I wasn’t clear about an underlying assumption: I thought it was obvious the topic is corruption at the state level, and my arguments revolve around whether the state of California can do better... I am not arguing anything about the USA as a whole.

California could compare itself with other countries and improve some of its governance. I believe that a major roadblock to that path is the ambiance of American excellence, that blinkers the sight of citizens to solutions found in other parts of the world.

Individually, there are many citizens with a suitable social wealth that could choose to have a demonstrable effect upon the governance of their state.

Keep an open mind, try to avoid memes of mindless arguments, make an effort to improve your own governance, and if all else fails if you are technically wealthy you could always move to a country that has better social wealth.

California is the largest state on many important metrics, so usually it is comparing against other states that are much smaller on those metrics. I believe the size of New Zealand is not a reason to ridicule any comparison (zepto’s original answer “argued” that the size of NZ matters, which I feel is an evasion).

California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries.

Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them.

That certainly doesn’t seem to be a valid assumption about how governance works globally.

Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything.

Individual Californians can make whatever comparisons they like, and so can politicans and other leaders.

Do you have something to offer about what they might want to look at that would help them?

Do you even have an understanding of the problems? It seems like not everyone would agree on what they are.

Otherwise it just seems like your position is essentially just a claim that because there is another country that you think is run better, there are some ideas that you don’t actually understand yourself, that could help.

Edit: you added a paragraph to your comment after I posted my reply.

Please don’t do this as it can look like you are trying to change the context of the reply, which would be a dishonest move.

You added > I believe the size of New Zealand is not a reason to ridicule any comparison (zepto’s original answer “argued” that the size of NZ matters, which I feel is an evasion)

You say you ‘feel’ it’s an ‘evasion’ which is a way of dismissing this comment without addressing it.

If you think the comparison is valid then why not tell us what could California or the US adopt from NZ that would make things better?

If you don’t know, then what’s the point of the comparison, other than a kind of vague nationalism?

Edit 2: oh - I see you have changed a whole bunch of things about your earlier comments to make it look as though you made points that I failed to respond to.

You are completely intellectually dishonest and as such have nothing to offer to political discourse about corruption.

> California isn’t an independent country, so it can’t just adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries.

Strawman. No country can adopt arbitrary solutions from other countries - they are always modified to fit.

> Even if it could, there is an assumption you are making that you can identify what ‘solutions’ led to particular results and can simply adopt them.

Strawman. I am arguing comparisons should be made, not blindly discarded because of <insert meme>. Look at what works in other countries, and see what can help your own. Don’t just blindly discard everything as irrelevant because the country is different (for example, a different size.)

> Also ‘California’ isn’t a person. ‘It’ can’t compare itself to anything.

Nitpicking.

> Do you even have an understanding of the problems? It seems like not everyone would agree on what they are. Otherwise it just seems like your position is essentially just a claim that because there is another country that you think is run better, there are some ideas that you don’t actually understand yourself, that could help.

Those are starting to smell like personal attacks. Nobody understands much, but we all have some understanding. Yes, I have specific beliefs about what could help, but I have epsilon interest in beginning that particular conversation with you.

Edits as follows:

> Edit 2: oh - I see you have changed a whole bunch of things about your earlier comments to make it look as though you made points that I failed to respond to.

Ummmmm, nope. I didn’t read your child comment first. I did add an edit against the most obvious attack, I should have marked the edit, sorry. I made the edit within a short time, so I didn’t expect your immediate response. The edit (last para) merely reiterates the theme, it doesn’t add anything of substance.

> You are completely intellectually dishonest and as such have nothing to offer to political discourse about corruption.

If you get flagged, it wasn’t me.

You added this entire paragraph upthread after I had replied more than once:

“You mentioned Covid. Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.”

As well as lying about not having edited your comments, this comment is contemptuously anti-American and unconstructive. You can always find citizens of a country saying stupid things.

It’s also a non sequitur to what I was commenting on.

Covid numbers across Europe as a whole have been comparable to those across the US as a whole.

The two blocs are of comparable size, so this is an interesting statistic when evaluating effectiveness of governance of a large bloc.

> If you think the comparison is valid then why not tell us what could California or the US adopt from NZ that would make things better?

I understand that “look at what other countries do” is hand-wavy meta-advice. However, that is the best advice I have to give.

I could drill down on a particular policy, but how does that help?

The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, and is what most every other country manages to do for breakfast. Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude, and perhaps California can learn from the rest of the world.

“The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, and is what most every other country manages to do for breakfast.”

If most every other country managed to do this for breakfast, most every other country would be ahead of even the best parts of the US. The fact that the US and Europe as a whole are roughly comparable proves this simply can’t be correct.

“Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude..”

I’m not dismissing other countries. What I’m dismissing is this claim of a fix that everyone else is applying and that the US is not.

You mention strawmen in another part of the thread, presumably you must realize that the idea that California’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ is a strawman.

As I point out elsewhere, the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

When asked for a single idea about how others are doing better, you simply say ‘look at other countries’ and admit that this is a vague handwave.

Have you considered asking people why they think there is nothing better? You might discover they have different values to you.

Drilling down on policy would be much more meaningful than claiming America’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ you don’t like.

> the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

I am trying to help - you are perceiving that as an attack and you continue to incorrectly try and tell me how I think - an obvious impossibility.

> and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

Throughout this thread I talk about looking to countries that are doing things better, obviously not every country!

You choose to misrepresent a throwaway joke comment as having some deeper meaning: “What most every other country manages to do for breakfast” is an allusion to the now mostly obsolete habit of reading about international news in the morning paper, nothing nefarious.

“Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.”

Seems like what you mean by ‘trying to help’, is to assert that and that the US problems are the result of excuses and an attitude problem.

Do you seriously think that no Americans are interested in how other countries do things? As people have pointed out elsewhere, one of the two major political parties makes a point of citing other countries as models.

You say you are trying to help, but you haven’t offered any helpful suggestions.

You keep saying other countries are better governed, but somehow you haven’t identified a single thing the US could actually do to govern better.

It’s entirely possible that what looks like ‘better government’ isn’t a feature of a system at all, and just the result of a simpler situation of not having had to face particular challenges.

Without actually saying what the US could do better, you really aren’t making a case for anything.

What we do know, is that you keep saying that other countries are better than the US, and that you firmly believe this.

How is this different from the people who believe that the US is better than other counties? Aren’t you just the mirror image of the thing you are criticizing?