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That's... a stretch, because that would disqualify about 90% of Americans.
There's nothing more American than looting the commons for your own benefit; socializing the losses and privatizing the gains. Bad Bunny is doing the most American of things; being paid to celebrate himself and perform a victory dance on a defeated people, and to make them pay for the privilege. Improve? Protect? He's getting that bread, if American society was getting worse he'd move somewhere else after getting his bag.
This is the most American of things. Men are free, and when free, this is what significant amounts of them do.
Do we live in different countries? Or are you under 25? 90% of Americans do not loot the commons. Nobody does. That’s a post 2016 commons breaking down. It’s not the America I grew up in. This is literally what we are fighting for to prevent America from going down that path.
The reason freedom worked in America is due to Americans being able to work for the collective good and not be solely self-centered. If everyone robbed from each other the entire experiment would have never worked.
Post 2016??? What?? America's nowhere close to unique in this case, but even the most rose -tinted views of American society should understand that the "fuck you, got mine" attitude is endemic in the country and the people who don't hold that view are consigned to being victimized by those who do.
The 2016 commons "breaking down" didn't come out of nowhere and didn't start in 2016. It comes out of many reasons, among them a long line of short term decisions being made to solve problems and kicking the can down the road; even a relatively short term view that only considers federal governance alone can be dated back to the LBJ Great Society, the chain from Ford-Carter-Reagan, Dubya 1, the Clinton corporatization consolidation years, Dubya 2's action and then the Obama-era expansion of the surveillance state. That's without talking about money, the economy, the labor and mortgage markets. America is a country where there are outsized, stratospheric rewards for playing defectbot.
Somewhere, FDR is pulling a sad Pikachu face because he was left out of this line.
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I am sorry you feel this way and sorry you grew up around people who think this way. It is not the America I experienced.
I don’t believe we “kicked the can down the road”. The Great Society was an attempt to end poverty. Reaganism was a mostly successful attempt at improving American prosperity.
Why does Harvard have a $50 billion endowment? It’s because a lot of people donated money wanting to give something back for (unrelated) people who come after them. Why did so many people sign up for the military when those towers fell? Or those boys who died on those beaches in Normandy? Why did Carnegie give all his money away?
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This is certainly a view one can hold. By all means, maintain the same perspective when it is you getting got.
Oh, absolutely, I completely expect to get got at some point by those who have it worse than I do and have the opportunity to. I don't even begrudge them for it. The old saw about capitalism being to blame for everything/what we have now isn't real capitalism aside, capitalism has proven more robust and powerful than other economic systems because it considers and accounts for self-interest. I don't see myself as being more powerful than incentive, nor do I expect to be.
On the other hand, I didn't watch the Super Bowl nor did I pay for tickets.
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