An entire generation grew up in that atmosphere... they became the nation's teachers and leaders, influencing the opinions of subsequent generations. Game theory shows small changes in behaviors and opinions can have massive downstream impact, as demonstrated by this interactive demo: http://ncase.me/trust/ (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864183).
I haven't had any luck finding studies or data on this topic. The key would be voter turn-out for each party bucketed by age for the past few decades of elections.
If my propaganda theory holds true, the Republicans would see a popularity boost that ages at roughly 1 year per year. That segment would be ~50-80 around now, which does match recent voting data (older voters consistently skew conservative) - but historical data is needed to track a bulge over time and disprove the "naive youngsters vote liberal" narrative.
Reagan did a lot of damage to the perception of what government should do and how citizens need to hold it accountable. Instead he described it in terms of being inherently bad, which is demonstrably b.s. but the country pretty much bought it as evidenced by his election, the ensuing cut in taxes, the near total stop in investments made to large scale private and and public infrastructure spending, and a shift to hoarding wealth rather than keeping it moving so that everyone benefits from it.
If he also caused a step back from large scale public investments... wow, this man has certainly done a lot of damage.
How do Eastern European countries fare then? How about China?
(Note: I specifically said collectivism, not Communism)
For each of the items you list, I can see it going the direction you describe, or instead going the other direction, with government stepping in only after individuals were clearly not taking care of the problems. How do you propose that we can tell which direction it went?
I have no intention of making an argument that government is better or worse at: providing healthcare, building libraries, feeding the hungry, etc. All I'm suggesting is that when the government creates programs like SNAP then people have a tendency to believe that the hungry are being fed.
This blame-the-government thing is uniquely American. In other parts of the world there are big governments that really help their populations thrive and live safely and comfortably (e.g. I live in Sweden).
You are in top 10% of European countries. You are comparing your filthy rich country to the entire United States. If you want to make a fair comparison, compare Sweden to Washington State.
Also: ask Eastern European countries, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, African countries, Greece, Cambodia, Myanmar... how much they trust their government. You have no idea how much of a prosperity bubble you are in, in Sweden.
You also seem to be unaware that the United States has more Big Government economic regulations than in Sweden.
Second, I was holding Sweden up as an example the you could aim to emulate. "Socialism" the Swedish way is really quite nice. I've lived and moved countries and know many who have moved around the world and to and from the states and I warmly recommend Sweden as the place everyone wishes their home countries was more like ;)
Sweden does not have socialism. There is less economic regulation of private companies than in the United states. Sweden has a freer economy with higher tax rates.
Sweden also has 145% the per capita income of the EU average. And don't forget that excludes poor Eastern European non-EU countries like Ukraine.
Well, the Swedes think they have their 'nordic model' version of it. Its been governed by the Social Democrats for almost all the last hundred years. Perhaps their definition differs from yours?
> There is less economic regulation of private companies than in the United states
Crikey, poor you folks! Given how startup-hostile Sweden truly is on the ground, its amazing that Silicon Valley can exist at all if its worse over your side of the pond! ;)
Here, very few people can or would start a company, and startups are rare and happen despite the poor investment. I've met some of the founders of the companies that are often cited like skype and I don't think they started in Sweden rather than the states because Sweden is a less regulated economy. Sweden is part of the EU, and the rules are the EU rules which Britain alleges to have found so over-regulated that they had to leave! ;)
Everything you hear on the news is true unless you have some personal experience of it. So it is with the brush Sweden gets tarred with in the US. There's some crazy left-wingers who think Sweden isn't socialist enough (and their idea of collectivism seems to be towards communism, and Sweden isn't communist), but its mostly the right-wingers thinking Sweden is some immigration hellhole. People in Sweden don't recognize the Sweden portrayed on Fox News.
Interestingly, the coverage of the US that you get on the European media seems to be much more truthful and balanced; I know plenty of US citizens, I've visited an awful lot, I've worked for US companies for years, and the general portrayal of the US life in the media over here seems to ring true.
So yes, big governments can certainly provide services that you like. They can also provide never ending wars funded by your income that you can't do a damn thing about.
You know what cooperation means - it means that some of the time you don't get what you want and that's OK because the system gives you what you want (and need) also.
I dare you to describe a society where all services are provided on a voluntary basis. Go ahead I dare you.
Do you really suggest "having a big family" as the way to survive health problems and retirement? Because that's how it works in some (e.g.) SE Asian countries, and life there can be very harsh indeed if you strike adversity and don't have family to care for you. Some people are infertile, or have lost their children.
Not to mention that simply populating the world with more and more people is kind of environmentally short-sighted. I'd rather have the government bulk buying my meds, and lighten my overall footprint on the planet, rather than harking back to ancient times when there was little or no government, and family was everything.
Life can be very harsh if you're unfortunate but don't qualify for government benefits. Or maybe you've genuinely turned a corner in your life but government rules don't have mercy like individuals can.
But yes, unfortunate you if you get something that's not covered under the universal deal, e.g. some kind of leading edge cancer treatment. That's when you hope your private insurance (if any) will pick up the tab.
The government doesn't literally pay for anything you want or need. It picks what things it will pay for and what things it won't. You can't always ask government to make a special exception in extenuating circumstances like you could with a parent or cousin.
I'm not saying family is always better. I'm saying there are certainly downsides to government-based charity.
That's a perfectly respectable opinion. And you and I probably are in agreement on the government's role on many of these kinds of social issues. However, it's completely possible to both support those programs and simultaneously understand their impact on social fabric.
Certain African countries are strongly individualistic. The state is too weak to help or punish anybody. Infrastructure crumbles, crime and slavery abounds.
You seriously don't want to visit let alone live in a country that lacks collectivism.
I wish I could summon up a one of those nice charts on this subject from gapminder! That would show immediately if there's something to it.
It could also be simply that the American media and intellectual class are unusually neurotic and there similar issues exist everywhere but the local reporting in my country doesn't emphasize it as much.
There are many differences among these nations. Some are densely populated (the Netherlands), some sparse (Australia). No comparisons I've ever seen amongst them however remotely suggests that as you add more sophisticated social welfare policies, this reduces social cohesion. On the contrary, such policies tend to smooth out the effects of inevitable industrial change, rendering populations more resilient. It's no accident that nations clinging to relatively crude social policy (the US, the UK) have far lower economic mobility than those using the state of the art (Sweden, Germany). And it is about sophistication, not absolute expenditure, by the way. France, for example, has high spending, but it's badly targeted and rendered inflexible by traditional interests, so on many indicators other than health, it looks more like the laggards (US, UK) than leaders (Sweden, Denmark, Canada).
Do you have a deconstruction of that?
I'd say burden of proof is on the side claiming "developing integration problems" and such in Australia / Sweden / Germany. Without any data it seems like empty rightist populism.
Correct your perspective and see that the United States and Europe are fairly equal. Example: Italy has next to no cohesion.
References? In my personal experience that's far for accurate. If anything they are an extremely nationalistic country.
Living half way between the US and the EU has taught me otherwise - that the kind of cohesion between say Portugal and Sweden is surprisingly solid - once you know where to look e.g. social values, political views. Trying to do the same with someone from deep Texas and a little town in the Maine coast could be an interesting example of the opposite.
Having different languages even inside the same territory doesn't account for lack of cohesion. It's quite irrelevant in practice actually.
Cohesion seems to be mistaken these days by sheepishly following politicians into unnecessary wars and lacking critical thinking. Widespread ignorance is not cohesion, is divisive at best.
Turkey is a nation that is even more nationalistic and they have very serious trust issues with their fellow citizens.
You're buying a false narrative. Most midwestern town in states like Montana, the Dakotas, Utah do not have opioid problems. In fact, those states have the happiest and most satisfied people in this country.
(Google "National drug overdose rates" for more info - CDC and academia have plenty of studies, but no pretty graphs)
If I as an individual become aware that there are hungry people in my area, I may as an individual choose to put forth some effort, funds, etc. to attempt to rectify this problem. This is an individual act for the collective good. You are emotionally attached to your own act and have a personal interest in improving the system of feeding people because you want to make sure your money feeds the most people possible.
Conversely, if we all decide we're going to take some of your money, whether you like it or not, and decide how all of us cumulatively wish to solve the hunger problem, that is not an individual act. It is not an act of your conscience. It separates you emotionally and cognitively from the people you're feeding. You never meet them, you never get to know them. You have no attachment whatsoever to what's going on. You just pay taxes and hope the bureaucracy does a decent job, or more likely you stop thinking about feeding the hungry altogether because it's "taken care of." You still want your money to be used efficiently/effectively but the entire scope of government is far too big for the average person to deal with at that level.
I'm not intending to make any argument about which way is the most effective at: feeding the hungry, providing healthcare to the poor, etc. That's a different debate altogether. I'm only pointing out that the government giving some of your money to feed people is a completely different social experience than you doing so yourself. And further that when the government tells you it's going to take care of feeding everyone, it tends to drop off your radar.
But we can all plainly see that this is completely wrong, and people do do all that.
And yes, families are far more likely to be broken today than in decades past. The elderly are more likely to be dumped in a home somewhere. Welfare has ravaged families. The single motherhood rate is 8x what it was in the 50s because we incentivize broken families. Over 50% of adults are single now. That's historically unprecedented, and it didn't start heading that direction until the 1950s when socialist programs started really taking hold in the US.
Trust, empathy, bonding, etc. are going to be a lot harder when someone's identity, life experiences, and circumstances are completely foreign to your own. I don't think it makes cooperation impossible, but as a practical matter it means we're more likely to need huge, complex institutions like the federal government to mediate cooperation. People also seem less likely to want to cooperate or sacrifice their resources for others who are nothing like them.
One way societies have historically dealt with this is to close their borders, beat the shit out of internal nonconformists and, if they remain unrepentant, torture them to death in the public square by lighting them on fire. Subtler variants persist; for example, the official government's indifference to vigilante enforcement actions ranging from bullying (Japan) to beheading (Saudi Arabia).
It seems clear to me that our culture of welcoming and celebrating differences is more just and causes better outcomes for more people, but it does mean that we aren't all in the same boat.
Evidence: who are the heroes in american TV and movies? The rebel against authority, the one that breaks the rules. Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, House, I could go on and on. We celebrate the idea of something we actively argue against in daily life.
There's also some weird connection between extremes of claiming to value individualism and idolizing authoritarianism that I won't claim to understand, so I could be completely wrong on all of this. I'm not positive that extremes of individualism are a death knell for cooperation...but I don't find the idea unlikely either.
All of these heroes cooperated with close friends, colleagues, and other people in order to solve problems and achieve goals.
The difference is not individualism vs. cooperation. The difference is cooperation based on the voluntary choices of individuals, as needed to accomplish goals, vs. cooperation dictated from the top by someone's ideology.
And what does "cooperate as a society" mean? If there is indeed a goal that every member of the society has in common, then yes, it makes sense for everyone in the society to cooperate to achieve that goal. But too often, "cooperate as a society" really means that some people get to choose the goal and force everyone else to cooperate to achieve it, whether they agree with the goal or not. That is the kind of "cooperation" that the American culture of individualism rejects.
Does american culture resist coercion? Yes, excluding a few big bandwagon issues and incidents. But that's not really the point.
One might say when something needs to get decided or done, does the country get together and get it done or bicker and in-fight? Let's check some big "needs to get this taken care of issues":
* Slavery - Somehow, the "land of the free" was one of the last developed nations to condemn this practice. And while racism is a separate issue, even over a century later we're still having large public arguments about whether the slaves had it "easy" (?!)
* Climate Change - There is largely universal consensus that if current trends continue, there has been and will continue to be an accelerating increase in human suffering. Every developed nation on the planet agrees, almost every qualified scientist in the US agrees. We can accept that our scientists can predict the movements of celestial bodies across distances mind-bogglingly vast down to the minute, but trust our "guts" over them. Some might argue that the US is rejecting a goal chosen by everyone else, and doing so as a brave stand of individualism. I'd argue they are just demonstrating the issue.
Do I need to go on?
You phrased this wrong. It should be: when some small group of people believe that something needs to get done, do they just go out and do it, or do they try to co-opt everyone else's resources using government power?
> Slavery - Somehow, the "land of the free" was one of the last developed nations to condemn this practice.
And somehow, the "something needs to get done, so let's get it done" methodology ended up killing somewhere between half a million and a million people and leading to a century or more of Jim Crow. If that's what "getting together to get it done" looks like, I'll take bickering and in-fighting.
By contrast, countries that were willing to countenance something less than "getting it done" the abolitionist way (such as Britain, which simply bought the slaves' freedom by paying off the slave owners) ended up ending slavery with no loss of life and a much smoother social transition.
Not to mention that, if the abolitionists had simply left the South alone, they probably would have ended slavery on their own, and probably sooner than 1865. In 1831, the Virginia State Legislature was considering a bill to abolish slavery in the state, and there was a good chance it was going to pass. If it had, the other slave states would probably have followed Virginia's lead. Then word came that William Lloyd Garrison in Boston had published an abolitionist pamphlet calling for no compromise and just forcing the South to end slavery, and the bill died.
> Climate Change - There is largely universal consensus that if current trends continue, there has been and will continue to be an accelerating increase in human suffering.
A consensus that is based on flawed climate models that do not make correct predictions, and economic numbers based on no predictive power whatsoever. Consensus is worthless if there is no predictive power to back it up.
> We can accept that our scientists can predict the movements of celestial bodies across distances mind-bogglingly vast down to the minute, but trust our "guts" over them.
That's because astronomers can back up their predictions of the movements of celestial bodies with a track record of accurate predictions to many decimal places, over a period of more than a century. Whereas climate scientists, as above, can back their predictions up with--nothing.
> Some might argue that the US is rejecting a goal chosen by everyone else, and doing so as a brave stand of individualism.
Yep. If everybody else has a consensus that we should all shoot ourselves in the foot, should the US follow it?
> Do I need to go on?
No, you've given quite enough background to see where you're coming from. Hopefully I've done the same.
My whole point was that a society occasionally does, in aggregate, feel it needs to do something. If you're going to insist that it's only ever a minority imposing their will over everyone, then there is no point in further discussion.
> And somehow, the "something needs to get done, so let's get it done" methodology ended up killing [far too many]...and leading to .... Jim Crow.
You seem to have forgotten the context - I was demonstrating how the American refusal to cooperate led to a civil war, while the rest of the world managed to deal with it both faster and with a lot less bloodshed.
> A consensus that is based on flawed climate models that do not make correct predictions, and economic numbers based on no predictive power whatsoever.
Your assertion that your conclusion is somehow more valid that that of, well, just about everyone, is both a demonstration of the concept in question AND somewhat laughable considering your opinions on a minority forcing suffering upon the majority.
> If everybody else has a consensus that we should all shoot ourselves in the foot, should the US follow it?
Another straw man - no one is saying that. If the world thought it was dumb to shoot yourself in the foot, would you ignore them? One of these two scenarios is happening.
> Hopefully I've done the same.
I would say yes.
Perhaps, but neither of your examples show that. They just show a portion of society feeling the need to do something and imposing it on everybody else.
> I was demonstrating how the American refusal to cooperate led to a civil war
Yes, exactly: refusal to cooperate, according to my definition of cooperate--work together to achieve a common goal--because the American abolitionists had a flawed concept of "cooperate". The British were willing to cooperate (in my sense) with the slaveowners, by buying the slaves' freedom, in order to achieve the common goal of avoiding civil war. The American abolitionists, because the very thought of cooperating (in my sense) with slaveowners gave them apoplexy, refused to consider any such alternative.
But with your definition of "cooperate", the abolitionists were doing it right--that's my point. What happened in the US is what happens when your version of "cooperate"--feel you need to do something and just make everybody do it--is working.
> Your assertion that your conclusion is somehow more valid that that of, well, just about everyone
Is based on the very simple and common sense criterion of predictive power. Whereas yours is based on an apparent mystical belief that if enough people agree with something, it must be right. You have offered no other argument.
> no one is saying that
Yes, they are. The rest of the world is saying that everyone should spend huge amounts of money on the Paris agreement, just like Kyoto before it, even though everyone admits that it will have negligible impact on the climate. That is shooting yourself in the foot.
This quote (by Bertrand Russell) stood out: "Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible."