because their revolutions were so frequent for awhile, and a lot of the blood shed was French.
Meanwhile in America we got:
1. Mass murder of the natives
2. Inventing an entire new, more horrific type of slavery
3. Manifest destiny, with more genocide
4. Building the Transcontinental Railroad, with Not-Technically-Slavery
5. Massive racism against the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad
> They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.
Correct, the late 1800s and then the 20th century were a major turning point. Loosely enforced IP laws allowed Hollywood to thrive (super interesting history!), and poor environmental laws and a well educated workforce allowed the initial version of silicon valley to come about (look up why it is called silicon valley, and why it is also a superfund cleanup site!).
The US being slightly-less-racist against some people helped, and the less racist we were, and the more people we invited in from around the world, the better things got.
IMHO the best move the US Government could make for the economy is to offer the top 1% of graduates from the top universities in each major country an automatic VISA and a guaranteed path to citizenship.
The 2nd best thing the US Government could do for the economy is enforce Japanese style zoning laws on all major cities so people can actually afford to live in major metros again.
I actually agree with many of the points you made here, especially your two policy proposals.
But I don't think you can mention the US in the same breath as imperial Belgium. Leopold was surely one of the low points of our species. But the Brits, for all the bad things they did - including in my native country - were the least bad empire up to that point, and forcibly ended slavery.
My broader point is that certain cultural values lend themselves massively to economic and technological development. European nations got these values by random chance, and then used this economic edge to then colonize the world. How else could tiny Belgium utterly subjugate the Congo?
The US's short history since 1776 is actually peaceful by relative standards. Despite the genocide of indigenous people, a revolution, slavery, a civil war, and some crime we have had a lower percentage of people killed through violence (including forced starvation) than China or Europe in the same period. Have you heard of WW1 and WW2? I make no excuses for the terrible things that Americans have done at times but the notion that Americans are somehow "absurdly violent" is simply ahistorical and unsupported by any hard data.
For all of its faults, it's great that the USA continues to be the country where the best minds from all over the world still want to move. It gives me hope for the future. Those immigrants are typically glad to be here and prefer to focus on building a better life instead of navel gazing recriminations over historical events.
> The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.
Don't forget that US has some of the most prime agricultural land in the world, which they only got for the small price of genociding vastly less developed Native American tribes (with disease doing a large chunk of the work)
Given the violent European history several centuries prior, it would be absolutely unfathomable to just come across so much land with so little competition as the US colonies did.
This resource richness (and isolation via Atlantic) is very much responsible for US wealth today, perhaps as much as the brain drain of the 20th century, if not more.
> The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago.
This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of their levels of development starting in 1500 until the 19th century. You aren't implying that before the Atlantic slave trade, Africa was a monolithic culture, would you? No, that would be absurdly ignorant
> US's short history is absurdly violent,
Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history?
Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.
> Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.
You'd be wrong. What I have done is read my history books, and visited historical sites all around the US and abroad.
Saying "shit was violent" isn't saying I hate this country. Saying "we fucked up and we shouldn't do that crap again" is how we improve as a people.
> This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland.
Go visit some southern plantations. Learn how the plantations were built.
Farming isn't just physical labor. There is engineering involved. Designing flood levees to water crops was a technology that the US plantation owners acquired from slaves who in many cases designed and built the levees used on plantations.
> Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history?
Those countries do not have a short history. The US has a very short history and it has involved a lot of violence in rapid succession.
Trying to say that our success as a nation is purely because of Hard Work, Brains, and Grit, is a false narrative that will lead to our downfall if we do not actually understand why we succeeded.
Our economic success from the transcontinental railroad is because we imported near slave labor to built it, at a high cost of human lives, and then we attempted to kick many of the surviving immigrants out. That is the simple truth about the largest successful rail project in US history, and understanding how labor costs impact nationwide infrastructure build-outs is, IMHO, rather important.
The success of Hollywood is because patent laws were widely ignored on the west coast, which allowed technology to progress faster. Our failure to understand how too strict of IP enforcement stifles growth is why a lot of iterative improvements come out of China now, they can iterate faster w/o waiting for patents to expire.
Our success in science and technology is because we have been willing to allow the best minds in from all around the world by ensuring a higher quality of life in the US compared to other places. But we've taken that for granted for too long, and allowed that qualify of life to slip while other countries have caught up.
Jumping up and down shouting "we're the best!" is inane, especially while the rest of the world isn't just standing still.
Colonial-esque behavior by the US was (is?) hardly limited to plantation slavery in the US south. For much of the late 1800s and most of the 1900s the US government was more than happy to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries to protect corporate profits. One particularly egregious example is the CIA-aided overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50s, largely to protect the profits of US fruit companies, but you don't have to look far to find more.
From General Smedley Butler, most decorated marine at the time of his death and the only marine with two medals of honor:
> I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any historical empire you could mention).
I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy: Every country out there has always defended its interests in more or less muscular ways. Exactly the way you describe for the US, and much worse as well. Where are they now?
There is no basis for the claim that different things of some category would progress exactly the same given the same set of circumstances. Those different things, like culture, have significant impact on everything, including economic growth.
I'm sure you can think of a culture or policy, which you consider backwards, and counterproductive. Well, there you go.
Think you missed the massive explosion during the 1990's (the birth of the internet) and the precursor during the Reagan years (basically gargantuan deficit spending on defense).
Factories and farming took a huge hit in 1970's and 1980's due to the rise of globalization (and shift from decades of hot wars to a cooled off one) and a trade war with Japan.
Uh, what you said is only true if you ignore all of the American technology invented since the 1980s.
Just the iPhone alone acts as a counterpoint. The world has changed massively in fifty years because of American inventions made possible by our developed economy
With all due respect I have no idea what you're talking about
U.S is outperforming everyone else economically. At what cost though? And for how long?
There is an insane wealth gap. People always seem to be stressed. There is plenty of food, but quality isn’t great. We don’t even need to start on healthcare and housing and college tuition. Then there is gun violence. Women’s rights are going away slowly too.
Sure, developing countries have lots of problems too. I suppose each person has to decide what kind of problems they are ok dealing with?
Sad part is - most of these problems are man made. Even sadder is that just a few dozen people seem to be the cause for most problems
The violent crime rate in the US is a fraction of what it was 30 years ago. The only difference is that now every crime is getting blasted from the rooftops by the news media as propaganda to generate clicks on ads.
There is a violent crime problem in specific neighborhoods of specific cities, largely tied to gangs and the drug trade. But there is zero empirical data to suggest that it is more of a nationwide problem than it was in the 1980s and 1990s.
The majority of gun deaths in this country (60-80 percent jurisdiction-dependent) are people committing suicide, often middle-aged men. Beyond that, the average gun murder is a young man with a criminal record killing another young man with a criminal record using an illegally-possessed handgun.
There's also the fact that way more Americans are killed by cars than in homicides. This is not to diminish the importance of tackling homicides. But the high level picture of "what is most wrong in America" is definitely skewed in weird ways that is independent of the underlying reality.
>The violent crime rate in the US is a fraction of what it was 30 years ago. The only difference is that now every crime is getting blasted from the rooftops by the news media as propaganda to generate clicks on ads.
How about all the mass shootings that we read about, happening every few weeks or even more frequently, sometimes back-to-back, on average, in the US? That's not violent crime? Of course it is.
>a fraction of what it was 30 years ago
And statistics don't paint the full picture, not by a long chalk, unless all you are is a bean counter. What about the personal and family and friends' trauma of all the victims and their circles? We can dismiss that as negligible, right? /s
Also don't confuse the law of diminishing returns with "therefore the remainder is fine," either. There's room for regulation of many of the ills of our society, but you will always reach a point where trying to stamp out that last bit you can't get ends up taking away things that make life worth living.
I can't imagine more of a hell than being forced to live a life wrapped up in bubble wrap so someone else is convinced I'm "safe."
What about the personal and family and friends' trauma of all the victims of drunken driving, alcoholism, and their circles?
Should we re-enact Prohibition, given that there are orders of magnitude more people who've been victimized by alcohol than firearms? No, that's absurd. You regulate the problem through hard, data-driven analysis, not waving the bloody shirt. Be that violent crime or addiction.
> I suppose each person has to decide what kind of problems they are ok dealing with?
What problems do you think people in the United States have that people in Mexico don't? Of this list you gave, most of them seem to apply to people in Mexico.
I was talking about immigrants. If you are deciding between two countries, each one is likely going to have a different type or level of problems - man made or otherwise. Australia is too hot, Canada is too cold. Scandinavia might be too progressive for some, Saudi Arabia might be too regressive for some.
And so on. What kind/level of issues to put up with - I suppose that varies from person to person
Your unexamined prior is that this is a bad and unsustainable thing. It was always thus.
> People always seem to be stressed.
They really aren't. Americans are extremely happy and relaxed compared to where I'm from.
> We don’t even need to start on healthcare and housing and college tuition.
I think we do. Healthcare in the US has more red tape and expense than would be optimal, but the actual outcomes are still good. Keep in mind some caveats:
- US healthcare spend drives a ton of medical innovation that then benefits the rest of the world
- North America is going through a Fentanyl crisis that's cutting life expectancies
> Then there is gun violence. Women’s rights are going away slowly too.
I was lucky enough to be a computer nerd who landed in Silicon valley/San Francisco in 2012 and it was a pretty special place culturally. It was pretentious and idealistic and confused, but the atmosphere where everyone seemed to be building something and sharing ideas was pretty intoxicating. Probably felt similar to being in Hollywood back during that 1920-1950s period (except everyone was less attractive lol).
It's not only fact that in Western Europe I could earn a lot more. But also that I don't have to deal with massive corruption. I don't have to deal with feeling I have to be constantly on guard. I don't have to deal with failing education. I don't have to hide who I am in fear of being ostracized by society. (even if for that point we made a lot of progress - but still, why wait endlessly while I can get it right away somewhere else?)
Culture is not the cause of development. It's the result. The complex human system always has a central area of development and an extended periphery. You can't have homogeneous development because development is the concentration of resources. Wherever these resources concentrate will have a privileged economy, and culture (because it can afford it) and it will develop a superiority complex. And it will keep moving. In 2100 when the center of the world economy has moved on from the US, the new center will have beautifully constructed narratives about how their culture is superior and their rise inevitable.
About the downvoting per se, it has a way of canceling out. This is one of the reasons the guidelines ask that voting on the comments not be discussed: just because you see a good comment greyed out, doesn't mean it will end up that way.
There's a faction of HN commenters who are somewhat reflexively anti-American, anti-capitalist, or both. In my experience they're also censorious by nature, and like to downvote and even flag comments which are perfectly polite, and simply express opinions they don't agree with. I consider the latter specifically to be very bad form, I vouch for comments which fit that profile almost daily now.
This has been exacerbated by the recent election, which has, understandably, upset people.
Dang has said that downvoting for disagreement is allowed. Whether this is a good practice or not is probably a personal opinion. I don’t know how you would even correct for this if you wanted to. If someone is making normative statements especially, and you disagree, a downvote seems entirely appropriate?
I'm not sure how I could have phrased I consider the latter specifically to be very bad form any better? It's one thing to downvote a comment because you don't like it, flagging is quite another.
There's a difference between downvoting something substantively wrong, fatuous and/or cantankerous, bad faith, and so on, and simply doing so to punish the sort of person one doesn't like for speaking their mind. That difference is subjective, but I know it when I see it. There's no need to police this, or any way to really, but I think rather poorly of such behavior and would be gratified if they would knock it off.
I think it's really hard to draw that line, though. You "know" it when you see it, but others -- quite reasonably, sometimes -- know it and see it differently.
As an example, I'm fine downvoting an opinion that I find morally gross or anti-social, even though others (such as the person commenting) might think it's fine, and even agree with it.
To be fair, though, pg has said in the distant past that it's fine to downvote to express disagreement.
I personally try not to do this too much (unless something is egregiously, probably wrong), but it's a thing that I think we should just accept as a norm.
>Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations.
This isn't necessarily the case, even with brain drain. Remittances (financial transfers from migrants to family and friends at home) can actually represent a large percent of GDP for developing nations, upwards of 10 or 20 percent.
Brain drain is a real thing, but there are other issues preventing poor countries from being rich. Most of all political dysfunction.
As far as brain drain goes, I don't think there's much point in fighting it. Cities like Singapore and Dubai demonstrate that you can quickly build a city/country people want to live. Why shouldn't Bhutan have to compete with the rest of the world to attract young, talented people? They should! And they can do fine at it, they just have to prioritize it. And from the article, that's exactly what they're doing.
Well it's a least starting to change, as countries like Canada, and to an extent the US, see the people several generations after their immigrants look back or outside their countries of birth. There are lots of opportunities outside the US for someone who doesn't feel super-comfortable because of the culture or ethnicity, but is educated and ready to move around the globe.
Are developing countries bottlenecked technical aptitude? Or are they bound by social, economic, and political structures that would prevent capable people from generating wealth anyway? Maybe some of both, but to the extent it's the latter, someone being stuck in their country of origin to languish in some undifferentiated low-productivity job is a travesty.
I thought about the "work for X-years" solution a few times. While it looks attractive, it also removes some pressure from the country (or local employers) to get better.
Some countries need a kick in the head, like the one I emigrated from. Perhaps a couple of "developed" countries failing due to brain drain will be a wake-up call for the rest about the value of the younger generation.
Since you're forced to stay here, why shouldn't we abuse you? What are you going to do, run away?
I remember in secondary school, my deeply patriotic teacher asked us who wants to emigrate. And she deeply condemned us for it, calling us leeches that stole from the country.
It was obligatory education! We didn't even had an option to choose by then. And also, my parents also could say that yes, they paid for it in their taxes.
the problem here is that you're directly equating earning more money with a "better life"
once you have enough to have your needs met, then earning multiples times that doesn't make your life better; at that point, "better life" is much more impacted by other factors than money
Indices that try to capture aspects of life other than money have also been made, such as Human Development Index [1]. Europe and North America lead these too. Nobody thinks Bhutan, on average, is a better place to live in than Norway. It might be better for a particular person due to cultural and familial reasons, but ceteris paribus Norway is better in all aspects.
Do note that HDI does indeed depend on some assumptions and those includes "equating earning more money with a "better life"" as GNI (PPP) per capita. With no further increases after 75k USD (International dollar), unadjusted for inflation since introduction more than a decade ago. It also does give large amount of value to traditional education (i.e. total amount of years in full time schooling) and not outcomes of that (e.g. literacy). Schooling is also capped at 18 years, which is in line with a Master in most western countries; if schooling is this important then why cap it?
I'm not sure about Bhutan, because I've never been there, but for sure I think that middle-class life here in Romania (for those that can afford it) is a lot better and more relaxed than middle-class life in Norway (for starters, people here in Romania don't have to fear the State taking away their kid at a moment's notice, as it happens in Norway). Which is to say that those "charts" are very deceptive.
The marginal utility of an extra dollar goes down as you get more of them, but it never reaches zero, especially if you have big dreams.
Just look at Musk and his startups - I bet he's very glad to have that 200 billionth dollar, because now he can have the space program he always wanted. This wouldn't have been possible in the third-world country where he grew up.
First, HN consistently misuses the term "third world". In 2024, this term is now very out of date to describe developing economies (and below). Also, the original meaning was not at all what most people think -- it was about Soviet vs US alignment. And, no, South Africa was definitely middle income when he grew up there -- and it still is (sadly). For a long time (maybe still true?), the GDP per capita in SA nearly the highest amoung all African countries. (I think Seychelles is the richest African country now.)
"Third world" was a geopolitical term but now it's economic and cultural.
I assure you South Africa is third world by any measure. The GDP of SA (a large country with tons of resources and a population of 60m) is roughly on par with that of the Toronto metro area (population 7m) or the Phoenix metro (population 5m). It's middle income... and it probably will ~always be.
None of this really matters though - what Musk has done in the US (like it - or him - or not) was only possible in the US.
It's really hard to take people who use the term "third world" this way seriously. There are more precise ways to clarify your opinion without resorting to meaningless pejoratives.
GDP is a kind of screwed up measure because the buying power of the dollar in the US is so much worse than most other countries. Case in point you can find a little san jose neighborhood where the gdp is an order of magnitude higher than a little mexico city neighborhood with more or less the exact same sorts of homes on the same sort of street. Now you might argue the sj homes are that much more valuable because of what they offer beyond the home via location proximity to opportunities, but its not like everyone benefits from such things or even that these opportunities are equally available to everyone. Yet everyone shoulders the costs of others success and position.
Nearly everybody does when it is there own money. Sure you can show studies that more money doesn't make you happy, but almost everyone regularly has times they don't buy something just because they can't afford it and all think that thing would make them happier. I've know people making minimum wage, and people making nearly $million/year and both find money tight at the end of the month despite the vast difference in income. My personal wish list of things to buy totals more than my likely lifetime income, and your probably does too.
We could try explaining this to someone in a poor country scraping by on $50 monthly. Hint: They'll laugh at us in the face.
There's a reason people take huge risks to flee to the West, including traveling on unsafe boats, crisscrossing areas controlled by bandits, or crossing the environmentally harsh Darien Gap.
Brain drain is not just about money. it is also simply about beeing able to get a life doing what we like with people alike and know how to do while beeing recognized doing it. I left my country for this exact reason, there was a culture of doing the minimum and making sure others can't organize to do great things. And trying to go back you get a lot of opposition, bureaucratic, social (jealousy and resentment is more than palpable in interviews), cultural... It is more like a one-way brain valve.
Only the most rational concerning income. There are many other factors at stake such as staying close to family, keeping your contact network, 0 or low discrimination towards you in your home country, among others.
Source: I am one of those people that could leave but decided to stay.
> Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations.
nonsense; this is how developing nations become developed nations. peolpe seem to forget that Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, HK were all "developing" nations not too long ago
Catch-up growth being easier than growth in a "developed" country implies that the less-developed country "should" be easier to get rich in -- a better opportunity, not worse. In principle. Yes, we don't live in the in-principle world, but the logic "they're richer over there, so here is inherently stuck unable to compete for talent" is wrong. You need to address whatever the actual structural problem is.
It is easier to have higher relative economic growth, yes, as seen with China in the last decades but that doesn't translate to better opportunities for the individual.
A working class US American probably has a higher standard of living then an upper-class entrepreneur in Bhutan.
> It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism?
Money is only second or third factor that pushes people abroad. People leave countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh to escape rampant and total corruption, hooliganism, lack of safety and security. Then come better roads, better infra, less traffic, etc.
When you call 911, the police actually come. An ambulance actually arrive. In India, police first find if the perpetrator is from the local ruling party or under a local crime lord. They come only if the answer is negative. Then they push the perpetrator for hefty bribes. If they pay, again, no case. If they don't pay, you are at the mercy of local courts, which will give you justice in, say, 25 years.
In India, there is no basic human decency allotted for you. Only government officials of very high rank, hooligans, political leaders enjoy treatment with respect (like the Mafia).
Nothing to say about horrific roads, horrible hospitals, poor hygiene, and everything else.
And things are worse in Bangladesh, Pakistan.
When we think about going abroad, we are trying to escape these. Money comes later.
Income in the same economic strata in India will give you maid, cook, driver, car, nanny, all- not accessible to you in Europe or the USA.
If someone is not going abroad from India, it's either because they can't or they don't want to leave their aging parents behind.
I should probably tell this to the Indian student I met in New Orleans who went to the community college here and he’s now going back to India because he finds it easier to run his small businesses and hire there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the brain drain goes the opposite way from America the next four years. I’m looking to live in Europe and so are lots of people I know that are fatFIREd with their American bucks.
The tax situation isn’t nearly as favorable for americans doing it elsewhere as it is for anyone to do it here in america. Unless you rip up your american citizenship.
From some point on, yes, because the modern world was born on many past such idealists. Fetishising material goods and materialism as a whole are a very big explanation for the mess we're now all in at the civilisational level.
> 9% of the country's population, most of them young people
Young people want adventure, but all their homeland is offering is contentment. They need to account for the desire for opportunity in their GNH metric.
Depends entirely on the outlook of the person. I have met poor farmers in Pakistan who emphatically told me that my big city life was filled with work and devoid of meaning, while their slow village life was worth living. The sons had studied in the big city, had access to good employment opportunities, but told me they were desperately trying to get back to the village. It did seem that with access to technology, these farmers were working less per day than city workers.
These exist at the same time as other farming families who were trying to escape to the big city or other countries in search of employment and better life. The latter category is larger than the former, but still it all depends on outlook.
Inner Sindh, but not the worst parts of it, or the best. They did not report any law and order situation. Had access to the nearest city with a well built road. I think the biggest problem was poor quality drinking water and sewage treatment.
Well, I'm pretty sure the people living off subsistence farming in Europe during the Middle Ages were mostly content with their lives too (at least during peacetime), despite much worse education and health care than the modern Bhutanese are getting. The difference is that this was simply their way of life and they didn't have any alternatives. "Contentment" means being content with what you have - no matter if it's because you consciously decide that it's enough for you or because you simply don't know any better.
> it seems the problem is not with happiness, but with the seductive appeal of materialism and the effects of exposing one culture to another.
I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but what struck me is that your comment would fit seamlessly into a text from the DDR regime, when it was still alive. (You know, the former communist republic of East Germany, which needed a wall to keep its citizens within the socialist paradise)
I'm not saying that this makes your comment wrong, I'm just wondering what this means with regard to former communism.
I find it weird that this article didn’t mention China’s aggressive invasions of Bhutan and settlement tactics violating their sovereignty. The fear of China’s CCP government stealing from Bhutan or taking over Bhutan is a big reason for people to want to leave and seek refuge and stability elsewhere. See https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/05/asia/china-bhutan-border-dst-...
There are lots of young people who are not ambitious. And as soon as you say that, there is a reactionary group that will come running to say well the problem is with teachers not being inspiring, curriculum being poor, society not creating the right environment etc etc. But these kids are never the issue. They are quite satisfied and accepting with whatever the universe throws in their lap.
The real issue is Ambitious kids. Not the ones who have enough looks, contacts, knowledge, skill, intelligence, creativity and imagination to meet their goals but the ones who don't.
Materialism exploits such people more than anyone else. It tells them Donald if you are not admired, respected, loved just work hard, don't stop, keep grinding, keep hustling, accumulate material wealth, accumulate status, accumulate luxury goods and you will get the affection, respect, admiration and love you crave. Its pure bullshit.
This is the stuff that has to stop. We have to take care of these people better and channel their infinite energies into things beyond consumption and materialism. Its the hardest thing to do cause they are an extremely annoying group to deal with constantly craving attention, praise, sympathy and love.
But thats the only path to a better, healthier and sustainable society.
No Free Lunch.
huh? do you remember what type of organization owns the site you are on right now? it specifically caters toward ambitious people who want to create things and provide services that nobody does as well in the status quo.
if societies historically cut down those who wanted change and put their energy into finding better ways to do things, we would still be hunting and gathering.
i don't want to share a world with people who believe the ambitious, creative, and industrious should be cut down from their full potential.
Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
I'm also not sure that mass emigration should be seen as an existential threat. Many developing economies have very successfully leveraged emigration and remittances as an engine of economic growth. If Bhutan can modernise into a more open economy, those young people could start returning home with the skills, experience and capital to do great things.
> For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
The early North American colonists had the same outlook about life among the Native Americans. However, is never a _single_ instance of a Native American running away from their tribe to join the colonists, but colonist defections to the tribes were a common occurrence, more among women than men.
Why? For all that talk of "upward social mobility and a better life", people figured out the Native Americans were _happy_ living in harmony with nature, and the women who escaped realized they had more personal freedoms with the "savages" versus the high-and-mighty Europeans who sold them on the good life at the colonies.
Upward mobility and money still aren't everything, despite the pressure those forces put on the world to appear so.
> However, (there) is never a _single_ instance of a Native American running away from their tribe to join the colonists
I have heard and quoted this for years, but I'm actually questioning whether it is true now. It just seems unbelievable when you think about it, and sort of feeds the "noble savage" trope. Out of hundreds of thousands or millions of Native Americans, there MUST have been some youth, at least one, seduced by the promised of western culture and voluntarily left their tribe and moved to a city or something. It just makes for a better story the other way around. Whether this was documented is another matter I guess.
What happened is that European disease created massive pandemics that killed most of the American Indians. No one was seduced by western culture, because, in general, American Indians had a better standard of living than the European colonists.
Where I live, (in Massachusetts,) the remaining American Indians integrated into European settlements because so few of them were left. I know its different elsewhere in the American continents; you can find out more if you read 1491 and its sequel 1493.
There are, however, instances of entire Native tribes adopting settled agrarian economies, developing written languages, and largely adopting European civilization: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee
The Native Americans weren't ignorant of the advantages the European settlers possessed, and many did attempt to reform their societies along European grounds. They just tended to do this as a society-wide endeavor, rather than individual people running away to live with colonists.
This description leaves out the why. Why did the tribes start adopting these ways of life?
The wiki link itself talks about how they continuously had their land stolen, the deer population they hunted for food was almost made extinct by the colonists, and a general attempt to claim ownership and sovereignty over their land in a way that was in line with how the European powers viewed ownership.
> attempt to reform their societies along European grounds
well, yeah, they had their land forcibly taken away from them so had to change their way of life
it's also unclear how much some of the social structural changes by the Cherokee was by choice or pressure from invaders to become "civilized" (i.e., pyramidical government structures, individual land ownership, etc.)
there's no indication that, generally speaking, Native Americans saw European societies as a "better life" -- in fact, quite the contrary. More powerful technologically and militarily, yes, but that's a separate matter altogether.
> However, is never a _single_ instance of a Native American running away from their tribe to join the colonists, but colonist defections to the tribes were a common occurrence, more among women than men.
There are many such instances, most famously Pocahontas. As far back as the 1600s there are records of Native Americans studying at Harvard. We just don't typically frame integration into the culture and institutions of a colonial power as "running away".
The PPP adjusted for COL puts Bhutan roughly on a par with Sri Lanka or Indonesia, which suffice to say are countries where a lot of people don't get their needs met. There's plenty of intra-EU migration driven by youth unemployment, and I suspect that the Bhutanese unemployment benefits - if they exist at all - aren't as generous. And I think the Llotshampa might have something to say about how open minded the Bhutanese leadership really is...
I imagine the low wages there are a big reason why young people leave. I was there in 2011 doing the tourist thing and you could live nicely on not much money as they didn't have much the way of a land shortage or silly building restrictions so you could build quite a nice house for not much - the style there is log cabin like. But it must be tempting to go off and earn 10x for a while and then come back.
>Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
Is it really that hard to imagine? For someone not flooded by continuous stream of advertisements about how far better would be their live if they could buy the next crap the wonderful market planned with obsolescence included, it’s not that hard to imagine the lake of "upward mobility" as a barrier to live happily.
Advertisement comes in many forms. Seeing the rich nobles and their kids walk around with something you don't have is a form of advertisement. Poor people are not stupid, they notice when the rich have something interesting and they tend to want that too.
Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to buy something.
The nobles that walk around with their kids might be animated with pervert narcissism and enjoying poor people looking at them with envy, but they are certainly not their to suggest plebeians should strive at obtaining the same kind of wealth they want everyone to think they enjoy.
Also nobles more often than not have their own existential threats and fears. It’s not like going up the social ladder is a certain path to more serenity and happiness.
> Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to buy something.
That is wrong because of the word buy. Political ads are not convincing you to buy anything. The nobles don't want the result, but the plebeians still see their wealth and want it.
> Also nobles more often than not have their own existential threats and fears. It’s not like going up the social ladder is a certain path to more serenity and happiness.
I 100% agree with this. However from the point of view of the poor it looks much better (I tend to agree with them even though I'm closer to the rich end - like most people reading HN)
> "Gross National Happiness acknowledges that economic growth is important, but that growth must be sustainable. It must… be balanced by the preservation of our unique culture," Tobgay said. "People matter. Our happiness, our well-being matters. Everything should serve that."
> Every five years, surveyors fan out across Bhutan measuring the nation's happiness. The results are analyzed and factored into public policy.
> "Gross National Happiness does not directly equate to happiness in the moment. One happiness is fleeting, it is emotion, it is joy," Tobgay said.
Perhaps when you or I have a hard time imagining them being happy, its more our imagination's fault than anything! I know there is no escaping cold hard capitalism, and a "happiness index" is a little cringey, but I don't think any situation would preclude their intentions here. Other than that, its up to you I guess to believe or not the data instruments (and the people) that are saying they are happy!
If I were tasked with improving Bhutan, one of the things I would focus on is probably lead. 3/4 of Bhutanese children have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Some cursory investigations have revealed that there are lots of lead-painted surfaces [1]. Even children's play equipment [2]. And kitchen utensils [3]. And all the other usual sources, too.
The slant of the article is that there's brain drain from Bhutan. But the meat is more interesting. Apparently, Bhutan is building a charter-like city:
"A Bhutanese team is collaborating with experts around the world, seeking investors to help build the city, the cost of which is likely to run in the billions. The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI."
I like this sentence in particular, which showcases an admirable pragmatism:
"When we say we follow the principles of Gross National Happiness, we do not mean we are happy with less… We also want to be rich. We also want to be technologically high standard."
There has been some buzz around charter cities lately, particularly Prospera in Honduras which has been seized by the government. Bhutan seems like the perfect place for this kind of experiment because it is peaceful, politically stable, and English is taught in schools.
There's a chance that we see more city-states like Singapore, Dubai, etc. These places offer something the US can't: social orderliness. Bhutan seems intent on preserving its national identity, which is also draw. Conversely, Dubai (and Neom, if it actually gets built) strike me as a bit soulless.
Singapore has 8-9x more people than Bhutan, so you'd think Bhutan could become rich fairly quickly as a city state. It doesn't have a port, and it is pretty hard to get to, so I don't think it can be particularly populated unless they manage to flatten a few mountains to build a big airport.
It is also one of the sources of the Shangri-La myth, it would be cool if they actually called a city that (China technically renamed Zhongdian Yunnan to Shangri-La, but that is very much a gimmick).
Maybe they could do something more productive with that surplus like host AI data centers? I know those are popping up out west in the US where green energy like wind is more plentiful.
Data centers require an ecosystem of technology to exist - skilled manpower, fiber optic network, grid capacity etc, they're probably not up for it yet.
When you said "productive", do you perhaps mean socially useful?
It takes a lot of AI data center to derive a billion-dollar profit, which is the value just of the Bitcoin which Bhutan currently retains. Seems fairly economically productive to me.
bitcoin is fiat digital money, its value is all based on how others think it is worth (due to scarcity or whatever); even worse it's price goes up and down rather quickly, making it not very useful as something to exchange goods and services with. AI can actually do productive things. Bhutan could start up a bunch of call centers staffed not by people, but AI agents powered by its green energy.
Bhutan sounds interesting. I would be very curious to know more about how life is there. Its one thing to provide certain things and prioritize happiness, it is another to provide fulfillment, which is what I suspect the countries young citizens leaving are finding to be the case.
Though, with university free, if Bhutan has good, solid universities and produces students in reasonable numbers, since the country appears to be a highly literate english speaking one, I could see them leveraging that to raise the economy by founding outsourcing firms etc.
From my very limited experience having visited the country as a tourist, they appear to lead “simple” lives from the outside. Unfortunately many are not well off, “fortunately” the standards of living are oftentimes simple enough that it’s not a problem.
What I can imagine, is that many (youngsters) may rather prefer a more “modern” life with McDonalds and iPhones, particularly if they are able to actually achieve it.
Which one is better? I’m not going to comment. But I do want to add as a closing statement that the country (and people) were absolutely amazing. I’d definitely love to go there again if I can, the mountains are pretty much magical and the people really friendly. I hope they manage to succeed, socially speaking.
I think tourism, especially in countries that rely on tightly controlling the experience, can tell you very little about the function of the country itself.
I've had many people say the same to me about Nepal, ignorant of the high youth unemployment rate, the corrupt politicians, the complete lack of any basic infrastructure (schools, transportation, electricity, etc.) in some areas, or the astronomically high number of people leaving to work as migrant labourers in countries that are the absolute worst in the world when it comes to labour rights.
None of these problems are visible to you as a visitor. This is especially true if you stick to areas that are heavily trafficked by tourists which tend to be rich enough to cater to their needs.
I visited there in 2022 right they lifted Covid restrictions. You don’t really get an authentic experience with the locals as you’re with a guide at all times and the standard tourist trip is pre planned, but I’m quite happy I went. Although the daily tourist fee of $200/day just to be in the country felt excessive.
I wonder if that would be seen as a net negative on the happiness scale due to the fact that people tend to dislike those jobs.
I think if you’re taught your whole life to seek happiness, a younger generation could largely look curiously out into the world as a source of happiness. In the western world, when you poll any population of people asking what they are “passionate” about Travel is always going to be a top ranked answer. It brings people joy, exploration is an innate curiosity of humans. So, my guess/hypothesis would be they are looking for happiness as they’ve been raised/conditioned to do.
If you don't get past the headline you might miss the most interesting part of this story. Bhutan is building a special economic-zone city, based on Singapore as a model, and designed by Bjarke Ingels. The renders are really striking, many of the major and most important buildings are designed to double as bridges over the river. Skip to 16:52 in the video to see the renders of the planned development "Gelephu Mindfulness City".
IMO also a good exploration of the ethnic cleansing of Lhotsampa and the subsequent hardships faced by the refugees is The Lhotsampa People of Bhutan, edited by Venkat Pulla.
Is it really prioritizing happiness tho? From Wikipedia:
> According to the World Happiness Report 2019, Bhutan is 95th out of 156 countries.
Not to mention its ethnic cleansing of the non-Buddhist population. There are definitely other things that have higher priority on the government's agenda than people's happiness.
That's just true, but people were wrong before when they thought we were good (and they may be wrong now about why we're a bad example).
There's a reason that when we (anyone, really, but even the US) let the policy nerds set up a democracy somewhere else, they usually don't model much or any of it on the US. The system's not been regarded as especially good, as systems of democracy go, since not later than the early 20th century, as it became clear that not only does it have serious problems, but some of those are extremely resistant to repair.
I think the 3/5ths compromise is a good highlight of the poorness of the model of democracy the USA established from its formation. "A democracy of the people but only 3/5 of those people who only have a voice by proxy entrusted to their captives", falls quite short of an ideal model.
The FPTP system of elections used for most federal elections in the country is certainly the worst part. Stabilizing at only two viable parties rather than several that must (most of the time) form coalitions to govern causes a bunch of problems, with few benefits. It is also why so much of the rest is hard to fix, including why this system of elections has been so hard to move away from. At the strictly federal level, the notorious electoral college system reinforces FPTP and has accomplished little of its positive intentions, leaving only "give lower-free-population slave states more power" (which has become simply "give lower population states more power" after the civil war) which effect is simply bad, as was the original primary reason for including it (and again, secondary reasons like "direct election of a position like president is kinda dumb [true!] so we should instead vote for trusted, wise representatives to go make the decision for us" never worked as intended, so aren't reasons to keep it)
The Supreme Court was recognized as super-dangerous at the founding and the solution some of our much-revered founders provided was "I guess we can just ignore them when they do really bad things?" which definitely seems not great.
Lack of a defense against gerrymandering is extremely bad, but file under things that jettisoning FPTP would largely fix without further specific action. The many ill effects of FPTP are why it's so bad.
There's some evidence that common law significantly increases the overall cost of government administration over continental systems of jurisprudence, though that's a more-recent and developing area of potential weakness.
The crazy thing is that in the recent 2024 US election, there were a number of ballot initiatives to replace FPTP, and FPTP won every time. Ranked choice was even repealed in Alaska. The majority spoke, and they said they prefer an "inferior" system.
Democracy has a fascinating "self-refuting" quality to it.
Homo sapiens is irrational. At least he is not rational all the time.
People wanting to have their cake and eat it too, or to impose rules on others but themselves be excepted from it is nearly universal. In any case it's extremely common.
This is just the nature of what we are, and so much trouble comes from pretending otherwise.
What's the difference between "protect people from themselves" and "take away people's freedom and decide for them anything important"?
IMHO, freedom must contain the freedom to choose "bad", or make mistakes. "Bad" is in quotes because it's only certain to be bad from the perspective of the person considering the problem, you or me in this case. Maybe the people will be well served by "bad" decisions, able to learn from them, or be happy in ignorance, or who knows what else.
I think it's parallel to giving children autonomy. The more you protect them, the more you prevent their growth as a person.
> This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state.
I am certain Xi and Putin and Trump think it is their right and prerogative to "protect people from themselves". Just like you.
This is for example the justification used to ban books. Certain books, when read, give people incorrect ideas, and we need to protect them from themselves.
No, the point is that you'd better "protect yourself from them". That one should not «protect people from themselves» is opinable, but as that one is directly involved, a better question is "how to protect yourself" - which is a revolution in perspective.
That some people may have had a position (and that is also to be shown) that coincidentally overlaps with something that be confused as related to the above changes nothing (of the truthfulness of the idea).
You first said it is your right to protect people from themselves. This new different position is more reasonable. Sure, go ahead, protect yourself from others. Be aware they will protect themselves from you too, on the exact same arguments.
No, look: you cannot take chunks of posts when they are not semantically isolated, there is no «new» position, it is the same expressed more verbosely:
it was "Protect[ing people] from themselves[? ... Certainly[], because society has consequences over the individual".
It means, "no, it is not a good idea to let them be liabilities: the consequences fall on you".
You see that the point is not plainly "protecting people from themselves", and the closest cone of interpretations of that, right?
> Be aware they will
An where is the problem? That is duly! Society is based on reciprocal interaction AND correction! Of course everybody is supposed to contribute.
> Every one of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about “liberty”; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “progress”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “education”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, “Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty.” This is, logically rendered, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.” He says, “Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress.” This, logically stated, means, “Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it.” He says, “Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education.” This, clearly expressed, means, “We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children.”
No, it is just that that one was not the context to discuss the details of sought education. That one did not go into specifics does not mean the specifics are not available in good amount.
I think people who say education is the solution to democracy, or in particular to the people voting someone the spearker does not like, mean "educate more people to believe what I believe".
It's clearly a good solution from the perspective of that speaker - more people would vote the same way they do, so the "right" people would get elected, "right" policies would happen and so on.
Meh, if this avoiding the "definition of good" is really the problem, then the likes of Putin and Xi and Trump will fix us. They clearly think they know exactly what's good for everyone, and are willing to do most anything to achieve it. Doubtful they will make the world a better place, but who knows. I guess we'll find out.
Because to me it appears that you just give the "ignorant" peoples power to someone else, and if your goal is to keep being a democracy, then this sort of power redistribution is almost certain to screw your system over in the long term.
It is not an opinion: you do not choose it among alternatives. You have to look at it and see. "Giving the ignorant power over the rest is dangerous". Try to argue the opposite, you'll probably have to go into quite some effort to produce some good arguments.
> Are you not worried in any way about needing to answer everything with "no"?
No, I trust you with understanding the sense. (It's not a need, it just works in formulation.)
And your vision is perfect, while everyone else's is flawed? How lucky for you. No need to present arguments, just let us know what you see, and that what you see is the "very hard obvious truth".
We don’t want to do that. We want to give them the tools to help themselves, and leave them with the advises we believe relevant to not hurt themselves when using them, and then let them the duty to act according to their own experience.
Sure, we would rather not see our kids die from all the dangers of the outside world. But they won’t thrive an bloom if we confine them in a padded basement.
When resource curse transnational corporations enter the fray, I think they might have third thoughts about how good of an idea it was to cede political power that can be bought and sold for special interests using the trappings of democracy.
This article is an interesting case study in the difference between "monarchy" and "dictatorship". The way I think about it, the differences are as follows:
* Under monarchy, one person is chosen to rule "at random". Under dictatorship, there is a competition where the most ruthless person gets to rule.
* Under monarchy, the people believe the monarch rules by divine right. Under dictatorship, the dictator rules by fear.
* Monarchies are more stable, meaning the ruler can plan with a long time horizon. Dictators are more likely to siphon resources while the siphoning is good, since they fear a coup.
* Lacking popular legitimacy, a dictator is forced to consider the self-interest and loyalty of their underlings. This leads to extractive and regressive policy. See this excellent video explaining the game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
* Under monarchy, criticism is kept in check while maintaining rule of law, via lèse-majesté laws which make it illegal to criticize the monarch. Under dictatorship, criticism is kept in check via repression. That same repression makes the dictator less popular, which triggers more criticism, and thus more repression, in a doom loop.
Monarchy is an imperfect system. A lot comes down to the person who is "randomly" chosen to rule. But I do wonder if monarchy should be considered an option in countries where democracy has been consistently dysfunctional and the population is poorly educated -- Haiti perhaps?
Most successful democracies were monarchies at some point in the past. Maybe it's just a phase of development a country needs to go through -- in order to achieve mass literacy and civics education, if nothing else.
To me, the most notable difference is "confidence" in what happens when leadership change. The next in line is already decided in a monarchy, often already well-known by the time of the official handover.
Dictatorships tend to fall into chaos when leadership changes, and the current leader tends to remove any potential leader replacements to remove threats to their authority.
A Monarch is a dictator who managed to stay in power long enough to pass the position on to more generations. This comes with culture changes such that they can act like a monarch instead of a dictator.
Based on my reading about history, I sketch the situation as follows:
In pre-industrial societies, having a king was considered the mark of a developed state. The king was seen as a divine or semi-divine figure. Democracy popped up every so often, but it had a tendency to end in chaos, enhancing the legitimacy of the nobility.
It's only in the past few hundred years that we've seen a reversal, where democracy is now considered the legitimate form of government. The lack of legitimacy is a big problem for dictatorships, and creates the need for repression.
There's also an adverse selection problem in modern times -- since 'everyone knows' that democracy is the more ethical form of government, those who volunteer to be dictator tend to be unethical.
Reading between the lines though, I suspect that isn't quite correct even though a simple reading of history says that. Remember the victors write history. The great dictator tends to be good at war, and so they write history. Democracy doesn't select the great war leaders and so they lose to the better generals, who in turn become kings and then write how bad other forms are to secure their legitimacy.
Representative democracy as we think of democracy - didn't exist much from what I can tell (I'm not an expert in history though). However small villages tended to have the "elders" gather to deal with government matters which looks a lot like direct democracy (and has significant problems - "busy bodies" are more likely to attend and make decisions for the average person who is trying to do something else with their limited time).
Great question. Maybe it's sort of an in-between case. They seem pretty deep down the repression doom loop at this point. It's too bad we don't have a stronger tradition of amnesty for repressive rulers -- offering them a cushy requirement in order to let someone else take the helm.
Southern Bhutan’s Lhotshampa people, who were 100,000 mostly Hindu ethnic minority were cleansed under the “One Nation, One People” policy aimed at forced ethnic, cultural, and religious cohesion. They now live as refugees in Nepal.
Behind Bhutan's Shangrila facade is a discriminatory policies favoring Buddhists & Drukpa culture remain in place as do discriminatory citizenship laws and restrictions on civil, religious and linguistic rights.
Another factor not mentioned is that Bhutan is a tiny and quite isolated country; it's not at all unexpected that young people, who now have the means to go to other countries, would do so. It's a pretty natural thing. It's also possible that a number will return at some point -- enough time hasn't passed to see how this plays out.
> Bhutan, which is about the size of Maryland, was largely isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. The kingdom was so protective of its unique Buddhist culture that it only started allowing foreign tourists to visit in the 1970s and didn't introduce television until 1999.
When their smart young people leave to earn more money abroad, wouldn't it make sense to take smart young people from other countries that aren't that materialistic? Just asking for a friend...
It's sad, but I'm sure there's a certain kind of person who's gloating over this. As in "Haha, those assholes wanted happiness, but my awesome capitalism wins everytime!1!! Join us at the bottom, suckers!!1!"
Personally, I kinda feel like people probably have perverse psychological impulses that cause us to make ourselves unhappy and discontented unless there's certain specific external constraints to control those impulses. Modern technology, in its quest to remove all constraint, eagerly removed the necessary ones.
It's sort of like fitness: way back, there was no such activity as "exercise," because everyone got enough as a matter of course (e.g. by farming, hunting, walking everywhere). Now no one has to do any of that, "exercise" is a new chore that requires willpower, so we're all getting fat.
Imagine a Star Trek existence where any meal imaginable was just a replicator away and a holodeck could enable one to be anybody, have anybody, and do anything - any time and for seemingly no or next to no cost.
Many people seem to think this would be a utopia, but I suspect on reality there'd be a mass epidemic of suicide, drug abuse, and so on.
It's not about having external constraints, but about having a purpose in life. Of course one could create a purpose but endless hedonism is far more tempting. The history of ancient emperor's, who could have or do essentially anything, and how they approached life is a clear example of both sides of the coin. The only difference between Aurelius and Calligula is one created an artificial purpose for himself, and the other simply indulged in the pleasures of life as an end in itself.
Let me preface this by saying that I'm generally pro-legalization. Particularly of consumption, which when criminalized, makes things worse for everyone.
That being said, heroin is one of those things that are genuinely dangerous to try. It's so easy to become addicted to the stuff, and the costs to society are so high to get an addict clean, that one has to at least consider the pros and cons of prohibition. In an ideal world, all consenting adults should have the free choice to ruin their life if they wish, and perhaps in a post-scarcity society this is what we should allow everyone to do. But while resources are still limited, heroin addicts (and by extension opiates) create a lot of negative externalities. Personal freedom is all good, but where does it end? Should a person be free to ruin the lives of others when they cannot get their fix other than to rob people? And when someone is getting withdrawal symptoms, they have no more free will, they'll do anything to avoid that suffering.
It's tricky to say what would be the marginal increase in heroin users if it was easily available. I agree with you that rational people with well balanced lives and a strong safety net in terms of family and finances are unlikely to go out and buy heroin. People who are bored, in a bad spot, depressed, etc... might just go out and do it if all it takes is a short walk to the nearest shop.
Maybe the "free stuff" is not there. My country has a free healthcare, but every month I have to pay hundreds on mandatory insurance. I do not even have a GP or dentist, non are taking on new patients!
I don't think pursing happiness in itself is a noble goal, especially for a society at large. The article talks about some sort of happiness metric which is based on the standard of living and such. It just seems like Bhutan is sticking to a traditional bhuddist agrarian society, and not pursing some metric of happiness directly.
IDK about capitalism, but people seem to like it because it creates a dynamic society with internal competition, which is the kind of society young people want to immigrate to.
Young people don't want to live in a "utopia" where everything has been solved for them. That's the problem described in the article.
I remember reading someone who classified activities like exercise "surrogate actions" or something, but their point was that it was bad only because they aren't useful in modern society but that the impulse to pursue challenge like this is natural.
There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession -as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.
John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
However Keynes goes on to say the "only" option is to hitch our wagon to these psychopathic criminals, regardless of where their rocket toboggan is going, without consideration of alternatives, nor of Regulations (such as mentioned by Adam Smith) or even holding higher standards of conduct to the Mammon-addled, in order to better blunt some of their more charming aspects.
Keynes was a great economist but I think he was a bit off on human nature there with:
"The love of money" .... "semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease".
People like making money. Not just weirdos but most people. My gran used to sell things at a stall and give the money to a Donkey charity, Keynes himself made money in the markets and used it to build a theater in Cambridge. It's a normal thing and not usually pathological.
I went to Bhutan and looked up the surveys. The consensus seems to be they are happier than most countries at their (low) gdp per capita but probably not doing as well as the leading rich countries like Denmark etc.
I think the Bhutanese are a bit cynical about 'gross national happiness' which was invented on the fly by one of the kings.
I can't edit my comment now, but I think it's totally uncalled for that the GP comment is now grayed-out from down-votes. There was nothing wrong with the question!
> The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI.
AI with an hydroelectric power supply? That's optimistic. At least the power-consuming part of this would have to be somewhere.
Why is that optimistic? Hydro is old, reliable tech, it's always online, and as pointed out in another comment thread, Bhutan has so much excess energy that they're looking for ways to make it useful. Not sure if I see the problem?
This probably very good news for Butan. The young people seeing the world, expanding their horizons
They will be back, especially when they have children
I am an interal migrant to a small city in Aotearoa (Ōtepoti) and it is striking how many people grew up here, left as youngsters, and came back to have children
Bhutan is not a basket case, it sounds like a good placecto raise a family (as is Ōtepoti, why I am here).
Ask the Lhotshampa (ethnic Limbu, Gurung, and other Janajatis) who were ethnically cleansed by the Ngalop majority 20-30 years ago.
It's a banana (tsampa?) monarchy that only exists as a buffer between India and China, and it's entire economy is basically owned by Tata Group (who owns and manages Bhutan's hydroelectric dam used for exports) and Indian construction companies (who build all the roads and resorts in the country).
Admittedly I'm not familiar with bhutan. Besides basics, and buddhism connections. Lets take a look.
>Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically the success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese so sought after abroad.
They are 95th place for GDP.
125th place for HDI.
I wouldn't even consider working on 'happiness' with the numbers that bad.
Bhutan's balance of trade appears to be entirely negative. So the country is getting poorer.
Their GDP numbers are 5% growth every year? That seems impossible.
3% unemployment and 65% participation rate.
Lets call it a ~4-5% inflation average or worse.
6.8% interest rate, while never ever being below 6%? So they target what 5%? So its not that GDP growth at 5% is impossible. They are essentially saying they havent had gdp growth in decades, they are hiding a major depression?
In the last 10 years Bhutan has doubled their money supply, while population is leaving? LOL incoming government collapse.
government debt to gdp is ~130%. 100% is the magical threshold you're not allowed to cross. If you're the federal reserve and Tbills reputation might allow you to go above 100% like the USA in 2020... but Bhutan has no such ability. They likely cant cross ~40% if i were to estimate.
Major deficit spending across the last 25 years.
Sales tax of 50%
Income tax of 30%
>Bhutan was, and is today, largely a subsistence agricultural society. Many families still live in multigenerational farmhouses.
I'd be leaving as well. Nobody is seeking Bhutan people. The bhutan people are fleeing the inevitable.
Bhutan is about 20% debt/gdp from a venezuela level collapse. If by some magic they dont collapse there, they are about 40% from a greece like collapse.
Bhutan is already about 10% higher than the Sri Lankan collapse.
> I'm not familiar with bhutan
> Fleee Bhutan while you can.
maybe familiarize yourself with the country at a deeper level before throwing out recommendations based on a few select metrics which may or may not be that relevant (GDP in particular is not a good metric)
>maybe familiarize yourself with the country at a deeper level before throwing out recommendations based on a few select metrics which may or may not be that relevant (GDP in particular is not a good metric)
Perhaps there's more analysis for you personally but when I look at those numbers.
30% poverty, 20-40% unemployment is coming. identical to their peers in similar financial situations.
I dont need any further analysis. What other 'deeper' facts do you want to look at?
How about a huge one I didnt even add.
Firearms per 100 people, places Bhutan about 196th in the world. They arent even a free country. Flee asap.
Isn't GDP a particularly bad indicator for a society that's largely subsistence agriculture? They grow things and then eat them - does that even figure into GDP?
Subsistence farming, while possibly not counted in GDP, is an explanation why people don't starve to death. It's not really an argument that the country is doing "better than it seems", unless your baseline is famine.
Maybe, maybe not. The point is that the GDP of the country you're in going up or down is a somewhat abstract and irrelevant concern for a subsistence farmer
I think it's possible that some of them have beautiful lives anyway, but tough, no doubt. I've been to some similar villages in Ladakh
Heating and air conditioning, a comfortable apartment, being able to travel, health care to live long enough to see your kids grow old.
Food that's cheap enough, so you always have something healthy and tasty to eat when you are hungry.
A pool in the garden is pretty fun on summer days, I imagine! It's cool to see the Niagara Falls, or the Norwegian fjords. Or visit a friend in a foreign country!
It boils down to applying western logic to a non western country. I get a little suspect that the statistics aren’t telling the full story.
I do think the government optimizing for happiness doesn’t equal optimizing for fulfillment, which isn’t always the same thing.
So people leave, despite perhaps a generally good happiness vibe. It’s like people who leave a Western European country for the US, because they feel their home countries can’t provide the experience they’re looking for.
I don’t think anyone is comparing Bhutan to prison? That isn’t an apt comparison.
I’d be more interested in what young Bhutanese people have to say. If it’s economic opportunity they seek then it can be dealt with locally (and they seem to recognize that), if it’s something deeper that would also be very interesting to know.
On topic: people both need meaning and creature comforts. No meaning, they'll wait for death; no comfort, they'll move, that was the brain is there for.
>This must be very much true of the US, too, then, and has been for a long time? Its trade balance is negative to the tune of tens of billions.
Quite true. The key difference here is that the USA is a reserve currency and those advantage give them far more breathing room in the balance.
But the USA isnt without the same consequences. The USA could be much wealthier per capita if they had a president who planned to put big tariffs in place.
Leaving Bhutan for Australia and the US (often on a Refugee visa) is extremely popular in Bhutan nowadays [0]. If you live in the Bay Area, there is a large Bhutanese (as well as Nepali, Indian Tibetan, and Himachali) diaspora in the East Bay.
> Their GDP numbers are 5% growth every year? That seems impossible
They are a large energy exporter who exports much of their energy to Northeast India and Bangladesh.
That said, most infrastructure is owned and operated by Indian conglomerates like Tata Group or Indian SoEs.
> Bhutan is about 20% debt/gdp from a venezuela level collapse. If by some magic they dont collapse there, they are about 40% from a greece like collapse
The Indian government will prop up Bhutan no matter what. Several of India's forward deployment bases are located in the country, and it is critical for defending much of Northeast India from China.
If Bhutan gets even the slightest bit wobbly or shifts direction, India would probably "absorb" Bhutan the same way it did Sikkim in 1973.
TL;DR - The leaders of a highly-religious, homophobic, low-HDI, faux-democracy country get surprised when some of their people want to leave for greener pastures.
Turns out that inventing a specific measure of happiness that makes your country look more favorable than it is doesn't change reality.
If my government did something as stupid as introduce a Gross national happiness metric, I would be getting out as soon as possible to avoid the gulags that will be following shortly. The most fascinating thing here is that these people managed to convince others that they are smart.
> Now this is, I say deliberately, the only defect in the greatness of Mr. Shaw, the only answer to his claim to be a great man, that he is not easily pleased. He is an almost solitary exception to the general and essential maxim, that little things please great minds. And from this absence of that most uproarious of all things, humility, comes incidentally the peculiar insistence on the Superman. After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby. Mr. Shaw cannot understand that the thing which is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man—the old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man. And the things that have been founded on this creature immortally remain; the things that have been founded on the fancy of the Superman have died with the dying civilizations which alone have given them birth. When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob a coward—in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
Social comparison theory is the idea that our satisfaction with what we have isn't an objective measure, but is actually based on what we see other people have. Young people generally seem to have an innate desire to leave their hometowns and seek out what else might be waiting out there for them. When you add in globalization and media influence exposing them to what looks like a "better" life with more things, it's not surprising that they've seen ~9% of young people leave Bhutan.
The other question is, what will happen if Bhutan does increase their financial wealth as well as their happiness? Will they then see a net influx of people through immigration, looking for the lifestyle Bhutan promises? And will those new people be able to maintain the culture Bhutan has cultivated?
It sounds like the concept of Gross National Happiness is a successful one, on its own, but it brings new challenges that couldn't have been forseen originally. That doesn't mean they can't solve them without giving up their core values.
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