This is a very useful list. Most economists should read it too.
This is real Asymetric Warfare - the art of speedily maneuvering through Situational Awareness with ounces of prevention, not just wasting endless pounds on late repair and punishment after the fact.
Worst of all, most Americans will be outraged, fly off the handle and refuse to even think about these 10 observations below. That is exactly why they are largely true. Don't be one of the knee-jerks.
Have we BECOME the places we originally left in order to make America? Our ancestors would be appalled. Thankfully, it's not too late to again start acting like ingenious Americans.
Talk about things we don't need - that's the definition of capitalism we've settled for. Seems the Ugly American of the 1950s had kids who grew up even uglier in the 1990s. And NOTE ESPECIALLY #9, THE COMMENT ON AGRICULTURE & FOOD PRODUCTS!
Finally, many if not most people worldwide still WANT TO BE LIKE AMERICANS - so let's set an example worth emulating.
Anything else to add to the list below?
10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About America
(scroll down to the text; the speech-to-audio conversion quality in the video is very poor)
1) Few People in Other Countries Are Impressed By Americans,
2) Few People in Other Countries Hate Americans,
3) Few Americans Know Much About The Rest Of The World,
4) Most Americans Have Become Impolite, & Poor At Expressing Gratitude & Affection,
5) The Quality Of Life For The Average American Is Not That Great,
6) Most Of The World Is NOT A Slum-Ridden Shithole,
7) Most Americans Have Become Paranoid,
8) Most Americans Have Become Status-Obsessed & Attention Seeking,
9) Most Americans Have Become Very Unhealthy (we've industrialized our entire ag/food chain),
10) Most Americans Are Conditioned To Mistake Sloth (not just comfort) For Happiness.
by Mark Manson
Goes along with my long-standing recommendation for young people to look for opportunity elsewhere unless they have strong leverage in the US or strong ties keeping them here. then they should travel the world a lot instead.
ReplyDeleteGood list, but I think a lot of these can be extrapolated to other countries too, so don't bash yourself too much.
ReplyDeletePoint 9 is big, because it has been exported to other nations unfortunately. Here kids used to be healthy but from few years ago the american alimentary model and lifestyle has increasingly got adopted by the natives, and as consequence youth and kids health have going down the drain.
Personally, with all the problems, I prefer more the european model, specially north-european. But I have serious doubts it can be generalized to be exactly like that everywhere due to geographic and demographic differences.
Anti-government and free raider capitalism obsession seems one of the biggest problems in USA right now, as long as the bipartisan corporate sell-out system, as an outsider.
"If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership." Will Rogers
ReplyDeletecirca 1934?
The author is just talking out of his ass. He offers no evidence of any kind for his statements.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been much of world traveler of late, but some of my younger friends are, e.g., importers, or live abroad, and they say much the same thing.
It used to take one of my more hot-tempered (New Yorker) friends a couple of weeks to re-adjust after returning from a trip. He'd walking around repeating, "Americans are so fucking stupid."
BTW, one of the huge practical things, which the author of the post also mentions although briefly, is medical and dental, including meds. The disparity here is monumental.
ReplyDeleteFor example, a few years ago our cat needed some expensive human medication that was not produced for vet use. At the local pharmacy a month's supply was $140. At Costco, it dropped to $122. Ordering from Canada was $90. Ordering by mail from Inda was $40, with guarantee in case of confiscation. A friend could buy it personally in India for $8 and in Nepal for $5.25.
"But you don't know what your getting." Yeah, right. Worked for the cat and he is doing fine now.
I'm not saying the things he claims are not true. Maybe they are; maybe they aren't. But if someone puts forward a bunch of claims of the form, "Most F are G" and expects those claims to be taken seriously, then they should offer some evidence for the claims.
ReplyDeleteThere are two things that I retain from this paper wrt MMT.
ReplyDeleteFirst the clear observation that 10 things that most X don't know about CountryOfX can be written for any country, with quite psychological similarities.
This a strong indirect affirmation that most people around the planet faces basically the same problems.
Does MMT give the due importance to this idea wrt the importance it gives to the specific problems faced by people in the so called developed countries?
How this basically sound and global approach to prosperity - we are all humans, we mostly face the same problems - can intersect and realize the independent countries wisely managed state monetary systems MMT advocates?
Paul,
ReplyDeleteSome of us harp on the importance of interconnections, and return-on-coordination as the highest return.
You can suppress insightful feedback, or you can over-document nonsense (R&R style) - many even in the MMT community can't see the system for the protocols.
As in every community, there's more infighting than cooperation.
back to item #9, public health maintenance issues are dominated by that very topic of systemic coordination, see
COSI Open Solutions @groenpj2
For hospitals on the edge, HIT is the tipping point
http://www.openhealthnews.com/hotnews/hospitals-edge-hit-tipping-point
(HIT = health IT; i.e., contractor vs OpenSource versions, notable the VA VisTa system, which predates Linux)
"Some of us harp on the importance of interconnections, and return-on-coordination as the highest return."
ReplyDeleteRoger - I think I understand what you mean by "return-on-cooperation", and unless I'm mistaken "Team Work" and/or "Cooperative Labor" could be substitute terms more or less. And, I do not dispute your claim, however, I'm wondering if you have any statistical data that would lend support to this view.
Ed, the entire field of industrial and social statistics culminating in Walter Shewhart's SPC ("statistical process control"), his protege WE Deming's work and the Toyota Production System (later dumbed down to SixSigma) documents this out the ying yang.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention John Boyd's OODA Loop work, adopting SPC back into military thinking.
You can also look up the same topic in ecology under "autocatalysis." Or google the term "General Systems Theory" or any subset of "Control Theory."
The documentation is so pervasive that, like air, we forget about it.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-to-explain-return-on-coordination.html
ps: it's also documented in the coordinated activity of the trillions of cells making up the physiology you call your "self"
ditto for the coordinated human activities we call a human culture
It's all the same topic. The bulk of the adaptive power is carried in the organization of the interactions, not just in the system components.
"ps: it's also documented in the coordinated activity of the trillions of cells making up the physiology you call your "self""
ReplyDeleteThanx Roger - I like that!