I chose the Netherlands for a variety of reasons, but I guess ultimately it is a question of what values you think are best suited to create a functional society. For me, a life that was less centered on car travel and had a political system that was more robust to new problems is what I wanted the most.
I wonder about this - some have felt this under President $FOO but $FOO still had to concede to a loss or term limits. I feel like actual change of power is important, and the US still has this while a lot of the world is losing it
The US messed around with losing it, too. It didn't end up happening, but it has edged closer and closer for the past couple of decades. The system has twice produced a result that was clearly against the popular preference, and most recently the losing candidate took numerous measures to attempt to make it a third.
Both sides have significant doubt about whether the mechanisms used to count votes are accurate, and it's growing worse. It looks very much like a situation where sooner or later we, too, could lose the ability to have a peaceful change of power.
Extrapolations about the future are always fraught, so take that with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, the fact that everybody is making the same extrapolation just makes it more likely.
> The system has twice produced a result that was clearly against the popular preference, and most recently the losing candidate took numerous measures to attempt to make it a third.
the popular vote is not the popular preference. it's just the total number of people who voted for each candidate under a set of rules where that number doesn't matter. the popular vote would likely look quite different if the popular vote decided the election. people who live in overwhelmingly red or blue states often don't bother voting in presidential elections outside of the primaries.