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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 excellen
by 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 agoIt'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 agoTons 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 agoI’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 agoTaiwan has no natural resources yet is an economic powerhouse. Russia has vast natural resources and a poor economy.
- kaashif 3y agoTrue. 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 agoIt did open doors to Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who have contributed greatly to the US economy (in spite of racism against them).
- oblio 3y agoPractically 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 agoBrazil and Peru have unfree markets. Immigrants can't help.
- andrepd 3y agoIn what way does Brazil have unfree markets vs the US? Either now or during the last 150-200 years?
- WalterBright 3y ago
- avgcorrection 3y ago> 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, That's a long-winded way to say Settler Colonialism.
- oblio 3y agoBrazil, Argentina, etc also had settler colonialism. Distinctions are useful.
- avgcorrection 3y agoWhat's the distinction? That the settlers were inferior catholics? (Of course other Europeans at later stages like in Argentina.) In any case you can cherry-pick any variable you want when talking about such disparate nations.
- oblio 3y agoI expanded in another comment: > "ambitious, motivated, solid work ethic, respect for education and legitimate entreprise". Spanish and Portuguese settlers, for reasons that are beyond me, didn't manage to create societies where these values are at their core.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- user3939382 3y agoIMHO 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 agoThe revolving door is mostly at the political appointee level. Most of the leadership is appointed.
- philwelch 3y agoAmerica is an innovative and economically powerful country because the role of government has been consciously and deliberately curtailed.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoThe 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.