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I don't know what barometer you're using to call the US a success in detail so I can't effectively comment on it. And unless you think the US in 2025 is the only example of a successful society out there such that it merits setting it categorically apart from other nations, there are plenty of other successful societies out there. China has a more effective governance system (it's why even scholars of the right-wing like Paul Gottfried have taken to admire it and refers to himself as a "right-wing Leninist"). Japan has a better transportation system. Singapore has a better drug policy. Finland has a better educational system. Many European countries have a better healthcare system. Even North Korea has a better border policy than we do. What’s the superior individual liberty policy prescription for these domains?
A lot of times I see this way of thinking omnipresent in almost every argument left-wingers and progressives alike make in policy circles when it comes to taxing everyone and everything to fund their utopian social programs (and no amount of money will ever be enough to see them achieve their goals). And this is a problem Americans have more generally with the way they look at things; because Americans are a group of people that money will solve anything. I think most people will find it shocking that there are other qualitative aspects to life that are at least equally if not more important to them because believe it or not, money isn't everything.
If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.
I didn't cite communism in my prior example because there's no disagreement I have with the people who make this argument. I'm about as far right-wing on this point as you can get. But there's a reason most civilizations who have flourished over the long run or at best or withstood the test time of time have been ran by highly illiberal regimes, whether democratic or not. I think historians of the future will in a way look back on America with a similar view.
If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.
If you don't mind tsukin jigoku (commuter hell). I for one do not want to be pressed into commuter paste in order to get to work.
A less expensive one, certainly. But the existence of medical tourism from Europe to the US suggests it's not better on all criteria.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?
Well if I look at the Democracy Perception Index 2020, which measures the public perception of a country's governance. 52% of respondents think France is democratic. 73% think China is democratic. They may not value your personal conception of liberty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value liberty. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?,” so too is the case with your Liberty. Maybe they’re brainwashed fools who don’t understand the true concept of liberty, but I’m doubtful.
Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.
Incidentally is immigration something I’m supposed to be impressed with here? Even most Afghans aren’t clamoring to come to the US and of those that are and desperately want to attach themselves to jet turbines and escape, I say let them. People immigrate all the time. So what? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any country the US is actively bombing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that people are trying to escape it. They don’t envy American liberty. They envy American wealth. And unless you can explain to me how the latter is causally explained by the former, I’m not going to buy that argument. I’d argue you care as much about the terminal as well as instrumental values of your liberty, because you don’t place the same value on alternative conceptions of liberty. And the reason for this is because it doesn’t produce outcomes that are agreeable to you.
Also don’t know what your link has to do with my argument.
Don't. Democracy is not the same as liberty. And a "Democracy Perception Index" that puts China at 73% is obviously garbage, it's like a "Skiing Perception Index" that puts Haiti at #2.
It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.
I think this is a good place to leave this discussion. If liberty is an idea so sacrosanct that it can’t be discussed in a meaningful relationship to the rest of the world in all its friction, I see little utility to it in any sense. Someone can hug the idea to them if they like, but it’s not for me; nor do most people care about it in that way.
If you don’t want to read in greater detail the information I want to present to you and simply dismiss it out of hand, that’s fine. The data itself is about “perceptions,” not how you may feel about the idea in private abstract.
I didn’t say it’s an assumption that the US is the most wealthy country in the world. I said the assumption lies with thinking that that’s an important barometer for gauging liberty. Which I reject. 10 fish in a bucket is quantitatively the same thing as 1 fish in 10 buckets. The latter is a ‘wealthier’ society measured by its health as a whole, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Conservatism includes a “place” for personal liberty in the lives of ordinary individuals. I completely buy that premise and reject any one of them that postulates the totalitarianism of liberty over anything of equal or greater importance.
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