[HN Gopher] Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an e...
___________________________________________________________________
Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential
crisis
Author : nradov
Score : 221 points
Date : 2024-11-18 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| no_wizard wrote:
| Bhutan sounds interesting. I would be very curious to know more
| about how life is there. Its one thing to provide certain things
| and prioritize happiness, it is another to provide fulfillment,
| which is what I suspect the countries young citizens leaving are
| finding to be the case.
|
| Though, with university free, if Bhutan has good, solid
| universities and produces students in reasonable numbers, since
| the country appears to be a highly literate english speaking one,
| I could see them leveraging that to raise the economy by founding
| outsourcing firms etc.
| user_7832 wrote:
| From my very limited experience having visited the country as a
| tourist, they appear to lead "simple" lives from the outside.
| Unfortunately many are not well off, "fortunately" the
| standards of living are oftentimes simple enough that it's not
| a problem.
|
| What I can imagine, is that many (youngsters) may rather prefer
| a more "modern" life with McDonalds and iPhones, particularly
| if they are able to actually achieve it.
|
| Which one is better? I'm not going to comment. But I do want to
| add as a closing statement that the country (and people) were
| absolutely amazing. I'd definitely love to go there again if I
| can, the mountains are pretty much magical and the people
| really friendly. I hope they manage to succeed, socially
| speaking.
| amritananda wrote:
| I think tourism, especially in countries that rely on tightly
| controlling the experience, can tell you very little about
| the function of the country itself.
|
| I've had many people say the same to me about Nepal, ignorant
| of the high youth unemployment rate, the corrupt politicians,
| the complete lack of any basic infrastructure (schools,
| transportation, electricity, etc.) in some areas, or the
| astronomically high number of people leaving to work as
| migrant labourers in countries that are the absolute worst in
| the world when it comes to labour rights.
|
| None of these problems are visible to you as a visitor. This
| is especially true if you stick to areas that are heavily
| trafficked by tourists which tend to be rich enough to cater
| to their needs.
| jaysonelliot wrote:
| I doubt that becoming another "developing economy" where you
| have to spend 8-10 hours a day working in a call center would
| increase happiness.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Admittedly I'm unimaginative. I edited that out because it
| does belie a certain connotation.
| bloak wrote:
| The official language of Bhutan seems to be Dzongkha. Now
| there's a pub quiz question not many people will be able to
| answer, I suspect.
|
| People being forced to work in call centres, speaking a foreign
| language, sounds like a kind of neocolonialism and hardly a
| recipe for happiness.
| conductr wrote:
| I wonder if that would be seen as a net negative on the
| happiness scale due to the fact that people tend to dislike
| those jobs.
|
| I think if you're taught your whole life to seek happiness, a
| younger generation could largely look curiously out into the
| world as a source of happiness. In the western world, when you
| poll any population of people asking what they are "passionate"
| about Travel is always going to be a top ranked answer. It
| brings people joy, exploration is an innate curiosity of
| humans. So, my guess/hypothesis would be they are looking for
| happiness as they've been raised/conditioned to do.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I visited there in 2022 right they lifted Covid restrictions.
| You don't really get an authentic experience with the locals as
| you're with a guide at all times and the standard tourist trip
| is pre planned, but I'm quite happy I went. Although the daily
| tourist fee of $200/day just to be in the country felt
| excessive.
|
| I can't really describe what Bhutan is like, but I did enjoy
| learning about Drukpa Kunley:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drukpa_Kunley
| itishappy wrote:
| Bhutan is also quite energy rich due to hydroelectric power and
| have been dumping the excess into bitcoin.
|
| > Bhutan is fifth among countries holding BTC, after the United
| States, China, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bhutan-cashes-33-5b-bitcoin-0...
|
| (Mistake in title, they've cashed out only $33 million, not
| billion.)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Maybe they could do something more productive with that surplus
| like host AI data centers? I know those are popping up out west
| in the US where green energy like wind is more plentiful.
| ponty_rick wrote:
| Data centers require an ecosystem of technology to exist -
| skilled manpower, fiber optic network, grid capacity etc,
| they're probably not up for it yet.
| samatman wrote:
| When you said "productive", do you perhaps mean socially
| useful?
|
| It takes a lot of AI data center to derive a billion-dollar
| profit, which is the value just of the Bitcoin which Bhutan
| currently retains. Seems fairly economically productive to
| me.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| bitcoin is fiat digital money, its value is all based on
| how others think it is worth (due to scarcity or whatever);
| even worse it's price goes up and down rather quickly,
| making it not very useful as something to exchange goods
| and services with. AI can actually do productive things.
| Bhutan could start up a bunch of call centers staffed not
| by people, but AI agents powered by its green energy.
| andai wrote:
| King thinks democracy is a great idea. Everyone rejects it. King
| institutes it anyway.
|
| Wait a second...
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| The people could vote the same person or party in representing
| the interests of the king and his family. Dictators can be
| democratically elected.
|
| The real question is how do you protect people from themselves?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _how do you protect people from themselves_
|
| Education.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| > Every one of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a
| dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are
| fond of talking about "liberty"; that, as we talk of it, is
| a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of
| talking about "progress"; that is a dodge to avoid
| discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about
| "education"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is
| good. The modern man says, "Let us leave all these
| arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is,
| logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but
| let it be considered good not to decide it." He says, "Away
| with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This,
| logically stated, means, "Let us not settle what is good;
| but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He
| says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the
| hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly
| expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let
| us give it to our children."
| mdp2021 wrote:
| No, it is just that that one was not the context to
| discuss the details of sought education. That one did not
| go into specifics does not mean the specifics are not
| available in good amount.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I think people who say education is the solution to
| democracy, or in particular to the people voting someone
| the spearker does not like, mean "educate more people to
| believe what I believe".
|
| It's clearly a good solution from the perspective of that
| speaker - more people would vote the same way they do, so
| the "right" people would get elected, "right" policies
| would happen and so on.
|
| Meh, if this avoiding the "definition of good" is really
| the problem, then the likes of Putin and Xi and Trump
| will fix us. They clearly think they know exactly what's
| good for everyone, and are willing to do most anything to
| achieve it. Doubtful they will make the world a better
| place, but who knows. I guess we'll find out.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| No, it is the very hard obvious fact that empowering the
| ignorant (with power over the rest) is a very bad idea.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Clearly not everyone agrees with your opinion. Calling it
| "very hard obvious fact" changes nothing. Maybe add some
| caps, see if that helps.
|
| Are you not worried in any way about needing to answer
| everything with "no"? Is this a discussion or are we here
| to be told by you what the truth is?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is not an opinion: you do not choose it among
| alternatives. You have to look at it and see. "Giving the
| ignorant power over the rest is dangerous". Try to argue
| the opposite, you'll probably have to go into quite some
| effort to produce some good arguments.
|
| > _Are you not worried in any way about needing to answer
| everything with "no"?_
|
| No, I trust you with understanding the sense. (It's not a
| need, it just works in formulation.)
| lucianbr wrote:
| > You have to look at it and see.
|
| And your vision is perfect, while everyone else's is
| flawed? How lucky for you. No need to present arguments,
| just let us know what you see, and that what you see is
| the "very hard obvious truth".
|
| Have a little self-awareness man.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _How lucky for you_
|
| Yes, surely it is a very good position - but it's not
| just plain luck, it comes from lots of training.
|
| > _No need to present arguments_
|
| The argument is there, you missed it: "If you do not find
| X a <<hard obvious fact>>, try arguing for the opposite".
| myrmidon wrote:
| Who gets to define what "ignorance" is, though?
|
| Because to me it appears that you just give the
| "ignorant" peoples power to someone else, and if your
| goal is to _keep being a democracy_ , then this sort of
| power redistribution is almost certain to screw your
| system over in the long term.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| It's less a solution than we want to believe (in the west).
| [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2015/12/04/more-
| educa...
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| It's not for you to protect them from themselves.
|
| > This is the first principle of democracy: that the
| essential things in men are the things they hold in common,
| not the things they hold separately. And the second principle
| is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one
| of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is
| more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic
| contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is
| a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping
| into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the
| church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole
| (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer
| Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do
| at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a
| thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing
| one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself,
| even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth
| of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are
| asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may
| soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by
| nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these
| universal human functions, and that democracy classes
| government among them. In short, the democratic faith is
| this: that the most terribly important things must be left to
| ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing
| of the young, the laws of the state.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _for you to protect them from themselves_
|
| It certainly is, because society has consequences over the
| individual.
|
| People cannot be free to damage you: it is not
| <<protect[ing] them from themselves>>, it is "protecting
| yourself from them".
| lucianbr wrote:
| I am certain Xi and Putin and Trump think it is their
| right and prerogative to "protect people from
| themselves". Just like you.
|
| This is for example the justification used to ban books.
| Certain books, when read, give people incorrect ideas,
| and we need to protect them from themselves.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| No, the point is that you'd better "protect yourself from
| them". That one should not <<protect people from
| themselves>> is opinable, but as that one is directly
| involved, a better question is "how to protect yourself"
| - which is a revolution in perspective.
|
| That some people may have had a position (and that is
| also to be shown) that coincidentally overlaps with
| something that be confused as related to the above
| changes nothing (of the truthfulness of the idea).
| lucianbr wrote:
| You first said it is your right to protect people from
| themselves. This new different position is more
| reasonable. Sure, go ahead, protect yourself from others.
| Be aware they will protect themselves from you too, on
| the exact same arguments.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| No, look: you cannot take chunks of posts when they are
| not semantically isolated, there is no <<new>> position,
| it is the same expressed more verbosely:
|
| it was " _Protect[ing people] from themselves[? ...
| Certainly[], because society has consequences over the
| individual_ ".
|
| It means, "no, it is not a good idea to let them be
| liabilities: the consequences fall on you".
|
| You see that the point is not plainly "protecting people
| from themselves", and the closest cone of interpretations
| of that, right?
|
| > _Be aware they will_
|
| An where is the problem? That is duly! Society is based
| on reciprocal interaction _AND_ correction! Of course
| everybody is supposed to contribute.
| lucianbr wrote:
| What's the difference between "protect people from
| themselves" and "take away people's freedom and decide for
| them anything important"?
|
| IMHO, freedom must contain the freedom to choose "bad", or
| make mistakes. "Bad" is in quotes because it's only certain
| to be bad from the perspective of the person considering the
| problem, you or me in this case. Maybe the people will be
| well served by "bad" decisions, able to learn from them, or
| be happy in ignorance, or who knows what else.
|
| I think it's parallel to giving children autonomy. The more
| you protect them, the more you prevent their growth as a
| person.
| int_19h wrote:
| Unlike with children, though, "people" is not a singular
| entity. While the sets of those voting for some platform
| and the set of those harmed by its policies often
| intersect, they rarely overlap entirely.
|
| In general, the biggest problem with any kind of democracy
| is preventing it from dissolving into a cycle of people
| voting to, basically, oppress and/or rob their outgroup
| neighbors for their own benefit (with outgroups themselves
| created or redefined over time to provide for new targets).
| psychoslave wrote:
| We don't want to do that. We want to give them the tools to
| help themselves, and leave them with the advises we believe
| relevant to not hurt themselves when using them, and then let
| them the duty to act according to their own experience.
|
| Sure, we would rather not see our kids die from all the
| dangers of the outside world. But they won't thrive an bloom
| if we confine them in a padded basement.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| When resource curse transnational corporations enter the fray,
| I think they might have third thoughts about how good of an
| idea it was to cede political power that can be bought and sold
| for special interests using the trappings of democracy.
| konschubert wrote:
| Unlike a king, which famously can't be bought.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Similar situation in the US:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/10/72-of-ame...
|
| Interesting how a process based on the will of the majority can
| also be disapproved of by the majority.
| vundercind wrote:
| That's just true, but people were wrong before when they
| thought we were good (and they may be wrong now about why
| we're a bad example).
|
| There's a reason that when we (anyone, really, but even the
| US) let the policy nerds set up a democracy somewhere else,
| they usually don't model much or any of it on the US. The
| system's not been regarded as especially good, as systems of
| democracy go, since not later than the early 20th century, as
| it became clear that not only does it have serious problems,
| but some of those are extremely resistant to repair.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| I think the 3/5ths compromise is a good highlight of the
| poorness of the model of democracy the USA established from
| its formation. "A democracy of the people but only 3/5 of
| those people who only have a voice by proxy entrusted to
| their captives", falls quite short of an ideal model.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| That wouldn't explain why US democracy seems
| dysfunctional today, though.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > The system's not been regarded as especially good, as
| systems of democracy go, since not later than the early
| 20th century
|
| what are some of the problems in your view?
| vundercind wrote:
| The FPTP system of elections used for most federal
| elections in the country is certainly the worst part.
| Stabilizing at only two viable parties rather than
| several that must (most of the time) form coalitions to
| govern causes a bunch of problems, with few benefits. It
| is also why so much of the rest is hard to fix, including
| why this system of elections has been so hard to move
| away from. At the strictly federal level, the notorious
| electoral college system reinforces FPTP and has
| accomplished little of its positive intentions, leaving
| only "give lower-free-population slave states more power"
| (which has become simply "give lower population states
| more power" after the civil war) which effect is simply
| bad, as was the original primary reason for including it
| (and again, secondary reasons like "direct election of a
| position like president is kinda dumb [true!] so we
| should instead vote for trusted, wise representatives to
| go make the decision for us" never worked as intended, so
| aren't reasons to keep it)
|
| The Supreme Court was recognized as super-dangerous _at
| the founding_ and the solution some of our much-revered
| founders provided was "I guess we can just ignore them
| when they do really bad things?" which definitely seems
| _not great_.
|
| Lack of a defense against gerrymandering is extremely
| bad, but file under things that jettisoning FPTP would
| largely fix without further specific action. The many ill
| effects of FPTP are why it's so bad.
|
| There's some evidence that common law significantly
| increases the overall cost of government administration
| over continental systems of jurisprudence, though that's
| a more-recent and developing area of potential weakness.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| The crazy thing is that in the recent 2024 US election,
| there were a number of ballot initiatives to replace
| FPTP, and FPTP _won_ every time. Ranked choice was even
| _repealed_ in Alaska. The majority spoke, and they said
| they prefer an "inferior" system.
|
| Democracy has a fascinating "self-refuting" quality to
| it.
| int_19h wrote:
| It kind of stands to reason when you consider the
| incentives in a hyper-partisan environment. FPTP
| generally benefits one major party over the other - which
| party it is varies depending on the location, but either
| way, it means that the same people who generally run the
| place and have the most long-term political power in it
| have the incentive to reject reform. And the vast
| majority of voters aren't going to delve into the
| details; if the people whom they generally already vote
| for tell them that ranked choice etc is a "power grab" by
| the other guys, they'll believe it. These days, such
| agitprop is often couched in terms that deliberately
| evoke various cultural issues - e.g. where Democrats are
| the ones opposing ranked choice, it is often presented as
| "diluting the power of minority voters".
| digging wrote:
| Democracy is not exactly a single thing though, but
| current forms kind of do have that quality, yes. "Casting
| binary votes on specific questions and no take-backs" is
| actually a kind of terrible model of democracy. There's
| got to be other ways.
|
| If we take "a healthy interpersonal relationship between
| people with mutual respect, self-knowledge, and strong
| communication skills" as a model, we can see how two or
| more people continually grow into the kinds of lives they
| want to lead by working together, and that's the kind of
| democracy I'd like to have.
|
| Obviously, this doesn't scale. But that doesn't mean we
| just give up and take the lazy, clearly bad option. We
| ought to evaluate the situation we're actually in and
| adapt.
|
| I mean, FPTP is obviously bad, but if we're being honest,
| we should expect a plurality if not majority of people to
| be unable to recognize a bad decision even when it's
| presented to them as such. We know that if you run enough
| emotionally-triggering ads and you will get supporters of
| virtually any idea - this is basically the concept of
| manufactured consent. And I think our society can't
| really evolve in a healthy way until we accept that more
| widely. (By accept, I mean "beware of", not "exploit".)
|
| If you want a program to run efficiently and give you
| good results, you don't just keep taking lazier and
| lazier approaches and delete functions you don't
| understand. You carefully refactor. It's a continuous
| process. That's what we're supposed to do with our
| democratic institutions, but unfortunately, we're stuck
| focusing on specific outputs so much that we can't even
| understand the root problems.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Here in Colorado, it was interesting to see one of the
| few things the D and R parties could agree on is that
| FPTP was the best possible system. I'm pretty confident
| because without it, more parties would show up if people
| could actually vote for who they most align with instead
| of voting for (who they most align with who they believe
| will have a chance to win the election).
| lucianbr wrote:
| Homo sapiens is irrational. At least he is not rational all
| the time.
|
| People wanting to have their cake and eat it too, or to
| impose rules on others but themselves be excepted from it is
| nearly universal. In any case it's extremely common.
|
| This is just the nature of what we are, and so much trouble
| comes from pretending otherwise.
| tivert wrote:
| It's sad, but I'm sure there's a certain kind of person who's
| gloating over this. As in "Haha, those assholes wanted happiness,
| but my awesome capitalism wins everytime!1!! Join us at the
| bottom, suckers!!1!"
|
| Personally, I kinda feel like people probably have perverse
| psychological impulses that cause us to make ourselves unhappy
| and discontented unless there's certain specific external
| constraints to control those impulses. Modern technology, in its
| quest to remove all constraint, eagerly removed the necessary
| ones.
|
| It's sort of like fitness: way back, there was no such activity
| as "exercise," because everyone got enough as a matter of course
| (e.g. by farming, hunting, walking everywhere). Now no one has to
| do any of that, "exercise" is a new chore that requires
| willpower, so we're all getting fat.
| nativeit wrote:
| Any chance you were raised Catholic?
| tivert wrote:
| No. I'm not Catholic and I wasn't raised as one either.
| tivert wrote:
| I can't edit my comment now, but I think it's totally
| uncalled for that the GP comment is now grayed-out from
| down-votes. There was nothing wrong with the question!
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Imagine a Star Trek existence where any meal imaginable was
| just a replicator away and a holodeck could enable one to be
| anybody, have anybody, and do anything - any time and for
| seemingly no or next to no cost.
|
| Many people seem to think this would be a utopia, but I suspect
| on reality there'd be a mass epidemic of suicide, drug abuse,
| and so on.
|
| It's not about having external constraints, but about having a
| purpose in life. Of course one could create a purpose but
| endless hedonism is far more tempting. The history of ancient
| emperor's, who could have or do essentially anything, and how
| they approached life is a clear example of both sides of the
| coin. The only difference between Aurelius and Calligula is one
| created an artificial purpose for himself, and the other simply
| indulged in the pleasures of life as an end in itself.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The availability of experience does not cause directly the
| perception of vacuity, nor does it hinder internal solidity -
| they are independent.
| frameset wrote:
| I always use hard drugs like heroin as an example of this.
|
| If the gov made it all legal tomorrow, are you going to run
| out and buy some?
|
| Probably not, right?
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Let me preface this by saying that I'm generally pro-
| legalization. Particularly of consumption, which when
| criminalized, makes things worse for everyone.
|
| That being said, heroin is one of those things that are
| genuinely dangerous to try. It's so easy to become
| addicted to the stuff, and the costs to society are so
| high to get an addict clean, that one has to at least
| consider the pros and cons of prohibition. In an ideal
| world, all consenting adults should have the free choice
| to ruin their life if they wish, and perhaps in a post-
| scarcity society this is what we should allow everyone to
| do. But while resources are still limited, heroin addicts
| (and by extension opiates) create a lot of negative
| externalities. Personal freedom is all good, but where
| does it end? Should a person be free to ruin the lives of
| others when they cannot get their fix other than to rob
| people? And when someone is getting withdrawal symptoms,
| they have no more free will, they'll do anything to avoid
| that suffering.
|
| It's tricky to say what would be the marginal increase in
| heroin users if it was easily available. I agree with you
| that rational people with well balanced lives and a
| strong safety net in terms of family and finances are
| unlikely to go out and buy heroin. People who are bored,
| in a bad spot, depressed, etc... might just go out and do
| it if all it takes is a short walk to the nearest shop.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Star Trek had Starfleet.
| travisporter wrote:
| Getting close to Mother Theresa reasoning there in my
| opinion.
|
| Replicators a la Star Trek tech and availability would save a
| lot of lives and bring happiness to billions of people.
| Throw383839 wrote:
| Maybe the "free stuff" is not there. My country has a free
| healthcare, but every month I have to pay hundreds on mandatory
| insurance. I do not even have a GP or dentist, non are taking
| on new patients!
| tolciho wrote:
| There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to
| come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high
| social importance, there will be great changes in the code of
| morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the
| pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two
| hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most
| distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest
| virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the
| money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a
| possession -as distinguished from the love of money as a means
| to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for
| what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those
| semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands
| over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All
| kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the
| distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties,
| which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and
| unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously
| useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then
| be free, at last, to discard.
|
| John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our
| Grandchildren (1930)
|
| However Keynes goes on to say the "only" option is to hitch our
| wagon to these psychopathic criminals, regardless of where
| their rocket toboggan is going, without consideration of
| alternatives, nor of Regulations (such as mentioned by Adam
| Smith) or even holding higher standards of conduct to the
| Mammon-addled, in order to better blunt some of their more
| charming aspects.
| tim333 wrote:
| Keynes was a great economist but I think he was a bit off on
| human nature there with:
|
| "The love of money" .... "semi-pathological propensities
| which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in
| mental disease".
|
| People like making money. Not just weirdos but most people.
| My gran used to sell things at a stall and give the money to
| a Donkey charity, Keynes himself made money in the markets
| and used it to build a theater in Cambridge. It's a normal
| thing and not usually pathological.
| konschubert wrote:
| How do you know that people in Buthan were actually happy?
| mrala wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > Every five years, surveyors fan out across Bhutan measuring
| the nation's happiness. The results are analyzed and factored
| into public policy.
|
| Or are you asking whether the results of the survey can be
| trusted?
| konschubert wrote:
| Whether they can be trusted. And how they compare to other
| nations.
| tim333 wrote:
| I went to Bhutan and looked up the surveys. The consensus
| seems to be they are happier than most countries at their
| (low) gdp per capita but probably not doing as well as the
| leading rich countries like Denmark etc.
|
| I think the Bhutanese are a bit cynical about 'gross national
| happiness' which was invented on the fly by one of the kings.
| beeflet wrote:
| I don't think pursing happiness in itself is a noble goal,
| especially for a society at large. The article talks about some
| sort of happiness metric which is based on the standard of
| living and such. It just seems like Bhutan is sticking to a
| traditional bhuddist agrarian society, and not pursing some
| metric of happiness directly.
|
| IDK about capitalism, but people seem to like it because it
| creates a dynamic society with internal competition, which is
| the kind of society young people want to immigrate to.
|
| Young people don't want to live in a "utopia" where everything
| has been solved for them. That's the problem described in the
| article.
|
| I remember reading someone who classified activities like
| exercise "surrogate actions" or something, but their point was
| that it was bad only because they aren't useful in modern
| society but that the impulse to pursue challenge like this is
| natural.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Admittedly I'm not familiar with bhutan. Besides basics, and
| buddhism connections. Lets take a look.
|
| >Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically the
| success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese
| so sought after abroad.
|
| They are 95th place for GDP.
|
| 125th place for HDI.
|
| I wouldn't even consider working on 'happiness' with the numbers
| that bad.
|
| Bhutan's balance of trade appears to be entirely negative. So the
| country is getting poorer.
|
| Their GDP numbers are 5% growth every year? That seems
| impossible.
|
| 3% unemployment and 65% participation rate.
|
| Lets call it a ~4-5% inflation average or worse.
|
| 6.8% interest rate, while never ever being below 6%? So they
| target what 5%? So its not that GDP growth at 5% is impossible.
| They are essentially saying they havent had gdp growth in
| decades, they are hiding a major depression?
|
| In the last 10 years Bhutan has doubled their money supply, while
| population is leaving? LOL incoming government collapse.
|
| government debt to gdp is ~130%. 100% is the magical threshold
| you're not allowed to cross. If you're the federal reserve and
| Tbills reputation might allow you to go above 100% like the USA
| in 2020... but Bhutan has no such ability. They likely cant cross
| ~40% if i were to estimate.
|
| Major deficit spending across the last 25 years.
|
| Sales tax of 50%
|
| Income tax of 30%
|
| >Bhutan was, and is today, largely a subsistence agricultural
| society. Many families still live in multigenerational
| farmhouses.
|
| I'd be leaving as well. Nobody is seeking Bhutan people. The
| bhutan people are fleeing the inevitable.
|
| Bhutan is about 20% debt/gdp from a venezuela level collapse. If
| by some magic they dont collapse there, they are about 40% from a
| greece like collapse.
|
| Bhutan is already about 10% higher than the Sri Lankan collapse.
|
| Fleee Bhutan while you can.
| no_wizard wrote:
| All this seems to be conjecture. Maybe its true that their
| economy will falter hard, maybe not.
|
| I wish we could hear from actual Bhutanese people rather than
| look at statistics. I suspect the reason people leave is more
| complex than this.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Problem: Young bhutanese are fleeing the country and its a
| huge problem.
|
| Government: "we're doing such a great job, people want to
| leave."
|
| That's the conjecture, or is it more comedy?
| no_wizard wrote:
| It boils down to applying western logic to a non western
| country. I get a little suspect that the statistics aren't
| telling the full story.
|
| I do think the government optimizing for happiness doesn't
| equal optimizing for fulfillment, which isn't always the
| same thing.
|
| So people leave, despite perhaps a generally good happiness
| vibe. It's like people who leave a Western European country
| for the US, because they feel their home countries can't
| provide the experience they're looking for.
|
| Then again, it's perhaps all a facade
| konschubert wrote:
| It's all facade.
|
| The fact that people are leaving in droves tells you all
| you need to know.
|
| Unless the argument is that people are happier when
| imprisoned.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't think anyone is comparing Bhutan to prison? That
| isn't an apt comparison.
|
| I'd be more interested in what young Bhutanese people
| have to say. If it's economic opportunity they seek then
| it can be dealt with locally (and they seem to recognize
| that), if it's something deeper that would also be very
| interesting to know.
|
| Humans aren't as rational as some like to believe
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _flagged for having my opinion_
|
| You'll sooner be bashed for gratuitous drama.
|
| On topic: people both need meaning and creature comforts.
| No meaning, they'll wait for death; no comfort, they'll
| move, that was the brain is there for.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Isn't GDP a particularly bad indicator for a society that's
| largely subsistence agriculture? They grow things and then eat
| them - does that even figure into GDP?
| konschubert wrote:
| Subsistence farming, while possibly not counted in GDP, is an
| explanation why people don't starve to death. It's not really
| an argument that the country is doing "better than it seems",
| unless your baseline is famine.
| biosboiii wrote:
| is the more accurate baseline having food, 3 mortgages, a
| new phone and a laptop?
| konschubert wrote:
| Heating and air conditioning, a comfortable apartment,
| being able to travel, health care to live long enough to
| see your kids grow old. Food that's cheap enough, so you
| always have something healthy and tasty to eat when you
| are hungry.
|
| A pool in the garden is pretty fun on summer days, I
| imagine! It's cool to see the Niagara Falls, or the
| Norwegian fjords. Or visit a friend in a foreign country!
| griffzhowl wrote:
| No, but it's a reason that changes to the standard economic
| indicators won't give you as much of an insight into
| changes to people's quality of life.
| konschubert wrote:
| If the thing that drives your quality of life is
| subsistence farming then your quality of life is
| terrible.
|
| No human except monks would choose such a life.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. The point is that the GDP of the
| country you're in going up or down is a somewhat abstract
| and irrelevant concern for a subsistence farmer
|
| I think it's possible that some of them have beautiful
| lives anyway, but tough, no doubt. I've been to some
| similar villages in Ladakh
| vundercind wrote:
| > Bhutan's balance of trade appears to be entirely negative. So
| the country is getting poorer.
|
| This must be very much true of the US, too, then, and has been
| for a long time? Its trade balance is negative to the tune of
| tens of billions.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >This must be very much true of the US, too, then, and has
| been for a long time? Its trade balance is negative to the
| tune of tens of billions.
|
| Quite true. The key difference here is that the USA is a
| reserve currency and those advantage give them far more
| breathing room in the balance.
|
| But the USA isnt without the same consequences. The USA could
| be much wealthier per capita if they had a president who
| planned to put big tariffs in place.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > I'm not familiar with bhutan > Fleee Bhutan while you can.
|
| maybe familiarize yourself with the country at a deeper level
| before throwing out recommendations based on a few select
| metrics which may or may not be that relevant (GDP in
| particular is not a good metric)
| incomingpain wrote:
| >maybe familiarize yourself with the country at a deeper
| level before throwing out recommendations based on a few
| select metrics which may or may not be that relevant (GDP in
| particular is not a good metric)
|
| Perhaps there's more analysis for you personally but when I
| look at those numbers.
|
| 30% poverty, 20-40% unemployment is coming. identical to
| their peers in similar financial situations.
|
| I dont need any further analysis. What other 'deeper' facts
| do you want to look at?
|
| How about a huge one I didnt even add.
|
| Firearms per 100 people, places Bhutan about 196th in the
| world. They arent even a free country. Flee asap.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Firearms per 100 people, places Bhutan about 196th in the
| world. They arent even a free country. Flee asap.
|
| More firearms per people equals more freedom?
|
| This has to be one of the worst rationales I have read on
| HN. Not an easy feat.
|
| And I _really_ struggled to post this while avoiding some
| harsher words. Also not an easy feat.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Fleee Bhutan while you can
|
| Leaving Bhutan for Australia and the US (often on a Refugee
| visa) is extremely popular in Bhutan nowadays [0]. If you live
| in the Bay Area, there is a large Bhutanese (as well as Nepali,
| Indian Tibetan, and Himachali) diaspora in the East Bay.
|
| > Their GDP numbers are 5% growth every year? That seems
| impossible
|
| They are a large energy exporter who exports much of their
| energy to Northeast India and Bangladesh.
|
| That said, most infrastructure is owned and operated by Indian
| conglomerates like Tata Group or Indian SoEs.
|
| > Bhutan is about 20% debt/gdp from a venezuela level collapse.
| If by some magic they dont collapse there, they are about 40%
| from a greece like collapse
|
| The Indian government will prop up Bhutan no matter what.
| Several of India's forward deployment bases are located in the
| country, and it is critical for defending much of Northeast
| India from China.
|
| If Bhutan gets even the slightest bit wobbly or shifts
| direction, India would probably "absorb" Bhutan the same way it
| did Sikkim in 1973.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bhutans-jobs-
| woes...
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Southern Bhutan's Lhotshampa people, who were 100,000 mostly
| Hindu ethnic minority were cleansed under the "One Nation, One
| People" policy aimed at forced ethnic, cultural, and religious
| cohesion. They now live as refugees in Nepal.
|
| Behind Bhutan's Shangrila facade is a discriminatory policies
| favoring Buddhists & Drukpa culture remain in place as do
| discriminatory citizenship laws and restrictions on civil,
| religious and linguistic rights.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhotshampa
| jaysonelliot wrote:
| Despite the headline CBS gave the article, it seems the problem
| is not with happiness, but with the seductive appeal of
| materialism and the effects of exposing one culture to another.
|
| Social comparison theory is the idea that our satisfaction with
| what we have isn't an objective measure, but is actually based on
| what we see other people have. Young people generally seem to
| have an innate desire to leave their hometowns and seek out what
| else might be waiting out there for them. When you add in
| globalization and media influence exposing them to what looks
| like a "better" life with more things, it's not surprising that
| they've seen ~9% of young people leave Bhutan.
|
| The other question is, what will happen if Bhutan does increase
| their financial wealth as well as their happiness? Will they then
| see a net influx of people through immigration, looking for the
| lifestyle Bhutan promises? And will those new people be able to
| maintain the culture Bhutan has cultivated?
|
| It sounds like the concept of Gross National Happiness is a
| successful one, on its own, but it brings new challenges that
| couldn't have been forseen originally. That doesn't mean they
| can't solve them without giving up their core values.
| cardanome wrote:
| Nah, the issue is the one that many developing countries suffer
| from: brain drain.
|
| The best people leave the country because the can earn orders
| of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why
| countries like the US keep being so successful while developing
| countries stay poor.
|
| It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try
| their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever
| dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism?
| There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is
| what moves humanity forward.
|
| Offering great and free education will always backfire for
| developing nations.
|
| The solution is to either keep the population ignorant,
| hamstringing their education so they are less useful abroad and
| implementing a strict censorship regime so they don't get
| "corrupted" by the West or well force them to stay.
|
| We saw that all play out in the Soviet Block. There is a good
| reason there was a wall.
|
| I think the fairest solution is to NOT make education free but
| instant offer a deal of having to stay in the country and work
| for X-years in the profession one has been trained in by the
| state. Once they get older and settle down they are less likely
| to leave anyway.
|
| Being a developing country just sucks. There is a reason most
| never break the cycle of poverty.
| ta988 wrote:
| Brain drain is not just about money. it is also simply about
| beeing able to get a life doing what we like with people
| alike and know how to do while beeing recognized doing it. I
| left my country for this exact reason, there was a culture of
| doing the minimum and making sure others can't organize to do
| great things. And trying to go back you get a lot of
| opposition, bureaucratic, social (jealousy and resentment is
| more than palpable in interviews), cultural... It is more
| like a one-way brain valve.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > striving for a better life
|
| the problem here is that you're directly equating earning
| more money with a "better life"
|
| once you have enough to have your needs met, then earning
| multiples times that doesn't make your life better; at that
| point, "better life" is much more impacted by other factors
| than money
| FredPret wrote:
| The marginal utility of an extra dollar goes down as you
| get more of them, but it never reaches zero, especially if
| you have big dreams.
|
| Just look at Musk and his startups - I bet he's very glad
| to have that 200 billionth dollar, because now he can have
| the space program he always wanted. This wouldn't have been
| possible in the third-world country where he grew up.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| First, HN consistently misuses the term "third world". In
| 2024, this term is now very out of date to describe
| developing economies (and below). Also, the original
| meaning was not at all what most people think -- it was
| about Soviet vs US alignment. And, no, South Africa was
| definitely middle income when he grew up there -- and it
| still is (sadly). For a long time (maybe still true?),
| the GDP per capita in SA nearly the highest amoung all
| African countries. (I think Seychelles is the richest
| African country now.)
| FredPret wrote:
| "Third world" was a geopolitical term but now it's
| economic and cultural.
|
| I assure you South Africa is third world by any measure.
| The GDP of SA (a large country with tons of resources and
| a population of 60m) is roughly on par with that of the
| Toronto metro area (population 7m) or the Phoenix metro
| (population 5m). It's middle income... and it probably
| will ~always be.
|
| None of this really matters though - what Musk has done
| in the US (like it - or him - or not) was only possible
| in the US.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| GDP is a kind of screwed up measure because the buying
| power of the dollar in the US is so much worse than most
| other countries. Case in point you can find a little san
| jose neighborhood where the gdp is an order of magnitude
| higher than a little mexico city neighborhood with more
| or less the exact same sorts of homes on the same sort of
| street. Now you might argue the sj homes are that much
| more valuable because of what they offer beyond the home
| via location proximity to opportunities, but its not like
| everyone benefits from such things or even that these
| opportunities are equally available to everyone. Yet
| everyone shoulders the costs of others success and
| position.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Depends on what. Tech is cheap:
|
| https://iphone-worldwide.com/
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| It's really hard to take people who use the term "third
| world" this way seriously. There are more precise ways to
| clarify your opinion without resorting to meaningless
| pejoratives.
| FredPret wrote:
| OK well I'm from there. When I moved to the first world,
| my eyes were opened. They literally are _worlds apart_
| culturally and economically.
|
| The term "third world" is a good and very descriptive
| one.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Indices that try to capture aspects of life other than
| money have also been made, such as Human Development Index
| [1]. Europe and North America lead these too. Nobody thinks
| Bhutan, on average, is a better place to live in than
| Norway. It might be better for a particular person due to
| cultural and familial reasons, but ceteris paribus Norway
| is better in all aspects.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
| paganel wrote:
| I'm not sure about Bhutan, because I've never been there,
| but for sure I think that middle-class life here in
| Romania (for those that can afford it) is a lot better
| and more relaxed than middle-class life in Norway (for
| starters, people here in Romania don't have to fear the
| State taking away their kid at a moment's notice, as it
| happens in Norway). Which is to say that those "charts"
| are very deceptive.
| waffleiron wrote:
| Do note that HDI does indeed depend on some assumptions
| and those includes "equating earning more money with a
| "better life"" as GNI (PPP) per capita. With no further
| increases after 75k USD (International dollar),
| unadjusted for inflation since introduction more than a
| decade ago. It also does give large amount of value to
| traditional education (i.e. total amount of years in full
| time schooling) and not outcomes of that (e.g. literacy).
| Schooling is also capped at 18 years, which is in line
| with a Master in most western countries; if schooling is
| this important then why cap it?
| bluGill wrote:
| Nearly everybody does when it is there own money. Sure you
| can show studies that more money doesn't make you happy,
| but almost everyone regularly has times they don't buy
| something just because they can't afford it and all think
| that thing would make them happier. I've know people making
| minimum wage, and people making nearly $million/year and
| both find money tight at the end of the month despite the
| vast difference in income. My personal wish list of things
| to buy totals more than my likely lifetime income, and your
| probably does too.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > My personal wish list of things to buy totals more than
| my likely lifetime income, and your probably does too.
|
| I dunno, I'm really more bottlenecked by time than by
| income. >50% of my household income goes to savings, so I
| could comfortably buy more things, but I'm already
| backlogged on dealing with the things I've already
| purchased.
|
| I guess the obvious answer would be to turn some of the
| money into more free time, but I've already picked all
| the low-hanging fruit there, so the remaining options are
| considerably higher effort/cost.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| We could try explaining this to someone in a poor country
| scraping by on $50 monthly. Hint: They'll laugh at us in
| the face.
|
| There's a reason people take huge risks to flee to the
| West, including traveling on unsafe boats, crisscrossing
| areas controlled by bandits, or crossing the
| environmentally harsh Darien Gap.
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-
| birth.
|
| It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of
| the real issue.
|
| The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my
| birthplace. It just isn't welcoming to nerds or rich people.
| It doesn't lend itself to ever becoming developed.
|
| When I compare and contrast to the New World: I find a much
| more welcoming culture that encourages personal progress. And
| not only are nerds welcome, but all sorts of productive folk.
| It's absolutely no surprise to me that the US is
| outperforming the rest of the world economically to a comical
| degree.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Culture aspect is way underrated.
|
| It's not only fact that in Western Europe I could earn a
| lot more. But also that I don't have to deal with massive
| corruption. I don't have to deal with feeling I have to be
| constantly on guard. I don't have to deal with failing
| education. I don't have to hide who I am in fear of being
| ostracized by society. (even if for that point we made a
| lot of progress - but still, why wait endlessly while I can
| get it right away somewhere else?)
| namaria wrote:
| Culture is not the cause of development. It's the result.
| The complex human system always has a central area of
| development and an extended periphery. You can't have
| homogeneous development because development _is_ the
| concentration of resources. Wherever these resources
| concentrate will have a privileged economy, and culture
| (because it can afford it) and it will develop a
| superiority complex. And it will keep moving. In 2100
| when the center of the world economy has moved on from
| the US, the new center will have beautifully constructed
| narratives about how their culture is superior and their
| rise inevitable.
| dfkasdfksdf wrote:
| This is the more correct answer. It's also answers why
| developed nations became developed and undeveloped nations
| did not. The west advanced just fine without "brain drain"
| in the centuries prior.
|
| That being said, I wouldn't use the US as some bastion of
| progress. Technically, we haven't progressed much since the
| 70s? 80s? outside of GDP going up, but that's just a number
| on a chart. Most of us today could go back to the 70s and
| live not much different than now (compared to the any
| earlier decade). It's mostly a side effect of being the
| world's reserve currency.
| cardanome wrote:
| > The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in
| the centuries prior.
|
| Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on.
| The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.
|
| Culture just reflects the underlying material conditions
| that people live in. There is nothing inherently superior
| about Western culture. Wealth is cumulative and first
| mover advantages are strong. And if anyone threatens the
| current hegemony, there is always the use of force.
|
| But yes, you are right there has been a stagnation since
| the 80s and things are slowly changing ins favor of
| countries like China and India.
| synecdoche wrote:
| There is no basis for the claim that different things of
| some category would progress exactly the same given the
| same set of circumstances. Those different things, like
| culture, have significant impact on everything, including
| economic growth.
|
| I'm sure you can think of a culture or policy, which you
| consider backwards, and counterproductive. Well, there
| you go.
| FredPret wrote:
| So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, and
| next thing you know the US is a global superpower, and
| that's all there is to it?
|
| Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than
| that?
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| Colonial-esque behavior by the US was (is?) hardly
| limited to plantation slavery in the US south. For much
| of the late 1800s and most of the 1900s the US government
| was more than happy to intervene in the domestic affairs
| of other countries to protect corporate profits. One
| particularly egregious example is the CIA-aided overthrow
| of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50s, largely to
| protect the profits of US fruit companies, but you don't
| have to look far to find more.
|
| From General Smedley Butler, most decorated marine at the
| time of his death and the only marine with two medals of
| honor:
|
| > I spent 33 years and four months in active military
| service and during that period I spent most of my time as
| a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street
| and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster
| for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially
| Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
| make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City
| Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping
| of half a dozen Central American republics for the
| benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the
| International Banking House of Brown Brothers in
| 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for
| the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make
| Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
| In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil
| went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might
| have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do
| was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated
| on three continents.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| As the saying goes, there's a special place in Hell for
| the Dulles brothers...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
| FredPret wrote:
| That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By
| the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any
| historical empire you could mention).
|
| I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US
| culture is better at creating and running a great
| economy: Every country out there has always defended its
| interests in more or less muscular ways. Exactly the way
| you describe for the US, and much worse as well. Where
| are they now?
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| > That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect.
|
| It certainly seems to me like its also a strong argument
| that much of the US's wealth is based on colonialism or
| colonialism-adjacent policies, no?
|
| > I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US
| culture is better at creating and running a great economy
|
| I didn't argue that. If US culture is/was in favor of
| colonialist antics and colonialism produces wealth for
| the US, that would actually be an argument in favor of US
| culture being better at producing a great economy. I
| _would_ argue that the ends don 't justify the means when
| the means are abusing far poorer neighboring countries.
|
| I also wouldn't argue that colonialism is the _only_
| reason the US is wealthy. There are clearly aspects of US
| culture that are conducive to productivity and innovation
| that are more or less independent of colonialism.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Yes. See:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
| com2kid wrote:
| > So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south,
|
| Slaves built the irrigation systems that made rice
| farming possible in the south. (People forget that the
| other huge slavery cash crop was rice).
|
| Without the engineering and agricultural knowledge of
| slaves, many of the farms would have failed (and many did
| fail early on until the knowledge was spread around to
| plantation owners).
|
| The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer
| tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists
| centuries ago.
|
| > Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than
| that?
|
| The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also
| includes the US getting some of the best minds from
| basically all over the world to move here and build up a
| century's worth of IP.
| dingnuts wrote:
| > The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer
| tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists
| centuries ago.
|
| This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone
| knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on
| the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety
| of other cultures more inland. It would be interesting to
| see a breakdown of their levels of development starting
| in 1500 until the 19th century. You aren't implying that
| before the Atlantic slave trade, Africa was a monolithic
| culture, would you? No, that would be absurdly ignorant
|
| > US's short history is absurdly violent,
|
| Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of
| Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican
| history?
|
| Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a
| personal problem.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's
| a personal problem.
|
| You'd be wrong. What I have done is read my history
| books, and visited historical sites all around the US and
| abroad.
|
| Saying "shit was violent" isn't saying I hate this
| country. Saying "we fucked up and we shouldn't do that
| crap again" is how we improve as a people.
|
| > This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone
| knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on
| the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety
| of other cultures more inland.
|
| Go visit some southern plantations. Learn how the
| plantations were built.
|
| Farming isn't just physical labor. There is engineering
| involved. Designing flood levees to water crops was a
| technology that the US plantation owners acquired from
| slaves who in many cases designed and built the levees
| used on plantations.
|
| > Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of
| Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican
| history?
|
| Those countries do not have a short history. The US has a
| very short history and it has involved a lot of violence
| in rapid succession.
|
| Trying to say that our success as a nation is purely
| because of Hard Work, Brains, and Grit, is a false
| narrative that will lead to our downfall if we do not
| actually understand why we succeeded.
|
| Our economic success from the transcontinental railroad
| is because we imported near slave labor to built it, at a
| high cost of human lives, and then we attempted to kick
| many of the surviving immigrants out. That is the simple
| truth about the largest successful rail project in US
| history, and understanding how labor costs impact
| nationwide infrastructure build-outs is, IMHO, rather
| important.
|
| The success of Hollywood is because patent laws were
| widely ignored on the west coast, which allowed
| technology to progress faster. Our failure to understand
| how too strict of IP enforcement stifles growth is why a
| lot of iterative improvements come out of China now, they
| can iterate faster w/o waiting for patents to expire.
|
| Our success in science and technology is because we have
| been willing to allow the best minds in from all around
| the world by ensuring a higher quality of life in the US
| compared to other places. But we've taken that for
| granted for too long, and allowed that qualify of life to
| slip while other countries have caught up.
|
| Jumping up and down shouting "we're the best!" is inane,
| especially while the rest of the world isn't just
| standing still.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also
| includes the US getting some of the best minds from
| basically all over the world to move here and build up a
| century's worth of IP.
|
| Don't forget that US has some of the most prime
| agricultural land in the world, which they only got for
| the small price of genociding vastly less developed
| Native American tribes (with disease doing a large chunk
| of the work)
|
| Given the violent European history several centuries
| prior, it would be absolutely unfathomable to just come
| across so much land with so little competition as the US
| colonies did.
|
| This resource richness (and isolation via Atlantic) is
| very much responsible for US wealth today, perhaps as
| much as the brain drain of the 20th century, if not more.
| FredPret wrote:
| Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If
| they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely
| we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa
| from around the time when they were abducted into
| slavery?
|
| To ascribe America's economic and technological success
| to the slaves is not an argument that will convince
| anyone, or win your side any votes.
|
| > The US's short history is absurdly violent,
|
| Are you sure? Have you read much history from the
| formative years in other countries?
|
| > but it also includes the US getting some of the best
| minds from basically all over the world to move here and
| build up a century's worth of IP.
|
| They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon
| for nerds who would like to be rich.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If
| they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely
| we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa
| from around the time when they were abducted into
| slavery?
|
| This isn't some topic of debate. There is well documented
| historical proof of slaves designing and then building
| the rice field levees!
|
| > To ascribe America's economic and technological success
| to the slaves is not an argument that will convince
| anyone, or win your side any votes.
|
| The early economic success of the country was built off
| of slavery. That isn't something that seemingly needs
| discussion. The southern part of the US was a large
| economic power, even by European standards of the time.
|
| > Are you sure? Have you read much history from the
| formative years in other countries?
|
| I have, and in general other countries had a lot longer
| to perfect being assholes. The British empire did many
| horrible, horrible, things, but they took awhile to work
| up to it, it wasn't part of their initial founding.
|
| Leopold II was in charge of an existing kingdom when he
| went on a quest to be one of the biggest assholes in
| history.
|
| France is complicated, because their revolutions were so
| frequent for awhile, and a lot of the blood shed was
| French.
|
| Meanwhile in America we got:
|
| 1. Mass murder of the natives 2. Inventing an entire new,
| more horrific type of slavery 3. Manifest destiny, with
| more genocide 4. Building the Transcontinental Railroad,
| with Not-Technically-Slavery 5. Massive racism against
| the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad
|
| > They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining
| beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.
|
| Correct, the late 1800s and then the 20th century were a
| major turning point. Loosely enforced IP laws allowed
| Hollywood to thrive (super interesting history!), and
| poor environmental laws and a well educated workforce
| allowed the initial version of silicon valley to come
| about (look up why it is called silicon valley, and why
| it is also a superfund cleanup site!).
|
| The US being slightly-less-racist against some people
| helped, and the less racist we were, and the more people
| we invited in from around the world, the better things
| got.
|
| IMHO the best move the US Government could make for the
| economy is to offer the top 1% of graduates from the top
| universities in each major country an automatic VISA and
| a guaranteed path to citizenship.
|
| The 2nd best thing the US Government could do for the
| economy is enforce Japanese style zoning laws on all
| major cities so people can actually afford to live in
| major metros again.
| FredPret wrote:
| I actually agree with many of the points you made here,
| especially your two policy proposals.
|
| But I don't think you can mention the US in the same
| breath as imperial Belgium. Leopold was surely one of the
| low points of our species. But the Brits, for all the bad
| things they did - including in my native country - were
| the least bad empire up to that point, and forcibly ended
| slavery.
|
| My broader point is that certain cultural values lend
| themselves massively to economic and technological
| development. European nations got these values by random
| chance, and then used this economic edge to _then_
| colonize the world. How else could tiny Belgium utterly
| subjugate the Congo?
| nradov wrote:
| The US's short history since 1776 is actually peaceful by
| relative standards. Despite the genocide of indigenous
| people, a revolution, slavery, a civil war, and some
| crime we have had a lower percentage of people killed
| through violence (including forced starvation) than China
| or Europe in the same period. Have you heard of WW1 and
| WW2? I make no excuses for the terrible things that
| Americans have done at times but the notion that
| Americans are somehow "absurdly violent" is simply
| ahistorical and unsupported by any hard data.
|
| For all of its faults, it's great that the USA continues
| to be the country where the best minds from all over the
| world still want to move. It gives me hope for the
| future. Those immigrants are typically glad to be here
| and prefer to focus on building a better life instead of
| navel gazing recriminations over historical events.
| kiba wrote:
| The North crushed the South, which clung to its slavery
| system which was unable to economically compete with the
| northern states' industrial power.
|
| If anything, slavery was probably was a weight around the
| US's neck, the legacy of which we're still dealing with
| today.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| > There is nothing inherently superior about Western
| culture.
|
| I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this
| outright, but after having just spent a summer reading
| through the history of the collectivist cultures in
| Russia/China during the last century, all I could think
| of is how lucky I was not to be born into that.
|
| So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly
| comparatively superior, in my opinion.
| pphysch wrote:
| People in Russia and China are saying the same thing
| about the West, having read critical histories of the
| modern West (e.g. Wang Huning, _America Against America_
| ).
|
| Based on the data, a lower/middle class person born in
| PRC almost certainly has better prospects of upward
| mobility and avoiding poverty.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| Interesting. I just read a long expose on Mao's party and
| the tens of millions of Chinese people they are
| responsible for killing. Can you recount a similar story
| of the West? Just trying to understand how it compares.
| pphysch wrote:
| There's a huge amount of documented history of mass
| killings, destruction of institutions, and economic
| exploitation by the West and USA in particular. By
| American authors, too.
|
| Frankly, I'm astonished that you aren't aware of this.
| FredPret wrote:
| Name one on par with Stalin's agricultural reforms or the
| Cultural Revolution or the madness in Cambodia.
| pphysch wrote:
| Genocide of Native American peoples, enslavement of
| Africans, political subjugation of LatAm, largest modern
| gulag system (#1 prisoners per capita, prison slavery
| still practiced).
| FredPret wrote:
| Unquestionably some of these were unacceptable acts. But
| the numbers don't stack up. There's also a huge
| qualitative difference.
|
| According to [0] there was a population decline adding up
| to 4 million native deaths (from all causes, including
| hunger and disease) over the past half a millennium.
|
| Russia and China killed 5-10 million of their own people
| just in the past century. They had cannibal banquets
| where they quite literally ate the rich in public
| ceremonies. China, right now, has more than a million
| Muslims in prison camps, churning out gadgets for the
| communist economic machine.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocid
| e_in_th...
|
| If the issue is that you hate the United States, you'll
| always find something to criticize, and I think we'll
| never find common ground.
|
| I grew up surrounded by many anti-American ideas. But
| when I tried to examine that place from a neutral point
| of view, in the proper context, after traveling to and
| living in many places, I found it impossible not to
| become a raving fan.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I had a really hard time stomaching the cannibalism. I
| had no idea this all happened until I started digging
| into it more recently. The stories of people being
| disemboweled while still alive and having their
| intestines feasted on just seems incomprehensible.
| FredPret wrote:
| Puts a new spin on it when lefties tweet to "eat the
| rich". Stomach churning stuff.
| pphysch wrote:
| > If the issue is that you hate the United States, you'll
| always find something to criticize, and I think we'll
| never find common ground.
|
| That's the issue, I'm not viewing this through a moral
| lens. I know you believe _a priori_ the West is
| essentially Good and communism is essentially Bad,
| because that is what we are taught in school. Then it
| becomes easy to find evidence that fits your conclusion,
| there is literally a government-backed industry
| manufacturing such "evidence" (USG has earmarked
| something like $3B purely for funding anti-China
| propaganda). There's no point trying to reason someone
| out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into.
|
| I think both systems have pros/cons, and the proof is in
| the pudding. China evolved out of a difficult colonial
| period and civil war to become world leader in many
| technologies.
|
| "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes
| and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
| corimaith wrote:
| > I know you believe a priori the West is essentially
| Good and communism is essentially Bad, because that is
| what we are taught in school.
|
| I think you're attacking a strawman here, what OP is
| pointing out for the faults of the West, it is still a
| preferable choice in comparison to the brutality the
| Communists performed on _on their own people_. It 's
| ironic really because the Cultural Revolution, the Great
| Leap Forward very much is a difficult thing to ignore, if
| at all neccessary given that Asian Tigers that China
| modeled itself from, in Korea, Hong Kong, Japan,
| Singapore, Taiwan did not have to resort to such policies
| to achieve their wealth.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I never said I wasn't aware of the faults of the West.
| I'm not naive enough to think Western culture is anything
| close to being innocent of crimes (many which are, as you
| pointed out, documented).
|
| However, I'm simply pointing out that the collectivist
| culture of these countries in the 20th century was
| responsible for killing _vast_ swathes of their own
| populations. My question was, of the documented horrors
| influenced by Western culture, which do you see as being
| comparative to this unfathomable death toll?
| corimaith wrote:
| And Wang Huning's political conclusions from that would
| also largely support most of the imperialist actions of
| USA such as the forceful integration of natives and a
| dominant, hegemonic culture to ensure total stability.
|
| Like, as postliberals the CCP and Russia do not like the
| West not because they were once dominant empires that
| conquered the world, in fact they respect that. They hate
| the West because of their belief in democracy, in
| diversity, in individualism and the belief in human
| rights.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| Well, Mao also "unified" China by systematically going
| into every province and murdering the opposition. Then of
| course they attempted to extend influence into Korea and
| Vietnam.
|
| I don't think it's accurate to pin imperialism as a
| uniquely Western thing.
| myworkinisgood wrote:
| Russia did have some problems, but China suffered badly
| due to colonialism.
| nradov wrote:
| Well that begs the question of why was China so weak that
| they could be easily colonized and exploited by the UK,
| Japan, and other foreign powers? At the time they didn't
| lack for population, natural resources, technology,
| ports, etc. Was their weakness caused by culture or
| something else? In other words, why were they the
| colonized instead of the colonizers?
|
| I'm not trying to make excuses for the crimes against
| humanity committed in China by the colonial powers. But
| we need to look deeper into the root causes of historical
| events.
| namaria wrote:
| The locus of fast development will always develop
| superiority narratives. The fact is that there will
| always be a locus of concentrated development and it's
| not because it has a special culture.
| FredPret wrote:
| > The locus of fast development will always develop
| superiority narratives.
|
| True
|
| > The fact is that there will always be a locus of
| concentrated development
|
| Also true
|
| > and it's not because it has a special culture.
|
| I don't think this is always true. Why can't there be
| cultures that are more likely to serve as a locus of fast
| development? Sure, there are geographic and climatic
| factors, but there are also cultural factors.
| namaria wrote:
| Where would this cultural specialty sit? We're all the
| same naked apes everywhere. Culture develops on the
| resources available. The human particles are too
| homogeneous for a group of special human behaviors to
| cause development. It is much more likely that the
| overall configuration of economic forces to cause the
| storms of extra value falling somewhere to give rise to
| the development and following cultural assertiveness.
|
| Kinda like the rain forest. It's the global rain patterns
| that cause them. It's not that the rain forests have a
| special rain attracting power.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's the opposite of a rain forest in every interesting
| way.
|
| Development springs from us, it doesn't appear out of the
| sky like rain.
|
| Having personally experienced the humans in various
| places, I'm astonished at how differently people see and
| engage with the world. The difference in outcome,
| however, is all too predictable.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.
|
| It's built on rule of law, stability, low corruption, and
| good governance. Most countries lack these factors,
| making them stay poor.
|
| Signed: Someone from a poor, developing country
| (Nigeria).
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Now everyone but the west is practicing slavery, yet the
| supposed economic benefits of slavery seem to elude them.
| Why might that be?
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Think you missed the massive explosion during the 1990's
| (the birth of the internet) and the precursor during the
| Reagan years (basically gargantuan deficit spending on
| defense).
|
| Factories and farming took a huge hit in 1970's and
| 1980's due to the rise of globalization (and shift from
| decades of hot wars to a cooled off one) and a trade war
| with Japan.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Uh, what you said is only true if you ignore all of the
| American technology invented since the 1980s.
|
| Just the iPhone alone acts as a counterpoint. The world
| has changed massively in fifty years because of American
| inventions made possible by our developed economy
|
| With all due respect I have no idea what you're talking
| about
| Axsuul wrote:
| > Most of us today could go back to the 70s and live not
| much different than now (compared to the any earlier
| decade). It's mostly a side effect of being the world's
| reserve currency.
|
| There's been 50 years of technological innovation since
| then. The entire fabric of society has been changed by it
| and has affected how we communicate and do business.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Food has improved dramatically. Quality and availability.
| We now have fresh produce year round, not seasonally.
| Meat consumption is up something like 30-40lbs a year.
| For is also vastly more interesting (unless various jello
| molds are your thing).
|
| Houses are much more comfortable, energy efficient, and
| larger. Air-conditioned in summer, heated to a reasonable
| temp in winter.
|
| Healthcare while it has become unaffordable has greatly
| improved.
|
| Car reliability/safety has improved insanely. The average
| car now has A/C unlike the 70s.
|
| Compute power. The average person has the knowledge of
| the ENTIRE world at their fingertips. But totally no
| progress has been made???
|
| We have weather satellites to prepare for meteorological
| disasters/storms saving so many lives.
|
| We can talk to family whenever we want, not a 5 minute
| conversation the first Sunday of the month.
|
| We have vastly more free time. My family made most of
| their close in the 1970s. Washed by hand. Hang out to
| dry. Now we have a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a
| microwave, an air cooker, all freeing up time to do other
| things.
|
| Your comment is like the people that watch American
| movies white eating pop-corn, wear blue jeans and
| sneakers, and say 'America doesn't have a culture'.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Now do rent.
| varelaseb wrote:
| You pay more. Boohoo
| myworkinisgood wrote:
| You cannot forget about the money drained from the
| undeveloped world during colonialism and the subsequent
| effect which continued during cold war.
| FredPret wrote:
| The undeveloped world doesn't have, and never had, enough
| money to be "drained" into a pool as large as the current
| US economy
| o11c wrote:
| Money is made up and doesn't matter. This applies even to
| gold during colonialism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
| akudha wrote:
| U.S is outperforming everyone else economically. At what
| cost though? And for how long?
|
| There is an insane wealth gap. People always seem to be
| stressed. There is plenty of food, but quality isn't great.
| We don't even need to start on healthcare and housing and
| college tuition. Then there is gun violence. Women's rights
| are going away slowly too.
|
| Sure, developing countries have lots of problems too. I
| suppose each person has to decide _what_ kind of problems
| they are ok dealing with?
|
| Sad part is - most of these problems are man made. Even
| sadder is that just a few dozen people seem to be the cause
| for most problems
| FredPret wrote:
| > There is an insane wealth gap.
|
| Your unexamined prior is that this is a bad and
| unsustainable thing. It was always thus.
|
| > People always seem to be stressed.
|
| They really aren't. Americans are extremely happy and
| relaxed compared to where I'm from.
|
| > We don't even need to start on healthcare and housing
| and college tuition.
|
| I think we do. Healthcare in the US has more red tape and
| expense than would be optimal, but the actual outcomes
| are still good. Keep in mind some caveats:
|
| - US healthcare spend drives a ton of medical innovation
| that then benefits the rest of the world
|
| - North America is going through a Fentanyl crisis that's
| cutting life expectancies
|
| > Then there is gun violence. Women's rights are going
| away slowly too.
|
| This is a problem but not with the economy.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| > I suppose each person has to decide what kind of
| problems they are ok dealing with?
|
| What problems do you think people in the United States
| have that people in Mexico don't? Of this list you gave,
| most of them seem to apply to people in Mexico.
| akudha wrote:
| I was talking about immigrants. If you are deciding
| between two countries, each one is likely going to have a
| different type or level of problems - man made or
| otherwise. Australia is too hot, Canada is too cold.
| Scandinavia might be too progressive for some, Saudi
| Arabia might be too regressive for some.
|
| And so on. What kind/level of issues to put up with - I
| suppose that varies from person to person
| sifar wrote:
| >> There is an insane wealth gap.
|
| Relative wealth gap in developing countries dwarfs that
| of the developed ones.
|
| Source: Personal observation.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Is there a reason to trust your anecdote instead of
| looking at data? I'm sure this topic has been researched.
| baq wrote:
| Yeah it's called the gini index. US isn't great but isn't
| anywhere near the worst.
|
| In absolute terms though just look at pictures of e.g.
| rural Russia va Moscow.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Thank you for bringing up this data point! I'm sure we
| both agree that's a much better argument than "trust me"
| :)
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by
| _we...
|
| tl;dr as of 2021 Gini coefficents, Brazil is the worst
| and Japan is best large nation... (there's tons of nuance
| missing here, but that's the basics)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| The violent crime rate in the US is a fraction of what it
| was 30 years ago. The only difference is that now every
| crime is getting blasted from the rooftops by the news
| media as propaganda to generate clicks on ads.
|
| There is a violent crime problem in specific
| neighborhoods of specific cities, largely tied to gangs
| and the drug trade. But there is zero empirical data to
| suggest that it is more of a nationwide problem than it
| was in the 1980s and 1990s.
|
| The majority of gun deaths in this country (60-80 percent
| jurisdiction-dependent) are people committing suicide,
| often middle-aged men. Beyond that, the average gun
| murder is a young man with a criminal record killing
| another young man with a criminal record using an
| illegally-possessed handgun.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| There's also the fact that way more Americans are killed
| by cars than in homicides. This is not to diminish the
| importance of tackling homicides. But the high level
| picture of "what is most wrong in America" is definitely
| skewed in weird ways that is independent of the
| underlying reality.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >The violent crime rate in the US is a fraction of what
| it was 30 years ago. The only difference is that now
| every crime is getting blasted from the rooftops by the
| news media as propaganda to generate clicks on ads.
|
| How about all the mass shootings that we read about,
| happening every few weeks or even more frequently,
| sometimes back-to-back, on average, in the US? That's not
| violent crime? Of course it is.
|
| >a fraction of what it was 30 years ago
|
| And statistics don't paint the full picture, not by a
| long chalk, unless all you are is a bean counter. What
| about the personal and family and friends' trauma of all
| the victims and their circles? We can dismiss that as
| negligible, right? /s
|
| Check these:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_Uni
| ted...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in
| _th...
|
| There were so many that I got tired of scrolling.
|
| JFC.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| What about the personal and family and friends' trauma of
| all the victims of drunken driving, alcoholism, and their
| circles?
|
| Should we re-enact Prohibition, given that there are
| orders of magnitude more people who've been victimized by
| alcohol than firearms? No, that's absurd. You regulate
| the problem through hard, data-driven analysis, not
| waving the bloody shirt. Be that violent crime or
| addiction.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Don't confuse, "the overall crime rate is down
| signicantly in very good ways" with "and therefore the
| remainder is fine".
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Also don't confuse the law of diminishing returns with
| "therefore the remainder is fine," either. There's room
| for regulation of many of the ills of our society, but
| you will always reach a point where trying to stamp out
| that last bit you can't get ends up taking away things
| that make life worth living.
|
| I can't imagine more of a hell than being forced to live
| a life wrapped up in bubble wrap so someone else is
| convinced I'm "safe."
| fuzztester wrote:
| So booze makes life worth living for you? Many others
| don't even feel the need for it, or can take it or leave
| it. I'm referring, of course, to the combination of both
| your previous comment, here,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42176669, and the
| current one.
|
| Because booze makes life worth living for you, you are
| okay with drunken driving claiming (tens of?) thousands
| of lives a year, and crippling many more? Then I have
| nothing more to say.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Yeah, so you misrepresented what I said to call me an
| alcoholic and thus denigrate my point via an ad hominem.
| Instead of actually engaging with my argument on the
| merits, you misrepresent it and act like a troll.
|
| Goodbye, you aren't worth my time.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Yes, but you are talking about data and logic, while I
| was making a point about humanity (humanitarianism? need
| to check which is appropriate).
|
| If you are from the US, and feeling defensive about my
| comment, and/or if you want to treat your people's deaths
| and crippling as just statistics, it's your call, _shrug_
| , and maybe also your death or crippling by gun violence
| some day, again, _statistically_ , you know.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If the success is not cheered we might regress to the old
| bad times. It is not like the only path forward is even
| less violent crimes.
| benji-york wrote:
| I'm not the OP, but I'm very curious why people are
| downvoting this comment.
|
| Is it that they don't agree that "the New World [...is...]
| much more welcoming [...of...] all sorts of productive
| folk"?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| > _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| samatman wrote:
| About the downvoting per se, it has a way of canceling
| out. This is one of the reasons the guidelines ask that
| voting on the comments not be discussed: just because you
| see a good comment greyed out, doesn't mean it will end
| up that way.
|
| There's a faction of HN commenters who are somewhat
| reflexively anti-American, anti-capitalist, or both. In
| my experience they're also censorious by nature, and like
| to downvote and even flag comments which are perfectly
| polite, and simply express opinions they don't agree
| with. I consider the latter specifically to be very bad
| form, I vouch for comments which fit that profile almost
| daily now.
|
| This has been exacerbated by the recent election, which
| has, understandably, upset people.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > simply express opinions they don't agree with
|
| Dang has said that downvoting for disagreement is
| allowed. Whether this is a good practice or not is
| probably a personal opinion. I don't know how you would
| even correct for this if you wanted to. If someone is
| making normative statements especially, and you disagree,
| a downvote seems entirely appropriate?
| samatman wrote:
| I'm not sure how I could have phrased _I consider the
| latter specifically to be very bad form_ any better? It
| 's one thing to downvote a comment because you don't like
| it, flagging is quite another.
|
| There's a difference between downvoting something
| substantively wrong, fatuous and/or cantankerous, bad
| faith, and so on, and simply doing so to punish the sort
| of person one doesn't like for speaking their mind. That
| difference is subjective, but I know it when I see it.
| There's no need to police this, or any way to really, but
| I think rather poorly of such behavior and would be
| gratified if they would knock it off.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| How do you feel about the removal of the downvote numbers
| on YouTube? This debate about downvotes on HN seems like
| a similar scissor statement:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
| controversial/
|
| I didn't mention flagging, which I reserve for guidelines
| violations.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think it's really hard to draw that line, though. You
| "know" it when _you_ see it, but others -- quite
| reasonably, sometimes -- know it and see it differently.
|
| As an example, I'm fine downvoting an opinion that I find
| morally gross or anti-social, even though others (such as
| the person commenting) might think it's fine, and even
| agree with it.
| kelnos wrote:
| To be fair, though, pg has said in the distant past that
| it's fine to downvote to express disagreement.
|
| I personally try not to do this too much (unless
| something is egregiously, probably wrong), but it's a
| thing that I think we should just accept as a norm.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I was lucky enough to be a computer nerd who landed in
| Silicon valley/San Francisco in 2012 and it was a pretty
| special place culturally. It was pretentious and idealistic
| and confused, but the atmosphere where everyone seemed to
| be building something and sharing ideas was pretty
| intoxicating. Probably felt similar to being in Hollywood
| back during that 1920-1950s period (except everyone was
| less attractive lol).
| dayvid wrote:
| Yes, I've traveled to a good amount of countries and the
| overwhelming corruption or culture which doesn't support
| fair enterprise is soul crushing. You can say America has
| it to some extent, but in a lot of places you really don't
| have a chance at all unless you're born into the right
| family.
| FredPret wrote:
| Travel is such an important part of a well-rounded
| education because it forces things into perspective. I'm
| glad it's becoming cheaper. I dream of the day all kids
| can do it.
| ronjakoi wrote:
| Cheap travel is a horrible thing for the world. Mass
| tourism has destroyed a lot.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| Another, less pleasant way to say this:
|
| You don't want _everyone_ to travel - many people don 't
| have a sense of respect and "light foot" that it takes to
| travel to foreign places without degrading or damaging
| them.
| FredPret wrote:
| This amounts to "only rich people should be able to
| travel"
| criddell wrote:
| Probably only rich people can afford to travel in a
| sustainable way. I'm thinking specifically if the carbon
| costs are priced into airfare (for example), flying may
| be out of reach for many of us.
| prisonality wrote:
| Like you: I too - is part of said brain drain.
|
| Though, my reason - or rather: my litmus test, is much
| simpler.
|
| For me, it all comes down to drinkable / potable tap water.
| That's it. That's all I care.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the brain drain goes the opposite
| way from America the next four years. I'm looking to live in
| Europe and so are lots of people I know that are fatFIREd
| with their American bucks.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The tax situation isn't nearly as favorable for americans
| doing it elsewhere as it is for anyone to do it here in
| america. Unless you rip up your american citizenship.
| D-Coder wrote:
| "Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement is
| followed by those who want to quit working before reaching
| traditional retirement age.
|
| "FatFIRE promotes abundance. The goal is to have enough
| funds to enjoy freedom and flexibility when you retire
| early."
| jimbohn wrote:
| I thought about the "work for X-years" solution a few times.
| While it looks attractive, it also removes some pressure from
| the country (or local employers) to get better. Some
| countries need a kick in the head, like the one I emigrated
| from. Perhaps a couple of "developed" countries failing due
| to brain drain will be a wake-up call for the rest about the
| value of the younger generation.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Absolutely!
|
| Since you're forced to stay here, why shouldn't we abuse
| you? What are you going to do, run away?
|
| I remember in secondary school, my deeply patriotic teacher
| asked us who wants to emigrate. And she deeply condemned us
| for it, calling us leeches that stole from the country. It
| was obligatory education! We didn't even had an option to
| choose by then. And also, my parents also could say that
| yes, they paid for it in their taxes.
| int_19h wrote:
| I recall running into similar attitudes in my country of
| origin, including, yes, teachers.
|
| Ironically, this ends up being one of those things that
| contribute towards the desire to leave.
| derektank wrote:
| >Offering great and free education will always backfire for
| developing nations.
|
| This isn't necessarily the case, even with brain drain.
| Remittances (financial transfers from migrants to family and
| friends at home) can actually represent a large percent of
| GDP for developing nations, upwards of 10 or 20 percent.
| paganel wrote:
| > Idealism?
|
| From some point on, yes, because the modern world was born on
| many past such idealists. Fetishising material goods and
| materialism as a whole are a very big explanation for the
| mess we're now all in at the civilisational level.
| slibhb wrote:
| Brain drain is a real thing, but there are other issues
| preventing poor countries from being rich. Most of all
| political dysfunction.
|
| As far as brain drain goes, I don't think there's much point
| in fighting it. Cities like Singapore and Dubai demonstrate
| that you can quickly build a city/country people want to
| live. Why shouldn't Bhutan have to compete with the rest of
| the world to attract young, talented people? They should! And
| they can do fine at it, they just have to prioritize it. And
| from the article, that's exactly what they're doing.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Catch-up growth being easier than growth in a "developed"
| country implies that the less-developed country "should" be
| easier to get rich in -- a better opportunity, not worse. In
| principle. Yes, we don't live in the in-principle world, but
| the logic "they're richer over there, so here is inherently
| stuck unable to compete for talent" is wrong. You need to
| address whatever the actual structural problem is.
| cardanome wrote:
| It is easier to have higher relative economic growth, yes,
| as seen with China in the last decades but that doesn't
| translate to better opportunities for the individual.
|
| A working class US American probably has a higher standard
| of living then an upper-class entrepreneur in Bhutan.
| FLT8 wrote:
| This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to
| invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or
| you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk
| that they stay".
|
| It seems to me that the smartest people would be far more
| motivated to leave a country where they are unable to find
| other people like themselves to collaborate with.
|
| And they'd be far more likely to come back in future and
| reinvest their overseas earnings in a country that they felt
| warmth towards than one that had forced them to play life in
| hard mode and was actively hostile towards them.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to
| invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or
| you can choose not to invest in your people and run the
| risk that they stay".
|
| Yes. I've seen it like this in a LinkedIn post:
|
| CFO to CEO: What if we train our people, and they leave?
|
| CEO to CFO: What if we don't train them, and they stay?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| There's another option, spend huge amounts to hire the
| very best and don't provide any training.
|
| That's what the top end hedge funds do with seven figure
| starting compensation.
| vondur wrote:
| My wife worked for a company that really trained their
| sales people. However, they also payed very poorly
| compared to their peers. So people would get trained stay
| for a year and then go to another company that was happy
| to such well trained employees and pay them better.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| A charity running a company as the front.
| throwaways_ind wrote:
| > _It is just the rational best decision for a young people
| to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could
| ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn 't they?
| Idealism?_
|
| Money is only second or third factor that pushes people
| abroad. People leave countries like India, Pakistan,
| Bangladesh to escape rampant and total corruption,
| hooliganism, lack of safety and security. Then come better
| roads, better infra, less traffic, etc.
|
| When you call 911, the police actually come. An ambulance
| actually arrive. In India, police first find if the
| perpetrator is from the local ruling party or under a local
| crime lord. They come only if the answer is negative. Then
| they push the perpetrator for hefty bribes. If they pay,
| again, no case. If they don't pay, you are at the mercy of
| local courts, which will give you justice in, say, 25 years.
|
| In India, there is no basic human decency allotted for you.
| Only government officials of very high rank, hooligans,
| political leaders enjoy treatment with respect (like the
| Mafia).
|
| Nothing to say about horrific roads, horrible hospitals, poor
| hygiene, and everything else.
|
| And things are _worse_ in Bangladesh, Pakistan.
|
| When we think about going abroad, we are trying to _escape_
| these. Money comes later.
|
| Income in the same economic strata in India will give you
| maid, cook, driver, car, nanny, all- not accessible to you in
| Europe or the USA.
|
| If someone is _not_ going abroad from India, it 's either
| because they can't or they don't want to leave their aging
| parents behind.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I should probably tell this to the Indian student I met in
| New Orleans who went to the community college here and he's
| now going back to India because he finds it easier to run
| his small businesses and hire there.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| What about making education free only if you stay in the
| country. If you leave then you owe the cost of school.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| That sounds fair only if you imagine that getting education
| is something like buying a product: if you like it, you
| take it and agree to pay the cost; and if you don't like,
| you don't take it.
|
| But sometimes the education is mandatory, inefficient, and
| it sucks. Then the people who want to leave the country
| would be required to pay a lot of money for something they
| didn't want and that wasn't worth it.
|
| Basically, any country that wants to prevent their people
| from leaving could just assign an absurdly high cost to its
| mandatory education, and say: "hey, anyone is free to
| leave, they just need to pay us more than they will ever
| make".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Offering great and free education will always backfire for
| developing nations.
|
| nonsense; this is how developing nations become developed
| nations. peolpe seem to forget that Korea, Singapore, Taiwan,
| HK were all "developing" nations not too long ago
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| Only the most rational concerning income. There are many
| other factors at stake such as staying close to family,
| keeping your contact network, 0 or low discrimination towards
| you in your home country, among others.
|
| Source: I am one of those people that could leave but decided
| to stay.
| closeparen wrote:
| Are developing countries bottlenecked technical aptitude? Or
| are they bound by social, economic, and political structures
| that would prevent capable people from generating wealth
| anyway? Maybe some of both, but to the extent it's the
| latter, someone being stuck in their country of origin to
| languish in some undifferentiated low-productivity job is a
| travesty.
| slt2021 wrote:
| immigrating is very hard, smart people would love to stay
| where they were born.
|
| unfortunately developing countries make it impossible for
| smart people to stay due to corruption and small
| market/economy
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Well it's a least starting to change, as countries like
| Canada, and to an extent the US, see the people several
| generations after their immigrants look back or outside their
| countries of birth. There are lots of opportunities outside
| the US for someone who doesn't feel super-comfortable because
| of the culture or ethnicity, but is educated and ready to
| move around the globe.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Well, it's a more complex economic thing from what I'm
| learning. It's a systems issue rather than a discrete
| resource/physical capital/human capital thing, ultimately it
| comes down to incentives. If you have an extremely educated
| workforce but broadly no incentive to invest in the future,
| no way to capitalize on those hypothetical investments
| through access to market, for whichever reasons, then trying
| to tweak one variable like education will just overflow your
| shallow tub and the water will spill into countries that do
| have incentives and where the feedback loop works.
|
| If that system breaks down, even for developing countries,
| it's worrying. For example Canada has a highly educated
| workforce with mobility, and has hamstrung itself by
| disincentivising productive investments, instead overvaluing
| real estate to the point where people entering the workforce
| now might not see a path to owning even a small condo by
| their 40s, unless you have a particularly rare and valuable
| skill, luck, or money from parents, which isn't a high
| prospect for the circulation of financial prosperity.
|
| So we're just subsidizing U.S growth at this point, and so
| are many other countries, even though we and many immigrants
| would (often but not always) rather live here, either because
| this is where our lives are or this is where the vibes are,
| which is tough to reconcile if there's next to no economic
| opportunity inside the country.
|
| This happens on a micro level as well, my home city's highest
| prospect is basically moving to a different city; people can
| be highly educated there, but unless you're going back into
| the academic system and your highest goal is basically
| getting a mcmansion (but probably not an actual mansion)
| you're gunna have to go elsewhere. Electricians probably do
| just fine though, nothing against that, but it's not really a
| force for innovation.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| Brain drain isn't what keeps poor countries poor - if only it
| was so simple. India would ban out migration in an instant if
| that was the key to US levels of GDP.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Could it be argued that we in the west have some degree of
| moral responsibility to prevent brain drain from developing
| countries?
|
| I don't see the point of giving out tons of foreign aid when
| we're just going to pull the rug out from underneath of them
| anyway.
| vivekd wrote:
| I mean it's not like developing countries are doing much to
| steward their best and brightest. Counties with brain
| drains also have serious issues with nepotism and cronyism
| limiting the ability of talent to rise up.
|
| My parents are from Sri Lanka the former leaders family
| filled up the cabinet and ministry positions. They put
| forward wonderful plans like banning fertilizer imports. I
| think we need to accept that they're their own worst enemy
| here
| dmafreezone wrote:
| > nothing wrong with striving for a better life
|
| Yes, but there are many things wrong with equating "better"
| with "more money" without sparing half a thought to
| introspection.
| gsuuon wrote:
| > ~9% of young people leave Bhutan
|
| It's worse than that:
|
| > 9% of the country's population, most of them young people
|
| Young people want adventure, but all their homeland is offering
| is contentment. They need to account for the desire for
| opportunity in their GNH metric.
| konschubert wrote:
| Re-branding poverty as "contentment" may whoo some
| westerners, but probably not the people living off
| substinence farming.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, I'm pretty sure the people living off subsistence
| farming in Europe during the Middle Ages were mostly
| content with their lives too (at least during peacetime),
| despite much worse education and health care than the
| modern Bhutanese are getting. The difference is that this
| was simply their way of life and they didn't have any
| alternatives. "Contentment" means being content with what
| you have - no matter if it's because you consciously decide
| that it's enough for you or because you _simply don 't know
| any better_.
| konschubert wrote:
| We probably don't disagree, but just to state the
| obvious: Being content with suffering through ignorance
| is still suffering.
|
| Medieval subsistence farmers had to bury half of their
| children before the age of 5.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Depends entirely on the outlook of the person. I have met
| poor farmers in Pakistan who emphatically told me that my
| big city life was filled with work and devoid of meaning,
| while their slow village life was worth living. The sons
| had studied in the big city, had access to good employment
| opportunities, but told me they were desperately trying to
| get back to the village. It did seem that with access to
| technology, these farmers were working less per day than
| city workers.
|
| These exist at the same time as other farming families who
| were trying to escape to the big city or other countries in
| search of employment and better life. The latter category
| is larger than the former, but still it all depends on
| outlook.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| And where exactly are these farmers living? Is it
| somewhere in Punjab with law and order situation, or a
| safe place?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Inner Sindh, but not the worst parts of it, or the best.
| They did not report any law and order situation. Had
| access to the nearest city with a well built road. I
| think the biggest problem was poor quality drinking water
| and sewage treatment.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I find it weird that this article didn't mention China's
| aggressive invasions of Bhutan and settlement tactics violating
| their sovereignty. The fear of China's CCP government stealing
| from Bhutan or taking over Bhutan is a big reason for people to
| want to leave and seek refuge and stability elsewhere. See
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/05/asia/china-bhutan-border-dst-...
| cen4 wrote:
| There are lots of young people who are not ambitious. And as
| soon as you say that, there is a reactionary group that will
| come running to say well the problem is with teachers not being
| inspiring, curriculum being poor, society not creating the
| right environment etc etc. But these kids are never the issue.
| They are quite satisfied and accepting with whatever the
| universe throws in their lap.
|
| The real issue is Ambitious kids. Not the ones who have enough
| looks, contacts, knowledge, skill, intelligence, creativity and
| imagination to meet their goals but the ones who don't.
|
| Materialism exploits such people more than anyone else. It
| tells them Donald if you are not admired, respected, loved just
| work hard, don't stop, keep grinding, keep hustling, accumulate
| material wealth, accumulate status, accumulate luxury goods and
| you will get the affection, respect, admiration and love you
| crave. Its pure bullshit.
|
| This is the stuff that has to stop. We have to take care of
| these people better and channel their infinite energies into
| things beyond consumption and materialism. Its the hardest
| thing to do cause they are an extremely annoying group to deal
| with constantly craving attention, praise, sympathy and love.
| But thats the only path to a better, healthier and sustainable
| society. No Free Lunch.
| rangestransform wrote:
| huh? do you remember what type of organization owns the site
| you are on right now? it specifically caters toward ambitious
| people who want to create things and provide services that
| nobody does as well in the status quo.
|
| if societies historically cut down those who wanted change
| and put their energy into finding better ways to do things,
| we would still be hunting and gathering.
|
| i don't want to share a world with people who believe the
| ambitious, creative, and industrious should be cut down from
| their full potential.
| misja111 wrote:
| > it seems the problem is not with happiness, but with the
| seductive appeal of materialism and the effects of exposing one
| culture to another.
|
| I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but what struck me is
| that your comment would fit seamlessly into a text from the DDR
| regime, when it was still alive. (You know, the former
| communist republic of East Germany, which needed a wall to keep
| its citizens within the socialist paradise)
|
| I'm not saying that this makes your comment wrong, I'm just
| wondering what this means with regard to former communism.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I mean it would also fit seamlessly into an Islamist lecture
| from Sayyid Qutb, or a primitivist rant from Ted Kaczynski,
| and so on. Anyone ideologically opposed to the Western
| "capitalism plus liberal democracy" combo pretty much _has_
| to form their opposition on anti-materialist and /or anti-
| integration grounds, because those are the only ones where it
| isn't an overwhelming, crushing victory over every
| alternative.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| If my government did something as stupid as introduce a Gross
| national happiness metric, I would be getting out as soon as
| possible to avoid the gulags that will be following shortly. The
| most fascinating thing here is that these people managed to
| convince others that they are smart.
|
| > Now this is, I say deliberately, the only defect in the
| greatness of Mr. Shaw, the only answer to his claim to be a great
| man, that he is not easily pleased. He is an almost solitary
| exception to the general and essential maxim, that little things
| please great minds. And from this absence of that most uproarious
| of all things, humility, comes incidentally the peculiar
| insistence on the Superman. After belabouring a great many people
| for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has
| discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful
| whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive
| at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined
| with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to
| abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being
| easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its
| limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as
| we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw
| asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of
| man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food
| for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not
| suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food,
| but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby. Mr.
| Shaw cannot understand that the thing which is valuable and
| lovable in our eyes is man--the old beer-drinking, creed-making,
| fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man. And the things that
| have been founded on this creature immortally remain; the things
| that have been founded on the fancy of the Superman have died
| with the dying civilizations which alone have given them birth.
| When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great
| society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul
| nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob a coward--in a word,
| a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates
| of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the
| kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual
| weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong
| men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was
| founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible.
| For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure there's much correlation between governments
| wanting their people to be happy and building gulags.
|
| I'm not that up on George Bernard Shaw but there is now a World
| Happiness Report published out of Oxford, not far from where he
| used to hang out.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
| alephnerd wrote:
| Their "Happiness" marketing was always bullshit.
|
| Ask the Lhotshampa (ethnic Limbu, Gurung, and other Janajatis)
| who were ethnically cleansed by the Ngalop majority 20-30 years
| ago.
|
| It's a banana (tsampa?) monarchy that only exists as a buffer
| between India and China, and it's entire economy is basically
| owned by Tata Group (who owns and manages Bhutan's hydroelectric
| dam used for exports) and Indian construction companies (who
| build all the roads and resorts in the country).
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| This article is an interesting case study in the difference
| between "monarchy" and "dictatorship". The way I think about it,
| the differences are as follows:
|
| * Under monarchy, one person is chosen to rule "at random". Under
| dictatorship, there is a competition where the most ruthless
| person gets to rule.
|
| * Under monarchy, the people believe the monarch rules by divine
| right. Under dictatorship, the dictator rules by fear.
|
| * Monarchies are more stable, meaning the ruler can plan with a
| long time horizon. Dictators are more likely to siphon resources
| while the siphoning is good, since they fear a coup.
|
| * Lacking popular legitimacy, a dictator is forced to consider
| the self-interest and loyalty of their underlings. This leads to
| extractive and regressive policy. See this excellent video
| explaining the game theory:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
|
| * Under monarchy, criticism is kept in check while maintaining
| rule of law, via lese-majeste laws which make it illegal to
| criticize the monarch. Under dictatorship, criticism is kept in
| check via repression. That same repression makes the dictator
| less popular, which triggers more criticism, and thus more
| repression, in a doom loop.
|
| Monarchy is an imperfect system. A lot comes down to the person
| who is "randomly" chosen to rule. But I do wonder if monarchy
| should be considered an option in countries where democracy has
| been consistently dysfunctional and the population is poorly
| educated -- Haiti perhaps?
|
| Most successful democracies were monarchies at some point in the
| past. Maybe it's just a phase of development a country needs to
| go through -- in order to achieve mass literacy and civics
| education, if nothing else.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| There is usually nepotism in monarchy though, right?
|
| What about enforcing the "at random" part by implementing
| monarchy as sortition with one person?
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Or some sort of trial-by-ordeal, where winning the tournament
| is supposed to correlate with the characteristics that would
| make for a good monarch.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| To me, the most notable difference is "confidence" in what
| happens when leadership change. The next in line is already
| decided in a monarchy, often already well-known by the time of
| the official handover.
|
| Dictatorships tend to fall into chaos when leadership changes,
| and the current leader tends to remove any potential leader
| replacements to remove threats to their authority.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >The next in line is already decided in a monarchy
|
| I'm not so sure about that...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_of_succession
| lucianbr wrote:
| Which one is NK? It's hereditary rule on the third generation,
| and as such I guess it fits what you mean by "ruler chosen at
| random".
| bluGill wrote:
| A Monarch is a dictator who managed to stay in power long
| enough to pass the position on to more generations. This
| comes with culture changes such that they can act like a
| monarch instead of a dictator.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Based on my reading about history, I sketch the situation
| as follows:
|
| In pre-industrial societies, having a king was considered
| the mark of a developed state. The king was seen as a
| divine or semi-divine figure. Democracy popped up every so
| often, but it had a tendency to end in chaos, enhancing the
| legitimacy of the nobility.
|
| It's only in the past few hundred years that we've seen a
| reversal, where democracy is now considered the legitimate
| form of government. The lack of legitimacy is a big problem
| for dictatorships, and creates the need for repression.
|
| There's also an adverse selection problem in modern times
| -- since 'everyone knows' that democracy is the more
| ethical form of government, those who volunteer to be
| dictator tend to be unethical.
| bluGill wrote:
| Reading between the lines though, I suspect that isn't
| quite correct even though a simple reading of history
| says that. Remember the victors write history. The great
| dictator tends to be good at war, and so they write
| history. Democracy doesn't select the great war leaders
| and so they lose to the better generals, who in turn
| become kings and then write how bad other forms are to
| secure their legitimacy.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| This book did a lot to inform my sketch:
| https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Industrial-Societies-Anatomy-
| Pre-...
|
| I don't think she says anything about democracy at all.
| It doesn't seem to have been common in pre-industrial
| times.
| bluGill wrote:
| Representative democracy as we think of democracy -
| didn't exist much from what I can tell (I'm not an expert
| in history though). However small villages tended to have
| the "elders" gather to deal with government matters which
| looks a lot like direct democracy (and has significant
| problems - "busy bodies" are more likely to attend and
| make decisions for the average person who is trying to do
| something else with their limited time).
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Great question. Maybe it's sort of an in-between case. They
| seem pretty deep down the repression doom loop at this point.
| It's too bad we don't have a stronger tradition of amnesty
| for repressive rulers -- offering them a cushy requirement in
| order to let someone else take the helm.
| int_19h wrote:
| NK is a theocratic monarchy with a God-Emperor cult.
| int_19h wrote:
| Divine right is not a requirement for monarchy, and many
| historical monarchies took a very long time to develop
| something like that.
|
| The distinction between lese-majeste and vaguely defined
| dictatorial "repression" is also unclear. You seem to imply
| that the latter is generally outside of the rule of law, but
| this isn't necessarily true - dictatorships absolutely can and
| do have actual laws similar to lese-majeste etc on the books,
| and in a stable and long-running dictatorship, consistent
| application of such laws is how most repression is implemented.
| Conversely, monarchies don't always have rule of law, either -
| indeed, autocratic monarchies are _defined_ by the notion that
| monarch is above the law and can disregard it with impunity,
| including to punish subjects for things that aren 't
| technically illegal.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per
| capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but
| 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness,
| it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor
| country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
|
| I'm also not sure that mass emigration should be seen as an
| existential threat. Many developing economies have very
| successfully leveraged emigration and remittances as an engine of
| economic growth. If Bhutan can modernise into a more open
| economy, those young people could start returning home with the
| skills, experience and capital to do great things.
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
|
| https://www.nsb.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/1...
|
| https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2024/03/11/a-stron...
| psychoslave wrote:
| >Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP
| per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is
| 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national
| happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in
| a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward
| mobility.
|
| Is it really that hard to imagine? For someone not flooded by
| continuous stream of advertisements about how far better would
| be their live if they could buy the next crap the wonderful
| market planned with obsolescence included, it's not that hard
| to imagine the lake of "upward mobility" as a barrier to live
| happily.
| bluGill wrote:
| Advertisement comes in many forms. Seeing the rich nobles and
| their kids walk around with something you don't have is a
| form of advertisement. Poor people are not stupid, they
| notice when the rich have something interesting and they tend
| to want that too.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to buy
| something.
|
| The nobles that walk around with their kids might be
| animated with pervert narcissism and enjoying poor people
| looking at them with envy, but they are certainly not their
| to suggest plebeians should strive at obtaining the same
| kind of wealth they want everyone to think they enjoy.
|
| Also nobles more often than not have their own existential
| threats and fears. It's not like going up the social ladder
| is a certain path to more serenity and happiness.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to
| buy something.
|
| That is wrong because of the word buy. Political ads are
| not convincing you to buy anything. The nobles don't want
| the result, but the plebeians still see their wealth and
| want it.
|
| > Also nobles more often than not have their own
| existential threats and fears. It's not like going up the
| social ladder is a certain path to more serenity and
| happiness.
|
| I 100% agree with this. However from the point of view of
| the poor it looks much better (I tend to agree with them
| even though I'm closer to the rich end - like most people
| reading HN)
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > "Gross National Happiness acknowledges that economic growth
| is important, but that growth must be sustainable. It must...
| be balanced by the preservation of our unique culture," Tobgay
| said. "People matter. Our happiness, our well-being matters.
| Everything should serve that."
|
| > Every five years, surveyors fan out across Bhutan measuring
| the nation's happiness. The results are analyzed and factored
| into public policy.
|
| > "Gross National Happiness does not directly equate to
| happiness in the moment. One happiness is fleeting, it is
| emotion, it is joy," Tobgay said.
|
| Perhaps when you or I have a hard time imagining them being
| happy, its more our imagination's fault than anything! I know
| there is no escaping cold hard capitalism, and a "happiness
| index" is a little cringey, but I don't think any situation
| would preclude their intentions here. Other than that, its up
| to you I guess to believe or not the data instruments (and the
| people) that are saying they are happy!
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700.
|
| GDP is not a good measure of whether people have their needs
| met or not, doesn't factor in COL
|
| > in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward
| mobility
|
| on the other hand, with its economy growing and an open-minded
| leadership, opportunities for enterprising young people would
| generally be greater
|
| > youth unemployment rate is 16%
|
| to put that in perspective, that's about the same as the EU
| snowwrestler wrote:
| And it is a big problem for the EU as well.
| notahacker wrote:
| The PPP adjusted for COL puts Bhutan roughly on a par with
| Sri Lanka or Indonesia, which suffice to say are countries
| where a lot of people don't get their needs met. There's
| plenty of intra-EU migration driven by youth unemployment,
| and I suspect that the Bhutanese unemployment benefits - if
| they exist at all - aren't as generous. And I think the
| Llotshampa might have something to say about how open minded
| the Bhutanese leadership really is...
| tim333 wrote:
| I imagine the low wages there are a big reason why young people
| leave. I was there in 2011 doing the tourist thing and you
| could live nicely on not much money as they didn't have much
| the way of a land shortage or silly building restrictions so
| you could build quite a nice house for not much - the style
| there is log cabin like. But it must be tempting to go off and
| earn 10x for a while and then come back.
| schainks wrote:
| > For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to
| imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with
| very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
|
| The early North American colonists had the same outlook about
| life among the Native Americans. However, is never a _single_
| instance of a Native American running away from their tribe to
| join the colonists, but colonist defections to the tribes were
| a common occurrence, more among women than men.
|
| Why? For all that talk of "upward social mobility and a better
| life", people figured out the Native Americans were _happy_
| living in harmony with nature, and the women who escaped
| realized they had more personal freedoms with the "savages"
| versus the high-and-mighty Europeans who sold them on the good
| life at the colonies.
|
| Upward mobility and money still aren't everything, despite the
| pressure those forces put on the world to appear so.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| There are, however, instances of entire Native tribes
| adopting settled agrarian economies, developing written
| languages, and largely adopting European civilization:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee
|
| The Native Americans weren't ignorant of the advantages the
| European settlers possessed, and many did attempt to reform
| their societies along European grounds. They just tended to
| do this as a society-wide endeavor, rather than individual
| people running away to live with colonists.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| This description leaves out the _why_. Why did the tribes
| start adopting these ways of life?
|
| The wiki link itself talks about how they continuously had
| their land stolen, the deer population they hunted for food
| was almost made extinct by the colonists, and a general
| attempt to claim ownership and sovereignty over their land
| in a way that was in line with how the European powers
| viewed ownership.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > attempt to reform their societies along European grounds
|
| well, yeah, they had their land forcibly taken away from
| them so had to change their way of life
|
| it's also unclear how much some of the social structural
| changes by the Cherokee was by choice or pressure from
| invaders to become "civilized" (i.e., pyramidical
| government structures, individual land ownership, etc.)
|
| there's no indication that, generally speaking, Native
| Americans saw European societies as a "better life" -- in
| fact, quite the contrary. More powerful technologically and
| militarily, yes, but that's a separate matter altogether.
| jawilson2 wrote:
| > However, (there) is never a _single_ instance of a Native
| American running away from their tribe to join the colonists
|
| I have heard and quoted this for years, but I'm actually
| questioning whether it is true now. It just seems
| unbelievable when you think about it, and sort of feeds the
| "noble savage" trope. Out of hundreds of thousands or
| millions of Native Americans, there MUST have been some
| youth, at least one, seduced by the promised of western
| culture and voluntarily left their tribe and moved to a city
| or something. It just makes for a better story the other way
| around. Whether this was documented is another matter I
| guess.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's worth reading "1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations
| of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C Mann if you
| have the time.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/1491-Second-Revelations-Americas-
| Colu...
|
| What happened is that European disease created massive
| pandemics that killed most of the American Indians. No one
| was seduced by western culture, because, in general,
| American Indians had a better standard of living than the
| European colonists.
|
| Where I live, (in Massachusetts,) the remaining American
| Indians integrated into European settlements because so few
| of them were left. I know its different elsewhere in the
| American continents; you can find out more if you read 1491
| and its sequel 1493.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| There are indeed such instances.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Occom The first
| indigenous Presbyterian minister
|
| Here's another:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Colbert A native
| American fought for Andrew Jackson and eventurally retired
| and set up a cotton plantation.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > However, is never a _single_ instance of a Native American
| running away from their tribe to join the colonists, but
| colonist defections to the tribes were a common occurrence,
| more among women than men.
|
| There are many such instances, most famously Pocahontas. As
| far back as the 1600s there are records of Native Americans
| studying at Harvard. We just don't typically frame
| integration into the culture and institutions of a colonial
| power as "running away".
| pkkim wrote:
| In the 1600s, English settlers and native Americans probably
| had similar standards of living (i.e. a bit above
| subsistence). Maybe a 2x difference which I'm not sure would
| have been in favor of the Europeans, given that the natives
| had had so much time to learn how to farm, fish, hunt, and
| forage in the area.
|
| Bhutan vs the West is a huge difference in comparison.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Another factor not mentioned is that Bhutan is a tiny and quite
| isolated country; it's not at all unexpected that young people,
| who now have the means to go to other countries, would do so.
| It's a pretty natural thing. It's also possible that a number
| will return at some point -- enough time hasn't passed to see how
| this plays out.
| mrala wrote:
| The article literally states this fact:
|
| > Bhutan, which is about the size of Maryland, was largely
| isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. The kingdom
| was so protective of its unique Buddhist culture that it only
| started allowing foreign tourists to visit in the 1970s and
| didn't introduce television until 1999.
| non- wrote:
| If you don't get past the headline you might miss the most
| interesting part of this story. Bhutan is building a special
| economic-zone city, based on Singapore as a model, and designed
| by Bjarke Ingels. The renders are really striking, many of the
| major and most important buildings are designed to double as
| bridges over the river. Skip to 16:52 in the video to see the
| renders of the planned development "Gelephu Mindfulness City".
| wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB wrote:
| how about renaming it to Lhotshampa hatefulness city ?
| tdeck wrote:
| In case anyone wondered this is referring to
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_in_Bhutan
| mark000 wrote:
| This is an interesting thread related to the subject
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gisa55/why_
| d...
| amritananda wrote:
| IMO also a good exploration of the ethnic cleansing of
| Lhotsampa and the subsequent hardships faced by the
| refugees is _The Lhotsampa People of Bhutan_ , edited by
| Venkat Pulla.
| mmmore wrote:
| If I were tasked with improving Bhutan, one of the things I would
| focus on is probably lead. 3/4 of Bhutanese children have
| elevated levels of lead in their blood.
|
| https://www.unicef.org/bhutan/press-releases/national-blood-...
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Wow, this is shocking. What is the root cause? I could not find
| anything in the article.
| ablation wrote:
| Some cursory investigations have revealed that there are lots
| of lead-painted surfaces [1]. Even children's play equipment
| [2]. And kitchen utensils [3]. And all the other usual
| sources, too.
|
| [1, 2] = https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365897933_P
| otential...
|
| [3] = https://www.bbs.bt/national-blood-lead-level-survey-
| reveals-...
| cm2012 wrote:
| This is very common in the developing world, due to lax
| regulations on lead in products.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| They pursued happiness by ethnic cleansing of Nepalis.
|
| It's why I can't look as a Bhutan as a good place. Bunch of
| hypocrites pretending to be saints.
| pie420 wrote:
| let he who hasn't engaged in some ethnic cleansing cast the
| first stone
| dominicrose wrote:
| > The city will have its own legal framework modeled on
| Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the
| hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI.
|
| AI with an hydroelectric power supply? That's optimistic. At
| least the power-consuming part of this would have to be
| somewhere.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Why is that optimistic? Hydro is old, reliable tech, it's
| always online, and as pointed out in another comment thread,
| Bhutan has so much excess energy that they're looking for ways
| to make it useful. Not sure if I see the problem?
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| TL;DR - The leaders of a highly-religious, homophobic, low-HDI,
| faux-democracy country get surprised when some of their people
| want to leave for greener pastures.
|
| Turns out that inventing a specific measure of happiness that
| makes your country look more favorable than it is doesn't change
| reality.
| the5avage wrote:
| When their smart young people leave to earn more money abroad,
| wouldn't it make sense to take smart young people from other
| countries that aren't that materialistic? Just asking for a
| friend...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Basically saying money can buy happiness
| cryptozeus wrote:
| "...pandemic hit Bhutan's economy hard, shutting down tourism.
| Recovery has been slow.."
|
| I wish them good luck however happiness does not put food on
| table.
| wb14123 wrote:
| Is it really prioritizing happiness tho? From Wikipedia:
|
| > According to the World Happiness Report 2019, Bhutan is 95th
| out of 156 countries.
|
| Not to mention its ethnic cleansing of the non-Buddhist
| population. There are definitely other things that have higher
| priority on the government's agenda than people's happiness.
| worik wrote:
| This probably very good news for Butan. The young people seeing
| the world, expanding their horizons
|
| They will be back, especially when they have children
|
| I am an interal migrant to a small city in Aotearoa (Otepoti) and
| it is striking how many people grew up here, left as youngsters,
| and came back to have children
|
| Bhutan is not a basket case, it sounds like a good placecto raise
| a family (as is Otepoti, why I am here).
|
| Exciting for Bhutan's future
| slibhb wrote:
| The slant of the article is that there's brain drain from Bhutan.
| But the meat is more interesting. Apparently, Bhutan is building
| a charter-like city:
|
| "A Bhutanese team is collaborating with experts around the world,
| seeking investors to help build the city, the cost of which is
| likely to run in the billions. The city will have its own legal
| framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean
| hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology
| companies, especially AI."
|
| I like this sentence in particular, which showcases an admirable
| pragmatism:
|
| "When we say we follow the principles of Gross National
| Happiness, we do not mean we are happy with less... We also want
| to be rich. We also want to be technologically high standard."
|
| There has been some buzz around charter cities lately,
| particularly Prospera in Honduras which has been seized by the
| government. Bhutan seems like the perfect place for this kind of
| experiment because it is peaceful, politically stable, and
| English is taught in schools.
|
| There's a chance that we see more city-states like Singapore,
| Dubai, etc. These places offer something the US can't: social
| orderliness. Bhutan seems intent on preserving its national
| identity, which is also draw. Conversely, Dubai (and Neom, if it
| actually gets built) strike me as a bit soulless.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Singapore has 8-9x more people than Bhutan, so you'd think
| Bhutan could become rich fairly quickly as a city state. It
| doesn't have a port, and it is pretty hard to get to, so I
| don't think it can be particularly populated unless they manage
| to flatten a few mountains to build a big airport.
|
| It is also one of the sources of the Shangri-La myth, it would
| be cool if they actually called a city that (China technically
| renamed Zhongdian Yunnan to Shangri-La, but that is very much a
| gimmick).
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Their northern neighbor infringing on the border and trying to
| reduce the size of the country?
| cm2012 wrote:
| In the end, maximizing GDP per Capita pretty closely maximizes
| most positive social outcomes. Richer countries are happier, less
| lonely, kinder to each other, etc.
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