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This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners

This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United States based on ideology and national origin; they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!) The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have. It remains a worthy goal; many of those fighting to realize it remain criminalized, ostracized, and imprisoned. Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the other countries of the world? Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies worldwide? If one were so inclined, one might wonder how these tendencies manifest in one's professional, social, and personal spheres. Or one might argued about the advantages of higher-bandwidth system RAM vs faster SSD's… or vi vs emacs…

_8j50 5y ago
You have good points but what is freedom and who is free? Most minorities don't think "we live in a free society" in this same sense. Relatively speaking, there maybe other countries with better freedom to specific groups but America is still the best place to be if the freedom you want is freedom to make a lot of money. You are confusing the animosity between social groups with lack of freedom. The incarceration rate, much like the gun ownership rate is a direct result of americans using their freedom to have their elected officials pass specific laws. Being tough on crime is still one of the best policies a politician can advertise in a campaign because that's what people want to hear. The free people use their free ballots to make sure miniroities are kept in check by an army of cops enganged in a "war on drugs". This is freedom. It includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. All of the problems you mentioned are caused by freedom, not by oppressive forces that disregard freedom. Freedom in america means political participation. No one has protests as much as americans or vote at the scale of america (except maybe india). You can free all the prisoners and disband all the cops if enough americans agree. It's not lack of freedom but quite the opposite, the people, your neighbors excercising their freedoms to an unfortunate end. Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to.
- throwaway684936 5y ago
  > Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to. You mean like how the correlation between public support for a policy and the probability of that policy becoming law is ≈0?[1][2] [1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/08/rich-people-rule/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...
  - _8j50 5y ago
    How do you interpret that? How many people actually vote? When there are no better politicians, how many people attempt and fail at getting elected to replace them? Also, the changes taking effect may not have correlation but over time, the changes people want, they seem to happen (see drug legalization) Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them. #1 issue being jobs. On issues where rich people are in conflict with the majority, how much impact will the majority accept to affect the change? That is what politicians have to decide.
    - throwaway684936 5y ago
      >Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them. You argue freedom includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. What you're describing sounds like the minority restricting the freedom of the majority.
      - _8j50 5y ago
        It is the minority influencing the desire of the majority not coercing them. You can pass laws that will make them do business elsewhere and hurt jobs,economy,etc... if the popular sentiment for the law outweighs popular sentiment against rich people excercising their freedoms. In the end the majority are still free but that does not mean the rich are not allowed influence. Not just the rich, but the well connected and social groups or people in specific geographies like DC. Ultimately, the rich can do many things in retaliation but they cannot actually stop a person from running for office , restrict their speech or restrict others from voting for them. The rich and corporations, as terrible as they are, are not the root cause. "We the people" are.
Gunax 5y ago
Yes to both. If I cannot walk down my street in the evening, I am not free. We are lacking in prisons.
rhexs 5y ago
Americans aren’t free because we enforce borders? What?
gruez 5y ago
>This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United States based on ideology and national origin Is there a country in the world that doesn't do this? I understand that some people want some sort of borderless society, but support for this is basically a fringe belief in every country. >they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!) It's worth noting that the courts have ruled that such restrictions were unlawful. Given that, it seems like the system was working as expected? >The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have. The problem with this argument is that it hinges on the definition of "free society", and therefore any discussion over it is inevitably going to end up arguing over what "free society" means. It's trivial to make the same statement about other country that's allegedly a "free society". eg. "Sweden is a free society." "Actually no, how can you even claim that? They have hate speech laws which severely limit your ability to make unorthodox views on race/gender. Only the US (which has no hate speech laws) is a free society!" >Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the other countries of the world? Perhaps, depending on how strongly it feels about crime. For instance, Taiwan has incarceration rate that's roughly twice of China. Does that mean it's not a free country? Or is a 2x factor small enough to let slide? >Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies worldwide? That sounds surprising until you realize that: 1. many metrics relating to size follow a pareto distribution, so not surprising at all that "major cities" in the US exceed the median country in some metric. For instance, if we look at GDP, we see that the median "country/territory"[1] has a gdp of 26.461 billion. If we compare that to data from the BEA[2], we see that there's a whopping 113 metropolitan statistical areas that exceed the median "country/territory" GDP. 2. "national armies" tend to be smaller than "police officers" in most countries, which make the criteria even easier to fulfill. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [2] https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-areas https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-area... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

_8j50 5y ago

You have good points but what is freedom and who is free? Most minorities don't think "we live in a free society" in this same sense. Relatively speaking, there maybe other countries with better freedom to specific groups but America is still the best place to be if the freedom you want is freedom to make a lot of money. You are confusing the animosity between social groups with lack of freedom. The incarceration rate, much like the gun ownership rate is a direct result of americans using their freedom to have their elected officials pass specific laws. Being tough on crime is still one of the best policies a politician can advertise in a campaign because that's what people want to hear. The free people use their free ballots to make sure miniroities are kept in check by an army of cops enganged in a "war on drugs". This is freedom. It includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. All of the problems you mentioned are caused by freedom, not by oppressive forces that disregard freedom. Freedom in america means political participation. No one has protests as much as americans or vote at the scale of america (except maybe india). You can free all the prisoners and disband all the cops if enough americans agree. It's not lack of freedom but quite the opposite, the people, your neighbors excercising their freedoms to an unfortunate end. Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to.

throwaway684936 5y ago
> Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular support but being unable to. You mean like how the correlation between public support for a policy and the probability of that policy becoming law is ≈0?[1][2] [1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/08/rich-people-rule/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...
- _8j50 5y ago
  How do you interpret that? How many people actually vote? When there are no better politicians, how many people attempt and fail at getting elected to replace them? Also, the changes taking effect may not have correlation but over time, the changes people want, they seem to happen (see drug legalization) Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them. #1 issue being jobs. On issues where rich people are in conflict with the majority, how much impact will the majority accept to affect the change? That is what politicians have to decide.
  - throwaway684936 5y ago
    >Rich people will always run democracies because they can affect the lives of the people, therefore politicians must listen to them. You argue freedom includes freedom of the majority to restrict the freedom of the minority. What you're describing sounds like the minority restricting the freedom of the majority.
    - _8j50 5y ago
      It is the minority influencing the desire of the majority not coercing them. You can pass laws that will make them do business elsewhere and hurt jobs,economy,etc... if the popular sentiment for the law outweighs popular sentiment against rich people excercising their freedoms. In the end the majority are still free but that does not mean the rich are not allowed influence. Not just the rich, but the well connected and social groups or people in specific geographies like DC. Ultimately, the rich can do many things in retaliation but they cannot actually stop a person from running for office , restrict their speech or restrict others from voting for them. The rich and corporations, as terrible as they are, are not the root cause. "We the people" are.

Gunax 5y ago

Yes to both. If I cannot walk down my street in the evening, I am not free. We are lacking in prisons.

rhexs 5y ago

Americans aren’t free because we enforce borders? What?

gruez 5y ago

>This article includes some essential details that are largely unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United States based on ideology and national origin Is there a country in the world that doesn't do this? I understand that some people want some sort of borderless society, but support for this is basically a fringe belief in every country. >they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!) It's worth noting that the courts have ruled that such restrictions were unlawful. Given that, it seems like the system was working as expected? >The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have. The problem with this argument is that it hinges on the definition of "free society", and therefore any discussion over it is inevitably going to end up arguing over what "free society" means. It's trivial to make the same statement about other country that's allegedly a "free society". eg. "Sweden is a free society." "Actually no, how can you even claim that? They have hate speech laws which severely limit your ability to make unorthodox views on race/gender. Only the US (which has no hate speech laws) is a free society!" >Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the other countries of the world? Perhaps, depending on how strongly it feels about crime. For instance, Taiwan has incarceration rate that's roughly twice of China. Does that mean it's not a free country? Or is a 2x factor small enough to let slide? >Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies worldwide? That sounds surprising until you realize that: 1. many metrics relating to size follow a pareto distribution, so not surprising at all that "major cities" in the US exceed the median country in some metric. For instance, if we look at GDP, we see that the median "country/territory"[1] has a gdp of 26.461 billion. If we compare that to data from the BEA[2], we see that there's a whopping 113 metropolitan statistical areas that exceed the median "country/territory" GDP. 2. "national armies" tend to be smaller than "police officers" in most countries, which make the criteria even easier to fulfill. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [2] https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-areas https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-area... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...