Comment by mattlutze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlutze | Hacker News Reader

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> I am for communities, but the only point of communities is to make the individuals that compose them happy. If a community is thriving by some metric but the individuals that compose them are unhappy, the community is pointless of even counter-productive.

I think there has been a very pernicious, detrimental focus in recent history on ensuring "happiness." Life is not about being happy. Communities do not exist to make people happy.

A thriving community is one that provides needed support to its members, "needed" and "support" being variables defined by those members.

> The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have.

Define "bigger". Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, all have governments that are significantly more activist in the daily lives of their citizens, and the wealth gap does not exist in those countries like it does the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA...

I don't know many that would say, per capita, these governments are "smaller". But they do actively redistribute wealth, a large part through social health care, higher education and retirement systems.

I would agree, but the wealth gap exists here too and it's growing bigger. There are only a handful people who have earn a big percentage of what's earned in total in the country. Sorry, but had to make this clear. I am from Europe.

     Countries with most Billionaires:
     1) USA – 409
     2) China – 317
     3) Russia – 88
     4) Germany – 61
     5) England – 56
     6) India – 53
     7) Switzerland – 41
     8) Brazil – 33
     9) Taiwan – 32
     10) France – 31
     10) Turkey – 31

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_by_net_worth

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_500_reichsten_Deutsch...

Don't take the List as absolute data, it's only showing publicly known billionaires. There are MANY secret billionaires. Germany might have +120 secret billionaires according to this article: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...

Well, the gap isn't growing in the same way in every European country. I'm guessing you're from Germany?

Billionaires certainly exist in every country. The count of billionaires in a particular country, however, does not actually talk to the wealth gap in a country. I'm simply stating that it is suppressed by wealth redistribution, and is not reliably a function of the size of a government, nor am I sure how one would go about meaningfully measuring the size of a government.

> I think there has been a very pernicious, detrimental focus in recent history on ensuring "happiness." Life is not about being happy. Communities do not exist to make people happy.

I am familiar with the argument and you are free to think that, of course. My view is that happiness is our ultimate internal gauge. Any alternative to wanting to be happy is typically some form of religion (including some political ideologies). I am willing to sacrifice for the people I love or even for strangers, but that's because it makes me happy. Most people will arrive at the same conclusion if they're honest with themselves.

> Define "bigger". Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, all have governments that are significantly more activist in the daily lives of their citizens, and the wealth gap does not exist in those countries like it does the US.

I define "bigger" as government spending per capita. Take this graph:

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7373

Then compare it with this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

Give the NSA disclosures, the size and activity of the US military and the fact that the USA has the largest percentage of its citizens arrested of all countries in the world -- the majority for victimless crimes, it's maybe hard to argue that the other countries you mention have bigger or more intrusive governments.

I live in Germany and the only intrusion in my life is that I don't have to pay for health care.

Notice that I'm not anti-american by any means. I actually admire America and many of its achievements, and this is why its current direction depresses me.

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