I was miserable.

I moved to Japan with a much lower income, but my standard of living is so much more higher.

> you may not realize how powerful America's culture of individual freedom has impact on other countries

Does individual freedom include not wearing masks? Does individual freedom include feeling unsafe from crime?

Japan feels much safer than any urban center in America, especially during this pandemic. This feeling of taking public transit without anxiety throughout the pandemic alone is already worth forgoing those FANG salaries.

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. That place has deteriorated. Parts of San Francisco is more dangerous than Vietnam or Egypt. NYC is filled with confrontation for all sorts of minor problems, none of which you would ever face in Tokyo.

> Any ideology that forces individual to be less ambitious for the prosperity of the group only gives more power to the enforcer's of the ideology.

This is not inherently unique to America or individual liberty. In fact, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is based on the idea that the whole benefits because the individual is acting in their own self regard, not altruistically for society at large.

Asian countries are collectivist with much less individual freedom.

> What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade.

Speaking of great, how about China? China's bullet train networks span longer than the rest of the world combined. All of that was built within a decade. They have spaceships and unicorns too.

Pedantically, literally anyone anywhere can dream of building spaceships. But let's examine that claim on the basis of people who have actually done it.

- Musk has, but he's South African.

- Bezos crossed the Kármán line so he's done it, but he hasn't reached orbit yet so calling New Shepherd a 'spaceship' is a slightly dubious claim.

- Branson hasn't either and he's British anyway.

- Carmack isn't in the news for space stuff any more, so maybe he's given up?

Looking at the evidence of 'billionaires and their space toys', I think 'not Americans' are a little ahead.

Musk is a US citizen and he did all of this in the US. The point is about the opportunity provided by the country, not about where you were raised.

And all you need is hard work, persistence, and a couple tens of millions burning a hole in your back pocket... and a legion of people, like you, who don't have that kind of capital to do the heavy lifting.

Varies a lot but all the people I know who are relatively young and doing startups come from pretty wealthy families.

Why are these top priorities? Metrics like happiness seem like much more valuable metrics than number of spaceships or massive tech companies.

--to be honest, the vast majority of people just don't care, because it is completely detached from any experience they have, and is in fact kind of obnoxious to them. To them, your evidence is a category error.

How do countries treat their poor->lower middle class, is more salient for a judge of societal excellence, for them. Is a country interested in raising the ceiling or the floor? America has always been focused on raising the ceiling.

I have a hard time seeing we're unique.

I also understand some of the European countries are great in terms of quality of life, safety net e.t.c. But they are weak and can not protect themselves in case of war and everything can change in a short period of time. America's strength lies in its founding principles based on freedom and that is something every nation looks up to.

That's mostly propaganda. The reality is Americans have very little freedom because the country is effectively governed by corporations.