2 points to make on that:

1) "Conservatism" these days would arguably be a US phenomenon as leading democracy in the Anglophone world. They certainly didn't get started supporting a monarchy.

2) And it is really interesting to note that, while I think monarchies are stupid, it was a remarkably good strategy. As far as I know (my history might be about to betray me) the UK didn't have an equivalent of the Terror after the French revolution or the period where the French killed off people like Lavoisier. To say nothing of the debacles in places like Russia (Communists) or Germany (Nazis) when they moved away from monarchism.

The UK probably should get rid of the King; but in hindsight a slow transition is arguably the cleverer path. It is a complex topic; the aristocrats in Europe are systematically underwhelming.

I concur with everything you said, and to be clear, I wasn’t specifically referring to big C Conservatives, GOP or otherwise, which I agree are straying from small c conservative values. I was referring specifically to political conservatism which I understood to be about minimal intrusion in private affairs. It would appear no mainstream political parties still stand for this.

> The least well off 10% here live better lives than the top 10% of a large number of places.

You're absolutely blind if you think that. Tell me, in what place do the top 10% live worse life than the bottom 10% in the USA? Keep in mind, the bottom decile of income in the USA is $10k/year - think about how a person that earns that lives.

>> We should figure out what they did right, and then keep doing it.

Slavery, settler colonialism modulo a bit of indigenous genocide, toppling democracies and supporting dictators all over the place, exploiting the natural world until it cried "mommy" and then keeping at it until we now have a gigantic environmental and climate crisis, and let's not forget investing more than anyone else on the world's most powerful military which was then used to invade agrarian societies armed with their grandparents' hand-me-down pea-shooters, and of course dropping two atom bombs and killing a couple hundred civilians in one of the worst atrocities of the worst war in history just to show who's boss.

etc etc etc.

Edit: as a matter of fact, the US did get something very right that everyone else keeps getting wrong: it invested in human capital by keeping its borders relatively open during at least some periods of time, so that people could keep coming in that eventually became the most dynamic sections of society. Very few others have done that, and almost nobody got it as right as the US. And yet, it is the "conservatives" today in the US that try their damnedest to kick the door shut against the windfall of human capital that keeps dropping in their lap, even as they keep outsourcing the US' most productive industries to one of its biggest competitors, China. That's not conservative, it's reactionary and completely idiotic to boot.

How do you know it is regardless of my nudging?

Doesn't really fit in with the "hacker" vibe, though, does it?

I'd wager the majority inside the US knows that it's behind in many fields but don't know exactly which ones. We learn to disregard people speaking blanket praise but don't learn enough about other countries from our media and schooling to argue against them. From the outside then this looks like most of our population thinks we're the best in every respect, but on the inside there's a very large and growing sentiment of dissatisfaction and pessimism.

No, I mean exactly US residents.

I live in US. I keep hearing stories how everything is better in Europe (they tend to cherry-pick good stories from different EU countries). The only areas where we get a consensus that US leads the way are probably gun rights and large pickup-trucks.

Their usage is improper. If that was their intention, it should have read “every area”.

I was visiting a relative in their $3M+ house in Bronte and saw plenty of it. Not in the front facades of the homes, but drive through the back alleys, and you can spot some in < 1 min. I remember an uncle there who's neighbor had a fibro cement mail box which was built into some stone work.

I agree my usage of "plenty" was more in absolute terms. It is probably thousands to tens of thousands, which is small in percentage terms. I also spent a lot of time on Australian farms, and they have lots of asbestos sheets buried in places. Most farmers would rather pile it up or bury it then pay the costs of having it removed properly.