[peanut_merchant]

This argument feels like an oversimplification to me.

These are only two examples of "collectivist" societies. The idea that you are either strongly individualist or China/Russia seems like a false dichotomy.

Some of the happiest societies in the world employee a model that is neither rigidly collectivist or individualist (e.g. the Nordic model).

My intuition is that the solution like probably in the middle ground at a political level, while adapting to our new digital reality.

The argument that our society must embrace full individualism or fail, feels a bit like the red-scare lite.

[seydor]

the nordics are probably the most individualists in europe. Look to the south for more collectivist cultures. The strong nordic state welfare actually enables people to be individualists. there s no argument about what society must do, but the evidence shows that people gravitate that way

[badpun]

They are collectivist in the sense that they pay very high taxes without trying to weasel themselves out of them. But yeah, they pay them so that they can actually live an individualistic life :)

[hackerlight]

> Some of the happiest societies in the world employee a model that is neither rigidly collectivist or individualist (e.g. the Nordic model).

Nordic societies are the most individualist societies on earth. Their policies are all about individual people and their wellbeing. They have no collectivist concept of a greater good that is above the individual. In Russia and China the concept of national rejuvenation is paramount above the individual. These nationalist visions are maximally collectivist. Trump is a lite version of this. The sociocultural construct of "America" and the sociolegal construct of "freedom" is supreme over the actual positive freedoms and negative freedoms of the individual. Self-described right-libertarians are often very collectivist in actual practice. You can't be anti-immigration and call yourself an individualist, it's a nationalist (and therefore collectivist) position.

[badpun]

> You can't be anti-immigration and call yourself an individualist, it's a nationalist (and therefore collectivist) position.

I don't neccessarily disagree with the rest of your post, but the above seems obviously false. Most anti-immigratio people are not for it because of some abstract ideas, but because they see immigrant as direct competitiors for their jobs. That was one of the biggest reasons behing Brexit votes for example.

[woooooo]

It's deeply American to call Russia "collectivist". It's more similar to 1800s America, economically, than it is to the USSR. Oligarchs owning resource extraction for sale into capital markets.

Generally when people say "collectivist", they mean "bad guys in black hats and also I liked Ayn Rand"

[hackerlight]

Russia is collectivist not because of their economic system but because of their nationalism. National rejuvenation is prioritized above the prosperity and freedom of the individual.

[izacus]

Yeah, if anything, Russia is a hyper-individualist ultra-capitalist endstate of society - every man for himself, taking care only for himself and everything you need has to be paid for. Even soldiers have to buy their own equipment with predatory loans from people that stole it from the army.

Calling Russia (heck or even China) "collectivist" is just repeating propaganda from expired times and show a horrifyingly poor education.