Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

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It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way. NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is much more so than the US.

Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of cultural breakdown. But we cannot be sure the causality doesn't flow the other way. Unfortunately, it's likely a feedback loop. We have bad policy in part due to the cultural and social decline the author describes, and we have cultural and social decline in part due to bad policy. Simply proposing policy changes neglects the complex interdependencies of these things, and is why national demographics are so important in a democracy.

Part of the reason NZ is able to cohere around its policy more than the US is because everyone in NZ (to a greater degree than in the US) shares the same values and cultural identity. This is why you see similarly idyllic societies in the Scandinavian countries. High social cohesion due to shared cultural and ethnic identity. Same in Korea and Japan - although Japanese culture is a good example of some of the downsides of ethnic and cultural homogeneity as well.

>> NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country

Not according to the CIA Factbook it isn't:

NZ: European 71.2%, Maori 14.1%, Asian 11.3%, Pacific peoples 7.6%, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African 1.1%, other 1.6%, not stated or unidentified 5.4%

USA: white 72.4%, black 12.6%, Asian 4.8%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.9%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, other 6.2%, two or more races 2.9% (2010 estimate)

I would say almost quite comparable.

Moreover, the Maori population was just as downtrodden and oppressed as the blacks of the USA, 50 or 100 years ago, and is still on the whole poorer and less educated than the white majority.

Well sure, but they were natives that weren't part of the "culture" one pictures when one imagines an average New Zeala---ohhhhh

Ya, I wasn't saying they have no ethnic or cohesion problems. Simply that they are smaller and more cohesive culturally than the US.

That breakdown leaves Hispanics out of the US, which seems to me to be, a pretty enormous oversight. I imagine they're being lumped in with 'white'. If you break them out separately, I imagine you'll see quite a difference.

The US is something like 62% white when you don't conflate whites and Hispanics.

the 'white' category in the US contains many more groups that would not be considered european on the NZ census, for instance hispanic and MENA ethnicities. the US is about 60% white by a categorization system closer to what is typically used informally.

What about Hispanics? Where did you get that stat from, can you cite your source please?

I'd be careful around claims about cultural identity and homogeneity. A lot of countries, like the scandinavian ones and NZ (and Australia) can look that way from the outside, but I think its a simplistic view. From our perspective, for example, apart from the obvious catastrophic partisan politics that have gripped the US, the US looks like it has a united cultural identity (e.g. a religious devotion to the founding fathers, patriotism, commitment to freedom of speech etc).

There was a recent article where a citizen of a Nordic country got upset at this common view, pointing out that perhaps it seems homogeneous to the US because in the US, today, you are white, black, hispanic, asian etc. There are not strong subdivisions in these categories, it seems, and subsequently they apply this view to other countries. But in Europe and Norway, Sweden etc, there are many flavours of 'white' with a long and recent history of animosity.

NZ is a country with a large indigenous population (the Maori), a lot of pacific island immigration, and increasing and accelerating immigrant population of Indians and Chinese (among others). These all assert social pressures of their own, and I would argue its partially our social safety net and maybe certain aspects of our culture and economic structure that have allowed it to be (mostly) harmonious, so far.

Not saying your entirely wrong, but that it is not (no pun intended) black and white.

Ya, it's definitely a spectrum. NZ is far from the most homogenous, and certainly there are divisions within the Nordic countries. No arguments from me there. But I think its fair to say that the US is more diverse than either of those two places, and that comes with benefits and it comes with problems. My point though is that it does have consequences, which is something that seems unfashionable to point lately.

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