This is a great article, and as a European I can relate to all of his points. Here are some comments from the other side of the pond; they're of course my personal opinion but I think they're somewhat representative of the European view.
I don’t view the USA as the center of the world - i see America as an overreaching empire that has had it's heyday. If you take a historical perspective this is how many empires fall. They overreach by trying to annex large parts of the world, spend all of their resources doing so and eventually implode. The British and Roman empire are good examples.
I stopped calling myself a Christian - the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening. If the Danish prime minister started confessing her belief in a god she'd be laughed out of the room.
I occasionally felt embarrassed of America - I have a mixed relation with America. On the one hand it's a great country with amazing and open people that will gladly help a stranger, and has an amazing work ethic. On the other hand I have a problem with Americans not knowing or caring about how the rest of the world functions, how Americans define themselves in terms of their job, and their aggressiveness on the Geopolitical arena.
I believe America’s time as #1 super-power will come to an end within my lifetime - I think this is already happening.
Opening Note: Personal views- Practicing Jewish most of my upbringing, now agnostic by choice
"If the Danish prime minister started confessing her belief in a god she'd be laughed out of the room."
As an 18 year old American, active in American politics (I've done minor campaigning, father is a US History teacher), this is utterly strange. A politician that was not some denomination of Christianity would be, most likely, completely unable to win a Presidential election. And that's even if they were a religion the Christian majority feels close to, such as Jewish. If they were Muslim, or so help them atheist, they would stand no chance at the White House.
I recently had a friend of 6 years from the UK come and visit for two weeks, and we had a number of discussions on cultural differences. When he mentioned that the majority of people in the UK were not religious, I was dumbfounded. I (foolishly) thought it was everywhere as it is here. In my community at least, to openly question the existence of a God is a social faux pas. I have an interesting perspective having been on both sides of the coin, but in the end it scares me as much as it scares you. The concept of God abounds in our Pledge of Allegiance, in our graduation ceremonies, in our political speeches--it is almost universally accepted and above question.
You might find Prof. Joseph Tainter's assessment of Rome interesting. he has a very different view of what caused the Roman collapse.
In his view, the problem was that Rome based their economy on conquest and pillage. As they'd conquer places, theyd bring back gold into their economy and this would allow them to lower or eliminate taxes. During this time of expansion they did well, and the complexity of their culture increased quite a bit, but in the end, this phase had to come to an end, and Rome was unable to sustain their economy internally. Their attempts to do so involved additional complexity and a great deal of additional attempts to regulate their way out including quantitative easing of their currency.
In the end, the problems were too great and the society collapsed from within, through the very process by which they expanded (greater and greater complexity of society).
One interesting thing I would add that Herwig Wolfram suggests is that the Western Empire was particularly poorly suited because of the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, which limited the tax base and made taxes harder to collect.
The Byzantine Empire listed much longer but a couple hundred years after the Roman Empire fell, they too experienced a massive simplification when faced with the Arab invasions. They did so in a more controlled way however and survived but in doing so, Tainter suggests, transitioned from a Roman society to a medieval one.
> i see America as an overreaching empire that has had it's heyday
And yet most of us are right now using computers designed in America, with an operating system written in America, posting on an American website. How is the USA not the centre of the world? From jeans to Katy Perry, from Google to McDonald's -- Americans totally dominated both the culture and the business. If I turn on the tv right now, I will have to skip through five channels before I hit a non-American production.
> the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening
Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.
I'm sure the author didn't mean that, that his observations are an honest account of his journey but I can't help to notice that articles like this strike this weird SWPL chord "I'm from America but I'm not like the rest of those simpletons" (that's a mild version) and comments to them tend to be real oikophobia festivals.
No, I'm not an American and don't live in the States (otherwise the whole tv exercise would be pointless).
If the USA was ever an overreaching empire, it was very reluctantly. OK, we picked some fights and managed to take a fair chunk of our own continent, but we were also isolationist to a fault until the mid-20th century. It was the Europeans who managed to rope us into both of their "world wars"--and in 1945, when you're looking at the whole of Europe spent and in ruins, and Joseph Stalin as the last dictator standing--well, would you really rather we just went home and forgot about you at that point?
People who say the US was imperialistic seem to forget that we didn't, for example, send tanks into France when they wanted to pull out of NATO, which is more than you can say about the other superpower. The British empire stationed troops and bureaucrats all over the world where they weren't wanted. They directly ruled over civilizations larger and more ancient than their own. Aside from the Philippines (whom we granted independence in 1946) and Hawaii and Puerto Rico (who both want to stay with us), we didn't really do that. It starts getting far more abstract when you talk about American imperialism via Coca-Cola and blue jeans.
I've been an out American for 7 years now, first two in Switzerland, the last 5 in China. I still think America has a lot going for it. Switzerland is efficient and fair, but something is missing because of restrained competition and protectionism. China is the exact opposite, and its hard to believe the system works at all. For whatever troubles America has, our system still works and is rather effective; no one is really coddled and you have to work hard, but social mobility is still better in the US than anywhere else.
There are people ignorant about the world in any country, I'm not sure why we always single out home bound Americans for being apathetic to world events. There is plenty of that to go around, even in Europe where people tend to travel more to other countries, but especially in China and even in Japan where people have many misconceptions about the rest of the world.
There are no more superpowers, not when IEDs are easy enough to procure by anyone.
An interesting and relatively recent example of this is that ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair didnt publicly announce his intention of converting to Catholicism until he left office.
I've been able to do the first 3 without leaving (perhaps because I wasn't born here), and number 4 doesn't seem so certain.
What I noticed about living outside America when I did it later as an adult was that it made it clearer what was distinctive about the US.
Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.
In some ways living abroad for a decade after school made me feel more like the US is the center of the world. I specifically looked for something as different and far away as possible, and I ended up meeting people who were learning English and familiar with the same music, television and movies I saw in college. Many of my European friends really could go weeks without seeing anything from home, but I couldn't.
That said, I was probably extremely unusual amongst my peers in thinking the US was just one of many countries when I left. Also, at that time I had thought that China would be dominating everything by 2020. Now, after having lived in China, I'm more bullish on the US than ever. Not only is it continuing to attract the smartest and most ambitious people in the world, but there's a huge demographic advantage, too. Whatever the babyboomer retirement does to the US, it will be far harder on Europe. Japan and China will be even older.
That doesn't make me doubt #4, though. Lifespans are going to increase.
What's interesting is to spend time living in an even younger culture, but with deeper roots, like in the Andes, or in Indonesia....
One thing I noticed in Ecuador was the level of visceral patriotism I had never seen and yet the lack of sense of "we're number 1" that is equated with this in the US. It was as if Ecuadorians said "We love our country. Let's make it number 1."
In Indonesia, it's different. The Chinese-Indonesians are afraid to get involved in politics, and the religious politics makes the Christian Right look pretty tame. Malaysia is different still, in weird and disorienting ways.
I think there's something to the not being born there that helps. #1 was a huge revelation to me (I'd like to think I'm observant and well-informed), and continues to be so to Americans I've had the opportunity to tour-guide for.
I'm really curious where it comes from. Perhaps because of the ubiquity of American mass-media? Every European knows the New York skyline and what "NYPD" and "FBI" mean.
How many Americans can spot the difference between Hong Kong and Seoul, or know what "BKA" stands for?
> Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.
"There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness."
"If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it."
"But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents."
> Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.
Aside from the obvious ambiguities of what defines sophistication of a culture: It feels like you're begging the question to me. "Americans are unsophisticated because they're a young culture so they're unsophisticated..."
Moreover I think suggesting that an entire culture is full of optimism and youth because it's only 300 some-odd years old strikes me quite sweeping. The modern nation state is barely as old, and it's not as if Americans don't have some cultural heritage that goes back much further than that.
That's an interesting point, but I guess that this is mostly due to the immigration friendly policies the US has. IIRC, I read somewhere in the Economist that the US is actually the only OECD country that is not going to suffer from a demographic shift. But if those policies would change, or research universities need to cut down their expenses due to budget problems, I'm not sure how long this would last. (IIRC, when Ireland's economy came to a halt, almost all foreign blue collar workers went back to their home countries in no time.)
>Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture.
I felt the same way when visiting Australia for the first time. The sense of a "Pioneer Spirit" with a vast mostly unexplored territory seems to still be there. It was actually quite infectious.
> number 4 [US not #1 soon] doesn't seem so certain.
Well, sure, nothing is certain, except that economists are often wrong. I listened recently to some 1998 academic conferences about economy and all the guys did boldly envision a slow steady growth for the next 25 years... Moreover, none of them did say a word about the East-West rebalancing, that is under everyone's pen these days. So let's not listen to them, sure.
But, still, I have the weird feeling that some people like pg and Fred Wilson have a kind of blind spot on China. It is sad because they could have more interesting things to say than economists.
Gosh, these two years money is raining over Beijing start-ups, VCs are praising founders to accept their money, every new things created in the US instantly generates tens of (shanzhai) Chinese copies. One can dismiss Chinese hot start-up temperature as artificial, ungrounded, or not fertile, or whatever, but I wouldn't understand how one could plainly ignore it.
Living and traveling outside the US (Europe, Middle East, Asia) for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US (culturally, economically, etc.). Our government is broken, but generally the US lets problems get really inefficiently bad, then overcorrects, so I hope that will happen in the next 20 years.
The threats to the US are not other countries getting better than us, but the decline of the nation-state in general, or some global catastrophe which would harm everyone.
(There are plenty of specific areas where other countries are better than the US, but no single country which is enough better on enough things to be a serious competitor.)
I was much more down on the US before leaving the country. Independent of that, I would strongly suggest spending a few years living and working overseas, not just traveling for a few weeks as a tourist.
(The UK/Canada don't really count if you're from the US, either, IMO.)
> There are plenty of specific areas where other countries are better than the US, but no single country which is enough better on enough things to be a serious competitor.
Germany. Better education, better attitude, more open-minded, less harassment for being weird/nonstandard, median level of critical thinking ability, healthier food, better transport, more cultural things to do/see, better solutions to the growing underclass problem you described elsewhere.
There are tons of hacker-mindset people here (it's something in the water, I swear), and while there are lots of annoying hoops to jump through in the entrepreneurial arena, the general quality of life is vastly improved over the US in almost every meaningful day-to-day way. Economically the differences have already been done to death.
The US is coasting, and I believe it will implode financially within our lifetimes.
"Living and traveling outside the US for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US"
As an Australian who has travelled the world extensively, spent a great deal of time in the USA, and currently lives in Canada, I strongly disagree with this statement.
It should also be noted that in most quality of life indexes, cities in the US rank far below many of those in Europe, Canada, and Australia - that is one such meaningful metric in my mind when declaring the "superiority" of a country (which I think is a pretty absurd notion anyway)*
> Our government is broken, but generally the US lets problems get really inefficiently bad, then overcorrects, so I hope that will happen in the next 20 years.
That's something as an outsider living here in since around last December I've noticed. Your government is quite broken. But it somehow still works. (Paradox, I know!) For instance, the healthcare bill that was recently passed largely solves the textbook problem of information asymmetry in the health insurance market. It almost didn't pass, but it did. Same seems about the immigration laws - although they are yet to be "fixed". It's a country where, ironically, a "professional news organization" like Fox News exists at the same time with with a "comedy" show like the Colbert Report.
> Unless something major changes, the American focus on consumption will eventually erode our influence around the globe.
That's a quote from the original article. I don't quite see how consumption is wrong. Especially, since from what I see, consumption here in the US is based on the idea of buying things that solve problems. That give people the incentive to invent tools to solve problems. Trust me there are a lot of countries where they don't like to spend money at all (consume). There are everyday problems there that aren't solved because tools invented for them will not be bought. Your quality of life is stagnant if "buy only bare minimum" is the model you want to follow.
I've never really understood the notion that any one country is better than another one. It just seems way too subjective and people seem to generally favour the country they were born or brought up in.
I think it's much like picking a car. You can argue the pros/cons all day and night but it just boils down to what you personally prefer and what evidence you feel justifies your decision. Declaring a country is better than any other because it has more money, weapons, CCTV cameras, mountains, lakes just seems silly, no?
(I'm discounting countries savaged by war, famine etc because I'd say by most accounts but not necessarily all, they wouldn't be better)
> Living and traveling outside the US (Europe, Middle East, Asia) for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US (culturally, economically, etc.).
You say this without any qualifications, when what you seem to mean is "superior for starting a tech business". That's a pretty major qualification to leave out.
It's obvious that most of the computer revolution was driven by the US. The dotcom boom was enabled by the very large American stock markets, and would not have been quite so possible elsewhere. That's undeniable, and I think the world is thankful to the leading lights in the US behind the innovations we enjoy today.
I went to the US as an undergrad hoping to experience the promises of its culture and energy. I learnt a lot from my time there, but in fact my opinion of the US moderated somewhat. Previously I thought it was the land of opportunity, creativity and liberty; after, I realised it also had deep problems with the way things ran (healthcare system, inequality and social distrust, deadlocked government). (I never lived on the West Coast - only visited.)
After returning to Asia from the US, I thought I'd prefer living in Canada, for easy access to the American market as well the Canadian healthcare system.
Another aspect is, it's simply not "done" in my home country (and I assume most other countries) to publicly label yourself as "the best". That's something I noticed among some Americans, and I can't agree with it. Where I'm from, there's always something to learn from someone else, and someone to build better relationships with. Calling yourself "the greatest nation on Earth" or the like smacks of arrogance, even if it could be argued to be true for some value of "greatest". Arrogance is, I suspect, why much anti-American sentiment exists.
I agree. I've also spent a few a years living outside the US and while I had a great time it made me realize a lot about all the simple things about living in the US that we don't even realize we have and take for granted. The political stability, the infrastructure, the uniform culture that stretches coast to coast, and just the feeling of being surrounded by the immense wealth of it all. Just last week when I was at the grocery and walking down a gigantic freezer of just ice cream it really makes you think.
This quote from the article "I don’t view the USA as the center of the world." seems rather fitting with the part where you mention America as culturally superior to other cultures.
> Living and traveling outside the US (Europe, Middle East, Asia) for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US (culturally, economically, etc.).
To be fair, most of the places you lived in that 15 years sucked really hard, even just objectively. The good non-US places are way better than the states in almost every measurable aspect.
> There are plenty of specific areas where other countries are better than the US, but no single country which is enough better on enough things to be a serious competitor.
Strongly disagree on this one here, after 4 years in Australia. Better public transport, better health care, better wages, less political bullshit, better immigration policy.
It is most certainly the case that living away from one's source culture has a profound effect on your perception of the world. It's important to note, however, that none of what Mr Carson describes was caused by Britain and the British specifically.
I can say that because I'm from there and I am one. And yet I can report much the same: I moved overseas to unfamiliar shores, and the result has been an enlightenment, a much clearer perspective on the parochial vs the universal. To look back at one's origin with fresh eyes. It's refreshing and challenging and will change anyone with a shred of self-analytical capability.
This became clearest to me when living in the Netherlands. There were two identifiable Dutch social modes: either cliquish & insular, or open & welcoming. The latter was strongly correlated to those Dutch who had travelled. I'm not saying the former were unfriendly, it was a matter of acceptance: I was simply always a guest.
I have observed this trait in many since, and in myself.
Note that I do not believe an overseas holiday is sufficient to achieve this. You'll have to stay somewhere, become at least a little bit of a local. My experience has been that six months is sufficient, two years is optimal.
Specific to this point as someone that has lived in England forever I find it really strange how on the reddit atheism subreddit all the (American) posters act as if they're persecuted for their Atheism whereas in England religion is just something people do in private if they do it at all, it's hard for me to understand the way r/atheism posters perceive their persecution, but reading someone from America saying that how England is very different with religion makes it easier to understand.
> When I moved to the UK, most people I met didn’t believe in God or Christianity. The UK is largely a non-Christian country.
No, you've went into a field whose practitioners are largely non-Christian, and since you've probably acquired most of your social circle directly or indirectly through that you mostly meet non-Christians.
If a kid who grew up in a religious family in London and went to a religious school most of his life where almost all his social group was religious left the UK after school and moved to Seattle to work for Google or Microsoft, he could reasonably blog years later that the US is largely a non-Christian country based on his experience.
I moved to the UK, most people I met didn’t believe in God or Christianity. The UK is largely a non-Christian country.
10$ note - "in god we trust".
£10 note - Charles Darwin picture on it.
I guess it explains a lot.
I read a few comments about atheists being "ashamed" in states - I don't really see that happening in europe. Even in the far eastern parts of it being overly (and I probably have a bit of a different definition on this word) religious is being nowadays quite often considered weird. Especially among young people in bigger cities.
"A ton of people I met from around the World thought Americans were overweight, materialistic and unintelligent. This was, of course, an unfair generalization."
Less than 30% of American adults are at a healthy bodyweight, so it's really not an unfair generalization.
#1 is the huge one. Americans say "the world" when they mean "the whole country". For most USAians, it is pretty inconceivable that anyone lives drastically differently than they do.
It's inexcusable, considering the breadth of information available to the contrary, but most just never expose themselves to it. I know I didn't until I moved away.
"""But after you settle in, both places are great."""
Found this in the comments. After having lived in different countries for the last 15 years (originally from Germany), that has become my conclusion, not only regarding the US and UK. It takes some time (years) to get really used to a culture and understand its thinking.
I feel like the majority of his "areas of impact" that living overseas has had on him could have just as easily happened if he had stayed in America, but moved to a city with some more diversity. It's more about growing up and making friends with people that think differently than you than just transplanting yourself.
Just wrapping up a several weeks trip to Europe (London, Cologne, Edinburgh) as we speak. I think I'm having the opposite observation. Western cultures have so much in common it has actually been surprising to me. I always expected to be amazed by the differences, but if you throw out all of the superficial stuff the set of appreciable differences is rather smaller.
As for his specific points
1. I have no idea how somebody with half a brain and access to the internet can have this notion. Maybe I am the exception to the rule, but I never fancied my Country to be any more 'important' than any other nation. In fact, the opposite was often considered given that modern civilisation has few roots in the Americas.
2. Never believed in religion in the first place
3. Every country has their fair share of embarrassing points, and of course their fair share of unfortunate embarrassing people. I have rather enjoyed seeing that the human condition is more or less the same the world over. I also feel occasionally embarrassed by my fellow countrymen, but I figure the best way to counteract that is to represent myself, and by association my country, the best I can.
4. As for that, we will see. I've not seen anything that screams out to me "This economy is vastly more productive than the US" in the areas that I have visited. Perhaps public transport and some infrastuctural aspects lend themselves to a more efficient country, and the US should certainly take a look at those things.
Oh well, I'm glad to have had the experience of travelling throughout Europe, but I would expect some deeper takeaways from somebody that literally spent years immersed in a foreign culture.
Last year, I spent seven months traveling the world and came back with a much greater appreciation for the U.S. Does America have its issues like any other country? Of course. And are there things as an American I would change? Absolutely. But in spite of its flaws, it's still an incredible land of innovation, personal opportunity and a (relatively) corruption free country.
It's certainly chic to hate on America these days, but I now tend to give much less credence to those who do.
"it’s very hard to truly question your beliefs if everyone around you shares them."
This gravitation toward a shared belief makes it not surprising that living where most peoples' belief is that God does not exist would result in one sharing that belief.
Thanks for the article. It's always great to see other perspectives on the world.
Upon graduating from High School I backpacked Europe for a month. I quickly learned not everyone felt the same way about America that I did. The tone wasn't hateful or angry (yes) but it was cautious as if people expected me to be arrogant, rude or flippant about their world views. There was a common joke between my friend and I: We should sport a Canadian flag on our backpack!
A few years later, I worked abroad for some time. Post "9/11" people were cruel and bitter. They really despised us! This year though, everyone was talking about Apple, Instagram and Facebook! I don't know if these are just hot topics but people were excited to talk with an American about them. I was glad to hear the tone had changed some.
To really understand America, you must not only live in it, but also live outside it. Note: I am from the USA, and "we" or "our" refers to us Americans.
I spent 3 years abroad, recently returning to the USA this summer, and I will try to outline some of what I learned, although it is somewhat difficult as this knowledge has become ingrained in me and obvious as to seem to require no explanation.
- English as lingua franca
The average person doesn't realize how dominant English is as the world's language, how that dominance is reflected by our leading industries, and how the prevalence of English helps exports our culture, values, and by extension, our products.
For example, the majority of the latest scientific research is written in English, regardless of the scientist's nationality.
Every programmer across the world learns a rudimentary English just by virtue of being a programmer, as most programming languages are in English and the majority of programming technical guides are in English.
When travelers of different nationalities meet in a 3rd country, they speak English. When businessmen of different countries do business together, they speak English. As native speakers we have a built-in advantage. But our potential weakness is failing to understand different nationalities. Especially as the other countries grow in power.
I've heard, from the English-speaking Chinese in China: "We understand your culture and speak your language. You, on the other hand, don't understand ours at all. We have the advantage."
- Dominance of American cultural media, internet, and education
Hollywood movies, American music artists and bands, tech companies, and higher education all hold significant leads over whatever competitors foreign countries can muster. Besides China, the rest of the world doesn't use their version of Facebook, and none of them have the engineers to keep up.
The majority of the top 100 Universities in the world are in the USA. And most of the world watches American music and movies. Its ironic: a commonly heard stereotype is that Americans have little to no culture, when American popular culture is by far the most dominant in the world and unmatched in its breadth, choice, depth, and quality.
- US Consumerism
This is a little more complex, but you still can see this if you look hard enough: the world economic system is built around US consumers. Take a look at prices for electronics in Asia, for example. In the very places where the electronics are made, the retail prices are all significantly higher than those in the US. Samsung and LG TVs cost more in Korea than they do in America. Computers cost more in China than they do in the USA. I frequently found myself waiting until I returned to US soil before I made any big ticket electronic or computer purchases, because the savings were ridiculous.
Once you look into the price disparity, you realize that other countries, mainly the exporting ones in Asia, manipulate their currencies, and build their economies on the back of US consumers. It's a potentially dangerous cycle because our consumerism habit is encouraged and built-in to the system via currencies and our addiction to credit, making it a hard habit to break.
- the effectiveness of USA institutions: legal system, courts, law enforcement, Congress, media, higher education
Good governance and higher civilization aren't created overnight, and are not easy to develop. If you look at any 3rd world country, you notice immediately that the country often borders on anarchy due to lack of effective political / governing structure. Either the President is a brutal dictator, or the police are corrupt, or military generals are the de facto leaders, or the legal system is weak and the laws unenforced, and the list goes on and on. Effective government does not arise from air. It is built on decades or centuries of experience and stability. To maintain its effectiveness is a constant struggle against the evils inherent in man: laziness, corruption, abuse of power, etc. and a fight that seems to be slipping away from us in recent years.
The strong laws, governance, loyal military, and highly educated and productive citizens of a country are what make countries like America, those in Western Europe, and increasingly, some in East Asia good places to live.
Interestingly, even though reddit seems to hate cops, in my experience cops in the USA are paragons of professionalism compared to those in developing countries. It's hard to imagine, but cops there just don't take the profession very seriously. The standards of law enforcement in developed countries are another level entirely. And you can apply this "higher level" concept to the other areas I outlined above: judges, courts, the military, businesses, politicians.
If we let our vigilance slack, then the strong civilizing forces, whose bond make a civilization great, will begin to weaken, and the country's excellence will begin to regress.
Sorry, I took a tangent there.
- differences in political systems and their effectiveness
This is hard for me to explain because I consider it as self-evident as 2+2=4, but I'll do my best.
It's clear to me, and many other people who have studied political systems across the world, that democracy isn't a one-model-fits-all-countries panacea. Democracies (if you could call them that) often fail where there is no historical precedent or experience for it, and the populace is unfamiliar with or uninterested in participating in the democratic process. Uneducated, unengaged citizens are a recipe for democracy failure. Other factors that ruin a democracy's effectiveness: corrupt leaders and lax enforcement. The leaders just rig the elections and the enforcement just lets it all slide.
Another issue is public policy. Looking at what other countries have tried and how it works in their countries is like drawing up a theoretical policy experiment and then seeing the results before your eyes. The policy's results won't ever match 1-1 with your native country if said policy was implemented due to differences in culture and environment, but just seeing how others have done things opens your mind to the possibilities and forces you to understand a different perspective. The same applies to cultural values or mores. Often I have found myself in Asia in wonder at some common practice or another that is superior, in almost every way, to what we have in America. (And I've found the opposite as well).
- crumbling US infrastructure vs. the World's
"Crumbling" is a bit of hyperbole, but still, the first thing you notice when traveling is how new and modern the rest of the world's airports are compared to those in the USA. New York, America's supposed mecca of culture and a truly international city, has airports whose decrepitness puts lesser cities to shame. Don't get me started on the subways.
I would say that the USA has one of the best governing infrastructures, but only average (and slipping fast) physical infrastructure. Oh, and US Broadband speeds rank is #12. I'm particularly emotional about that one.
Overall, the US is still one of the best countries to live in the world for a number of its strengths that are unmatched, and will not be surpassed for the next several decades, if ever. But signs are showing that the civilizing fabric which holds our country together is weakening: deadlocked political process, income and wealth disparity at historical levels, the Great Recession, and what some might lament as a decline in values and morals into a disgusting morass of consumerism, selfish individualism, and celebrity worship.
But it could be all part of the cycle, and the future is still bright. The highly educated citizenry, and especially the youth(courtesy of all those student loans!), are some of our greatest strengths.
Meanwhile, at the risk of sounding un-PC, the uneducated underclass is our biggest weakness, although I'm unsure whether historically it is larger in size relative to the population.
I'm not bearish on America... yet. There are too many good things going for it. The energy, dynamism, ambition, and intelligence are all in absurdly high concentrations in numerous US cities. The political system just needs a little tweaking.
> Take a look at prices for electronics in Asia, for example. In the very places where the electronics are made, the retail prices are all significantly higher than those in the US. Samsung and LG TVs cost more in Korea than they do in America. Computers cost more in China than they do in the USA. I frequently found myself waiting until I returned to US soil before I made any big ticket electronic or computer purchases, because the savings were ridiculous.
On this point, it's important to note that the price disparity is largely due to the way items are taxed in Asia. South Korea has both VAT and a luxury item tax; China has a luxury tax on foreign brands. You need only look to Hong Kong, which has the cheapest prices in the world on e.g. Apple products (because you need a microscope to find a tax in Hong Kong) to break down this model. Your main point re: currency manipulation, especially in China, is still valid and important, but this is a bad example.
"New York, America's supposed mecca of culture and a truly international city, has airports whose decrepitness puts lesser cities to shame."
Living in Los Angeles, I notice the same sort of thing about our freeways. I think part of it is that they were the among the first built, and they haven't really updated.
Interchanges are a particular sore point. The 101 north to 405 south interchange is a joke. One lane, 270 degree turn. Traffic crawls through it. And it's literally at the busiest interchange in the world.
Or the 110 north to the 5 north. It's like a theme park ride it's so narrow and curvy and hilly.
Of course, the 134 east to the 5 north has no interchange ramp. You have to leave the freeways and get on surface streets to change over. There's a few of those around.
I think you would be interested in reading this book about nations and their institutions: http://whynationsfail.com/
"Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it)."
> the effectiveness of USA institutions: legal system, courts, law enforcement, Congress, media, higher education Good governance and higher civilization aren't created overnight
Couldn't you have just copied them from Britain and France - wouldn't that have been easier ?
I really think seeing you're own culture from outside your own bubble provides a massive wide angle lens that provides perspective and periphery that you didn't previously have and if you have the opportunity to gain this insight then you should try your best to gain it.
The one thing I keep noticing while traveling outside America is how few Americans actually travel. I have encountered tons of Europeans/Australians but don't really come across that many Americans.
[+] [-] mixmax|13 years ago|reply
I don’t view the USA as the center of the world - i see America as an overreaching empire that has had it's heyday. If you take a historical perspective this is how many empires fall. They overreach by trying to annex large parts of the world, spend all of their resources doing so and eventually implode. The British and Roman empire are good examples.
I stopped calling myself a Christian - the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening. If the Danish prime minister started confessing her belief in a god she'd be laughed out of the room.
I occasionally felt embarrassed of America - I have a mixed relation with America. On the one hand it's a great country with amazing and open people that will gladly help a stranger, and has an amazing work ethic. On the other hand I have a problem with Americans not knowing or caring about how the rest of the world functions, how Americans define themselves in terms of their job, and their aggressiveness on the Geopolitical arena.
I believe America’s time as #1 super-power will come to an end within my lifetime - I think this is already happening.
[+] [-] thetabyte|13 years ago|reply
"If the Danish prime minister started confessing her belief in a god she'd be laughed out of the room."
As an 18 year old American, active in American politics (I've done minor campaigning, father is a US History teacher), this is utterly strange. A politician that was not some denomination of Christianity would be, most likely, completely unable to win a Presidential election. And that's even if they were a religion the Christian majority feels close to, such as Jewish. If they were Muslim, or so help them atheist, they would stand no chance at the White House.
I recently had a friend of 6 years from the UK come and visit for two weeks, and we had a number of discussions on cultural differences. When he mentioned that the majority of people in the UK were not religious, I was dumbfounded. I (foolishly) thought it was everywhere as it is here. In my community at least, to openly question the existence of a God is a social faux pas. I have an interesting perspective having been on both sides of the coin, but in the end it scares me as much as it scares you. The concept of God abounds in our Pledge of Allegiance, in our graduation ceremonies, in our political speeches--it is almost universally accepted and above question.
[+] [-] einhverfr|13 years ago|reply
In his view, the problem was that Rome based their economy on conquest and pillage. As they'd conquer places, theyd bring back gold into their economy and this would allow them to lower or eliminate taxes. During this time of expansion they did well, and the complexity of their culture increased quite a bit, but in the end, this phase had to come to an end, and Rome was unable to sustain their economy internally. Their attempts to do so involved additional complexity and a great deal of additional attempts to regulate their way out including quantitative easing of their currency.
In the end, the problems were too great and the society collapsed from within, through the very process by which they expanded (greater and greater complexity of society).
One interesting thing I would add that Herwig Wolfram suggests is that the Western Empire was particularly poorly suited because of the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, which limited the tax base and made taxes harder to collect.
The Byzantine Empire listed much longer but a couple hundred years after the Roman Empire fell, they too experienced a massive simplification when faced with the Arab invasions. They did so in a more controlled way however and survived but in doing so, Tainter suggests, transitioned from a Roman society to a medieval one.
[+] [-] spindritf|13 years ago|reply
And yet most of us are right now using computers designed in America, with an operating system written in America, posting on an American website. How is the USA not the centre of the world? From jeans to Katy Perry, from Google to McDonald's -- Americans totally dominated both the culture and the business. If I turn on the tv right now, I will have to skip through five channels before I hit a non-American production.
> the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening
Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.
I'm sure the author didn't mean that, that his observations are an honest account of his journey but I can't help to notice that articles like this strike this weird SWPL chord "I'm from America but I'm not like the rest of those simpletons" (that's a mild version) and comments to them tend to be real oikophobia festivals.
No, I'm not an American and don't live in the States (otherwise the whole tv exercise would be pointless).
[+] [-] philwelch|13 years ago|reply
People who say the US was imperialistic seem to forget that we didn't, for example, send tanks into France when they wanted to pull out of NATO, which is more than you can say about the other superpower. The British empire stationed troops and bureaucrats all over the world where they weren't wanted. They directly ruled over civilizations larger and more ancient than their own. Aside from the Philippines (whom we granted independence in 1946) and Hawaii and Puerto Rico (who both want to stay with us), we didn't really do that. It starts getting far more abstract when you talk about American imperialism via Coca-Cola and blue jeans.
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|13 years ago|reply
There are people ignorant about the world in any country, I'm not sure why we always single out home bound Americans for being apathetic to world events. There is plenty of that to go around, even in Europe where people tend to travel more to other countries, but especially in China and even in Japan where people have many misconceptions about the rest of the world.
There are no more superpowers, not when IEDs are easy enough to procure by anyone.
[+] [-] robgough|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|13 years ago|reply
What I noticed about living outside America when I did it later as an adult was that it made it clearer what was distinctive about the US.
Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.
[+] [-] xiaoma|13 years ago|reply
That said, I was probably extremely unusual amongst my peers in thinking the US was just one of many countries when I left. Also, at that time I had thought that China would be dominating everything by 2020. Now, after having lived in China, I'm more bullish on the US than ever. Not only is it continuing to attract the smartest and most ambitious people in the world, but there's a huge demographic advantage, too. Whatever the babyboomer retirement does to the US, it will be far harder on Europe. Japan and China will be even older.
That doesn't make me doubt #4, though. Lifespans are going to increase.
[+] [-] einhverfr|13 years ago|reply
One thing I noticed in Ecuador was the level of visceral patriotism I had never seen and yet the lack of sense of "we're number 1" that is equated with this in the US. It was as if Ecuadorians said "We love our country. Let's make it number 1."
In Indonesia, it's different. The Chinese-Indonesians are afraid to get involved in politics, and the religious politics makes the Christian Right look pretty tame. Malaysia is different still, in weird and disorienting ways.
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
I'm really curious where it comes from. Perhaps because of the ubiquity of American mass-media? Every European knows the New York skyline and what "NYPD" and "FBI" mean.
How many Americans can spot the difference between Hong Kong and Seoul, or know what "BKA" stands for?
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
This article has always stuck with me and I think speaks to what you're trying to say. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...
"There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness."
"If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it."
"But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents."
[+] [-] samfoo|13 years ago|reply
Aside from the obvious ambiguities of what defines sophistication of a culture: It feels like you're begging the question to me. "Americans are unsophisticated because they're a young culture so they're unsophisticated..."
Moreover I think suggesting that an entire culture is full of optimism and youth because it's only 300 some-odd years old strikes me quite sweeping. The modern nation state is barely as old, and it's not as if Americans don't have some cultural heritage that goes back much further than that.
[+] [-] sb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|13 years ago|reply
I felt the same way when visiting Australia for the first time. The sense of a "Pioneer Spirit" with a vast mostly unexplored territory seems to still be there. It was actually quite infectious.
[+] [-] gbog|13 years ago|reply
Well, sure, nothing is certain, except that economists are often wrong. I listened recently to some 1998 academic conferences about economy and all the guys did boldly envision a slow steady growth for the next 25 years... Moreover, none of them did say a word about the East-West rebalancing, that is under everyone's pen these days. So let's not listen to them, sure.
But, still, I have the weird feeling that some people like pg and Fred Wilson have a kind of blind spot on China. It is sad because they could have more interesting things to say than economists.
Gosh, these two years money is raining over Beijing start-ups, VCs are praising founders to accept their money, every new things created in the US instantly generates tens of (shanzhai) Chinese copies. One can dismiss Chinese hot start-up temperature as artificial, ungrounded, or not fertile, or whatever, but I wouldn't understand how one could plainly ignore it.
[+] [-] astrofinch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balsam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
The threats to the US are not other countries getting better than us, but the decline of the nation-state in general, or some global catastrophe which would harm everyone.
(There are plenty of specific areas where other countries are better than the US, but no single country which is enough better on enough things to be a serious competitor.)
I was much more down on the US before leaving the country. Independent of that, I would strongly suggest spending a few years living and working overseas, not just traveling for a few weeks as a tourist.
(The UK/Canada don't really count if you're from the US, either, IMO.)
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
Germany. Better education, better attitude, more open-minded, less harassment for being weird/nonstandard, median level of critical thinking ability, healthier food, better transport, more cultural things to do/see, better solutions to the growing underclass problem you described elsewhere.
There are tons of hacker-mindset people here (it's something in the water, I swear), and while there are lots of annoying hoops to jump through in the entrepreneurial arena, the general quality of life is vastly improved over the US in almost every meaningful day-to-day way. Economically the differences have already been done to death.
The US is coasting, and I believe it will implode financially within our lifetimes.
[+] [-] zainny|13 years ago|reply
As an Australian who has travelled the world extensively, spent a great deal of time in the USA, and currently lives in Canada, I strongly disagree with this statement.
It should also be noted that in most quality of life indexes, cities in the US rank far below many of those in Europe, Canada, and Australia - that is one such meaningful metric in my mind when declaring the "superiority" of a country (which I think is a pretty absurd notion anyway)*
* http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-repor...
[+] [-] ashishgandhi|13 years ago|reply
That's something as an outsider living here in since around last December I've noticed. Your government is quite broken. But it somehow still works. (Paradox, I know!) For instance, the healthcare bill that was recently passed largely solves the textbook problem of information asymmetry in the health insurance market. It almost didn't pass, but it did. Same seems about the immigration laws - although they are yet to be "fixed". It's a country where, ironically, a "professional news organization" like Fox News exists at the same time with with a "comedy" show like the Colbert Report.
> Unless something major changes, the American focus on consumption will eventually erode our influence around the globe.
That's a quote from the original article. I don't quite see how consumption is wrong. Especially, since from what I see, consumption here in the US is based on the idea of buying things that solve problems. That give people the incentive to invent tools to solve problems. Trust me there are a lot of countries where they don't like to spend money at all (consume). There are everyday problems there that aren't solved because tools invented for them will not be bought. Your quality of life is stagnant if "buy only bare minimum" is the model you want to follow.
[+] [-] bapbap|13 years ago|reply
I think it's much like picking a car. You can argue the pros/cons all day and night but it just boils down to what you personally prefer and what evidence you feel justifies your decision. Declaring a country is better than any other because it has more money, weapons, CCTV cameras, mountains, lakes just seems silly, no?
(I'm discounting countries savaged by war, famine etc because I'd say by most accounts but not necessarily all, they wouldn't be better)
[+] [-] creamyhorror|13 years ago|reply
You say this without any qualifications, when what you seem to mean is "superior for starting a tech business". That's a pretty major qualification to leave out.
It's obvious that most of the computer revolution was driven by the US. The dotcom boom was enabled by the very large American stock markets, and would not have been quite so possible elsewhere. That's undeniable, and I think the world is thankful to the leading lights in the US behind the innovations we enjoy today.
I went to the US as an undergrad hoping to experience the promises of its culture and energy. I learnt a lot from my time there, but in fact my opinion of the US moderated somewhat. Previously I thought it was the land of opportunity, creativity and liberty; after, I realised it also had deep problems with the way things ran (healthcare system, inequality and social distrust, deadlocked government). (I never lived on the West Coast - only visited.)
After returning to Asia from the US, I thought I'd prefer living in Canada, for easy access to the American market as well the Canadian healthcare system.
Another aspect is, it's simply not "done" in my home country (and I assume most other countries) to publicly label yourself as "the best". That's something I noticed among some Americans, and I can't agree with it. Where I'm from, there's always something to learn from someone else, and someone to build better relationships with. Calling yourself "the greatest nation on Earth" or the like smacks of arrogance, even if it could be argued to be true for some value of "greatest". Arrogance is, I suspect, why much anti-American sentiment exists.
[+] [-] pixie_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmax|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
To be fair, most of the places you lived in that 15 years sucked really hard, even just objectively. The good non-US places are way better than the states in almost every measurable aspect.
[+] [-] beedogs|13 years ago|reply
Strongly disagree on this one here, after 4 years in Australia. Better public transport, better health care, better wages, less political bullshit, better immigration policy.
[+] [-] randomStuff|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inopinatus|13 years ago|reply
I can say that because I'm from there and I am one. And yet I can report much the same: I moved overseas to unfamiliar shores, and the result has been an enlightenment, a much clearer perspective on the parochial vs the universal. To look back at one's origin with fresh eyes. It's refreshing and challenging and will change anyone with a shred of self-analytical capability.
This became clearest to me when living in the Netherlands. There were two identifiable Dutch social modes: either cliquish & insular, or open & welcoming. The latter was strongly correlated to those Dutch who had travelled. I'm not saying the former were unfriendly, it was a matter of acceptance: I was simply always a guest.
I have observed this trait in many since, and in myself.
Note that I do not believe an overseas holiday is sufficient to achieve this. You'll have to stay somewhere, become at least a little bit of a local. My experience has been that six months is sufficient, two years is optimal.
[+] [-] citricsquid|13 years ago|reply
Specific to this point as someone that has lived in England forever I find it really strange how on the reddit atheism subreddit all the (American) posters act as if they're persecuted for their Atheism whereas in England religion is just something people do in private if they do it at all, it's hard for me to understand the way r/atheism posters perceive their persecution, but reading someone from America saying that how England is very different with religion makes it easier to understand.
[+] [-] tzs|13 years ago|reply
No, you've went into a field whose practitioners are largely non-Christian, and since you've probably acquired most of your social circle directly or indirectly through that you mostly meet non-Christians.
If a kid who grew up in a religious family in London and went to a religious school most of his life where almost all his social group was religious left the UK after school and moved to Seattle to work for Google or Microsoft, he could reasonably blog years later that the US is largely a non-Christian country based on his experience.
[+] [-] pawelwentpawel|13 years ago|reply
10$ note - "in god we trust". £10 note - Charles Darwin picture on it.
I guess it explains a lot.
I read a few comments about atheists being "ashamed" in states - I don't really see that happening in europe. Even in the far eastern parts of it being overly (and I probably have a bit of a different definition on this word) religious is being nowadays quite often considered weird. Especially among young people in bigger cities.
[+] [-] Alex3917|13 years ago|reply
Less than 30% of American adults are at a healthy bodyweight, so it's really not an unfair generalization.
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
It's inexcusable, considering the breadth of information available to the contrary, but most just never expose themselves to it. I know I didn't until I moved away.
[+] [-] yaix|13 years ago|reply
Found this in the comments. After having lived in different countries for the last 15 years (originally from Germany), that has become my conclusion, not only regarding the US and UK. It takes some time (years) to get really used to a culture and understand its thinking.
[+] [-] davidb_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mberning|13 years ago|reply
As for his specific points
1. I have no idea how somebody with half a brain and access to the internet can have this notion. Maybe I am the exception to the rule, but I never fancied my Country to be any more 'important' than any other nation. In fact, the opposite was often considered given that modern civilisation has few roots in the Americas.
2. Never believed in religion in the first place
3. Every country has their fair share of embarrassing points, and of course their fair share of unfortunate embarrassing people. I have rather enjoyed seeing that the human condition is more or less the same the world over. I also feel occasionally embarrassed by my fellow countrymen, but I figure the best way to counteract that is to represent myself, and by association my country, the best I can.
4. As for that, we will see. I've not seen anything that screams out to me "This economy is vastly more productive than the US" in the areas that I have visited. Perhaps public transport and some infrastuctural aspects lend themselves to a more efficient country, and the US should certainly take a look at those things.
Oh well, I'm glad to have had the experience of travelling throughout Europe, but I would expect some deeper takeaways from somebody that literally spent years immersed in a foreign culture.
[+] [-] tyler_ball|13 years ago|reply
Thank you!
* closes tab
[+] [-] bane|13 years ago|reply
http://wikitravel.org/en/United_States
[+] [-] spiredigital|13 years ago|reply
It's certainly chic to hate on America these days, but I now tend to give much less credence to those who do.
[+] [-] scott_meade|13 years ago|reply
This gravitation toward a shared belief makes it not surprising that living where most peoples' belief is that God does not exist would result in one sharing that belief.
Thanks for the article. It's always great to see other perspectives on the world.
[+] [-] jetsnoc|13 years ago|reply
A few years later, I worked abroad for some time. Post "9/11" people were cruel and bitter. They really despised us! This year though, everyone was talking about Apple, Instagram and Facebook! I don't know if these are just hot topics but people were excited to talk with an American about them. I was glad to hear the tone had changed some.
[+] [-] intellegacy|13 years ago|reply
I spent 3 years abroad, recently returning to the USA this summer, and I will try to outline some of what I learned, although it is somewhat difficult as this knowledge has become ingrained in me and obvious as to seem to require no explanation.
- English as lingua franca
The average person doesn't realize how dominant English is as the world's language, how that dominance is reflected by our leading industries, and how the prevalence of English helps exports our culture, values, and by extension, our products. For example, the majority of the latest scientific research is written in English, regardless of the scientist's nationality. Every programmer across the world learns a rudimentary English just by virtue of being a programmer, as most programming languages are in English and the majority of programming technical guides are in English. When travelers of different nationalities meet in a 3rd country, they speak English. When businessmen of different countries do business together, they speak English. As native speakers we have a built-in advantage. But our potential weakness is failing to understand different nationalities. Especially as the other countries grow in power. I've heard, from the English-speaking Chinese in China: "We understand your culture and speak your language. You, on the other hand, don't understand ours at all. We have the advantage."
- Dominance of American cultural media, internet, and education Hollywood movies, American music artists and bands, tech companies, and higher education all hold significant leads over whatever competitors foreign countries can muster. Besides China, the rest of the world doesn't use their version of Facebook, and none of them have the engineers to keep up. The majority of the top 100 Universities in the world are in the USA. And most of the world watches American music and movies. Its ironic: a commonly heard stereotype is that Americans have little to no culture, when American popular culture is by far the most dominant in the world and unmatched in its breadth, choice, depth, and quality.
- US Consumerism This is a little more complex, but you still can see this if you look hard enough: the world economic system is built around US consumers. Take a look at prices for electronics in Asia, for example. In the very places where the electronics are made, the retail prices are all significantly higher than those in the US. Samsung and LG TVs cost more in Korea than they do in America. Computers cost more in China than they do in the USA. I frequently found myself waiting until I returned to US soil before I made any big ticket electronic or computer purchases, because the savings were ridiculous.
Once you look into the price disparity, you realize that other countries, mainly the exporting ones in Asia, manipulate their currencies, and build their economies on the back of US consumers. It's a potentially dangerous cycle because our consumerism habit is encouraged and built-in to the system via currencies and our addiction to credit, making it a hard habit to break.
- the effectiveness of USA institutions: legal system, courts, law enforcement, Congress, media, higher education Good governance and higher civilization aren't created overnight, and are not easy to develop. If you look at any 3rd world country, you notice immediately that the country often borders on anarchy due to lack of effective political / governing structure. Either the President is a brutal dictator, or the police are corrupt, or military generals are the de facto leaders, or the legal system is weak and the laws unenforced, and the list goes on and on. Effective government does not arise from air. It is built on decades or centuries of experience and stability. To maintain its effectiveness is a constant struggle against the evils inherent in man: laziness, corruption, abuse of power, etc. and a fight that seems to be slipping away from us in recent years.
The strong laws, governance, loyal military, and highly educated and productive citizens of a country are what make countries like America, those in Western Europe, and increasingly, some in East Asia good places to live.
Interestingly, even though reddit seems to hate cops, in my experience cops in the USA are paragons of professionalism compared to those in developing countries. It's hard to imagine, but cops there just don't take the profession very seriously. The standards of law enforcement in developed countries are another level entirely. And you can apply this "higher level" concept to the other areas I outlined above: judges, courts, the military, businesses, politicians.
If we let our vigilance slack, then the strong civilizing forces, whose bond make a civilization great, will begin to weaken, and the country's excellence will begin to regress.
Sorry, I took a tangent there.
- differences in political systems and their effectiveness This is hard for me to explain because I consider it as self-evident as 2+2=4, but I'll do my best. It's clear to me, and many other people who have studied political systems across the world, that democracy isn't a one-model-fits-all-countries panacea. Democracies (if you could call them that) often fail where there is no historical precedent or experience for it, and the populace is unfamiliar with or uninterested in participating in the democratic process. Uneducated, unengaged citizens are a recipe for democracy failure. Other factors that ruin a democracy's effectiveness: corrupt leaders and lax enforcement. The leaders just rig the elections and the enforcement just lets it all slide.
Another issue is public policy. Looking at what other countries have tried and how it works in their countries is like drawing up a theoretical policy experiment and then seeing the results before your eyes. The policy's results won't ever match 1-1 with your native country if said policy was implemented due to differences in culture and environment, but just seeing how others have done things opens your mind to the possibilities and forces you to understand a different perspective. The same applies to cultural values or mores. Often I have found myself in Asia in wonder at some common practice or another that is superior, in almost every way, to what we have in America. (And I've found the opposite as well).
- crumbling US infrastructure vs. the World's "Crumbling" is a bit of hyperbole, but still, the first thing you notice when traveling is how new and modern the rest of the world's airports are compared to those in the USA. New York, America's supposed mecca of culture and a truly international city, has airports whose decrepitness puts lesser cities to shame. Don't get me started on the subways.
I would say that the USA has one of the best governing infrastructures, but only average (and slipping fast) physical infrastructure. Oh, and US Broadband speeds rank is #12. I'm particularly emotional about that one.
Overall, the US is still one of the best countries to live in the world for a number of its strengths that are unmatched, and will not be surpassed for the next several decades, if ever. But signs are showing that the civilizing fabric which holds our country together is weakening: deadlocked political process, income and wealth disparity at historical levels, the Great Recession, and what some might lament as a decline in values and morals into a disgusting morass of consumerism, selfish individualism, and celebrity worship.
But it could be all part of the cycle, and the future is still bright. The highly educated citizenry, and especially the youth(courtesy of all those student loans!), are some of our greatest strengths.
Meanwhile, at the risk of sounding un-PC, the uneducated underclass is our biggest weakness, although I'm unsure whether historically it is larger in size relative to the population.
I'm not bearish on America... yet. There are too many good things going for it. The energy, dynamism, ambition, and intelligence are all in absurdly high concentrations in numerous US cities. The political system just needs a little tweaking.
[+] [-] culturestate|13 years ago|reply
On this point, it's important to note that the price disparity is largely due to the way items are taxed in Asia. South Korea has both VAT and a luxury item tax; China has a luxury tax on foreign brands. You need only look to Hong Kong, which has the cheapest prices in the world on e.g. Apple products (because you need a microscope to find a tax in Hong Kong) to break down this model. Your main point re: currency manipulation, especially in China, is still valid and important, but this is a bad example.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
Living in Los Angeles, I notice the same sort of thing about our freeways. I think part of it is that they were the among the first built, and they haven't really updated.
Interchanges are a particular sore point. The 101 north to 405 south interchange is a joke. One lane, 270 degree turn. Traffic crawls through it. And it's literally at the busiest interchange in the world.
Or the 110 north to the 5 north. It's like a theme park ride it's so narrow and curvy and hilly.
Of course, the 134 east to the 5 north has no interchange ramp. You have to leave the freeways and get on surface streets to change over. There's a few of those around.
[+] [-] 77ko|13 years ago|reply
"Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it)."
A good review of the book: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/what-ma...
[+] [-] excuse-me|13 years ago|reply
Couldn't you have just copied them from Britain and France - wouldn't that have been easier ?
[+] [-] TamDenholm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenwei|13 years ago|reply