8 ms·

Agreed, the US doesn't rank first in virtually any metric that citizens would consider to be desirable (like healthcare, education, safety, freedom of the press

Agreed, the US doesn't rank first in virtually any metric that citizens would consider to be desirable (like healthcare, education, safety, freedom of the press etc). And it's no more democratic than say most European states. Taking into context its size is a whole different matter, though. It's relatively easier to build an awesome small country (say the Netherlands where I'm writing from) than a massive union of states spanning multiple time zones and climates. Perhaps if the US is compared to the entirety of the EU, then Congress and the American system of governing can be said to be one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, experiment in government in history at that scale (although I'd much prefer Europe to the US even on average). But that's more a function of it being the only 300m+ country in the world that is also rich than it being the best among many of them.

theiostream 12y ago
I wouldn't say the US being rich is a question of government organization, rather of not having been a colony whose sole purpose was to export raw materials. Higher dimensions also means more tax collection, which could be perfectly invested into making the standard of living of Americans better (it seems absurd to me that you don't have any public universal healthcare). The government prefers to invest 50% of it in Defense though. Consequence (also) of arms industry lobbyists and geopolitical strategy etc. but certainly not of size.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  The US has extensive public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are huge programs. I realize there is a fair chance that you mean some baseline universal care, but imprecise terms make the conversation more difficult. Large corporations are also hilariously micro-socialist in the way health care is provided to workers (partly by government rule, partly because they hire productive workers and can afford to compete with benefits). Edit: The ACA (Obamacare) was also a big step towards universal care. The funding/payment model is messy, but all someone needs to do in the US to get health coverage now is apply for it and make payments, they don't have to hope they get accepted by the insurance company (and I guess it is also much harder to drop coverage).
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Europeans visiting the states are genuinely worried that they will be carjacked, which I always find hilarious. Life is not like the movies or the news.
    - goodcanadian 12y ago
      It is unsettling the number of Americans I meet that seem to have the same worries in their own country. The level of fear and paranoia is great.
      - happyscrappy 12y ago
        Americans don't worry about car jackings because they don't have a cartoon view of the US.
  - theiostream 12y ago
    My notion of "public healthcare" is being able to walk into a government clinic or hospital and get free treatment or appointments as long as you show you're a citizen -- sorry for not having cleared that up.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Except you said the U.S. doesn't have any public healthcare.
      - theiostream 12y ago
        I changed my original comment to "public universal healthcare". I once again apologize for the lack of clarity of the original comment, and I hope you understand what my point was.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      I personally do like the single-payer approach, where you get coverage on a no-fee basis purely by showing you're a citizen/resident; and that's how it's done here in Denmark. But it's not the only way of providing universal care, even in Europe. Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are typically considered to also have universal healthcare, but it's administered via health insurance, not as a single-payer model with direct state provision of services. There are various options for coverage, but having some baseline coverage is mandatory and intended to be universal (with subsidies for people who can't afford it), somewhat closer to the ACA model than to the Scandinavian or Canadian model.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Holding defense spending against the U.S. while comparing it to Europe doesn't make much sense. The U.S. subsidizes defense for Europe. Look, Europe spent the last several hundred years warring with each other, then stopped suddenly with U.S. ascendency. They didn't evolve beyond war. It just became unimaginable when the U.S. has all the guns and will enforce the status quo.
  - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    The European Union is widely regarded to be the main reason driving a peaceful Europe. I've not really heard of the argument at all, ever, that the US is what keeps Europe from engaging in war. It's true that the US-led United Nations and principles of the right of self-determination led to massive post-war decolonization, leading to Europe being much less imperialistic (which accelerated the inevitable independence movements which were already in full force in most countries) but even here the US subsidizing defense doesn't apply, the amount of military power that was used for the colonies was quite slim, almost everywhere they became police-heavy, and the US wouldn't have subsidized colonial powers, on the contrary. As for Europe warring until US ascendancy... while it's certainly true that the US was never more powerful relatively to everyone else than after the second world war, but they've been the largest economy in the world since the 19th century. They were the superpower before the first world war even started, let alone the second. Hell if anything, since then the US only lost power as Russia became a superpower, Western Europe became united and China rose, none of which were true at the end of the 19th century, and the per-capita wealth gap between the US and everyone else only slimmed since then. But I'll agree with you on the fact that the US subsidizes defense spending through the NATO in the tug of war for eastern Europe, sure. It's unlikely that the EU could have grown eastward so much, without NATO we would've seen today's Ukraine happen much sooner with say Estonia, Latvia, Romania or Poland 10 years ago.
    - philwelch 12y ago
      It's less a question of American economic power and more a question of the tens of thousands of American troops stationed throughout Europe. The U.S. military presence already in Europe is larger than the militaries of many European countries, and there's almost a million more American troops who can be deployed there if need be. If the U.S. was willing to do that in 1918, instead of turning isolationist again, World War II could have been prevented, just as the Pax Americana after World War II successfully prevented World War III.
bostik 12y ago
> no more democratic than say most European states I may get flamed or burned for saying this, but I believe we (in Europe and US) are currently pretty close to the ancient form of Greek democracy. In the ancient Greece, the vote was a privilege of the free men. The definition of "free man" on the other hand was not quite what we think of in a modern society. To start with, only a few percent of the population actually was eligible to participate. [0] To qualify as a free man, you needed to have position and/or wealth. Usually the two came together. After all, what good would it do to allow plebs to vote? They could vote against your agenda! Better to control the access to the vote by simply ensuring that at least majority of the voting people already share a certain appreciation for the status quo. "But, but but... We can vote however we want" you say. Sorry, no you can't. Thanks to the nature of the system, you get to vote between two or three nearly identical alternatives. Outliers will not be even put on the ballot. (I think California is an exception, which introduces its own downsides.) The choices on the vote are in practice dictated by those with the most power or money. Lawrence Lessig outlined this situation with his only slightly satirical TED talk - a country of Lesters. [1, 2] But back to terminology. If the power is held by those with wealth, and decisions are made purely among the people who have the most to financially gain from them, what do you call such a system? Is there even a descriptive term for a mix of oligarchy and plutocracy? The True Greek Democracy? 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Participation_and_exclusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Participatio... 1: http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/03/how-we-can-make-elections-about-the-people-not-just-funders-an-excerpt-of-lawrence-lessigs-new-ted-book-lesterland/ http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/03/how-we-can-make-elections-abo... 2: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...
- lclarkmichalek 12y ago
  Maybe for the US you have only 2 choices, but Europe actually has quite a few "new" parties recently. UKIP[0], Podemos[1], and SYRIZA[2] (and many others I'm not well acquainted with) have all cropped up in the past few years, and have had quite a lot of success. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podemos_%28Spanish_political_party%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podemos_%28Spanish_political_pa... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Radical_Left http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Radical_Left
tormeh 12y ago
Size is important. I think everything gets harder with increased size. The more I look at the US, the more I like the EU being more of a confederation than a union, even though all the horse trading makes Brussels a mess. Countries with homogeneous culture and a population less than 10 million just seems optimal. There are positive scaling effects to be had, and I don't think the EU is quite strong enough to capture them all yet, but I think a vision of a USE is misguided.
- kghose 12y ago
  We have those in the US. They are called good school districts.
ladytron 12y ago
The USA has the strongest military in the world. Unlike the Netherlands, we can actually defend ourselves against an aggressor. I would rather come from a strong country than one that needs to rely on others when it comes to defense. Your social programs aren't worth a damn if you don't have the ability to defend yourself.
- Retric 12y ago
  That's mostly a function of size. Several countries have stronger military's per person. Worse we gain little from a strong military. Sure, there are a few economic benefits but suspending 1/3 as much would be a huge net gain. Picture zero national debt.
  - ejain 12y ago
    Don't know what you mean by "strong", but the US has the highest per-capita military spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 12y ago
      Spending money and getting value for that money are vary different things.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Europe is too important to US power to leave to chance so those forces would be redundant.
  - ladytron 12y ago
    So you are content to allow the USA to defend Europe while you spend your money on domestic services? Personally I find it hard to respect those decisions. We end having to protect Europe because we are the only ones who understand defense of one's liberty should be the first priority.
mikerichards 12y ago
..metric that citizens would consider to be desirable.. And your problem is that you can only know what you and maybe a few other people consider desirable. Europeans commenting on HN seem to be continually confused on why Americans don't think like them.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly. And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10. I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy, but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this.
  - mikerichards 12y ago
    If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly. Except you don't define proper and the means to achieve better. And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10 Again, those rankings don't really mean anything because they're completely subjective. I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy "The rest of the world"? Really? You have no clue what "rest of the world" is thinking. but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this. Yes, everybody wants that utopia...duhhhh. The means to getting there is the problem.
johan_larson 12y ago
I wonder. Are there metrics by which the US is on top? By world standards, the US is a very nice place. It makes the top 10 or top 20 by typical metrics. But it usually doesn't take the top spot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index http://www.ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable http://www.ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable (reversed)
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Compare Denmark to the U.S. Now compare the EU to Massachusetts. See the problem? It is hard to act smug if you compare the US to the EU.
- hollerith 12y ago
  well in your list of countries by GDP (PPP) the US is and has long been the top large-population country.
  - andrepd 12y ago
    The fact that that doesn't translate to actual benefits in metrics such as happiness or healthcare or income equality just goes to show how little raw money actually means.
    - henrikschroder 12y ago
      On the contrary, the 1% that has the bulk of the raw money are extremely happy and healthy.
      - saraid216 12y ago
        Do you have any evidence for this claim? Because the first thing I think of when I see your claim is this 2011 (i.e., pre-Occupy) article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/308419/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-f...

theiostream 12y ago

I wouldn't say the US being rich is a question of government organization, rather of not having been a colony whose sole purpose was to export raw materials. Higher dimensions also means more tax collection, which could be perfectly invested into making the standard of living of Americans better (it seems absurd to me that you don't have any public universal healthcare). The government prefers to invest 50% of it in Defense though. Consequence (also) of arms industry lobbyists and geopolitical strategy etc. but certainly not of size.

maxerickson 12y ago
The US has extensive public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are huge programs. I realize there is a fair chance that you mean some baseline universal care, but imprecise terms make the conversation more difficult. Large corporations are also hilariously micro-socialist in the way health care is provided to workers (partly by government rule, partly because they hire productive workers and can afford to compete with benefits). Edit: The ACA (Obamacare) was also a big step towards universal care. The funding/payment model is messy, but all someone needs to do in the US to get health coverage now is apply for it and make payments, they don't have to hope they get accepted by the insurance company (and I guess it is also much harder to drop coverage).
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Europeans visiting the states are genuinely worried that they will be carjacked, which I always find hilarious. Life is not like the movies or the news.
  - goodcanadian 12y ago
    It is unsettling the number of Americans I meet that seem to have the same worries in their own country. The level of fear and paranoia is great.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Americans don't worry about car jackings because they don't have a cartoon view of the US.
- theiostream 12y ago
  My notion of "public healthcare" is being able to walk into a government clinic or hospital and get free treatment or appointments as long as you show you're a citizen -- sorry for not having cleared that up.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Except you said the U.S. doesn't have any public healthcare.
    - theiostream 12y ago
      I changed my original comment to "public universal healthcare". I once again apologize for the lack of clarity of the original comment, and I hope you understand what my point was.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    I personally do like the single-payer approach, where you get coverage on a no-fee basis purely by showing you're a citizen/resident; and that's how it's done here in Denmark. But it's not the only way of providing universal care, even in Europe. Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are typically considered to also have universal healthcare, but it's administered via health insurance, not as a single-payer model with direct state provision of services. There are various options for coverage, but having some baseline coverage is mandatory and intended to be universal (with subsidies for people who can't afford it), somewhat closer to the ACA model than to the Scandinavian or Canadian model.
rayiner 12y ago
Holding defense spending against the U.S. while comparing it to Europe doesn't make much sense. The U.S. subsidizes defense for Europe. Look, Europe spent the last several hundred years warring with each other, then stopped suddenly with U.S. ascendency. They didn't evolve beyond war. It just became unimaginable when the U.S. has all the guns and will enforce the status quo.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  The European Union is widely regarded to be the main reason driving a peaceful Europe. I've not really heard of the argument at all, ever, that the US is what keeps Europe from engaging in war. It's true that the US-led United Nations and principles of the right of self-determination led to massive post-war decolonization, leading to Europe being much less imperialistic (which accelerated the inevitable independence movements which were already in full force in most countries) but even here the US subsidizing defense doesn't apply, the amount of military power that was used for the colonies was quite slim, almost everywhere they became police-heavy, and the US wouldn't have subsidized colonial powers, on the contrary. As for Europe warring until US ascendancy... while it's certainly true that the US was never more powerful relatively to everyone else than after the second world war, but they've been the largest economy in the world since the 19th century. They were the superpower before the first world war even started, let alone the second. Hell if anything, since then the US only lost power as Russia became a superpower, Western Europe became united and China rose, none of which were true at the end of the 19th century, and the per-capita wealth gap between the US and everyone else only slimmed since then. But I'll agree with you on the fact that the US subsidizes defense spending through the NATO in the tug of war for eastern Europe, sure. It's unlikely that the EU could have grown eastward so much, without NATO we would've seen today's Ukraine happen much sooner with say Estonia, Latvia, Romania or Poland 10 years ago.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    It's less a question of American economic power and more a question of the tens of thousands of American troops stationed throughout Europe. The U.S. military presence already in Europe is larger than the militaries of many European countries, and there's almost a million more American troops who can be deployed there if need be. If the U.S. was willing to do that in 1918, instead of turning isolationist again, World War II could have been prevented, just as the Pax Americana after World War II successfully prevented World War III.

bostik 12y ago

> no more democratic than say most European states I may get flamed or burned for saying this, but I believe we (in Europe and US) are currently pretty close to the ancient form of Greek democracy. In the ancient Greece, the vote was a privilege of the free men. The definition of "free man" on the other hand was not quite what we think of in a modern society. To start with, only a few percent of the population actually was eligible to participate. [0] To qualify as a free man, you needed to have position and/or wealth. Usually the two came together. After all, what good would it do to allow plebs to vote? They could vote against your agenda! Better to control the access to the vote by simply ensuring that at least majority of the voting people already share a certain appreciation for the status quo. "But, but but... We can vote however we want" you say. Sorry, no you can't. Thanks to the nature of the system, you get to vote between two or three nearly identical alternatives. Outliers will not be even put on the ballot. (I think California is an exception, which introduces its own downsides.) The choices on the vote are in practice dictated by those with the most power or money. Lawrence Lessig outlined this situation with his only slightly satirical TED talk - a country of Lesters. [1, 2] But back to terminology. If the power is held by those with wealth, and decisions are made purely among the people who have the most to financially gain from them, what do you call such a system? Is there even a descriptive term for a mix of oligarchy and plutocracy? The True Greek Democracy? 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Participation_and_exclusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Participatio... 1: http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/03/how-we-can-make-elections-about-the-people-not-just-funders-an-excerpt-of-lawrence-lessigs-new-ted-book-lesterland/ http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/03/how-we-can-make-elections-abo... 2: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...

lclarkmichalek 12y ago
Maybe for the US you have only 2 choices, but Europe actually has quite a few "new" parties recently. UKIP[0], Podemos[1], and SYRIZA[2] (and many others I'm not well acquainted with) have all cropped up in the past few years, and have had quite a lot of success. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podemos_%28Spanish_political_party%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podemos_%28Spanish_political_pa... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Radical_Left http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Radical_Left

tormeh 12y ago

Size is important. I think everything gets harder with increased size. The more I look at the US, the more I like the EU being more of a confederation than a union, even though all the horse trading makes Brussels a mess. Countries with homogeneous culture and a population less than 10 million just seems optimal. There are positive scaling effects to be had, and I don't think the EU is quite strong enough to capture them all yet, but I think a vision of a USE is misguided.

kghose 12y ago
We have those in the US. They are called good school districts.

ladytron 12y ago

The USA has the strongest military in the world. Unlike the Netherlands, we can actually defend ourselves against an aggressor. I would rather come from a strong country than one that needs to rely on others when it comes to defense. Your social programs aren't worth a damn if you don't have the ability to defend yourself.

Retric 12y ago
That's mostly a function of size. Several countries have stronger military's per person. Worse we gain little from a strong military. Sure, there are a few economic benefits but suspending 1/3 as much would be a huge net gain. Picture zero national debt.
- ejain 12y ago
  Don't know what you mean by "strong", but the US has the highest per-capita military spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 12y ago
    Spending money and getting value for that money are vary different things.
happyscrappy 12y ago
Europe is too important to US power to leave to chance so those forces would be redundant.
- ladytron 12y ago
  So you are content to allow the USA to defend Europe while you spend your money on domestic services? Personally I find it hard to respect those decisions. We end having to protect Europe because we are the only ones who understand defense of one's liberty should be the first priority.

mikerichards 12y ago

..metric that citizens would consider to be desirable.. And your problem is that you can only know what you and maybe a few other people consider desirable. Europeans commenting on HN seem to be continually confused on why Americans don't think like them.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago
If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly. And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10. I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy, but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this.
- mikerichards 12y ago
  If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly. Except you don't define proper and the means to achieve better. And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10 Again, those rankings don't really mean anything because they're completely subjective. I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy "The rest of the world"? Really? You have no clue what "rest of the world" is thinking. but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this. Yes, everybody wants that utopia...duhhhh. The means to getting there is the problem.

johan_larson 12y ago

I wonder. Are there metrics by which the US is on top? By world standards, the US is a very nice place. It makes the top 10 or top 20 by typical metrics. But it usually doesn't take the top spot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index http://www.ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable http://www.ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable (reversed)

happyscrappy 12y ago
Compare Denmark to the U.S. Now compare the EU to Massachusetts. See the problem? It is hard to act smug if you compare the US to the EU.
hollerith 12y ago
well in your list of countries by GDP (PPP) the US is and has long been the top large-population country.
- andrepd 12y ago
  The fact that that doesn't translate to actual benefits in metrics such as happiness or healthcare or income equality just goes to show how little raw money actually means.
  - henrikschroder 12y ago
    On the contrary, the 1% that has the bulk of the raw money are extremely happy and healthy.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      Do you have any evidence for this claim? Because the first thing I think of when I see your claim is this 2011 (i.e., pre-Occupy) article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/308419/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-f...