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...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things neve

by badsock 10y ago

...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things never get this out of hand. Lead is posion, for pete's sake. Where else in the developed world would poisoned drinking water be allowed for so long? In Canada we had what we consider a big disaster 17 years ago: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s-worst-ever-e-coli-contamination-1.887200 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s-wors... The Premier (equivalent of a governor), was investigated by judicial inquiry, his offices searched, people went to jail, there were payouts for damages - and this is something that only affected a town of 5,000 people. More importantly, it was fixed as fast as possible. My point being: it's not that there aren't screw-ups elsewhere, it's just that they're so rare that they cause a huge scandal and everyone runs around trying to fix things. In America everyone just seems to just get angry at each other and then do nothing. So don't tar governments. They work well elsewhere. America's just doing it wrong.

Arizhel 10y ago
Exactly. The question now is: why is American government so broken, and the corollary is: what can we do to fix it? Is American culture simply broken, so that only utterly sociopathic people go into government? Is America just completely filled with people who have been trained from birth to be sociopathic, as evidenced by the way they vote?
- specialist 10y ago
  Empowering (electing) people who cannot govern, and are in fact utterly opposed to anyone governing, is having the expected outcome. Because Freedom Markets[tm], booyah!
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't explain why our voters consistently elect such people, while voters in other industrialized nations don't (nearly as much).
    - SapphireSun 10y ago
      America is the richest country in the world and as such attracts the best propagandists on the free market. American culture has a long individualist streak that distrusts authorities, combined with our many entrenched sins regarding e.g. racism, leaves a significant fraction of the population vulnerable to many effective forms of propaganda... and that's just the right. Except for a few states like MA and VT, the left consistently fails to field candidates that will fight for ordinary people against monied interests because that's where their election funds come from. In the past, leftists were associated with official enemies of the state (e.g. communists, socialists) by major media organizations and trusted authorities. Now most people here distrust their gut instincts about fairness, inequality, the golden rule, and mutual caring. Many forms of leftist organization were broken down and destroyed after the upheavals of the 60s, with especially aggressive pushes by Regan, but this has continued by both parties up to the present day with Republicans taking mainly larger digs at the integrity of the public trust. This story continues with rather emphasized savagery into the present day starting in 2017. However, this is an interesting moment where it seems there is a big fight brewing between truly breathtakingly rapacious greed and a significant fraction of the public. It will be interesting to see who wins in the coming decades - it may determine the fate of the planet's suitability for human life.
- flogic 10y ago
  "Slavery". That sort of system requires a fair amount of legal and propaganda support. Our election system gives the old slave states a boost. And our more bigoted politicians are constantly rehashing and reusing the propaganda to justify their actions. So while slavery itself is gone, the weighted legal system and propaganda are still in place doing what they do. It's a safe bet that much of the Flint water crisis is due to the water system being for "those people".
- vertex-four 10y ago
  It's the adversarial system - people vs Government. In pretty much every country that's doing well, the Government is considered a representative of the people, and is expected to act as one or suffer political consequences - but in the case of the US, it's expected that the Government as a whole is not a functional part of society, so it has no reason to behave as one.
  - new299 10y ago
    Can you give some examples of those countries? Which countries are doing well and have governments that their people are generally happy with and consider representative of the people?
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      Most of Europe to at least some extent, with variations on different subjects. For example, in some countries people are dissatisfied with immigration policy, but they're probably happy with the roads and water supply.
      - new299 10y ago
        Not the UK: In which probably 50% of the population feel the government doesn't represent them. Not France I'd guess? Which seems to have issues and strong probability of a Frexit? Not Italy, whose politics as seemed somwwhat messy for some time? Those are the countries in Europe that are "doing well" in terms of GDP at least. Aside from Germany that is. So is Germany the role model? I'm really trying to ask an honest question. I'm wondering which are the countries currently doing well economically and treating their citizens well.
        Arizhel 10y ago
        >Not the UK: In which probably 50% of the population feel the government doesn't represent them. When you have a situation like that, it seems like it's time to break up the country into smaller units so that you don't have a half-and-half divide, because then you'll never get to a stable state where a large enough majority of the population accepts the government (because they're constantly fighting the other half in a tug-of-war and the majority keeps flipping back and forth). According to the Brexit results, Scotland strongly favored "remain", and so did Northern Ireland. London did too. So obviously, Scotland should simply secede from the UK, and it can rejoin the EU as a separate nation. It's certainly large enough to be an independent nation on its own. Northern Ireland can too, or better yet it can rejoin regular Ireland which is already an EU member. I do wonder, however, what would happen if they did another Brexit vote just to see if many people have changed their minds.
cookiecaper 10y ago
There are many well functioning local governments in the United States. The US is a big country both in terms of habitable land and population, with almost 325 million people (Canada technically has more land, but since most of it is uninhabitable, they don't have to worry about plumbing it). You've read about ONE city where the mismanagement was so severe that the water became poisonous. I'm sure it's not the only one, but I'm also sure this happens in countries that aren't America sometimes too. I'm not a civil engineer but from what I hear, Flint's water problem is nearly impossible to resolve and would practically require a complete extraction and replacement of the city's infrastructure, which isn't really possible without destroying the city anyway, since there are buildings and roads and stuff on top of it. Of course, it's politically incorrect to admit that, and politicians and bureaucrats will probably keep pretending like they are going to do something to resolve it to try to keep public anger at bay, and just hope the city empties out before anyone notices that it's been 30 years. Maybe that evaluation of the engineering issue is incorrect, it's just what I've read; as above, I'm not a civil engineer so I don't actually know. But this is not just a simple matter of cleaning up a minor bacterial contamination. Minor contaminations of that type occur and get cleaned up all the time without anyone taking special notice (except the citizens affected by the boil order). I understand it's fun to throw rocks at the big guy, but your comment is not representative of life in the US. If we had such a hard time providing basic services like water and our neighbor to the immediate north didn't, things would look a lot different.
- 8note 10y ago
  isn't the problem in Flint that a set of politicians decided to switch the water source to a heavily polluted one in exchange for some financial compensation now that the lead particulate has gotten into all the existing pipes, it's an insurmountable problem, but still entirely a result of American corruption, rather than an engineering issue.
  - javagram 10y ago
    They switched the water to the Flint River to try to save money (the city had been maintaining infrastructure and a treatment plant to pull water from the Flint river for many years previously but it was unused). My understanding is the largest problem was not pulling water from the river - it was the decision of evironmental department officials and treatment plant managers to not add anti-corrosion chemicals to pH balance the acidic water. (They claimed to misinterpret federal regulations and believed 1 year of monitoring was necessary before adding the chemicals). The chemicals themselves were quite cheap and there hasn't been any "corruption" related reason for them not to have been added. Unless new evidence has come out since then, this was a case of incompetence.

by badsock 10y ago

Arizhel 10y ago

Exactly. The question now is: why is American government so broken, and the corollary is: what can we do to fix it? Is American culture simply broken, so that only utterly sociopathic people go into government? Is America just completely filled with people who have been trained from birth to be sociopathic, as evidenced by the way they vote?

specialist 10y ago
Empowering (electing) people who cannot govern, and are in fact utterly opposed to anyone governing, is having the expected outcome. Because Freedom Markets[tm], booyah!
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't explain why our voters consistently elect such people, while voters in other industrialized nations don't (nearly as much).
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
    America is the richest country in the world and as such attracts the best propagandists on the free market. American culture has a long individualist streak that distrusts authorities, combined with our many entrenched sins regarding e.g. racism, leaves a significant fraction of the population vulnerable to many effective forms of propaganda... and that's just the right. Except for a few states like MA and VT, the left consistently fails to field candidates that will fight for ordinary people against monied interests because that's where their election funds come from. In the past, leftists were associated with official enemies of the state (e.g. communists, socialists) by major media organizations and trusted authorities. Now most people here distrust their gut instincts about fairness, inequality, the golden rule, and mutual caring. Many forms of leftist organization were broken down and destroyed after the upheavals of the 60s, with especially aggressive pushes by Regan, but this has continued by both parties up to the present day with Republicans taking mainly larger digs at the integrity of the public trust. This story continues with rather emphasized savagery into the present day starting in 2017. However, this is an interesting moment where it seems there is a big fight brewing between truly breathtakingly rapacious greed and a significant fraction of the public. It will be interesting to see who wins in the coming decades - it may determine the fate of the planet's suitability for human life.
flogic 10y ago
"Slavery". That sort of system requires a fair amount of legal and propaganda support. Our election system gives the old slave states a boost. And our more bigoted politicians are constantly rehashing and reusing the propaganda to justify their actions. So while slavery itself is gone, the weighted legal system and propaganda are still in place doing what they do. It's a safe bet that much of the Flint water crisis is due to the water system being for "those people".
vertex-four 10y ago
It's the adversarial system - people vs Government. In pretty much every country that's doing well, the Government is considered a representative of the people, and is expected to act as one or suffer political consequences - but in the case of the US, it's expected that the Government as a whole is not a functional part of society, so it has no reason to behave as one.
- new299 10y ago
  Can you give some examples of those countries? Which countries are doing well and have governments that their people are generally happy with and consider representative of the people?
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Most of Europe to at least some extent, with variations on different subjects. For example, in some countries people are dissatisfied with immigration policy, but they're probably happy with the roads and water supply.
    - new299 10y ago
      Not the UK: In which probably 50% of the population feel the government doesn't represent them. Not France I'd guess? Which seems to have issues and strong probability of a Frexit? Not Italy, whose politics as seemed somwwhat messy for some time? Those are the countries in Europe that are "doing well" in terms of GDP at least. Aside from Germany that is. So is Germany the role model? I'm really trying to ask an honest question. I'm wondering which are the countries currently doing well economically and treating their citizens well.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        >Not the UK: In which probably 50% of the population feel the government doesn't represent them. When you have a situation like that, it seems like it's time to break up the country into smaller units so that you don't have a half-and-half divide, because then you'll never get to a stable state where a large enough majority of the population accepts the government (because they're constantly fighting the other half in a tug-of-war and the majority keeps flipping back and forth). According to the Brexit results, Scotland strongly favored "remain", and so did Northern Ireland. London did too. So obviously, Scotland should simply secede from the UK, and it can rejoin the EU as a separate nation. It's certainly large enough to be an independent nation on its own. Northern Ireland can too, or better yet it can rejoin regular Ireland which is already an EU member. I do wonder, however, what would happen if they did another Brexit vote just to see if many people have changed their minds.

cookiecaper 10y ago

There are many well functioning local governments in the United States. The US is a big country both in terms of habitable land and population, with almost 325 million people (Canada technically has more land, but since most of it is uninhabitable, they don't have to worry about plumbing it). You've read about ONE city where the mismanagement was so severe that the water became poisonous. I'm sure it's not the only one, but I'm also sure this happens in countries that aren't America sometimes too. I'm not a civil engineer but from what I hear, Flint's water problem is nearly impossible to resolve and would practically require a complete extraction and replacement of the city's infrastructure, which isn't really possible without destroying the city anyway, since there are buildings and roads and stuff on top of it. Of course, it's politically incorrect to admit that, and politicians and bureaucrats will probably keep pretending like they are going to do something to resolve it to try to keep public anger at bay, and just hope the city empties out before anyone notices that it's been 30 years. Maybe that evaluation of the engineering issue is incorrect, it's just what I've read; as above, I'm not a civil engineer so I don't actually know. But this is not just a simple matter of cleaning up a minor bacterial contamination. Minor contaminations of that type occur and get cleaned up all the time without anyone taking special notice (except the citizens affected by the boil order). I understand it's fun to throw rocks at the big guy, but your comment is not representative of life in the US. If we had such a hard time providing basic services like water and our neighbor to the immediate north didn't, things would look a lot different.

8note 10y ago
isn't the problem in Flint that a set of politicians decided to switch the water source to a heavily polluted one in exchange for some financial compensation now that the lead particulate has gotten into all the existing pipes, it's an insurmountable problem, but still entirely a result of American corruption, rather than an engineering issue.
- javagram 10y ago
  They switched the water to the Flint River to try to save money (the city had been maintaining infrastructure and a treatment plant to pull water from the Flint river for many years previously but it was unused). My understanding is the largest problem was not pulling water from the river - it was the decision of evironmental department officials and treatment plant managers to not add anti-corrosion chemicals to pH balance the acidic water. (They claimed to misinterpret federal regulations and believed 1 year of monitoring was necessary before adding the chemicals). The chemicals themselves were quite cheap and there hasn't been any "corruption" related reason for them not to have been added. Unless new evidence has come out since then, this was a case of incompetence.