Ask HN: Considering Living Abroad Given Political Instability
Things are obviously pretty crazy at the moment. Are there any places folks from the US have moved abroad and experience as enjoyable and reasonably stable socially and politically?
- First, the rest of the world doesn't want us - unless you're retired. If you're retired and have money, then they'll talk.
- Political instability? Many, many countries in the world would envy our "political instability." Don't lose sight of that.
- Canada definitely doesn't want a huge influx of us Americans. I lived in Canada for a while working on a project. It's probably the worst of all worlds - so familiar, yet so different.
- Every generation of Americans have been called to stand and fight for America. Now it's our turn. We're letting them down if we flee now.
- Understand that America worships money above all else. Whichever party wins just understand they'll be working on behalf of our corporate overlords. It's pretty much been that way since the days of the Rockefellers.
- When you're really feeling down, just remember Thomas Jefferson thought the common man was too ignorant to be trusted in electing leadership. That's why he only got to elect a representative. The state legislature elected the state senators, and the electoral college elected the president. These days I'm thinking maybe ol' Tom knew what he was talking about? ;)
I understand that the US has problems too but consider they are familiar problems and, to some extent, they are your problems as well. You can't run away from them without cutting ties.
Personal anecdote: I moved my family back to America, as it happened exactly on Jan 20, 2017 (inauguration day). I could've chosen to stay abroad but I felt a sense of duty to return and support my stateside family and friends through what was sure to be a hard four years, soon to be a hard twelve.
Re: the Jeffersonian ideal, I concur. Capitalist-mediated mob rule (which is effectively what we have now) has absolutely no resemblance to the republic envisioned by our founders - we must return to that politeia. If not, we explicitly give up on the cultural experiment that we once called America. Our current system bears no resemblance and is in danger of losing sight of that vision in the next generation.
I think a lot of us have this broad, seemingly undefinable feeling of anxiety. I think part of that feeling comes from the algorithmically controlled feeds that bait our amygdala. Another part of that anxiety comes from consuming news that has nothing to do with our local lives. Political news stokes your fears because it makes your more likely to vote, so what you're experiencing is likely ads and "news" stories designed to stir up your emotion to encourage you to go to the polls.
In the past year, I have severely reduced most of my consumption of national news, instead focusing on local events... things that effect my life daily. I have noticed a significant reduction in my anxiety levels. I also deleted all social media except for messaging apps to talk with friends and families. That has been great too.
Every country/kingdom/empire eventually faces the crisis of financial inequality, where the rich become so obscenely rich and the poor so desperately poor that the majority lose faith in the system. This takes decades, sometimes centuries, but the slow drift towards inequality is a tidal force that requires periodic fixes in order to avoid a bad fate.
Some older societies engaged in pot latch or jubilees or other means of peaceful redistributions of wealth. Others suffered revolutions or civil wars after the people completely lost faith and engaged in mob rule to achieve their justice.
Sister comments talk about other places being politically unstable, but of the first world countries, America is currently the least stable by a wide margin. Next to America, France looks like a shining beacon of a functional system.
There are many places to live in that are calm and stable, and some of them even have decent economies to boot (I'd name a few, but then the local curmudgeons will seep out of the woodwork to wax poetic about their local storm-in-a-teacup).
So yes, there are options. The quickest test of stability is the rich-poor divide. The real question to ask yourself is: "Do I leave, or do I stay and try to fix things?"
FWIW, I grew up on Richard Scarry books and got de Tocqueville in school. For the vibe of the former in general, and the overlapping patchworks of multiple voluntary associations of the latter in particular, things are defo better here than my (caveat: twentieth-century) memories of the Old Country.
I think there might be a moralizing lesson here about the Old Continent being not as supportive of the SW industry, CH being interesting because of the well maintained balance between ag, traditional industry, tech, finance, SMEs,MNCs, etc.
I don't want to extend the analogy to algebra/syntax (vs geometry or analysis or diagrams) but one can certainly go there.
As the Russian saints of XXe & XIXe siecle might agree, the problem with unreasonable effectiveness is that it gives certain intellects more effectiveness than their reason (native(/social? holocratic?) cognitive abilities) can handle. Putting the human housecat amongst human flightless birds? At the end of the story the housecat still gets to starve to death or be shot.
The nerd may become the jock, and the jock may become the nerd, but ultimately more value is extracted from the whole than is returned to it..
The second law of cognitodynamics?
Contact with equuids, or CH culture being very outdoorsy certainly helps to remind the housecat that the pigeons are not as dumb as they think, and more than deserving to be more-than-kept-alive, and (in the economic context), "squeezed for their non-cognitive value* but otherwise neglected"
Sorry to sometimes state that TK was a saint, but without him, I wouldn't have understood the message of the Russian saints/Grothendieck (who overemphasized the role of what seemed to be traditional religion)
(To me TK is like Woland (the smith?) in Mastr i Margarita)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_the_Smith
(Somehow apotheosized by the Greeks to an actual deity)
I am starting to think that mandatory (ie of the fiducial duty) constant close contact with your peers' toddlers needs to be reified as the core abstraction of the kibbutzim that needs to be kept alive, at all costs.
(With the difficulty, of course, in having a good working definition of "peer". I know what bad definitions are though: fellow officers, aristocrats, software engineers, founders..)
"Purgatory is the other [eg self-styled elites] in the same equivalence class of hubris**/humility ratio"
**Offensiveness to higher minds
Not really free Lagniappe: https://youtu.be/wyLjbMBpGDA
That asked, your questions are simple but strike deep (so that I suspect it was not)!! Thank you!
By moving abroad and being in a different time zone you have a good excuse not to take their phone calls anymore and/or keep them short. With your mind clear you can then write cleaner code faster and be happy.
In his current campaign, he has discussed discarding the Constitution and has schemed to throw out election results that don't favor him.
He openly admires foreign fascists and enemies of the US, including Putin and Orban. His last attempt at ending peaceful democratic transitions of power only failed because his vice president was more loyal to the US than to him.
Many people are rightfully worried that he will win and end peaceful democracy in the US, which he has openly promised to do by refusing to accept any unfavorable election results.