The point is basically no one else has politicised this to the extent the US did. Pointing to how different countries solve it differently is missing the point completely.
No, not really. There are a couple municipalities (Portland, OR, e.g.) that have famously not fluoridated their water forever, but for the most part this is not something most places argue about. UT is an exception.
I think most cities manage their own utilities. So, Portland has to make some decision on this issue. Utah doesn’t, it was an active choice to intervene.
downplayed? you judge.
The British abolished slavery with a vote of parliament. The Russian emperor signed a decree, and freed the serfs. Compromised were made, compensation provided and people were made free. But for some reason, Americans felt the matter is important enough to start a civil war around it.
People complain about America being divided and both sides there being unable to compromise, but if anything, that's been the defining feature of the nation since it's creation. "Y'all should take a chill pill, this ain't that important" is a perfectly valid position to have.
It sure is bizarre for the parts of the world where people are born to do as they're told and shut up.
What's rare is for a nation to have a civil war between sides that agree on almost everything, from the structure of the government to the economic system.
The situation was fundamentally different. Colonies that allowed slavery had no representation in parliament and the slave owners received massive “compensation” that the British people had to spend decades paying off..
Also AFAIK most slaveholders were living in Britain and just viewed their plantations as just another investment. There was very little ideological/“way of life”/racial supremacy stuff involved. So if some Liberals wanted to buyout their not necessarily very liquid “property” with cash they didn’t really have much reason to oppose it.
And then there were 5x more slaves in the US in 1864 while the population was only ~30% higher than that of Britain in 1830 (only if we don’t count the colonies).
Not sure how excited would the inhabitants of New England and other free states would have been if they were forced to buy out all the slaves in the country (if that was even an option).
Slavery for the British was a side note at that point while it was a fundamental component of the US economy.
The idea that no compromise was possible sounds somewhat absurd since America did end the civil war with a compromise. "You can free the slaves, but then we oppress them for 100 or so years." Not that it was a good compromise or anything, but it does show that the civil war was fundamentally pointless.
So it’s hardly applicable to the US (or Britain)
> end the civil war with a compromise
I’m not sure it’s was a compromise per se.
Most people in the north didn’t really actively support country wide abolition before the war (neither did Lincoln) nor were they necessarily particularly concerned about the treatment of the African-American population.
Opposing slavery is a very low bar. Most people in the free states were still deeply racist and segregation was effectively (while not necessarily legally) still a thing there. It only became a major issue in the mid 1900s.
The answer was the same then as it is now: big business. Slave labor cash crops were central to the economy of the South. Great Britain was not dependent on it in the same way.
Even more so the economy of Wall Street.