American Culture Ate the World | Hacker News Reader

American Culture Ate the World

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Is there any evidence that Americans are particularly ignorant of the world relative to other nationalities?

in my opinion the evidence is anecdotal from mainly Europeans, the problem there is that Europeans are perhaps more aware of other parts of at least Europe than most nationalities are of their local environment. So the ignorance of Americans is a source of humor.

This however is just a surmise, based on some observation.

The other evidence is that Americans generally know very little of geography, it's a big thing in countries I've visited to laugh about, although given that when I say I lived in Utah in the U.S a lot of years and the geographically cognizant Dane will sagely say "oh, the middle of the country" I'm not sure how much to value that opinion either.

At any rate I don't much value the fact that people can tell you what the capital of Ethiopia is or where Andorra is because these bits of trivia don't actually tell you anything significant about the countries under discussion. It's true, not knowing these things you are extremely unlikely to know anything worth knowing about the region under discussion, but on the other hand it's been my experience that knowing them you somehow think you do know significantly more about the region than someone who does not know whatever trivia is the subject.

Europeans tend to be fairy elitist about their own history and culture.

Specific to the example that you brought up, why is knowledge of Andorra or any of the other European micro states any more geographically important than knowledge of US States? Anecdotally, Europeans will respond that those are _countries_, yet those realistically only exist due to the quirks of European political history, one can hardly hold up Lichtenstein as the geopolitical equal to California, yet in discussions with Europeans it seems that knowledge of its existence is somehow superior.

> one can hardly hold up Lichtenstein as the geopolitical equal to California

Why not?

Sure, technically you can do whatever you want.

But by any measure, political/cultural/economic influence it’s pretty evident that the two are not in the same category.

Liechtenstein has over double the GDP per capita.

well, yeah Liechtenstein has nearly 7 billion, California has 3 trillion.

Yet it’s California that has double the murder rate, massive homelessness issues, not to mention substance abuse, armed robberies and car theft in broad daylight, the list goes on… and ends in an incarcerated population of over 2 million people, whereas Liechtenstein is incarcerating around twenty people. (TWENTY! In the entire population!)

You’re totally missing the thread here.

The discussion isn’t about which is a better place to live/governance. It’s about what’s a more relevant measure of geographical knowledge.

Certainly it cannot be the one that is widely portrayed in ALL Western mass media, because that reduces to common knowledge and not a measure of geographical knowledge. Long live Liechtenstein.

last week someone in Sweden asked me if L.A and San Francisco were next to each other. There is lots of knowledge about California that is not as common as you might suppose.

I mean I'm starting to think you live in Liechtenstein, or maybe in Austria but you sneak across the border for late night nookie?

I mean the arguments you're making, although not really arguments, don't hang together, you talk about GDP per capita which is big because the population is small but then all this other stuff which is partially small because the population is small.

I mean are you sure California only has double the murder rate with its 39 million people vs. Liechtenstein's 38 thousand, because if so, damn!!

Also, does that 20 take into account the people that Liechtenstein is imprisoning in Austria because the sentence would be more than 2 years? When I look at https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/liechtenstein I think not, also it says the official capacity of the prison system is 20 and they are imprisoning 12, but ah hah https://countryeconomy.com/demography/prison-population/liec... 41 males and 2 females were held, I interpret that to mean about 12 were held in Liechtenstein and the rest 28 people were held in Austria as there isn't the capacity in the country.

You know if a country doesn't have the prison facilities to house its prisoners and farms it out to neighboring bigger country this also argues against the particular geopolitical significance of that country.

Finally, re: California, I mean that someplace manages to imprison 0.03% of the world population, while obviously not a great argument for quality of life, really does argue for geopolitical significance.

oops math error, should be 31 people held in Austria.

Ok, so it’s like Cupertino. That’s a fine enough comparison.

I suspect so, but these questions are often defined more by the type of knowledge they would ask.

Canadians tease Americans for not knowing Canada, but that's an unequal comparison. Of course Canadians know more about America than Americans do about Canada. They hear about American news and elections and watch American movies. Ask canadians and americans about Uruguay or Mali and they probably know about the same.

It's not that Americans are dumb or don't care--they are just at the center of the world.

When I go to the gym I pass a McDonald's drive in. Feel a bit annoyed we are letting our minds and bodies be poisoned by American culture but they are all doing it voluntarily. It is like a junkie blaming his drug dealer for the addiction.

Does his drug dealer bear some responsibility? Courts would charge him with committing crimes causing harm to the people they sell to.

A _free_ world... dedicated to free information flows.

Meanwhile, you can't even get AJE on cable in the US

I'm presuming that by "AJE", you're talking about Al Jazeera English.

1. but you can get it over internet? I don't see why it not being available on cable is indicative of "freedom" (ie. government oppression)

2. according to wikipedia the only countries that have it "on cable" are: UK, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Sweden. I guess every other country not on that list are not "dedicated to free information flows" by your criteria?

This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United States based on ideology and national origin; they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!)

The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have. It remains a worthy goal; many of those fighting to realize it remain criminalized, ostracized, and imprisoned.

Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the other countries of the world?

Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies worldwide?

If one were so inclined, one might wonder how these tendencies manifest in one's professional, social, and personal spheres.

Or one might argued about the advantages of higher-bandwidth system RAM vs faster SSD's… or vi vs emacs…

You have good points but what is freedom and who is free? Most minorities don't think "we live in a free society" in this same sense.

Relatively speaking, there maybe other countries with better freedom to specific groups but America is still the best place to be if the freedom you want is freedom to make a lot of money.

You are confusing the animosity between social groups with lack of freedom. The incarceration rate, much like the gun ownership rate is a direct result of americans using their freedom to have their elected officials pass specific laws. Being tough on crime is still one of the best policies a politician can advertise in a campaign because that's what people want to hear. The free people use their free ballots to make sure miniroities are kept in check by an army of cops enganged in a "war on drugs".

This is freedom. It includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. All of the problems you mentioned are caused by freedom, not by oppressive forces that disregard freedom.

Freedom in america means political participation. No one has protests as much as americans or vote at the scale of america (except maybe india). You can free all the prisoners and disband all the cops if enough americans agree.

It's not lack of freedom but quite the opposite, the people, your neighbors excercising their freedoms to an unfortunate end.

Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to.

> Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to.

You mean like how the correlation between public support for a policy and the probability of that policy becoming law is ≈0?[1][2]

[1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...

How do you interpret that? How many people actually vote? When there are no better politicians, how many people attempt and fail at getting elected to replace them? Also, the changes taking effect may not have correlation but over time, the changes people want, they seem to happen (see drug legalization)

Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them. #1 issue being jobs. On issues where rich people are in conflict with the majority, how much impact will the majority accept to affect the change? That is what politicians have to decide.

>Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them.

You argue freedom includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. What you're describing sounds like the minority restricting the freedom of the majority.

It is the minority influencing the desire of the majority not coercing them. You can pass laws that will make them do business elsewhere and hurt jobs,economy,etc... if the popular sentiment for the law outweighs popular sentiment against rich people excercising their freedoms. In the end the majority are still free but that does not mean the rich are not allowed influence. Not just the rich, but the well connected and social groups or people in specific geographies like DC. Ultimately, the rich can do many things in retaliation but they cannot actually stop a person from running for office , restrict their speech or restrict others from voting for them.

The rich and corporations, as terrible as they are, are not the root cause. "We the people" are.

Yes to both. If I cannot walk down my street in the evening, I am not free. We are lacking in prisons.

Americans aren’t free because we enforce borders? What?

>This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United States based on ideology and national origin

Is there a country in the world that doesn't do this? I understand that some people want some sort of borderless society, but support for this is basically a fringe belief in every country.

>they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!)

It's worth noting that the courts have ruled that such restrictions were unlawful. Given that, it seems like the system was working as expected?

>The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have.

The problem with this argument is that it hinges on the definition of "free society", and therefore any discussion over it is inevitably going to end up arguing over what "free society" means. It's trivial to make the same statement about other country that's allegedly a "free society". eg.

"Sweden is a free society."

"Actually no, how can you even claim that? They have hate speech laws which severely limit your ability to make unorthodox views on race/gender. Only the US (which has no hate speech laws) is a free society!"

>Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the other countries of the world?

Perhaps, depending on how strongly it feels about crime. For instance, Taiwan has incarceration rate that's roughly twice of China. Does that mean it's not a free country? Or is a 2x factor small enough to let slide?

>Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies worldwide?

That sounds surprising until you realize that:

1. many metrics relating to size follow a pareto distribution, so not surprising at all that "major cities" in the US exceed the median country in some metric. For instance, if we look at GDP, we see that the median "country/territory"[1] has a gdp of 26.461 billion. If we compare that to data from the BEA[2], we see that there's a whopping 113 metropolitan statistical areas that exceed the median "country/territory" GDP.

2. "national armies" tend to be smaller than "police officers" in most countries, which make the criteria even easier to fulfill.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2] https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-area...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

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