America Got Mean (2023) | Hacker News Reader

America Got Mean (2023)

theatlantic.com

29 pointszdw31 comments

The article offers a few explanations. Aside from the abandonment of moral education, the one that stands out to me/comes to mind is the prioritization of scores. For example, I knew kids who started studying for the SAT as soon as they hit high school. They were taking the PSAT as early as 9th grade, maybe 10th. They were also busy outside of that with accelerated courses and other enrichment. And college was more of the same. Can anyone really say that this is balanced?

Attention and energy are finite. If success in education or in your job require a disproportionate amount of energy, then there's less to go around for giving a shit. It doesn't even have to be success, some people are struggling to make ends meet. So I guess that's the economy story?

And after they graduate, the scoring system changes to be income and status based.

The US at least has moved to be much more of a "winner takes all" with taxation changes moving in a regressive direction for the last 45 years.

VAT was probably the most damageable tax "invention" ever created.

What do you mean by this?

The VAT is an broad tax that is eaten fully by the working class, and partially ignored by the owning class (the more you own, the easier it is).

I've never paid VAT on my school stuff (notebooks,pens...) because my uncle owned a company. His wife owned a sport shop and I never paid VAT on any of my sports equipment until 10 years ago when I realized how privileged I was. No VAT on most food because I lived on a farm (that I think is fair), and my other uncle managed to escape the VAT on solar panels by making his own roof a part of his power company. He still had to pay the VAT on his swimming pool (probably), but I'm pretty sure his cars were VAT-free until he sold everything (he had to buy them from himself).

VAT evasion is the reason why independent contractors should start a LLC that employ themselves instead of getting a 'self-employed' status, at least in my country.

Not parent, but a common criticism against VAT is that it broadly increases transaction costs which disproportionately burdens the less well off due to how their consumption is structured and that they have less to spend in the first place.

> […] disproportionately burdens the less well off due to how their consumption is structured and that they have less to spend in the first place.

Offer credits (tax refunds) for lower incomes:

* https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-famil...

https://archive.ph/vmIkR

We'll talk about everything and anything but the elephant in the room, the one thing that makes this society mean: Capitalism. The language of capitalism is the language of competition, of winning and losing, of climbing ladders, of hierarchy, of beating others. Your neighbor, your coworkers, are all competitors. It sets entire groups against each other, the better to divide and rule us. It's hard to see any other outcome but meanness. It's no wonder we are in the midst of a mental-health crisis. How ironic then that the name of the system that is so dominant and yet so devoid of morality does not appear once in the article; whereas "morality" shows up at least a dozen times.

This is a superb article. I’ve noticed almost everything he mentions over the past few decades and it really bothers me. After not going to church for a long time, after I had kids, I started attending again, and it has been great for the kids, but for me as well.

While I'm happy for you, I feel it's worth mentioning that you can be a moral and contributing member to society without participating in a church/organised religion.

Absolutely. However, I have found that a good church is very helpful. Having a set time every week for an hour for everyone to reflect on living in a good and moral way is very useful.

I had been an agnostic for many years, and studied a lot of moral philosophy in college, but I came to realize later in life that many of my deep seated moral intuitions came from church as a kid, and the Christian values I was given by my parents.

There's a big difference between the potential to do something and actually doing it. You can buy an exercise bike for your house, or a bunch of great books but that doesn't make you fit or wise if they just sit there unused. Theoretically all of the materials you need to be a world class physicist are available online, but how many people actually spend years mastering the material without the support of a university? The specific habit of regular reflection and learning, supported by a community, helps turn the theory into practice.

Not sure how marriage rates gets roped into this story of meanness and morality. People in previous generations didn’t marry At higher rates due to better moral direction. They did it because of intense social pressure and the knowledge that there was no real place in society for unmarried adults.

Other ethics are seemingly eaten by economic uilitarianism. Wonder whether you can synthesize a stable intersection with something nicer and have it not be eaten by something (or someone, like a defecting individual or foreign power) else.

We should beware of any advice hearkining us back to a past filled with racism, sexism, starvation and genocide. It was no golden age for most people in the United States. We are in 250 years of a grand experiment, can a pan-ethnic country based on immigration and secular democracy endure? In the past we have been able to reset, sometimes violently, to keep the wheels turning. It is always an open question if it can endure, or if we collapse into a plethora of ethnostates like most of the world.

To suggest that morality is less than it was completely disregards the constant irrepressible lack of morality that has existed from the very beginning of the slaughter of the indigenous Indian population and theft of their land - to the reliance upon slaves to enrich white men to the treatment of women as male housekeepers. And religion did nothing but enforce that lack of morality. It sickens me to think people want to believe morality is somehow "worse" today and that what I describe above is some how the "good old days".

For cripes sake. Geez.

Can't help that the religion which emphasises compassion and selflessness has become unpopular.

That said, it's the inevitable outcome of a more heterogeneous society.

> Can't help that the religion which emphasises compassion and selflessness has become unpopular.

Some of the cruelest, most selfish, and least compassionate people I have known have also been deeply religious; and some of the kindest, most loving, and most caring people I have known have also been deeply religious.

I don’t think that the popularity of religion really has much to do with it either way.

People are driven away from Christianism because of bigotry and intolerance. The message of Jesus got lost somehow at some point for a significant part of Christians.

> Can't help that the religion which emphasises compassion and selflessness has become unpopular.

More likely its that those who claim to follow such a religion frequently act opposite to its purported teachings. Particularly when they are both rich and powerful. Sets the example that you tell people you are compassionate, but then act in a fully selfish way - its the proven route to success.

Religion tends to lead to maaany other problems as history and current Islamic republics amply prove. If one wants compassion and selflessness, one can choose those for their own sake. Otherwise you'll end up using excuses like wisdom of imaginary beings to make people believe stuff and behave according to your exegesis.

That said, if non-cognitivism is true (and I believe it is), one can never deduce a canonical ethics, including one having properties like compassion, either. Biopsychosocial self-regulation is IMO the more interesting angle for looking at human behavior and practiced ethics...

Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

Can you elaborate on this? I presume you mean Christianity, but in the USA as of 2020, 63% identify as Christian. Clearly, identifying as Christian is not as as commonplace as in, say, 1950, but that doesn't mean its become unpopular. Just driving errands, I see very obviously Christian church buildings all over the place. I do not see synagogues or mosques or other religion's edifices.

The author of this piece is Jewish, btw.

Well, of course the ongoing war does make for poor PR and bad rep, but when things will have settled down people will see it again as the truly compassionate way of thought it promotes.

(2023)

Alternate title: Why Americans Are So Awful to One Another

Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37131902

Brooks is beneath anyone's notice. What he is pointing at, in his confused and confusing way, is that the meanness is infantile and could only be overcome by somehow teaching people to grow up, but it is too late for that -- not too late on the historical clock, but too late in the lives of the individuals who were taught nothing from their first breath.

So this person has a few good reasons (and one bad one) and instead of doing some deeper analysis on those reasons they come up with

> The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.

And then spends like 2000 words talking about training people to be more polite as a solution. What an awful article.

Why do you believe his proposed solution is a bad one?

Why would it be a solution? It's just painting over the cracks.

Thing that i observe in myself and that makes me frightened: i am longing to become independently rich because i see it as only plausible way to not be actively evil.

Catch 22: you don't become rich without some good old evil first!

What?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com