The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)(peterturchin.com) |
The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)(peterturchin.com) |
This quote (by Bertrand Russell) stood out: "Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible."
An entire generation grew up in that atmosphere... they became the nation's teachers and leaders, influencing the opinions of subsequent generations. Game theory shows small changes in behaviors and opinions can have massive downstream impact, as demonstrated by this interactive demo: http://ncase.me/trust/ (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864183).
I haven't had any luck finding studies or data on this topic. The key would be voter turn-out for each party bucketed by age for the past few decades of elections.
If my propaganda theory holds true, the Republicans would see a popularity boost that ages at roughly 1 year per year. That segment would be ~50-80 around now, which does match recent voting data (older voters consistently skew conservative) - but historical data is needed to track a bulge over time and disprove the "naive youngsters vote liberal" narrative.
Reagan did a lot of damage to the perception of what government should do and how citizens need to hold it accountable. Instead he described it in terms of being inherently bad, which is demonstrably b.s. but the country pretty much bought it as evidenced by his election, the ensuing cut in taxes, the near total stop in investments made to large scale private and and public infrastructure spending, and a shift to hoarding wealth rather than keeping it moving so that everyone benefits from it.
How do Eastern European countries fare then? How about China?
For each of the items you list, I can see it going the direction you describe, or instead going the other direction, with government stepping in only after individuals were clearly not taking care of the problems. How do you propose that we can tell which direction it went?
Do you really suggest "having a big family" as the way to survive health problems and retirement? Because that's how it works in some (e.g.) SE Asian countries, and life there can be very harsh indeed if you strike adversity and don't have family to care for you. Some people are infertile, or have lost their children.
Not to mention that simply populating the world with more and more people is kind of environmentally short-sighted. I'd rather have the government bulk buying my meds, and lighten my overall footprint on the planet, rather than harking back to ancient times when there was little or no government, and family was everything.
Certain African countries are strongly individualistic. The state is too weak to help or punish anybody. Infrastructure crumbles, crime and slavery abounds.
You seriously don't want to visit let alone live in a country that lacks collectivism.
But we can all plainly see that this is completely wrong, and people do do all that.
Trust, empathy, bonding, etc. are going to be a lot harder when someone's identity, life experiences, and circumstances are completely foreign to your own. I don't think it makes cooperation impossible, but as a practical matter it means we're more likely to need huge, complex institutions like the federal government to mediate cooperation. People also seem less likely to want to cooperate or sacrifice their resources for others who are nothing like them.
One way societies have historically dealt with this is to close their borders, beat the shit out of internal nonconformists and, if they remain unrepentant, torture them to death in the public square by lighting them on fire. Subtler variants persist; for example, the official government's indifference to vigilante enforcement actions ranging from bullying (Japan) to beheading (Saudi Arabia).
It seems clear to me that our culture of welcoming and celebrating differences is more just and causes better outcomes for more people, but it does mean that we aren't all in the same boat.
Evidence: who are the heroes in american TV and movies? The rebel against authority, the one that breaks the rules. Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, House, I could go on and on. We celebrate the idea of something we actively argue against in daily life.
There's also some weird connection between extremes of claiming to value individualism and idolizing authoritarianism that I won't claim to understand, so I could be completely wrong on all of this. I'm not positive that extremes of individualism are a death knell for cooperation...but I don't find the idea unlikely either.
When people freely participate in civic activities, they are being generous. There is no coercion. When government does the same thing, it is coercive. The activity does not occur unless taxes are collected. Choice goes out the window.
I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".
This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
In this case, the n-grams chart really exemplified this for me. There are so many influences on the frequency of a word, including lexical substitution of a word by its synonyms, changes in spelling, and increased or decreased interest in a topic regardless of whether that interest is positive or negative.
For example, check out the long-term decline in avarice in America! It's profound!
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=avarice&year_s...
Oh, wait, maybe we just stopped using the word "avarice" rather than the concept. :-)
Or, during this Second Gilded Age, our society actually started to become less atomized:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=atomized&year_...
... or maybe we just moved away from calling the phenomenon that.
When we're indoctrinated to suppress our humanity and see each other as self-interested profit-maximizing businesses rather than people, then it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're less cooperative.
Do you belong to any organization which has member meetings in which members can vote and make decisions binding on the organization?
Club politics is generally tiresome, few people join a tennis club or hackerspace to play politics, they want to play tennis or make things.
Yes. I belong to a university, the academic governance of which rests in the Senate. True, it's not a completely elected body -- almost 1/4 of its members are administrators holding ex officio seats -- but over 3/4 of the Senate is elected by Faculty, Students, and Convocation.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-t...
That said, the various participation rates he's siting may presumed to be somewhat skewed by immigration.
>In these articles I argue that general well-being (and high levels of social cooperation) tends to move in the opposite direction from inequality. During the ‘disintegrative phases’ inequality is high while well-being and cooperation are low. During the ‘integrative phases’ inequality is low, while well-being and cooperation are high.
With economic inequality only getting worse [0, 1, 2] I can't help but wonder if there is also a decline in open source contributions? Or do our contributions increase because it provides visibility, and therefore increased economic opportunity, for those lower on the income scale?
[0]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/22/news/economy/us-inequality-w...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonh...
[2]: https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/890610260251033602
What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far from the Democratic (or Republican) party? As real differences fade, the showmanship of there being a difference must increase, thus, Trump.
Even healthcare has no polarization. Both parties are agreed on what it should be. Any party acting as if it will do single player or scrap Obamacare is just showboating. Any changes that get through will be minor ones. It was a 60 Senator consensus vote of the middle-of-the-road consensus view of what healthcare would be. McCain's thumbs down to any major overhaul.
In the past two centuries the US went from a civil war to the intitial struggle of how to deal with the Great Depression. There hasn't been much polarization since that. Even the big squabble in the 1960s was over a non-issue - over a small, peasant country in Indochina. The cold war began cooling off in the early 1950s, and stayed cool, aside from occassional flare-ups in certain areas. By the 1970s, US conservatives were trying to figure out how to heat the cold war up again against the background of SALT and the Helsinki accords.
The political establishment is less polarized than ever nowadays. It's not like post-war France, where Joliot-Curie, Picasso, Sartre etc. were members of the largest political party in France - the PCF.
Sure, the political space between Allegany County, NY (low income and trump voting) and Westchester County, NY (high income and clinton voting) is huge. But if you go to an elk lodge in Allegany or a (i dunno) running club in Westchester, you're going to find that everybody there has basically the same politics and basically the same income.
Something else is going on here.
Meanwhile, groups with fewer prosperous members tend toward the opposite behavior. They realize that the only way to compete with the "in group" is to gang up on them... or at least, that's what they tell themselves.
It hardly seems necessary to point to US electoral politics as a case in point.
https://clickamericana.com/media/newspapers/why-the-navy-wan...
It's hard to even imagine now. But presumably people sent them. They were helping. It was their war. Now the military probably buys 20 times the binoculars they'll ever use. At 20 times the price a citizen pays for them. And it's all run by career service bureaucrats. The taxpayers foot the bill but the specific expenses are unknown. And the war isn't the peoples war now. It's usually some kind of undefined action cheered on by think tanks and special interests and pumped up by news stories of terrorists. The citizens are mostly removed from the process, as it goes right on regardless of who they vote for. Unless they enlist, then they are involved, but that is less for principal now and more for a free college education or because what else to do?
This is what has changed in society. Life has become a faceless bureaucracy running on it's own agenda. Corporate, government, you name it. The concept of community is a pale shadow of what it once was. I don't know if this is better or worse, it's probably not great if your military has to beg for binoculars but seems the new hazards may be even more dangerous.
It's hard to pin cultural changes to anything definiteively. So, my 2c with the same grain of salt...
Personally, I think it's the regionalism vs globalism dynamic. At least, I think that's the force acting on me.
We think of our political & cultural identities as part of a much bigger whole. Solidarity and identitiy are closely related. Take HN, for example. If HN was regional and something happened in our region then we'd be far more inclined mobalize. If we regulalry met in person to discuss ideas, we'd have more solidarity. We'd probably be an impactful force.
As an online group, we draw from a much bigger pool. The intellectual aspects are richer. But, the community is weaker.
TLDR, solidarity of mass culture, maybe. Could be something else.
Mistrust in America could sink the economy
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21726079-part-proble...
how have the benefits of membership in the Elks lodge or the FreeMasons (or whatever) changed since the 1970s?
I believe this is a factor in men becoming less cooperative.
Anyway, I think the issue is one level up from that: Economic uncertainty in general, rather than strictly social/reproductive uncertainty. The former invites the latter.
And yes, there are lots of men with shortcomings, physical ones, that have rendered them out of the modern dating pool whereas in the past they would have met an equivalent woman. That's no longer the case as that equivalent woman can demand a much higher quality man -- there's an unlimited supply of men to pick from.
And in the case of hurricanes, yes, the government does step in because even insurance companies can't afford that scale of loss. And if you look at the aftermath of things like Hurricane Katrina, yes, there was a lot of community involvement in coping with the losses.
There was more than enough misery to go around 100 years ago, and heaven help you if you weren't a member of the in-group. I'd much rather have the government help me out than having to pretend to be a member of the church, or whatever was required to be acceptable in such communities.
In the case of hurricanes, it's only because of government intervention and subsidies that people build in imperiled areas. Flood insurance mostly subsidizes more wealthy people to the tune of $3B/year. They would likely not choose to live in imperiled areas without the subsidies. Is it really a social good to promote the building of dwellings in places where it is likely the dwellings will be destroyed every 20 - 30 years or so?
Having seen the devastation of Katrina in MS first hand, this seems like a remarkably poor choice of things to subsidize and promote. In fact, when we were there about a year after the storm, the only people who were helping the people who were left were voluntary associations. The government had pretty much pulled out.
Tocqueville wrote extensively about associations and their beneficial impact on society. You should give his book, Democracy in America, a read. Here's an intro: http://www.learningtogive.org/resources/philanthropy-describ...
In fact, the "greed is good, corporations are people, etc." mentality that promotes selfishness as a vice is a major plank of one of the main political parties of the US.
In your mind, when you imagine the 1920's, or the 1960's, do you think that there were incredibly high levels of cooperation between people? I don't want to put a huge burden of evidence of you, but am curious.
Also if anyone gets a chance please look into the book "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz. Good examination of American family trends and activities over time.
My parents tell a story about how in the 1950's, my grandfather built his house himself. One day after work, he came to the site and his neighbors were at work helping out on it. Of course, he was an immigrant living in a relatively homogeneous ethnic community. So, maybe small communities took care of their own, but in the post-drug, post-industrial economy small communities aren't diverse enough to handle the load.
I know it is cool to blame everything on the government, but ...
We've entered into an era of unprecedented government surveillance and power. We have agencies such as the DEA, NSA, homeland security, etc that wield enormous power over the lives of Americans.
Also the welfare programs are significantly more pervasive now. You have subsidized farming, subsidized food, subsidized business, subsidized housing, a subsidized economy.
At this point, aren't we all just living off the hand of the federal government? Isn't that by design?
I also hate this idea that helping the poor should be left to personal whim. "Programs that solve problems" sounds more effective and egalitarian than "people helping people" if you ask me.
What example would you have citizens rather follow?
Also, if you think it coercive you are basically admitting your democracy isn't working. Otherwise it wouldn't be coercion but executing on the whishes of the people voting.
If 60% of the people vote to tax everyone and use that money to bomb the moon, the remaining 40% are going to feel coerced into supporting it.
The government forcing people to support things is not leading by example at all, because any other organization would be breaking the law if it tried to force support. How would you feel if the local church just started taking 30% of your income?
You can't say that we as a people are being generous when we're only doing what we're doing to avoid massive fines or imprisonment.
They'll say that no matter what the tax rate is.
Doesn't help that when one side is wrong, the other makes sure to kick some dirt in the face and rub it in as long as possible.
While it lacks the satisfying simplicity of your government has a monopoly on violence, err, banality worldview, it does have some basis in objective reality.
It's interesting that you think this is a tragedy. The point of such programs is to solve significant human problems, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. This seems to me to be a superior goal to the alternative you propose, which seems to be to allow some altruistic people to feel good about themselves.
It also ignores vastly top end income tax rates for nearly 4 decades, which weren't less than 75%. And ignores the relatively higher taxes in other countries where people, where trust in government is much higher than in the U.S.
Taxes should be seen as fair, and increasingly Americans think that you can avoid taxes by having clever accoutants and attorneys. Leona Helmsley "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes" is an example of how tax burden has changed.
If the collected money is then put to a purpose you don't like, or is incompetently managed, what can you do? Nothing in any realistic sense.
If you would have liked to have been generous with the money instead, too bad.
As an aside, tax rates are pretty meaningless. Revenues are at record levels.
The real question is why wouldn't civic qualities decline.
You can look at this on an economic lens - people don't need to depend on familial relations as much because of money.
You can look at this with a racial/ethnic lens - more genetic variance reduces cooperative behaviours (see Charles Murray).
Then there's the libertarian version you've heard above.
Then there's the social lens - people have become atomized by individualism in their manners, social conditioning etc.
I like to think there's a non-relativistic way in which all of them are true, sometimes some of them more at certain times than others, but that they are models of the same phenomena.
Should we genetically manipulate ourselves to increase our pro-social behaviours? It seems clear that if society flies apart then all the critiques I've mentioned will be true simultaneously, I do not see how that can plausibly be positive. What about genetic intervention?
Yeah, it's a fun website -- but you could say that about just about any claimed correlation.
Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'barometric' changes he's talking about -- the shift in the basic, underlying "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos has been not just noticeable, but profound. Probably a lot more work needs to be done to find a solid statistical basis behind this observation (if this is at all possible).
But by and large (aside from the singe n-gram example, which I agree smells like cherry-picking), it's not like his arguments are simply frivolous.
Depends on your value of "we."
There is certainly lower solidarity/interest in public life among the straight white landowning Christian men from good families who used to participate in things like freemasonry and Rotary.
On the other hand, both the left and right have been adding previously marginalized demographics to their constituencies and platforms.
I don't think there's any less solidarity going around. My intuition is that more people than ever have their voices heard and interests represented in public life. But rather than one line of solidarity across the center of the political spectrum, we now have two disjoint lines reaching from each party's center to what used to be its marginalized fringes. (Not just in ideology, but in identity).
We also just aren't in this together so much anymore. The rise of coastal cities means the country is increasingly split between (at least) two totally distinct patterns of geography, economics, culture, built environment, and lifestyle. The correlation between population density and vote share on the latest electoral map is staggering.
I need to see some very solid evidence before I change my assumption, which is that people have always felt this as they get older, because we romanticize our memories of youth and we are uncomfortable with the societal changes that younger generations inevitably introduce.
My hunch is that the thing that most frequently trickles down in the trickle down economy is DEBT. I imagine distrust follows close behind.
What she really said was:
"No government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."
If you are correct, how then did this philosophy get into place to begin with?
I would argue that it is more likely the rise of corporatism in the post war era which brought massive disruption of 'organic' social networks and through the large-scale transformation of economic activity from small businesses into larger ones removed much of the need for societal participation.
mass media, the decline of religious life, and the entrance of women into the workplace also likely are major factors - we can entertain ourselves, don't hear moral/values in a community, and have fully 1/2 of the house dedicated to matters of societal rather than economic concern
It seems to be the result of a successful PR campaign on behalf of economists like Milton Friedman and the wealthy elites who stood to gain from it. The 1973 oil crisis was a tumultuous time, and so it was a ripe time for a new ideology.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-t...
The vernacular "polarization" here would be better thought of as a measure not of conceptual distance, but of the intensity with which that distance is perceived.
The left and right are both very centrist (with some wacky outlier issues), but they perceive the other side as being very wrong, which allows for polarization regardless of actual political distance.
Lower frequency of compromise and bipartisan bills. I've seen it just from reading the papers and staying semi-aware of politics. My mother-in-law worked in DC for decades, and it was glaringly evident to her even when she retired a decade or so ago.
> The two parties are close together on almost everything.
Along certain axes, sure. They're both broadly corporatist, for instance.
But overall? Not even close, particularly since the rise of the Tea Party. I read through my House Rep's notes on the legislation each side advances / endorses / votes for, which makes their actual legislative priorities pretty clear. Not to mention knowing people whose health, environment, and/or job are impacted by those ideological differences.
Most of the time I see "there's no difference between the two parties" asserted, it seems like it's either being used as a justification for apathy, or as a rallying cry for a third party.
Still not resolved (for example a couple of states have just recently been found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act).
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6pc5qu/democrats...
Separately, something that really concerns me is gerrymandering - which has pushed for more extreme views on both sides as there are far fewer "mixed" districts.
Conservative media portrayed Obama as an extreme leftist when he was, in terms of policies, more in line with Eisenhower and Reagan. Look at the label of RINOs for Congressmen who vote the wrong way on a particular issue.
In the U.S. there is a lot of political polarization.
The polarization is between those who prefer authoritarian leadership, and those who don't. The poles are defined primarily by personality.
If I as an individual become aware that there are hungry people in my area, I may as an individual choose to put forth some effort, funds, etc. to attempt to rectify this problem. This is an individual act for the collective good. You are emotionally attached to your own act and have a personal interest in improving the system of feeding people because you want to make sure your money feeds the most people possible.
Conversely, if we all decide we're going to take some of your money, whether you like it or not, and decide how all of us cumulatively wish to solve the hunger problem, that is not an individual act. It is not an act of your conscience. It separates you emotionally and cognitively from the people you're feeding. You never meet them, you never get to know them. You have no attachment whatsoever to what's going on. You just pay taxes and hope the bureaucracy does a decent job, or more likely you stop thinking about feeding the hungry altogether because it's "taken care of." You still want your money to be used efficiently/effectively but the entire scope of government is far too big for the average person to deal with at that level.
I'm not intending to make any argument about which way is the most effective at: feeding the hungry, providing healthcare to the poor, etc. That's a different debate altogether. I'm only pointing out that the government giving some of your money to feed people is a completely different social experience than you doing so yourself. And further that when the government tells you it's going to take care of feeding everyone, it tends to drop off your radar.
(Note: I specifically said collectivism, not Communism)
Where I live the Little League is like the farm team for the local democratic machinery.
It's not that you have to prove yourself better than other men; you have to prove that being with you is better than being alone.
Harder than that, you don't only have to prove yourself, you have to continue to remain better than being alone.
(I mean, I'm typing this from a male perspective, because that's what I know, and because I think that men have always had more freedom to 'opt out' than women, meaning that women having this power to 'opt out' is a relatively new phenomena, but I imagine that this cuts both ways)
Emancipation, I think, is a social good... and yes, that means we all will spend more time alone, but being alone is dramatically better, in my experience, than being in a bad relationship, even if it's dramatically worse than being in a good relationship. But maintaining a relationship is difficult, and now that most people have the option of saying "I'd rather be alone" many of them do, at least some of the time.
But Grant threatened resignation if pardons were not granted to Lee and all who surrendered at Appomattox. These men were absolutely over the war, and as the papers of the day indicate, most people were too. There really was no meaningful demand for treason trials for the lead generals.
And the sadly, as the Civil War determined slavery was absolutely wrong, it began 100 years of institutionalized 2nd class citizenry based on skin color. The Civil War was not a successful egalitarian enterprise by any stretch of the imagination.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/income-...
Especially these graphs:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/median...
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/mean%2...
And during this time, the GDP growth rate was great:
https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543
Of course the average worker would be less stressed, have more time for communal activity, as well as rotate A LOT more money back into the economy compared with money sitting still on top.
And yes, families are far more likely to be broken today than in decades past. The elderly are more likely to be dumped in a home somewhere. Welfare has ravaged families. The single motherhood rate is 8x what it was in the 50s because we incentivize broken families. Over 50% of adults are single now. That's historically unprecedented, and it didn't start heading that direction until the 1950s when socialist programs started really taking hold in the US.
You're claiming that people are less cooperative because the NSA is spying on them?
You had me and then you lost me.
That's the problem with democracy. It's hard work.
I've often wondered if random juries should play a larger role in day-to-day government. Forcing people to work like this is a huge tax and not to be taken lightly, but taxing peoples attention rather than their wallets might actually be what we need.
I was on a jury deciding a driving while intoxicated case. The first vote was basically two of us against the rest of the jury. The reasons I heard justifying the guilty verdict votes were things like "Well, I'm a mom and I think drunk driving is terrible. That's why I think she is guilty".
Fortunately, there was one other educated person on the jury, and eventually, after discussing the actual facts of the case the rest of the jury understood and we acquitted the accused.
It was scary, during the selection process, the candidates mostly fell into two categories. Those looking forward to the $40 (as I remember it) allowance they gave us for each day of the trial and those that valued their time at more than $5/hour. The latter group all seemed to have some excuse for getting out of the trial. If it wasn't for the two of us on the jury, I believe the accused woman would have have been found guilty.
I think that misses the point. The problem is not hard work, but rather hard work dictated by a preconceived belief that a one-size-fits-all collective solution is the best approach to all problems.
Wrong. Selfish strategies aren't sustainable. Why should I continue with anything else you said? Your basic premise leads me to believe you don't have a rudimentary grasp on game theory, economics, psychology or sociology.
> If you take the position that society exists first
Yeah don't do that. Reason from first principle first and work your way up. Not the other way around.
This sort of nonsense is also where we get prosperity theology from. You'd think these people would have read Job.
Tell me that if ever become exceedingly wealthy you wouldn't do what you could to protect your wealth. I know I'm doing what I can with what I have.
Only the extremly wealthy can be philanthropic to an extreme extent.
So it follows that the normally wealthy can be philanthropic to a normal extent, then?
Separately, I have to admit I'm unsure if you meant to conflate philanthropy with monetary value.
If he also caused a step back from large scale public investments... wow, this man has certainly done a lot of damage.
I wish I could summon up a one of those nice charts on this subject from gapminder! That would show immediately if there's something to it.
It could also be simply that the American media and intellectual class are unusually neurotic and there similar issues exist everywhere but the local reporting in my country doesn't emphasize it as much.
There are many differences among these nations. Some are densely populated (the Netherlands), some sparse (Australia). No comparisons I've ever seen amongst them however remotely suggests that as you add more sophisticated social welfare policies, this reduces social cohesion. On the contrary, such policies tend to smooth out the effects of inevitable industrial change, rendering populations more resilient. It's no accident that nations clinging to relatively crude social policy (the US, the UK) have far lower economic mobility than those using the state of the art (Sweden, Germany). And it is about sophistication, not absolute expenditure, by the way. France, for example, has high spending, but it's badly targeted and rendered inflexible by traditional interests, so on many indicators other than health, it looks more like the laggards (US, UK) than leaders (Sweden, Denmark, Canada).
Do you have a deconstruction of that?
I have no intention of making an argument that government is better or worse at: providing healthcare, building libraries, feeding the hungry, etc. All I'm suggesting is that when the government creates programs like SNAP then people have a tendency to believe that the hungry are being fed.
This blame-the-government thing is uniquely American. In other parts of the world there are big governments that really help their populations thrive and live safely and comfortably (e.g. I live in Sweden).
You are in top 10% of European countries. You are comparing your filthy rich country to the entire United States. If you want to make a fair comparison, compare Sweden to Washington State.
Also: ask Eastern European countries, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, African countries, Greece, Cambodia, Myanmar... how much they trust their government. You have no idea how much of a prosperity bubble you are in, in Sweden.
You also seem to be unaware that the United States has more Big Government economic regulations than in Sweden.
So yes, big governments can certainly provide services that you like. They can also provide never ending wars funded by your income that you can't do a damn thing about.
Life can be very harsh if you're unfortunate but don't qualify for government benefits. Or maybe you've genuinely turned a corner in your life but government rules don't have mercy like individuals can.
But yes, unfortunate you if you get something that's not covered under the universal deal, e.g. some kind of leading edge cancer treatment. That's when you hope your private insurance (if any) will pick up the tab.
The government doesn't literally pay for anything you want or need. It picks what things it will pay for and what things it won't. You can't always ask government to make a special exception in extenuating circumstances like you could with a parent or cousin.
I'm not saying family is always better. I'm saying there are certainly downsides to government-based charity.
That's a perfectly respectable opinion. And you and I probably are in agreement on the government's role on many of these kinds of social issues. However, it's completely possible to both support those programs and simultaneously understand their impact on social fabric.
All of these heroes cooperated with close friends, colleagues, and other people in order to solve problems and achieve goals.
The difference is not individualism vs. cooperation. The difference is cooperation based on the voluntary choices of individuals, as needed to accomplish goals, vs. cooperation dictated from the top by someone's ideology.
And what does "cooperate as a society" mean? If there is indeed a goal that every member of the society has in common, then yes, it makes sense for everyone in the society to cooperate to achieve that goal. But too often, "cooperate as a society" really means that some people get to choose the goal and force everyone else to cooperate to achieve it, whether they agree with the goal or not. That is the kind of "cooperation" that the American culture of individualism rejects.
> "There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate"
I think this whole argument is mostly a problem because some people view government as an adversary, instead of the product of populace cooperation. Sure you get "oppression of the majority", but that's what policing has always been. Being free to do whatever you want means being free to oppress others. The only difference with government involvement is that it's using collective knowledge/intellect over individual.
That's because government is an adversary to anyone who doesn't agree with what it's doing. There is no such thing as "populace cooperation" unless all of the populace agrees on what should be done. That is very rarely the case; most cases of "populace cooperation" are a portion of the populace using the coercive power of the government to force everyone else to do the things that portion of the populace thinks are good ideas.
> that's what policing has always been. Being free to do whatever you want means being free to oppress others.
But if all the government does is "policing" in this sense--preventing people from oppressing others--then almost all of what governments do today would be off the table.
Correct your perspective and see that the United States and Europe are fairly equal. Example: Italy has next to no cohesion.
References? In my personal experience that's far for accurate. If anything they are an extremely nationalistic country.
Living half way between the US and the EU has taught me otherwise - that the kind of cohesion between say Portugal and Sweden is surprisingly solid - once you know where to look e.g. social values, political views. Trying to do the same with someone from deep Texas and a little town in the Maine coast could be an interesting example of the opposite.
Having different languages even inside the same territory doesn't account for lack of cohesion. It's quite irrelevant in practice actually.
Cohesion seems to be mistaken these days by sheepishly following politicians into unnecessary wars and lacking critical thinking. Widespread ignorance is not cohesion, is divisive at best.
Turkey is a nation that is even more nationalistic and they have very serious trust issues with their fellow citizens.
You're buying a false narrative. Most midwestern town in states like Montana, the Dakotas, Utah do not have opioid problems. In fact, those states have the happiest and most satisfied people in this country.
You know what cooperation means - it means that some of the time you don't get what you want and that's OK because the system gives you what you want (and need) also.
I dare you to describe a society where all services are provided on a voluntary basis. Go ahead I dare you.
(Google "National drug overdose rates" for more info - CDC and academia have plenty of studies, but no pretty graphs)
Cooperation doesn't mean that everyone gets their way. It's rare enough that two people want the exact same thing, even less a group of people. Having a country want the same thing is infeasible. Cooperating means compromising to maximise total utility.
> But if all the government does is "policing" in this sense--preventing people from oppressing others--then almost all of what governments do today would be off the table.
I didn't say that it is all it does, or should do, merely that the alternative to "government oppression" is oppression by individuals/corporations/groups, and you don't get a vote. Personally I think there are a lot more good things than just that aspect that our collective invention of government brings.
I don't think this is a useful definition of cooperation, because "total utility" is not measurable, and might not even be well-defined.
I would define cooperation as people working together towards a common goal.
> It's rare enough that two people want the exact same thing, even less a group of people
It's rare for multiple people to want all of the same things, yes. This is why collective action should be limited.
But it's quite common for multiple people to have some common goal, in which case they can cooperate to achieve that goal, without having to share all of their other goals.
Your definition of cooperation appears to be all or nothing: either everybody agrees on everything, or people have to compromise. But if people don't agree on a particular goal, they can just choose not to pursue it together. They can go off and pursue their own goals separately. Nothing requires everybody to agree on a common set of goals and only pursue those.
> the alternative to "government oppression" is oppression by individuals/corporations/groups
No, the alternative to government oppression is voluntary choice. You can't be oppressed by individuals or corporations or groups that don't have power. And who gives them that power? Governments. Individuals or corporations and groups get to oppress others because they have bought the privilege of doing so from the government--which was supposed to protect people from oppression.
> you don't get a vote
My vote doesn't make any difference anyway; neither major political party in my country (the US) is willing to touch any policy proposals that I would advocate. The best I can do with my vote is to choose the candidates that I think will do the least damage. But I would be glad to trade the loss of that dubious privilege for a much smaller government that didn't try to meddle in so many things.
> I think there are a lot more good things than just that aspect that our collective invention of government brings
Governments do do good things. But that doesn't mean all good things get done by governments, or that governments doing them are the best way to do even those good things that governments do.
I'd say burden of proof is on the side claiming "developing integration problems" and such in Australia / Sweden / Germany. Without any data it seems like empty rightist populism.
Does american culture resist coercion? Yes, excluding a few big bandwagon issues and incidents. But that's not really the point.
One might say when something needs to get decided or done, does the country get together and get it done or bicker and in-fight? Let's check some big "needs to get this taken care of issues":
* Slavery - Somehow, the "land of the free" was one of the last developed nations to condemn this practice. And while racism is a separate issue, even over a century later we're still having large public arguments about whether the slaves had it "easy" (?!)
* Climate Change - There is largely universal consensus that if current trends continue, there has been and will continue to be an accelerating increase in human suffering. Every developed nation on the planet agrees, almost every qualified scientist in the US agrees. We can accept that our scientists can predict the movements of celestial bodies across distances mind-bogglingly vast down to the minute, but trust our "guts" over them. Some might argue that the US is rejecting a goal chosen by everyone else, and doing so as a brave stand of individualism. I'd argue they are just demonstrating the issue.
Do I need to go on?
You phrased this wrong. It should be: when some small group of people believe that something needs to get done, do they just go out and do it, or do they try to co-opt everyone else's resources using government power?
> Slavery - Somehow, the "land of the free" was one of the last developed nations to condemn this practice.
And somehow, the "something needs to get done, so let's get it done" methodology ended up killing somewhere between half a million and a million people and leading to a century or more of Jim Crow. If that's what "getting together to get it done" looks like, I'll take bickering and in-fighting.
By contrast, countries that were willing to countenance something less than "getting it done" the abolitionist way (such as Britain, which simply bought the slaves' freedom by paying off the slave owners) ended up ending slavery with no loss of life and a much smoother social transition.
Not to mention that, if the abolitionists had simply left the South alone, they probably would have ended slavery on their own, and probably sooner than 1865. In 1831, the Virginia State Legislature was considering a bill to abolish slavery in the state, and there was a good chance it was going to pass. If it had, the other slave states would probably have followed Virginia's lead. Then word came that William Lloyd Garrison in Boston had published an abolitionist pamphlet calling for no compromise and just forcing the South to end slavery, and the bill died.
> Climate Change - There is largely universal consensus that if current trends continue, there has been and will continue to be an accelerating increase in human suffering.
A consensus that is based on flawed climate models that do not make correct predictions, and economic numbers based on no predictive power whatsoever. Consensus is worthless if there is no predictive power to back it up.
> We can accept that our scientists can predict the movements of celestial bodies across distances mind-bogglingly vast down to the minute, but trust our "guts" over them.
That's because astronomers can back up their predictions of the movements of celestial bodies with a track record of accurate predictions to many decimal places, over a period of more than a century. Whereas climate scientists, as above, can back their predictions up with--nothing.
> Some might argue that the US is rejecting a goal chosen by everyone else, and doing so as a brave stand of individualism.
Yep. If everybody else has a consensus that we should all shoot ourselves in the foot, should the US follow it?
> Do I need to go on?
No, you've given quite enough background to see where you're coming from. Hopefully I've done the same.
My whole point was that a society occasionally does, in aggregate, feel it needs to do something. If you're going to insist that it's only ever a minority imposing their will over everyone, then there is no point in further discussion.
> And somehow, the "something needs to get done, so let's get it done" methodology ended up killing [far too many]...and leading to .... Jim Crow.
You seem to have forgotten the context - I was demonstrating how the American refusal to cooperate led to a civil war, while the rest of the world managed to deal with it both faster and with a lot less bloodshed.
> A consensus that is based on flawed climate models that do not make correct predictions, and economic numbers based on no predictive power whatsoever.
Your assertion that your conclusion is somehow more valid that that of, well, just about everyone, is both a demonstration of the concept in question AND somewhat laughable considering your opinions on a minority forcing suffering upon the majority.
> If everybody else has a consensus that we should all shoot ourselves in the foot, should the US follow it?
Another straw man - no one is saying that. If the world thought it was dumb to shoot yourself in the foot, would you ignore them? One of these two scenarios is happening.
> Hopefully I've done the same.
I would say yes.
Second, I was holding Sweden up as an example the you could aim to emulate. "Socialism" the Swedish way is really quite nice. I've lived and moved countries and know many who have moved around the world and to and from the states and I warmly recommend Sweden as the place everyone wishes their home countries was more like ;)
Sweden does not have socialism. There is less economic regulation of private companies than in the United states. Sweden has a freer economy with higher tax rates.
Sweden also has 145% the per capita income of the EU average. And don't forget that excludes poor Eastern European non-EU countries like Ukraine.
Well, the Swedes think they have their 'nordic model' version of it. Its been governed by the Social Democrats for almost all the last hundred years. Perhaps their definition differs from yours?
> There is less economic regulation of private companies than in the United states
Crikey, poor you folks! Given how startup-hostile Sweden truly is on the ground, its amazing that Silicon Valley can exist at all if its worse over your side of the pond! ;)
Here, very few people can or would start a company, and startups are rare and happen despite the poor investment. I've met some of the founders of the companies that are often cited like skype and I don't think they started in Sweden rather than the states because Sweden is a less regulated economy. Sweden is part of the EU, and the rules are the EU rules which Britain alleges to have found so over-regulated that they had to leave! ;)
Everything you hear on the news is true unless you have some personal experience of it. So it is with the brush Sweden gets tarred with in the US. There's some crazy left-wingers who think Sweden isn't socialist enough (and their idea of collectivism seems to be towards communism, and Sweden isn't communist), but its mostly the right-wingers thinking Sweden is some immigration hellhole. People in Sweden don't recognize the Sweden portrayed on Fox News.
Interestingly, the coverage of the US that you get on the European media seems to be much more truthful and balanced; I know plenty of US citizens, I've visited an awful lot, I've worked for US companies for years, and the general portrayal of the US life in the media over here seems to ring true.
Perhaps, but neither of your examples show that. They just show a portion of society feeling the need to do something and imposing it on everybody else.
> I was demonstrating how the American refusal to cooperate led to a civil war
Yes, exactly: refusal to cooperate, according to my definition of cooperate--work together to achieve a common goal--because the American abolitionists had a flawed concept of "cooperate". The British were willing to cooperate (in my sense) with the slaveowners, by buying the slaves' freedom, in order to achieve the common goal of avoiding civil war. The American abolitionists, because the very thought of cooperating (in my sense) with slaveowners gave them apoplexy, refused to consider any such alternative.
But with your definition of "cooperate", the abolitionists were doing it right--that's my point. What happened in the US is what happens when your version of "cooperate"--feel you need to do something and just make everybody do it--is working.
> Your assertion that your conclusion is somehow more valid that that of, well, just about everyone
Is based on the very simple and common sense criterion of predictive power. Whereas yours is based on an apparent mystical belief that if enough people agree with something, it must be right. You have offered no other argument.
> no one is saying that
Yes, they are. The rest of the world is saying that everyone should spend huge amounts of money on the Paris agreement, just like Kyoto before it, even though everyone admits that it will have negligible impact on the climate. That is shooting yourself in the foot.
