Yeah, the "few aspects" like the prison system, healthcare, inequality, corruption, homelessness rates, freedom of the press, air pollution, crime rates, discrimination, police violence, homicide rates, unemployment benefits, social nets...
For context, I'm married to a person from a real developing country, as it's actually defined. I'm sending multiple family members to school there so they can get out.
Every single person in her family has done everything they can to get out. Every single person I know there has done everything they can to get out. Every single person they know has done everything they can to get out.
Getting out is the primary motivator for people in developing countries. Whining about the country being unfair is something that perhaps privileged children who know nothing about "developing countries" do -- other people get out.
The US is nothing like a developing country.
(assuming you can even find a place to take you - things are easier here for this crowd, tech skills are in-demand and usually open doors, but if you are highly skilled in working a register at K-Mart you're not going to find many countries open to you when you go to immigrate somewhere else.)
For a lot of people it's just easier to take the chance that you won't be one of the people who falls into the gears of justice. I won't even say "don't commit a crime" because (a) committing a crime is not even necessarily a requirement to end up in prison given how bad our judicial system is particularly surrounding plea deals/etc. Lots of innocent people end up in jail. And (b) virtually everyone regularly does things that are, by a strict enforcement of the US legal code, punishable by prison sentences. "3 felonies a day" is perhaps an exaggeration, but 3 felonies a month or a year is still a lot of potential legal exposure. The system relies heavily on prosecutorial discretion, which falls apart when you have prosecutors who are elected on the basis of high conviction rates instead of doing what is just.
To put it simply: 1% chance of being tortured, vs having to uproot your whole life. A lot of people will choose the 1% chance of being tortured.
If the US were really so bad, people would leave. The people who do leave typically leave for tax purposes opposite to your belief.
One of these times was on a late night Santa Cruz to SF drive, my friend and I got too tired to drive and slept on the beach near McNee Ranch state park, in the middle of being arrested, with five guns drawn, one officer said - this is verbatim 'That's a north face jacket, I don't think this guy is homeless. Are you Homeless?' and just like that I was restored to full white privileges and the arrest was off.
I don't think changing law enforcement is easy, I believe law enforcement reflects the power relationships of society - you won't change law enforcement with out changing the society in which it exists.
I love California, it broke my heart to leave, I'll never really know if I made the right decision, and I'm pretty sure if I didn't have four kids I'd be back there.
Either you are a slow learner, or you make a point to be a smartass with cops. Do you think it's specific to American cops? Maybe try that with Algerian or Brazilian cops and see how things turn out for you.
This feels like conversation that could get personal and nasty quick. I don’t want that to happen, I get your point, if a problem is avoidable and you don’t avoid it, you’ve got to question why.
And do I really fail to submit out of democratic integrity or am I just stubborn? Honestly I don’t know.
Also I want to tell you about my friend, who when instructed to address Detroit police as ‘sir’ replied ‘I struggle to believe her majesty has granted you a knighthood’
He’s stubborn - he’s also ridiculously smart and charismatic, enough to talk his way out of a beatdown most of the time
I was asked if a bag of teriyaki beef jerky in its original packaging, the edge of which was sticking out of my pocket was drugs.
Eventually I was arrested for saying fuck off while walking away. I was charged, appealed eventually rejected because half of America does not actually have any rights at all unless you have thousands of dollars and if you need that money to buy medicine or pay rent you are fucked.
Then there is the time I was almost arrested by virtue of helping a black man move a couch from his own home because burglers always leave the electronics and jewelry and take the giant furniture.
I'd keep going but the other abuses are more personal.
Your perspective is based on being well off and white.
Since it is harder to _simply not be a criminal_ and prisons there are proven not to fulfill their role, maybe OP simply wishes that this aspect of the country would improve. I don't think he/she was whining, or even saying that everything in the country terrible.
European misunderstanding and distortion of American society never fails to entertain.
"American Airlines overcharged you by $1 and you're complaining? WHY NOT JUST START AN AIRLINE YOURSELF?"
If only we were all god, your comment would be helpful.
It also happens that I don't have children or family members that need me to care for them, etc. It would get significantly harder if I had to deal with that (though I did move a cat internationally, which was not trivial).
The irony of course is that having the privilege for all that (cash reserves, highly employable skillset, etc) means that most of the problems in the US don't actually affect you as much as others. The people who are getting screwed the worst by the terrible systems in the US are in no position to extract themselves.
Can you explain this to me? It seems like an extreme way to live that would preclude anyone from living anywhere that's not perfect or using anything that's not perfect. (And nothing is perfect.)
Why not just address the criticisms individually, rather than arbitrarily bundling them into a person's decision on where to live and what to use?
See: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
You: "Why don't you just move?"
This really sounds like saying "Cheer up!" to a person suffering from depression.
EDIT: Spelling
That's reality in a developing country.
The US is not in any way like a developing country. Comparing it to one is an act of such entitled privileged whining it's absurd.
> That's reality in a developing country.
> The US is not in any way like a developing country. Comparing it to one is an act of such entitled privileged whining it's absurd.
I think you just argued against your own point?
1) You're saying that people from developing countries are desperate to get out. (I have no issue with this claim.)
2) Then you say: the US is not like a developing country.
The post of yours that I responded to effectively says to US citizens "why don't you just move?".
I'll note that: Point 2 (as stated by you!) means that the entirety of point 1 is completely irrelevant if you want to argue against what I said.
Seriously, if you believe other threads on HN are so much better, why stay in this thread?
But apart from the holier than though putdowns, are the comparisons valid?
Because you’d make a much better comment chain with “the comparisons are invalid because XYZ” than “you’re entitled and whiny and I know people who suffer more”
The US is a big place. Not all of it is paradise. I've heard foreign exchange students from countries like Russia, placed in rural communities like Wyoming or Nebraska, describe the conditions back home as better than where they are placed in the US. I've read books describing the Chicago projects at the height of their badness and then visiting some of the poorest cities in Latin America and seeing parallels.
The US is rich, sure, but that wealth is very heavily concentrated along coastal and border states. Saying the US is "nothing" like a developing country would be a false statement as it doesn't take into account the sheer contrast of livelihoods that we have here.
I can't speak to living in the USA but I have lived in Milawe and Fiji, and honestly being poor is definitely bad but some of the stuff happening in the US is a whole other kind of dystopian terrifying.
Fly through a big Asian hub and you have none of that BS, modern clean efficient airports with working toilets that can actually flush and better food.
Not a hard decision.
It all may have changed, but until I hear otherwise (or that the TSA have decided to calm down) I'm happy with my choice.
Edit: As the other comment mentioned, this was also all just for a flight transfer.
In most of Europe, one scans their passport, has their photo taken, and may need to tell a border guard why they're visiting. It takes less than five minutes, even for the former Soviet Union country I visited earlier this year.
If one is traveling to the US from Dublin, there's a sort of franchise of the USA wing of the airport that's quarantined off from everything else, where one has to go through another slow baggage inspection/body scan, even though the Irish Airport staff have already conducted identical inspection/scanning on every passenger there. Then there's a ~1-hour line (looked about twice as long for non-citizens) to wait to be grilled by customs and immigration. Total overhead for me was ~3 hours once I got to the airport there.
When flying in to Seatac, the CBP staff (the first representatives of the US that one talks to, in order to discuss anything being brought along) are all super-muscular giants dressed in full body armour, for maximum intimidation.
As A US citizen, it's embarrassing that our country treats visitors this way. I wouldn't visit if I were from outside the country either, which is almost certainly one of the goals - discourage foreigners from visiting, and discourage citizens from seeing what it's like anywhere else.
So yes, you do think an airport is at least a good starting point for forming an opinion about a country.
Seriously that is crazy. Like the port authority is a good example of New York City. I don't even know how to respond to that.
No, you think that is crazy. That's your opinion, not a fact.
> Like the port authority is a good example of New York City.
I think you are missing the point.
> I don't even know how to respond to that.
Then don't.
I would like to go back some time, just not right now.
American is a combination of a first world country and a third world country under one government. Which one you are born into is a roll of the dice. People travel between the two, but one of them is not shrinking as fast as it should.
The fact that I can point at that doesn’t make me want to move to Sweden, it makes me want to work harder to take care of my neighbors and to change our political climate.
Right, because should an American decide that they like country X more, they can just move to country X, which is waiting for them with open arms.
Like, anyone could be Swedish, right?
Immigration is an easy-peasy thing; who can possibly find it difficult to get a job overseas, learn a language, leave family and friends behind, get an entire new social and support network, lose a ton of money and/or most of your possessions in an overseas move (re-purchasing is often cheaper, but costs a ton either way), jump through a thousand bureaucratic hoops, all with no guarantee of actually having long-term prospects in the country paper-wise.
That's, of course, assuming that no American has crippling debt that would effectively prevent them from going somewhere where people can comfortably live on a smaller salary (since their education and healthcare are free).
No sirree, not a problem at all. Love it or leave it, and when you do, don't come back, just get another citizenship somewhere. Somehow. Should be easy, right?
Also, nobody in their right mind would think to criticize some aspects of a country (healthcare, justice system, etc), while enjoying some others (opportunities as a software developer) that make it worth it to be here. Not even immigrants.
Tell you what, even in 90-s Ukraine, one wouldn't think much about calling an ambulance if someone was real sick. And I wasn't afraid of the cops there. They were corrupt, but predictable; worst case, you have to bribe them. Police shooting unarmed civilians was unheard of. I don't think I've even seen a gun before I moved to the US.
The US has some catching-up to do.
You're speaking from a position of such great privilege that you don't even have a frame of reference to accurately talk about a developing country. They're leaving because they would rather make 500 dollars a month working 20 hours a day at three jobs in Dubai than make 2-5 dollars a month working 20 hours a day at subsistence farming or worse, and they're often doing it so they can support those back home who don't have the skills to find sponsorship to work abroad.
They learn a skill that will let them leave, or they find an agency that is hiring people to work abroad. I know plenty of people who have left their country to find jobs elsewhere -- many of them in the US, many in Japan. Any good nurse from southeast Asia who wants a job can usually get sponsored to come to the US -- there are other professions as well, some in the US and some elsewhere.
And sure, the conditions you describe are unimaginable there. But there's more to the world than the Glorious USA and subsistence farming at $5/month.
You are setting the bar waaaaaay too low. There are many shades out there. There are plenty of countries where the opportunities are much more scarce than in the US, but which nevertheless got a lot of things right that the US got wrong.
And you can make your own "real developing country" definition, just don't expect others to know it. Probably for the best to just name the country you have in mind.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country#Developing_...
[2]http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/developing-countr...
Perhaps you mean "least developed countries"[2]? That's beside the point, however.
The point is, making up definitions and using the equivalent of "love it or leave it" when it comes to talking about the US won't get you far in terms of getting any point across.
And I didn't say "love it or leave it", I asked a question. People who hate where they are, complain about it incessantly, compare it to things they've never experienced in order to denigrate it absurdly, cons the fuck out of me with why they stay.
Cars are already made of recycled materials, especially steel and aluminum. But metals in old cars are melted down in foundries and reconstituted to the proper alloys before being used in new cars; they're just used-as is.
To go back to this analogy, that's basically like completely eliminating the government and creating an all-new one from a blank slate. I don't think you were thinking of doing anything that extreme.
And historically speaking, the only time this happens is usually after a major war when a country loses and becomes occupied by another power (Germany & Japan, WWII), or after a bloody revolution (Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, French Revolution in France). #1 is pretty much impossible here, and #2 is not something I want to be around to witness. The most likely outcome is something much more like #3: the fall of Rome, but on a much shorter timescale. That isn't something I want to witness either.
Some people might even consider that act patriotic or a duty of a citizen to do so.
The US respects the rights people have, and the US gives tremendous opportunity. Is it perfect? Of course not. Are there issues that need to be addressed? Of course there are.
But to compare the US to a developing country is simply profoundly ignorant and a display of such privilege that it shows one simply can't even fathom what a developing country actually is.
I've been there. I've been all over the US, I've volunteered in homeless shelters in the US, I've travelled extensively in southeast Asia. The homeless in the US would be considered extravagantly wealthy in many places in southeast Asia. Southwest Asia too, I've been deployed there more than once.
The US is not a developing country or anything near it. We're the premiere first world country, and we provide opportunity beyond the wildest dreams many people worldwide can ever imagine. That's why the people in real developing countries generally want to come here.