I live among foreigners, and the only ones that I've met that actually like their home country are rich ones from totalitarian regimes who somehow benefit from the regime. And as far as I can tell, public opinion of a regime among expats is strongly tied in both directions to how that regime effects them and their families financially, though even well off people such as myself, who have chosen to move away, often find it in their hearts to hate their home country.

The rich Saudis who come to Prague to study all thing Saudi Arabia is heaven on earth. The Russian who's family lost everything in 1998 [1] think that Putin should be hung from a lamp post with his own intestines.

I think that there is basically no knowledge to be gained from talking to expats about their home countries. After-all 75% of Turks in Belgium voted for totalitarian dictatorship at home [2].

[1] https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referen...

Exactly. It's also very typical for the average person someone on HN would mingle from that comes from other countries to say their country sucks (someone heavy on US culture, or who aspires to be a SV entrepreneur, etc is not the typical example of the average citizen of most countries). So just because someone knows people from a country, it doesn't mean their opinions represent what people from that country generally believe. Even ex-pats living in a foreign country tend to meet and mingle with quite specific demographics.

Cab drivers (and similar working class people) can often tell you more for the general sentiment in a country that people you naturally gravitate towards for making friends.

I had a similar objection to the various "arab spring" analysts, who take people with celebrated english-speaking blogs and twitter accounts (which by that fact already are a small minority in their country) as representative of the general sentiment etc. The guy who aspires to be an Egyptian blogger (and who participates in internet culture heavily) is probably more westernized and quite different than the average folk who might ask for heavier islamic laws etc. That's obvious, and still pundits are then surprised when such incidents (arab spring etc) take a turn for stricter regimes.

I'm not choosing either side of this discussion, simply clearing something up.

I'm an expat from Sweden and I think Sweden is fantastic. It's just not the place for me at this point in my life. My friends from the U.S. are also very fair in their descriptions - there are things about their country they love, other things they hate.

You could just as well say that people still in their countries are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Or did you intend to say selection bias?

It's kind of amazing that around here when someone says "yeah my Libertarian Paridise home-country is actually a shithole because people keep getting machete'd to death by roving gangs", someone else strokes their chin and thinks "hmm, I'm not sure I buy it, maybe there's a survivorship bias in there"

But yes, in this case a more generic, selection, might be more appropriate.