6 ms·

This is very elegant, and encapsulates the problem with America. Well, many other countries as well, but certainly us, America. Not government -- but our concep

by kaitai 8y ago

This is very elegant, and encapsulates the problem with America. Well, many other countries as well, but certainly us, America. Not government -- but our conception of "ourselves". HN occasionally has articles about education and the comparison of, say, Finnish education and American education comes up. I am firmly of the opinions that Finnish education works, when it works, because it is a service that the population is providing for themselves via government. It is seen as spending their own money on themselves. These other social services are seen similarly: people are getting what they paid for. And they (Finns, in this example) are conscious of it: in large part, I lay this lingering national consciousness of the value of government at the Karelian refugee resettlement of the 1940s. My inner armchair historian/anthropologist sees this massive national effort from family level through the top of government as providing a bit of national glue that also led to feelings of agency and efficacy among the population. The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else, or steals it, pervades the US discourse. Our efforts are focused on avoiding taxes, lessening taxes, eliminating services for those undeserving others. We don't want to pay for other peoples' kids; they shouldn't have had them and haven't they heard of birth control, which they should also be able to obtain on their own. Personal responsibility is king. It subtly pervades even how we teach reading -- if you read [1], you see that teachers were taught that kids learn from their parents reading to them, and it's also just a matter of parenting choices and personal responsibility. From the family to top levels of government in the US, there's now an anti-glue, the story that government is an adversary, that it's a wasteful theft of honest peoples' money. They are both just stories that make themselves true through our behavior, the behavior of government officials, citizens, and contractors. [1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-a...

nonbel 8y ago
>"The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else" If something else was going on, then taxes would be voluntary...
- whatshisface 8y ago
  An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them. If the entire US was 100% aligned with your own politics then taxes wouldn't be very burdensome. If my political faction ran the country like a dictatorship, I wouldn't mind them taking my money, because they'd spend it on getting me what I want (which may include "a better world," prioritized according to my subjective view of which world problems are the worst). However because there is more than one political faction in power, the money taken from me will sometimes be spent on things I don't want, including things that I am actually opposed to. Clearly the solution is either cough "greater unity," or the more practical answer which is having minimal taxes to fund only the lowest common denominator of services that everyone wants.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    >"An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them." What? If people really felt that way there would be no need for taxes. If you have a lack of self-interest (or the sense of "self" is altered to refer to the group) you would freely give money to each other. The only time taxes are required is when people will not freely give money for a project. That is literally the only reason taxes exist. Nothing is stopping people from donating to the government. In fact, I was just thinking the other day that 50 million trump voters could donate $100 each to "build the wall" and be done with it. You could probably even donate $25/year for four years. $5 billion is nothing at those scales yet there is all this bickering (supposedly) about it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 8y ago
      Just because everyone is like me is not enough to for voluntary payment to work. The issue is when people can not pay and get what they want they will simply not pay. If me and 10,000 people want a waste treatment plant we can individually chip in. But, in that case defecting would be so common that it's unlikely to be built. Or, we can vote to make payment mandatory and get what most people want, but nobody wants to pay for. Now, if you disagree feel free to start a build a wall fund. It can work for specific kinds of things where donations feel good.
pjc50 8y ago
The problem with American opposition to government, especially Federal government, is that it's inextricable from the outcomes of the civil war.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  So we should mitigate the problem by making more of the stuff government does happen at the state level instead of the federal level. There's no inherent reason something like healthcare or net neutrality needs to be done nationally.
  - cwingrav 8y ago
    50 different rule books for 50 different locations of doing business sounds like an inherent reason.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The problem with American opposition to government, especially Federal government, is that it's inextricable from the outcomes of the civil war. Even that is sanitizing it, it predates the Civil War and is inextricable from the cause of the Confederacy in the Civil War, perhaps best articulated in Confederate Vice President Stephens famous Cornerstone speech: ---[quote]--- The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.” ---[end quote]---
swebs 8y ago
I think the main reason is that Finland is also a very homogeneous country. There's much less of a concern for "paying for other people's kids".
- danzig13 8y ago
  Except diverse communities in Finland do not have significant achievement gaps with non-diverse communities. Edit: After looking into it PISA stats, this is inaccurate. Must have heard this in a news story. Edit 2: They do seem to do better than us with diversity - http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/fin http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/fin - but worse than OECD average.
  - swebs 8y ago
    That seems like an odd tangent rather than a rebuttal, but it would still be interesting to see such data.
- nabnob 8y ago
  What do you mean by homogeneous?
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    It means people view each other as being part of the same tribe, or network. People (and many other animals) don't mind helping people in their "closer" networks, but the further away you get in the network, the less you care about someone else. Perhaps it is because there is an assumption that there is less reciprocation the further out you go in the network.
- forkLding 8y ago
  I think that brings up the question, does the homogeneity of a country really mean less concern for "paying for other people's kids", and how do we define homogeneity: culture? income level? family size? ethnic background? net wealth?

by kaitai 8y ago

nonbel 8y ago

>"The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else" If something else was going on, then taxes would be voluntary...

whatshisface 8y ago
An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them. If the entire US was 100% aligned with your own politics then taxes wouldn't be very burdensome. If my political faction ran the country like a dictatorship, I wouldn't mind them taking my money, because they'd spend it on getting me what I want (which may include "a better world," prioritized according to my subjective view of which world problems are the worst). However because there is more than one political faction in power, the money taken from me will sometimes be spent on things I don't want, including things that I am actually opposed to. Clearly the solution is either cough "greater unity," or the more practical answer which is having minimal taxes to fund only the lowest common denominator of services that everyone wants.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them." What? If people really felt that way there would be no need for taxes. If you have a lack of self-interest (or the sense of "self" is altered to refer to the group) you would freely give money to each other. The only time taxes are required is when people will not freely give money for a project. That is literally the only reason taxes exist. Nothing is stopping people from donating to the government. In fact, I was just thinking the other day that 50 million trump voters could donate $100 each to "build the wall" and be done with it. You could probably even donate $25/year for four years. $5 billion is nothing at those scales yet there is all this bickering (supposedly) about it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 8y ago
    Just because everyone is like me is not enough to for voluntary payment to work. The issue is when people can not pay and get what they want they will simply not pay. If me and 10,000 people want a waste treatment plant we can individually chip in. But, in that case defecting would be so common that it's unlikely to be built. Or, we can vote to make payment mandatory and get what most people want, but nobody wants to pay for. Now, if you disagree feel free to start a build a wall fund. It can work for specific kinds of things where donations feel good.

pjc50 8y ago

The problem with American opposition to government, especially Federal government, is that it's inextricable from the outcomes of the civil war.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
So we should mitigate the problem by making more of the stuff government does happen at the state level instead of the federal level. There's no inherent reason something like healthcare or net neutrality needs to be done nationally.
- cwingrav 8y ago
  50 different rule books for 50 different locations of doing business sounds like an inherent reason.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The problem with American opposition to government, especially Federal government, is that it's inextricable from the outcomes of the civil war. Even that is sanitizing it, it predates the Civil War and is inextricable from the cause of the Confederacy in the Civil War, perhaps best articulated in Confederate Vice President Stephens famous Cornerstone speech: ---[quote]--- The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.” ---[end quote]---

swebs 8y ago

I think the main reason is that Finland is also a very homogeneous country. There's much less of a concern for "paying for other people's kids".

danzig13 8y ago
Except diverse communities in Finland do not have significant achievement gaps with non-diverse communities. Edit: After looking into it PISA stats, this is inaccurate. Must have heard this in a news story. Edit 2: They do seem to do better than us with diversity - http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/fin http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/fin - but worse than OECD average.
- swebs 8y ago
  That seems like an odd tangent rather than a rebuttal, but it would still be interesting to see such data.
nabnob 8y ago
What do you mean by homogeneous?
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  It means people view each other as being part of the same tribe, or network. People (and many other animals) don't mind helping people in their "closer" networks, but the further away you get in the network, the less you care about someone else. Perhaps it is because there is an assumption that there is less reciprocation the further out you go in the network.
forkLding 8y ago
I think that brings up the question, does the homogeneity of a country really mean less concern for "paying for other people's kids", and how do we define homogeneity: culture? income level? family size? ethnic background? net wealth?