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http://youtu.be/BJWKccHQFOA?t=189 http://youtu.be/BJWKccHQFOA?t=189 I'll grant you that culturally and regulatory wise, there are advantages to certain regions

http://youtu.be/BJWKccHQFOA?t=189 http://youtu.be/BJWKccHQFOA?t=189 I'll grant you that culturally and regulatory wise, there are advantages to certain regions in the US. Some of those features are shared in parts of Canada, UK, Australia and other Commonwealth culture countries, where a view of entrepreneurship, risk, and ambition seems to differ with that of say, some continental Europe cultures. But I'd also include China, a politically unfree country in that last, in the sense that, despite "Communism", the country has many regions of wild west of wide eye entrepreneurs and greed. Like Obama said, you may believe in American Exceptionalism like the British believe in British Exceptionalism, or the French believe in Francophone Exceptionalism, but it's not unique. Canada's not really less free than the US for example. And unprecedented human happiness? Really, with the events of Baltimore (my hometown) going on, you can say this with a straight face? We live in an amazing amazing time that entrepreneurs can now do what only nation states did in the past. But our current situation is a precarious thing, and rather than be rah-rah about freedom and human happiness, we need to be worried about the environment and a breakdown in our social structure that might be fueled by such amazing abilities. Automation, software, robotics, et al, are starting to devalue labor, but we have not evolved politically or socially to deal with perhaps, the decline of work itself, as a focus of human self worth or well being.

happyscrappy 12y ago
>with the events of Baltimore Those rioters are thugs trashing their own neighborhood for a laugh. SJWs will pretend it is about poverty but blacks who live there understand exactly what is happening and were even trying to protect the police who are majority black.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  You should probably go read David Simon's take on it. It is brilliant and depressing and might provide you with some of the nuance you are evidently lacking. - http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/david-simon-talks-about-where-the-baltimore-police-went-wrong-429 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/david-simon-talks-about-where...
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    I am familiar with Baltimore. Beautiful downtown with drugged out zombies wandering around everywhere. The piece you linked to said black cops are by far more brutal so I don't see how that helps the narrative. Until you have to get a parenting license the cycle will continue.
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      I am not trying to help anyone's preferred narrative. I am saying it is far more complex than thugs trashing their own neighborhood for a laugh.
    - cromwellian 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure I'm more familiar with it, as I grew up only a few blocks from where Gray died, and I watched as the neighborhood turned from a rather fine urban neighborhood in the 70s into a crackhouse infested burnt out Detroit-style inner city (where I had bars on my windows to prevent druggies from breaking in) But I also lived in a mixed race neighborhood and watched how my friends and playmates became "drugged out zombies", most of whom are now either in jail or dead. My own sister is dead from a lifelong addiction to heroin. I made it out. It's not "social justice warrior" to try and understand how people become trapped in poverty and succumb to gangs and drugs. My siblings were raised by the same parents, but some of them got involved with the wrong crowd, and some didn't. I watched both working class black and white families encounter the same disintegrations. The right wing or libertarian narrative seeks not to find solutions, but to scold. It wants to say that people "get what they deserve" and so all of the poverty and misery must be justified somehow. If you're poor, if your kids are criminals, well, you have no one but yourself to blame, or them. Did you ever consider what causes people to become addicts in the first place? Or to join Gangs, or for many black families to be fatherless? Do you have any idea how hopeless it is to get a career off the ground if you've got an arrest record? Especially if you've got a felony where a white offender got a plea down to a misdemeanor? Baltimore wasn't always full of drugged out zombies. When I was 10 years old at the beginning of 80s, I used to walk halfway across town to the Inner Harbor by myself without fear. There was a sea change that happened, and it wasn't become the people who lived there suddenly became assholes, deadbeats, criminals, and bad parents. That all happened over many years from external factors. We need to understand how these external factors undermine our social capital and learn how to reverse it, otherwise you'll be living in a walled fortress in the future trying to avoid Zombies.

happyscrappy 12y ago

>with the events of Baltimore Those rioters are thugs trashing their own neighborhood for a laugh. SJWs will pretend it is about poverty but blacks who live there understand exactly what is happening and were even trying to protect the police who are majority black.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
You should probably go read David Simon's take on it. It is brilliant and depressing and might provide you with some of the nuance you are evidently lacking. - http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/david-simon-talks-about-where-the-baltimore-police-went-wrong-429 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/david-simon-talks-about-where...
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  I am familiar with Baltimore. Beautiful downtown with drugged out zombies wandering around everywhere. The piece you linked to said black cops are by far more brutal so I don't see how that helps the narrative. Until you have to get a parenting license the cycle will continue.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    I am not trying to help anyone's preferred narrative. I am saying it is far more complex than thugs trashing their own neighborhood for a laugh.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure I'm more familiar with it, as I grew up only a few blocks from where Gray died, and I watched as the neighborhood turned from a rather fine urban neighborhood in the 70s into a crackhouse infested burnt out Detroit-style inner city (where I had bars on my windows to prevent druggies from breaking in) But I also lived in a mixed race neighborhood and watched how my friends and playmates became "drugged out zombies", most of whom are now either in jail or dead. My own sister is dead from a lifelong addiction to heroin. I made it out. It's not "social justice warrior" to try and understand how people become trapped in poverty and succumb to gangs and drugs. My siblings were raised by the same parents, but some of them got involved with the wrong crowd, and some didn't. I watched both working class black and white families encounter the same disintegrations. The right wing or libertarian narrative seeks not to find solutions, but to scold. It wants to say that people "get what they deserve" and so all of the poverty and misery must be justified somehow. If you're poor, if your kids are criminals, well, you have no one but yourself to blame, or them. Did you ever consider what causes people to become addicts in the first place? Or to join Gangs, or for many black families to be fatherless? Do you have any idea how hopeless it is to get a career off the ground if you've got an arrest record? Especially if you've got a felony where a white offender got a plea down to a misdemeanor? Baltimore wasn't always full of drugged out zombies. When I was 10 years old at the beginning of 80s, I used to walk halfway across town to the Inner Harbor by myself without fear. There was a sea change that happened, and it wasn't become the people who lived there suddenly became assholes, deadbeats, criminals, and bad parents. That all happened over many years from external factors. We need to understand how these external factors undermine our social capital and learn how to reverse it, otherwise you'll be living in a walled fortress in the future trying to avoid Zombies.