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Comment by rmah | Hacker News Reader

You will never convince those who think the US is a state of lawlessness that the US is (mostly) a lawful, free and prosperous place. They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like. They've never experienced anything even remotely close to it. It's like someone who grew up in the tropics and complains that they're "freezing to death!" because it's 50F. Someone from the arctic tells them about what real cold is like... they literally cannot understand.

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> They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like.

I doubt that most Americans comprehend what is living in a well managed citizens-first country were people are represented and many laws are passed just because the working class wants them.

If you compare the USA with the worst places on earth, then it is a good place. I hope that Americans aim higher and want to compare themselves with the best places to live in the world.

What are those best places in the world?

I usually compare the US to Switzerland. I live in Boston, but was born in Lugano (southern tip of Switzerland).

Switzerland has an excellent quality of life, far better education system, remarkable stability, and amazingly good healthcare. The companies pay people well, give them adequate time off, and has 16+ weeks of maternity leave.

There are some pretty significant downsides in Switzerland, too. It's highly conservative, hard to make friends with the Swiss, and fairly expensive, depending on where you live.

We live in Boston because of family. It's a decent enough place to live, and from my perspective, just about the closest that the US gets to Europe.

I think Minnesota and Maine feel somewhat European in government.

I really wouldn't know. I haven't had any real exposure to either. I visited Maine once. It seemed nice.

Denmark's been in the top 3 of the "World Happiness Report" since the report started, the rest of the Nordic countries are always near the top of the list, too. Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world 9 years running.

That seems like a good place to start looking.

(commissioned by the UN, polls are run by Gallup, report is put out by Oxford, and the editorial board is multinational and doesn't have any Nordic nationals; seems reasonably unbiased to me)

Thanks. I wasn't aware of this interesting report.

https://data.worldhappiness.report/table

It wasn't easy for me to interpret these rankings though, or how they came up with the life evaluation score. More explanation around that would have been helpful. The column headers have hover-descriptions, but they don't really say how the values were calculated.

Anyway - it does seem that Scandinavian countries are well represented at the top. That's not too surprising. Costa Rica at #4 is very unintuitive to me. Viet Nam at #1 for freedom is REALLY surprising to me, having visited there a number of times and having many Vietnamese friends. Likewise, The United States at 104 on freedom seems very weird.

> how they came up with the life evaluation score

https://www.worldhappiness.report/faq/

What you describe is a goal we should absolutely strive for - and one we are clearly falling short of. At the same time it's foolish to describe the US as being on the opposite side of the spectrum. I dare say it's even dangerous, as it encourages a sense of hopelessness and disregard for laws and civility.

> it encourages a sense of hopelessness and disregard for laws and civility.

That is true. I hope that people sees my comment as a push to do better, not a reason to give up. Things are never perfect, anywhere. And that's why we should continue pushing for more equality, defending the environment and making better the live of working class people.

No you got it wrong. Many of us understand it very well, some of us even come from such places.

The thing is, bar for success is simply higher than what US provides, and its not even that hard, just behave like a decent human being. The thing US provides if you don't have US passport is... not worth commenting on.

Americans always fail to comprehend that outsiders judge them by how they act outwards to citizens of other countries.

Precisely 0 of your presidents were ever punished for any action against citizens of other countries, despite starting aggressive wars, breaking peace and massacring people, or helping genocidares and war criminals escape justice, attacking international institutions that try to prevent that, etc.

You country of laws. :D

>Precisely 0 of your presidents were ever punished for any action against citizens of other countries

How many presidents were EVER punished for actions against citizens of other countries, unless other countries forced the president's country to do this (for example by winning a war)

> Americans always fail to comprehend that outsiders judge them by how they act outwards to citizens of other countries.

Americans are not their government. Judging individuals based on the actions of their government is the type of ignorant behavior that breeds exactly the type of tribalism corrupt government officials are able to thrive in.

Yes they are. If you don't want this, stop calling yourself democracy.

What is the path to those truly lawless countries?

The one we're walking right now

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