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The U.S. needs the technologies and the explicit and implicit fabric of rules that Europe uses to govern people in crowded areas (hint: it works! go on a visit)

The U.S. needs the technologies and the explicit and implicit fabric of rules that Europe uses to govern people in crowded areas (hint: it works! go on a visit). Individualism doesn't work anymore in the U.S. - not in litigation, healthcare, transportation, crime, city planning etc. The U.S. needs to become more European. My two cents. I'll decipher this: if the U.S. would have effective city planning, crime prevention and a social welfare system, there'd be less bad neighborhoods to worry about and in result less crime. Further, if employers would actually hire people for longer periods of time then longer standing communities of people could form where several generations would know what's going on in the neighborhood. Further, if you would add good public transportation and kids who know how to ride on a bicycle, you would finally have European conditions => kids could go to school on their own.

martincmartin 17y ago
On the other hand, this comes at a cost. My name is Martin C. Martin. I was born Martin C. Hilgerdenaar, and changed it in college. A dutch friend remarked that changing your name is very very hard in Holland: a roofer whose last name was the Dutch word for leaky had to go through all these hoops to change his name. He said that, in general, Europe has a kind of conformity. From what I've seen, many European countries are also racially homogeneous, and a little xenophobic. Even Geoff Hinton, a big name in Machine Learning, had to move back to Canada after a few years of living in England because his black son encountered an overwhelming amount of discrimination. And I think England is more racially diverse than a lot of European countries.
- christofd 17y ago
  Yup. That's why I moved to Canada for a while at least. Want to try out the so-called freedom you guys in North-America have. Pros and cons. EXAMPLE: 1/2 h ago somebody stole my mountainbike right out of my garage. Here in North America nobody saw the guy. In Germany, usually the neighborhood widow next door lady would have seen the guy looking through the kitchen window.
  - martincmartin 17y ago
    Yeah, there are definitely pros & cons.

martincmartin 17y ago

On the other hand, this comes at a cost. My name is Martin C. Martin. I was born Martin C. Hilgerdenaar, and changed it in college. A dutch friend remarked that changing your name is very very hard in Holland: a roofer whose last name was the Dutch word for leaky had to go through all these hoops to change his name. He said that, in general, Europe has a kind of conformity. From what I've seen, many European countries are also racially homogeneous, and a little xenophobic. Even Geoff Hinton, a big name in Machine Learning, had to move back to Canada after a few years of living in England because his black son encountered an overwhelming amount of discrimination. And I think England is more racially diverse than a lot of European countries.

christofd 17y ago
Yup. That's why I moved to Canada for a while at least. Want to try out the so-called freedom you guys in North-America have. Pros and cons. EXAMPLE: 1/2 h ago somebody stole my mountainbike right out of my garage. Here in North America nobody saw the guy. In Germany, usually the neighborhood widow next door lady would have seen the guy looking through the kitchen window.
- martincmartin 17y ago
  Yeah, there are definitely pros & cons.