4 ms·

Americans expect the government to be corrupt and bad, and they get what they expect. In Europe we get very angry when the government is corrupt and bad. Maybe

by boxed 3y ago

Americans expect the government to be corrupt and bad, and they get what they expect. In Europe we get very angry when the government is corrupt and bad. Maybe instead of trying to spread your meme of "government always bad", you try to take on the European meme of "government needs to be good or everything goes to hell"?

beefychops 3y ago
[flagged]
adriand 3y ago
America’s government - as in, the civil service - is neither corrupt nor bad. It is a very well-run country! You need only visit America to witness how excellent it is in many ways. There is a reason that, despite its faults, America is still the most innovative and economically powerful country in the world. In terms of Europe, the level of corruption and competence seems to be highly variable depending on the country. So again it seems misplaced to make a broad assertion like the one you made.
- andrepd 3y ago
  It's well-run in some aspects and disastrous in others. The fact that the US is an economic powerhouse is due to other things, not the quality of its federal and local government.
  - bohadi 3y ago
    [dead]
  - oblio 3y ago
    Tons of natural resources and a huge pool of primarily Western European Protestant immigrants in the 1600, 1700s, 1800s, with a strong culture for independence and a continuous search for prosperity, these immigrants serving as the bedrock that instilled the current US culture. Before anyone tries anything funny I'm neither American, nor Western European, nor Protestant.
    - JambalayaJim 3y ago
      I’m sure this is a nice founding narrative that brings comfort to a lot of Americans of Western European ancestry. I think USA is better off inventing a more inclusive one in the coming century though (I suppose they already have in parts)
    - throwy101 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Taiwan has no natural resources yet is an economic powerhouse. Russia has vast natural resources and a poor economy.
      - kaashif 3y ago
        True. But it appears you have ignored half of the comment you're replying to, the part about the immigrants that moved to the US. It's entirely possible that the US would've also succeeded had it opened its doors to millions of East Asian immigrants, but that didn't happen.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        It did open doors to Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who have contributed greatly to the US economy (in spite of racism against them).
        oblio 3y ago
        Practically irrelevant. Brazil and Peru opened their doors to Asian immigrants but just like in the US, they were second wave immigrants and they couldn't save either of those countries. You need the initial immigrants to do the heavy lifting, plus they majorly control politics.
        WalterBright 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- user3939382 3y ago
  IMHO the US government is extremely corrupt. Many important regulatory agencies are captured by industry and run with a revolving door of conflict of interest. Corporate donors have basically completely captured Congress. We have a melding of industry and government, seen most visibly through our foreign policy, that makes us a quasi-fascist authoritarian country.
  - lokar 3y ago
    The revolving door is mostly at the political appointee level. Most of the leadership is appointed.
- philwelch 3y ago
  America is an innovative and economically powerful country because the role of government has been consciously and deliberately curtailed.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  The key "crossing of the rubicon" that America has not yet reached is the normalization of everyday corruption (bribes, local corruption as a rule, etc). We have done that in the federal political sphere for quite a while. The last vestiges of actually doing political right for the moral principle was probably back in the 80s or 90s. There is a lot of corruption in the backwaters, and again at the high levels of large city government, but in general in the civil service there isn't corruption. Likewise the military is still relatively uncorrupt in its administration, outside of the outlandish contracts of the military industrial complex. It's probably because functionally speaking the "elite" capture most of the corruption money at the highest levels, and won't tolerate the inefficiency of low level corruption.
zamfi 3y ago
Surely you can’t mean “Europe”, you must have a certain country or small set of countries in mind here, and be thinking of a very recent time period.
wernercd 3y ago
Americans expect the government to be corrupt and bad because history shows that government to be corrupt and bad. We don't get it because we expect it. We get it because history repeats. Which is why we setup ours to be limited in power and why, as time goes on and that power expands, it gets worse and worse and why stuff like POTUS elections are now life and death when they used to be largely figure heads.
joenot443 3y ago
The government in Serbia never struck me as especially uncorrupted, but I also don't think this has caused everything there to go to hell. Laws exist and are largely enforced, it just happens you can bribe your way out of most fines. I met friends there looking for any possible way to come to Canada or the US largely to escape the systematic corruption which exists in some Balkan countries.
- bernawil 3y ago
  People say this but they -mostly- just want to live somewhere wealthier. Would anybody move from Serbia to USA/Canada if they where equally wealthy? What if Serbia was even wealthier but still more corrupt?
sneak 3y ago
Intelligent students of history expect the government to be corrupt and bad. It works the same in every country, from Japan to Russia to Germany to the USA to Venezuela. It's the principal-agent problem, writ large. I live in both the US and Germany (roughly 50/50) and the level of corruption is about the same in both places. A lot of it is so ingrained in the culture you don't register it anymore. It gets automatically filed under "the way things work here" and becomes relatively invisible.
- watwut 3y ago
  > Intelligent students of history expect the government to be corrupt and bad. That is not quite true. Historically, the quality of both government and corruption varied ... and goverments worldwide also did quite a lot of good. The "all of government is always bad" is pure ideological flex.
  - sneak 3y ago
    The specific places that rot varies, but the fact that governments all tend toward corruption is widely consistent. If that weren't true, you could show me a large, industrialized country that has very low governmental corruption. You can't. There aren't any.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Any large groups of people tend toward corruption. That being said, in general corruption in western countries is massively lower then elsewhere. They actually function well with low levels of corruption in general. The big corruption tend to be on the east.
      - sneak 3y ago
        I vehemently disagree with this premise. The corruption in western nations is more sophisticated, and is better at hiding in plain sight. The type in the east is more furtive, probably out of an effort to "save face". They differ in style, but not degree. Over here we call it special euphemisms like "lobbying" and "regulatory capture" instead of "bribery" and "kickbacks". It makes people regard it differently, giving it an air of respectability. Given the size of the corruption industry in the US, this was inevitable, as it would need a surface level of legitimacy to be able to attract and employ the sheer numbers of people who operate the machinery of the flows of bribery money from industry to servile lawmakers. Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Banks? It's not lack of supply or lack of demand. Many people wish to manufacture cheap insulin or build better ISPs or more cheap surgery clinics or better grocery stores. Soon it will be the same with social networks. They already achieved it with app stores, which is the only meaningful publishing today, apps having killed the web. Anything that has broad social appeal or need which subsequently results in large recurring cash flows will get regulated upon so that the cash doesn't flow to anyone the existing power structure doesn't want to enrich. (I have a separate theory that the current anti-Musk backlash is engineered because of an accidental failure of the system implementing this longstanding policy, due to the double whammy of unexpected breakout success of both Tesla stock and SpaceX operational scaling simultaneously. He sure is lucky he has a US passport whilst trying to do what he's doing.) People like to ascribe this to "late stage capitalism" but for every dysfunctional industry lacking real competition or consumer choice, I can point to a bad set of laws or regulations paid for by that industry. It's a failure of the state to do its job to protect end users and opportunity and liberty. When copyright was about to expire, Disney went to the legislature with checkbook in hand. Laws are for sale in the USA. Why does the illusion of consumer choice become more and more farcical every year? The US regulatory machine is totally corrupt in almost everything it touches. We just reclassified it so it seems less shady than it is, but the story of Comcast and the FCC stands clear as just one of many illustrations. (Or Bell in Canada, or DTAG in Germany. It works the same everywhere.)
andrepd 3y ago
As a European, that's a very superficial reddit-tier understanding. Europe is far far from the civic paradise of engaged citizens you're trying to portray. Not even to mention the EU government, which hugely affects everybody's life but which the overwhelming majority of citizens never interact with.
WalterBright 3y ago
I wouldn't say American government is especially corrupt. What it is is bureaucratic, inefficient, and counterproductive, because it implements policies that have counterproductive side effects. Like rent control.
- neongodzilla 3y ago
  You haven't been paying attention for the last 20 years.

by boxed 3y ago

beefychops 3y ago

[flagged]

adriand 3y ago

America’s government - as in, the civil service - is neither corrupt nor bad. It is a very well-run country! You need only visit America to witness how excellent it is in many ways. There is a reason that, despite its faults, America is still the most innovative and economically powerful country in the world. In terms of Europe, the level of corruption and competence seems to be highly variable depending on the country. So again it seems misplaced to make a broad assertion like the one you made.

andrepd 3y ago
It's well-run in some aspects and disastrous in others. The fact that the US is an economic powerhouse is due to other things, not the quality of its federal and local government.
- bohadi 3y ago
  [dead]
- oblio 3y ago
  Tons of natural resources and a huge pool of primarily Western European Protestant immigrants in the 1600, 1700s, 1800s, with a strong culture for independence and a continuous search for prosperity, these immigrants serving as the bedrock that instilled the current US culture. Before anyone tries anything funny I'm neither American, nor Western European, nor Protestant.
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    I’m sure this is a nice founding narrative that brings comfort to a lot of Americans of Western European ancestry. I think USA is better off inventing a more inclusive one in the coming century though (I suppose they already have in parts)
  - throwy101 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Taiwan has no natural resources yet is an economic powerhouse. Russia has vast natural resources and a poor economy.
    - kaashif 3y ago
      True. But it appears you have ignored half of the comment you're replying to, the part about the immigrants that moved to the US. It's entirely possible that the US would've also succeeded had it opened its doors to millions of East Asian immigrants, but that didn't happen.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        It did open doors to Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who have contributed greatly to the US economy (in spite of racism against them).
        oblio 3y ago
        Practically irrelevant. Brazil and Peru opened their doors to Asian immigrants but just like in the US, they were second wave immigrants and they couldn't save either of those countries. You need the initial immigrants to do the heavy lifting, plus they majorly control politics.
        WalterBright 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
user3939382 3y ago
IMHO the US government is extremely corrupt. Many important regulatory agencies are captured by industry and run with a revolving door of conflict of interest. Corporate donors have basically completely captured Congress. We have a melding of industry and government, seen most visibly through our foreign policy, that makes us a quasi-fascist authoritarian country.
- lokar 3y ago
  The revolving door is mostly at the political appointee level. Most of the leadership is appointed.
philwelch 3y ago
America is an innovative and economically powerful country because the role of government has been consciously and deliberately curtailed.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
The key "crossing of the rubicon" that America has not yet reached is the normalization of everyday corruption (bribes, local corruption as a rule, etc). We have done that in the federal political sphere for quite a while. The last vestiges of actually doing political right for the moral principle was probably back in the 80s or 90s. There is a lot of corruption in the backwaters, and again at the high levels of large city government, but in general in the civil service there isn't corruption. Likewise the military is still relatively uncorrupt in its administration, outside of the outlandish contracts of the military industrial complex. It's probably because functionally speaking the "elite" capture most of the corruption money at the highest levels, and won't tolerate the inefficiency of low level corruption.

zamfi 3y ago

Surely you can’t mean “Europe”, you must have a certain country or small set of countries in mind here, and be thinking of a very recent time period.

wernercd 3y ago

Americans expect the government to be corrupt and bad because history shows that government to be corrupt and bad. We don't get it because we expect it. We get it because history repeats. Which is why we setup ours to be limited in power and why, as time goes on and that power expands, it gets worse and worse and why stuff like POTUS elections are now life and death when they used to be largely figure heads.

joenot443 3y ago

The government in Serbia never struck me as especially uncorrupted, but I also don't think this has caused everything there to go to hell. Laws exist and are largely enforced, it just happens you can bribe your way out of most fines. I met friends there looking for any possible way to come to Canada or the US largely to escape the systematic corruption which exists in some Balkan countries.

bernawil 3y ago
People say this but they -mostly- just want to live somewhere wealthier. Would anybody move from Serbia to USA/Canada if they where equally wealthy? What if Serbia was even wealthier but still more corrupt?

sneak 3y ago

Intelligent students of history expect the government to be corrupt and bad. It works the same in every country, from Japan to Russia to Germany to the USA to Venezuela. It's the principal-agent problem, writ large. I live in both the US and Germany (roughly 50/50) and the level of corruption is about the same in both places. A lot of it is so ingrained in the culture you don't register it anymore. It gets automatically filed under "the way things work here" and becomes relatively invisible.

watwut 3y ago
> Intelligent students of history expect the government to be corrupt and bad. That is not quite true. Historically, the quality of both government and corruption varied ... and goverments worldwide also did quite a lot of good. The "all of government is always bad" is pure ideological flex.
- sneak 3y ago
  The specific places that rot varies, but the fact that governments all tend toward corruption is widely consistent. If that weren't true, you could show me a large, industrialized country that has very low governmental corruption. You can't. There aren't any.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Any large groups of people tend toward corruption. That being said, in general corruption in western countries is massively lower then elsewhere. They actually function well with low levels of corruption in general. The big corruption tend to be on the east.
    - sneak 3y ago
      I vehemently disagree with this premise. The corruption in western nations is more sophisticated, and is better at hiding in plain sight. The type in the east is more furtive, probably out of an effort to "save face". They differ in style, but not degree. Over here we call it special euphemisms like "lobbying" and "regulatory capture" instead of "bribery" and "kickbacks". It makes people regard it differently, giving it an air of respectability. Given the size of the corruption industry in the US, this was inevitable, as it would need a surface level of legitimacy to be able to attract and employ the sheer numbers of people who operate the machinery of the flows of bribery money from industry to servile lawmakers. Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Banks? It's not lack of supply or lack of demand. Many people wish to manufacture cheap insulin or build better ISPs or more cheap surgery clinics or better grocery stores. Soon it will be the same with social networks. They already achieved it with app stores, which is the only meaningful publishing today, apps having killed the web. Anything that has broad social appeal or need which subsequently results in large recurring cash flows will get regulated upon so that the cash doesn't flow to anyone the existing power structure doesn't want to enrich. (I have a separate theory that the current anti-Musk backlash is engineered because of an accidental failure of the system implementing this longstanding policy, due to the double whammy of unexpected breakout success of both Tesla stock and SpaceX operational scaling simultaneously. He sure is lucky he has a US passport whilst trying to do what he's doing.) People like to ascribe this to "late stage capitalism" but for every dysfunctional industry lacking real competition or consumer choice, I can point to a bad set of laws or regulations paid for by that industry. It's a failure of the state to do its job to protect end users and opportunity and liberty. When copyright was about to expire, Disney went to the legislature with checkbook in hand. Laws are for sale in the USA. Why does the illusion of consumer choice become more and more farcical every year? The US regulatory machine is totally corrupt in almost everything it touches. We just reclassified it so it seems less shady than it is, but the story of Comcast and the FCC stands clear as just one of many illustrations. (Or Bell in Canada, or DTAG in Germany. It works the same everywhere.)

andrepd 3y ago

As a European, that's a very superficial reddit-tier understanding. Europe is far far from the civic paradise of engaged citizens you're trying to portray. Not even to mention the EU government, which hugely affects everybody's life but which the overwhelming majority of citizens never interact with.

WalterBright 3y ago

I wouldn't say American government is especially corrupt. What it is is bureaucratic, inefficient, and counterproductive, because it implements policies that have counterproductive side effects. Like rent control.

neongodzilla 3y ago
You haven't been paying attention for the last 20 years.