Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck
Unfortunately there isn't a direct solution (if I remember right), as much as an excellent assessment of where things go wrong and why they are hard to fix (and thus a direction in which we can push to improve things).
https://www.amazon.com/Inadequate-Equilibria-Where-Civilizat...
I suspect this article has done a good job of shining a spotlight on a situation where accountability has disappeared.
Any location is a compromise, it's about weighing what's most important to you. After a decade in new Zealand I see it's problems very clearly as compared to the uk and while I've witnessed my birth country melt down spectacularly over the last few years, I can also see that my home country has a bleak future without a significant change of course.
If anyone reading this does move to a new country please take on just one piece of wisdom from me when you do so: Do NOT establish a friend group in your new country that consists primarily of other expats. You'll get stuck in an echo chamber where comparisons between places are always de jour. This should be recognized as toxic. To properly settle into a new place conversation is best done inside your own head with yourself or (sparingly) with your partner. Being careful about this can make all the difference between successfully integration and, well, other less desirable outcomes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51129580
There was a piece on BBC radio 4 about this. Stuck in a cell and not allowed to lean on walls had to sit up right the whole time horrendous.
Usa has its problems, it also has a constitution and the first amendment. Sadly here in the UK we do not.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/17/nhs-provokes-fur...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2020/11/17/how-mu...
In particular, why you think this is "the NHS", and not some specific services in one part of the country, and also why these patients can't make use of private healthcare instead.
Smokers and obese people are being prevented from receiving surgeries that are not deemed "essential" unless they stop smoking for 8 weeks or loose weight, respectively.
> In particular, why you think this is "the NHS" and not some specific services in one part of the country
Maybe this question isn't to be taken literally, but multiple articles' titles with some variation of "NHS bans some obese and smokers from surgery 'indefinitely'"
> and also why these patients can't make use of private healthcare instead.
As of 2015, only 10.5% of population was using private insurance [0]. We could assume roughly 89.5% of population is covered by the NHS since it's given by default. If you cannot afford private insurance, you will only have NHS.
In my opinion, I believe having a public option will slowly eliminate private insurance or at least reduce the types of services available. Additionally I think it's dangerous for the government to set that sort of precedent.
[0] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...
> If you cannot afford private insurance, you will only have NHS.
Yes, that's the point. If you can't afford private healthcare in the US you have much more limited options.
Well thanks for pointing out my errors in a nice way.
There are few countries where the taxes are lower than the US Federal ones. Thus though you will have to file a tax return, in most cases you won't owe any additional taxes.
What makes the US more expensive is all the non-tax fees that are included in those foreign countries' taxes (e.g. medical costs). So you still save.
Perspective: not a US citizen through currently living in California.
But I will say that the part about the actual cost of living being more deceptive than the taxes you pay is definitely true.
I have heard that it is fairly hard for foreigners who don't speak the language. I am still considering moving there but more so due to neo-orientalist tendencies and less because I think it's a good idea...
"Hard times create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times create weak people. Weak people create hard times."
We only get the leaders and government we deserve.
Ouch: “America is #1” is such an insidious belief system.
Have you really opened your eyes to how some countries have much, much better governing systems? Many Scandinavian countries have a higher population than most US states, yet somehow they seem to function better in so many dimensions.
I am from New Zealand and the worst interaction I have had with a government department for many many years was a breeze to deal with: competent phone help talking to a real person, emailing directly with staff, issue resolved. I am very confident the problematic process will be fixed properly within the next few years, because my experience is that every system in NZ I have ever had to deal with eventually gets fixed. For example tax returns are a breeze, and get easier each year. New Zealand has a higher population than 50% of the US states, and we are in the boondocks of the world transportation wise, yet somehow we manage to get our shit together.
Of course NZ has problems of overruns, collusion, defalcation, bribery, and corruption. Yet somehow they seem to be becoming less common... it seems to me our government keeps improving on multiple dimensions. The biggest disappointments I have had with my government have been due to pressures from the US (five eyes, copyright “reform”, trade interference, political interference, war on drugs, propaganda). I regularly read a story about the US where a structural problem just never gets resolved, or even worse, it is decaying year by year.
I have travelled the world, and you can cherry-pick areas where the US is resoundingly better than NZ (or the Scandinavian country of your choice)... I am talking about an overall measurement of functioning governance and society.
So if you're comparing a government the size of a US state to the US federal government, and saying the states do better, yeah, sure, but it's not a fair comparison. You can find US states that do better than the US as a whole, too. A much better comparison is the EU.
The US is the geographical size that is almost twice the Roman Empire (9 million km^2 for the US, 5 million km^2 for the Roman Empire), with widely varying climates and therefore economies, and a diverse set of cultures. To suggest that the solutions for a Scandinavian country (relatively homogeneous culture and climate, population roughly the size of a major US city) is unhelpful.
It's easy to say "these other people with a completely different history, geography, culture, and population" do it so much better, but it's just not helpful. Let me know hen you figure out how to apply Scandinavia or NZ to New York, the South, Utah, California, rural Iowa, and Alaska, and you can figure out a way to convince everyone it's in their best interests.
GP’s argument wasn’t that the Scandinavian model is better, they were instead forcefully rejecting the idea that everyone is as bad or worse than America. It is very common for liberals to point at Scandinavia as the ideal model, but that is not core at all to their argument.
Furthermore, while you might have a point about the geographic size of the US, as an individual it’s not clear why I should care. Living under corruption sucks, regardless of the root cause. The size of ones nation doesn’t really provide a lot of psychological protection against country specific negative experiences.
The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US. It seems like the cherry picking is being done by you.
It’s completely meaningless to compare it to the US as if it were similar.
If you compare the US to Europe as a whole, you’ll find just as many problems, and the comparison with individual smaller states would be equally meaningless.
You’ll find this is even true with things like Covid.
And if one felt like they should leave their current country and move somewhere less corrupt, then size doesn't really matter either. If the hypothesis is "living in the US is unpleasant due to corruption" then "but <alternate country> is small" is a bizarre non-sequitur.
I’m commenting on the idea that the US could just copy ideas from other arbitrarily selected states, or that the cause of those states present condition is well understood.
I don’t preclude the possibility of learning from other countries, but I think it’s meaningless to say that just because a small country happens to be running better right now, there must be something it is doing that the US could be doing that would help.
It’s possible that there is, but there is no prima facie evidence of that. If someone wants to make that argument, they need to explain what is being done better and how the US could adopt it. Otherwise it’s just nationalism.
A meaningless cliché argument.
Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware , South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, District of Columbia, Vermont, and Wyoming all have less population than metropolitan Auckland... so do I get to make sweeping generalisations about those states based on that?
There are 32 states with smaller populations than NZ. There are 44 states that are smaller in size than NZ.
The Tokyo Major Metropolitan Area has about the same population as the most populous state of California - so what?
If you did, that would be just as meaningless. Why do you want to make sweeping generalizations?
What’s your point? There exists an island nation of ~5 million is better run than many parts America but worse than the best parts?
What generalization do you seriously think you can make from that?
Every other country in the world manages to model their own policies by using other countries of smaller or larger size, that have wildly different societies and governance.
Each state government in the United States holds legal and administrative jurisdiction within its bounds, yet somehow US states are special, and other countries have nothing worthwhile copying.
Almost every time someone says that other countries manage to do something better, the same tired canards are brought out in attack, usually with the undercurrent of “USA #1”, therefore any other way of doing things is wrong or inapplicable.
I don’t normally argue the point, because the counter-arguments like yours are so predictable and so spectacularly irrelevant.
You mentioned Covid. Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.
You don’t need to go outside the US to be able to contrast two different regions of 5 million people.
Showing that some administrative groups of 5 million have better outcomes than others does nothing to explain how to run a state of 350m in a better way.
You have offered us nothing of explanatory value, merely a statistically obvious observation.
My “counter argument” is predictable because it’s pointing out a predictable flaw I’m what you are saying. Ignoring it doesn’t make it less true.
If you understand the causes of NZ’s better than average governance, and can also explain why it underperforms some states, then why not offer an explanation?
If you can’t offer explanations, then perhaps that tells us something.
California could compare itself with other countries and improve some of its governance. I believe that a major roadblock to that path is the ambiance of American excellence, that blinkers the sight of citizens to solutions found in other parts of the world.
Individually, there are many citizens with a suitable social wealth that could choose to have a demonstrable effect upon the governance of their state.
Keep an open mind, try to avoid memes of mindless arguments, make an effort to improve your own governance, and if all else fails if you are technically wealthy you could always move to a country that has better social wealth.
California is the largest state on many important metrics, so usually it is comparing against other states that are much smaller on those metrics. I believe the size of New Zealand is not a reason to ridicule any comparison (zepto’s original answer “argued” that the size of NZ matters, which I feel is an evasion).
Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them.
That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally.
Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything.
Individual Californians can make whatever comparisons they like, and so can politicans and other leaders.
Do you have something to offer about what they might want to look at that would help them?
Do you even have an understanding of the problems? It seems like not everyone would agree on what they are.
Otherwise it just seems like your position is essentially just a claim that because there is another country that you think is run better, there are some ideas that you don’t actually understand yourself, that could help.
Edit: you added a paragraph to your comment after I posted my reply.
Please don’t do this as it can look like you are trying to change the context of the reply, which would be a dishonest move.
You added > I believe the size of New Zealand is not a reason to ridicule any comparison (zepto’s original answer “argued” that the size of NZ matters, which I feel is an evasion)
You say you ‘feel’ it’s an ‘evasion’ which is a way of dismissing this comment without addressing it.
If you think the comparison is valid then why not tell us what could California or the US adopt from NZ that would make things better?
If you don’t know, then what’s the point of the comparison, other than a kind of vague nationalism?
Edit 2: oh - I see you have changed a whole bunch of things about your earlier comments to make it look as though you made points that I failed to respond to.
You are completely intellectually dishonest and as such have nothing to offer to political discourse about corruption.
Strawman. No country can adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries - they are always modified to fit.
> Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them.
Strawman. I am arguing comparisons should be made, not blindly discarded because of <insert meme>. Look at what works in other countries, and see what can help your own. Don’t just blindly discard everything as irrelevant because the country is different (for example, a different size.)
> Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything.
Nitpicking.
> Do you even have an understanding of the problems? It seems like not everyone would agree on what they are. Otherwise it just seems like your position is essentially just a claim that because there is another country that you think is run better, there are some ideas that you don’t actually understand yourself, that could help.
Those are starting to smell like personal attacks. Nobody understands much, but we all have some understanding. Yes, I have specific beliefs about what could help, but I have epsilon interest in beginning that particular conversation with you.
Edits as follows:
> Edit 2: oh - I see you have changed a whole bunch of things about your earlier comments to make it look as though you made points that I failed to respond to.
Ummmmm, nope. I didn’t read your child comment first. I did add an edit against the most obvious attack, I should have marked the edit, sorry. I made the edit within a short time, so I didn’t expect your immediate response. The edit (last para) merely reiterates the theme, it doesn’t add anything of substance.
> You are completely intellectually dishonest and as such have nothing to offer to political discourse about corruption.
If you get flagged, it wasn’t me.
“You mentioned Covid. Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.”
As well as lying about not having edited your comments, this comment is contemptuously anti-American and unconstructive. You can always find citizens of a country saying stupid things.
It’s also a non sequitur to what I was commenting on.
Covid numbers across Europe as a whole have been comparable to those across the US as a whole.
The two blocs are of comparable size, so this is an interesting statistic when evaluating effectiveness of governance of a large bloc.
I understand that “look at what other countries do” is hand-wavy meta-advice. However, that is the best advice I have to give.
I could drill down on a particular policy, but how does that help?
The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, and is what most every other country manages to do for breakfast. Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude, and perhaps California can learn from the rest of the world.
If most every other country managed to do this for breakfast, most every other country would be ahead of even the best parts of the US. The fact that the US and Europe as a whole are roughly comparable proves this simply can’t be correct.
“Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude..”
I’m not dismissing other countries. What I’m dismissing is this claim of a fix that everyone else is applying and that the US is not.
You mention strawmen in another part of the thread, presumably you must realize that the idea that California’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ is a strawman.
As I point out elsewhere, the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.
When asked for a single idea about how others are doing better, you simply say ‘look at other countries’ and admit that this is a vague handwave.
Have you considered asking people why they think there is nothing better? You might discover they have different values to you.
Drilling down on policy would be much more meaningful than claiming America’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ you don’t like.
I am trying to help - you are perceiving that as an attack and you continue to incorrectly try and tell me how I think - an obvious impossibility.
> and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.
Throughout this thread I talk about looking to countries that are doing things better, obviously not every country!
You choose to misrepresent a throwaway joke comment as having some deeper meaning: “What most every other country manages to do for breakfast” is an allusion to the now mostly obsolete habit of reading about international news in the morning paper, nothing nefarious.
Seems like what you mean by ‘trying to help’, is to assert that and that the US problems are the result of excuses and an attitude problem.
Do you seriously think that no Americans are interested in how other countries do things? As people have pointed out elsewhere, one of the two major political parties makes a point of citing other countries as models.
You say you are trying to help, but you haven’t offered any helpful suggestions.
You keep saying other countries are better governed, but somehow you haven’t identified a single thing the US could actually do to govern better.
It’s entirely possible that what looks like ‘better government’ isn’t a feature of a system at all, and just the result of a simpler situation of not having had to face particular challenges.
Without actually saying what the US could do better, you really aren’t making a case for anything.
What we do know, is that you keep saying that other countries are better than the US, and that you firmly believe this.
How is this different from the people who believe that the US is better than other counties? Aren’t you just the mirror image of the thing you are criticizing?
Anyway, I got it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552418 – but I don't think populism means “pull the ladder up”; rather, somebody observed that a lot of US populism at the moment is of the “why support any policy that doesn't directly benefit yourself?” variety.
Edit: Though there might be a little Baader-Meinhof in it, now that I think about it. There's no reason people shouldn't've been describing this aspect of US populism before.