[pembrook]

I see you've addressed none of my points and instead were triggered by my suggestion your team may have some bad people on it.

Yes, in recent times in the US right wing violence has been more prevalent. But HN is not a right wing place, it's a left filter bubble like reddit and leftist violence is a growing phenomenon in US politics. Arguing against the right wing here would be like clapping along with a giant crowd, providing zero interesting discussion. The bolshevik revival in the world's wealthiest country is far more interesting to discuss.

Also historically, we have to remember that the left's utopian socialist vision (communism) is responsible for the absolute highest body counts, including 30 million starved to death and thousands of incidents of cannibalism in just Mao's great leap forward alone.

[pksebben]

I'm not going to go to bat for Mao(1), but I think you're underplaying the body count that capitalist countries have had - this is kind of easy to do because a lot of the damage that we do is obfuscated behind proxies. Besides the obvious and direct war crimes like Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, and now I guess Iran again, there's the second order stuff like Israel's Bad Neighbor Syndrome (which we have enabled financially for basically the duration), Pinochet who we put in charge, heck - pick any country south of the border and we've done some damage there at least once. Then there's the spiderweb of damage that flows out to the global south continuously through NAFTA and similar foreign policy. I suppose the principal difference is that we externalize a lot of our violence (and somehow are shocked when it comes back to bite us that we trained Osama Bin Laden).

Nobody's asking for Maoist China, I think mostly we're clamoring for something closer to Norway. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to settle for UK-style socialized services but even those folks get lambasted for being "too far left" too so whaddyagonnado.

1 - I think he and 'bolshevism' are a bit of a strawman here anyway, as I've not heard a ton of pro-Mao people but a TON of people who identify as leftists - they are not the same thing

[pembrook]

> I think mostly we're clamoring for something closer to Norway. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to settle for UK-style socialized services

Norway is a Saudi Arabia-style petrostate just with white people aesthetics (Saudi Arabia is also socialist). A better analogue might be Sweden/Finland, also tiny socialist Lutheran countries but with no massive oil reserves.

I write this while currently living in Finland. Your understanding of European socialism is stuck in the early 2000s. Things are going terribly here (and also in the UK). The welfare states throughout Europe are all in various states of slow collapse due to the public sector eating the private sector and climbing government spending as percentage of GDP not seen since the USSR (we're well over 50-60%, communist China is only at 35%). Deficits are ballooning.

Our unemployment rate is 3X that of the US and still climbing. We have no growth in the economy, no population growth, and no productivity growth. Pensions/benefits have been overpromised and will require decades of pain to resolve. Things are bleak and similar throughout the rest of Europe. I would update my priors if I were you.

Furthermore, the only reason socialism ever appeared to work here was due to us being ethnically homogenous and tiny. Government's lack of competitive pressure can be somewhat overcome by social pressure from the government official being your neighbor Pekka. It's harder to grift when everybody knows who you are and can see your new Mercedes. The US is not tiny and not ethnically homogenous.

Our system isn't even working here anymore, and it absolutely would not work in a massive, diverse, low-trust society like the US. You would do much better to lean into your strengths than to chase early 2000s European socialism, which was in fact a mirage brought about by a one-time economic boom due to the fall of iron curtain and EU integration.

[pksebben]

all fair points - but what strengths? We've proven ourselves incapable of the most basic social goods for decades now. All the metrics that you might point to as "hey the US is doing fine" (GDP, deficit, sector growth) are concerned specifically with how the state is doing and desperately unconcerned with it's citizens, which I think is a principal issue here.

[pembrook]

I think I'm arguing from a position of the quantitative numbers and you're arguing from qualitative vibes, hence why there's a disconnect.

But here's why its important to look at the quantitative reality of the numbers going forward--they are going to absolutely change the qualitative populist vibes.

In 30 years, even if the AI bubble pops and US growth rates normalize to something low like 2%, the US will have a GDP per capita of $130k in 2050. Meanwhile with 0.8% growth (very optimistic for Germany, may be much worse) the average German will earn roughly $75K with far worse demographics ballooning their deficits even further unless they dramatically cut social benefits or cause massive inflation to inflate away social debts.

I can guarantee your vibes of the situation will change over the next 30 years as European nations continue falling behind the US in economic power. The US will have massive optionality to improve its healthcare/education system with this extra wealth. Europe will have the opposite problem, deciding which benefits/services to cut next with a growing welfare burden combined with a not-growing private sector to fund it.

As far as strengths? I think having the next economic revolution be centered in your country (AI) is pretty valuable no? If it raises productivity and GDP growth by even 0.5%, I can guarantee the US will also capture that better than Germany/Europe will given its technophobic culture.

[pksebben]

I think I see where we're coming at this from different angles.

If you're going by the numbers and the 'strength of the state' - then yeah, we're doing great. However, neither I nor anyone I know happens to be a part of the class that's holding the baton with all that stuff.

My concern is specifically about how well the citizens are doing, in aggregate, taking into account whether they have democratic control over the reins of governance, whether they are afforded the opportunity to be meaningful contributors to the greater good, education, freedom, enfranchisement.

GDP / capita is meaningless if most of the 'capita' never sees a dime. TBH the structures and institutions that make up a country are just a bunch of bureaucratic role playing from where I stand - they're meaningless without the 'we' of 'we the people'.