33 KiB
[D] Some blatant issues in American Society. Thoughts?
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Author: u/Kishoto *
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Score: 0
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Created: 2015-02-05T16:01:05
Post:
Just curious, are there any blatant issues in American Society, or Western society in general, that you can see? And, if so, how do you think they could be fixed? Or is there some other reason for this issue, that most don't think about, necessitating its existence?
For example, one of the biggest things that concerns me in the USA is the cost for tertiary education. The cost for tertiary education in America just seems very high, in general. And some people may say "Oh, go to a community college, they're cheap!" but then you have to look at how much worse off you are in competing for jobs, depending on where you graduate from.
It's not impossible to succeed without a degree, or a substandard one, but on a country wide basis, statistically speaking, there's a clear correlation between salary and the prestige of the school you attended.
This high cost gets even worse, if you need to go further into law school, or medical school, or grad school. Which seems counter intuitive, considering the importance these sorts of positions play in our society today.
In Europe, costs are marginally lower in a lot of countries. Yes, I know this is usually balanced out by significantly heavier taxes, but it still seems worth it. Despite our capitalism, I think we can all agree that systemic dissemination of the wealth would be a lot fairer, overall. Implementing that is, and always will be, a great challenge though.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Please comment freely, I intend this to be a discussion thread. :D
Comments:
u/Geminii27 [+10] (12 minutes later)
For examples, look at how other members of the G20 or G30 do it. If more than two thirds do it in a certain way, and America does it differently, and particularly if America is the only member to do it differently, it might bear further examination.
For example, the concept that health insurance and employers should ever be allowed to have anything to do with each other, instead of being kept as far away from each other as possible.
Or the concept of having prices in stores which are not what you pay at the register, because that would generally be considered fraud.
Or the use of imperial measurements.
Or medical treatment not being free to all, thus meaning that the citizenry don't need to actually worry about it constantly.
Or 'news' channels which are effectively pure lies and propaganda being (a) allowed to exist in the first place, and (b) being allowed to call themselves 'news'.
Or megachurches.
Or the lack of a national education curriculum.
Or the blithe acceptance of the existence of American military bases in other countries, without corresponding foreign military bases on American soil. Is there any argument whatsoever which could justify this other than "America is #1 and the best and you have to do what we say or we bomb you"?
u/None [+2] (4 hours later)
For examples, look at how other members of the G20 or G30 do it. If more than two thirds do it in a certain way, and America does it differently, and particularly if America is the only member to do it differently, it might bear further examination.
Unfortunately for USAians, there are a surprising amount of issues handled one way, or somewhere on one spectrum of ways, by most G20 countries, and an entirely different way in the United States for the sole reason that America refuses to ever enact anything by a clean move from one state to another, instead preferring to force itself to occupy every single possible intermediate state along the way.
Which also means that where a "hole" or other discontinuity in the topological state-space of policies occurs, America never manages to make the jump at all.
You know, like parliamentary democracy, or public funding for elections, or regulatory bodies that actually do something.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (5 hours later)
Yeah, but the United States is a collection of states with their own independent constitutions and governments. The founding document deliberately makes it hard for federal changes to happen, and the whole thing is sort of held together with bits of wire so that it will actually work.
In my opinion, the United States of America is more analogous to the European Union than it is to any one other country. People keep referencing America as this monolithic thing, but it was never built to behave like a country in its own right. Giant swaths of federal policy are held together with the interstate commerce clause and some court decisions. And this is probably never going to change, because of Constitutional fetishism.
u/Someone-Else-Else [+1] Anti-Spiral (3 hours later)
I'd agree with most of this, but:
Or the use of imperial measurements.
The measurement system is more like a language than anything else - a way to convey information to other people. While I prefer the metric system due to how intuitive it is, it's not necessarily a flaw; we wouldn't suggest that France is doing something wrong because they speak French.
u/gryfft [+6] (3 hours later)
66% of Sweden is in one Church.[1]
This is so, but the OP was referring to these, using 'Church' in the "a building used for public Christian worship" sense rather than the "a particular Christian organization, typically one with its own clergy, buildings, and distinctive doctrines" sense.
The OP wasn't referring to just the excessive religiosity of Americans, but "the application of corporate business models" to religion.
Thankfully, the Daily Mail doesn't exist. Or BBC internal politicking.
This would be a valid counterpoint to the OP if he had said this:
If America is the only member to do it differently, it might bear further examination.
Rather than this:
If more than two thirds do it in a certain way, and America does it differently, and particularly if America is the only member to do it differently, it might bear further examination.
u/Someone-Else-Else [+1] Anti-Spiral (8 hours later)
All good points, I'll edit those out.
u/Rhamni [+5] Aspiring author (3 hours later)
Uh... Swede here. Yeah, 66% of us are technically members of the "Church of Sweden", but most of us have no religious beliefs, and a very small fraction of those members ever go to church except for weddings, funerals and graduation ceremonies. Until the year 2000 you were born into the church as long as your parents were members and didn't object, but religion is not exactly a hot button issue here. It's similar to the Church of England.
We certainly don't have anything like Mega Churches. We have other problems, like accepting immigrants and then leaving them unemployed in our suburbs in great concentrations where there isn't much opportunity for them to integrate into society, but Mega Churches most certainly isn't one.
u/Someone-Else-Else [+2] Anti-Spiral (8 hours later)
Oh, okay, my bad. That's clearer.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (22 hours later)
Nothing wrong with bilingualism.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+5] Champion of Justice and Reason (3 hours later)
The American congress's science committee doesn't get science. It turns out that the jerk who made the infamous "legitimate rape" comment was actually a part of said committee when he did so.
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/congress-s-science-committee-doesn-t-get-science
u/None [+2] (6 hours later)
SlateStarCodex has some very thought-provoking stuff on the American education system here. On that note, anyone know Scott's reddit /u/?
u/None [+2] (4 hours later)
Just curious, are there any blatant issues in American Society, or Western society in general, that you can see?
falls over laughing
Yes. Most of it.
u/None [+2] (5 hours later)
Care to share?
u/rumblestiltsken [+7] (18 hours later)
Sexism, racism, classism all heavily institutionalized. Nationalism/patriotism held as a virtue and taught to children. Regulatory capture. Poverty traps. Widespread harm inflicted on non human life for no good reason other than inertia. Environmental pillaging. The exportation of suffering to fuel growth. The apathy to horrendous but solvable ills in the world, like famine and preventable disease. The deification of gut thinking and the sneering dismissal of careful deliberative thought.
The fact that every fucking thing in our society is a competition, when most social games can be set up to be positive sum. The fact we even see competition as an inherent good, rather than a social tool like any other.
Maybe we are the least worst option, but it staggers me that /u/eaturbrainz was downvoted in this sub for that comment.
u/None [+2] (19 hours later)
Maybe we are the least worst option,
No. Sorry, but no. That would imply that neither Germany, Australia, Canada nor any similarly rich-but-not-American country is the least-worst option. I'd have to run a bunch of numbers to nominate a specific candidate, but for a simple heuristic, who's got the lowest infant mortality rates, the highest scientific literacy, and the longest expected lifespans? It isn't the USA!
u/rumblestiltsken [+3] (20 hours later)
Speaking about western democracy in general.
And even then it may just be that we have had the longest time to get rich, off the backs of colonial subjugation. The rest of the world is catching up pretty fast. Will be interesting to see what form of social structure can overtake the legitimately amazing gains in health, wealth and security we have achieved.
On that note, even taking USA as the worst of the best on many measures, it is still orders of magnitude better than the best of the best a few generation earlier.
I think "best achieved to date" is fair, but golly there is a way to go.
u/chaosmosis [+0] and with strange aeons, even death may die (3 days later)
Can you expand on what institutionalized sexism you see? It seems mostly informal, to me.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (3 days later)
There are many recent studies that show women are less likely to be employed if the selection process is unblinded.
I could list hundreds of similar examples.
u/chaosmosis [+1] and with strange aeons, even death may die (4 days later)
When you said the sexism is "institutional", I thought you meant that there were formal institutional rules which were sexist. Instead, you mean that the people who are within institutions are sexist in informal albeit real ways. Gotcha.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (6 days later)
If a business/government/society (an institution) preferentially employs/legislates for/favors men it doesn't need to be a codified rule to be an institutional practice.
How are you even defining "institutionalized" if not "is the practice of institutions"?
I feel like you think you minimized the importance of the sexism, but I can't see how you would actually come to that conclusion?
u/chaosmosis [+1] and with strange aeons, even death may die (7 days later)
I don't think that it's unimportant even if it's not codified. I don't want to argue about definitions though, so I can't address the rest of your comment.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (7 days later)
Not unimportant but not "institutional"?
I'm not trying to dog on you, I just don't understand where you are drawing the distinction. The effect is the same whether it is explicit or not, and it is institutions that are perpetrating the inequality.
u/chaosmosis [+1] and with strange aeons, even death may die (7 days later)
I considered "institutional" to mean "formally codified into the rules of institutions". Things which are informal can still be important, however.
u/rumblestiltsken [+0] (7 days later)
Oh. That isn't how the word is used.
Institutional means "practice of the institution".
For example when we call increasing rates of death in hospital that can't be explained by a single person an "institutional failing". It was never written by hospital management that more people should die.
edit: just remembered you didn't want to debate definitions. That is fine, just the way you were using it sounds dismissive, which is important in this context.
u/None [+7] (19 hours later)
All the things /u/rumblestiltsken said. But wait, there's more! The United States makes an ideological fetish of a bloody-minded refusal to solve problems in any way except hill-climbing via small steps from the status quo. It is, in effect, a nation of people who don't believe in evolution, and yet refuse to use anything smarter than blind evolution to optimize their own society.
Then let's add:
- Configuring the economy to maximize rents and financial pseudo-profits rather than industrial and informational productivity.
- The competition fetish has given America a death and suffering fetish. To wit, you are talking about a nation which, when given the option to house the homeless cheaply or jail them expensively, often chooses the latter. Ditto ditto on many cases of the sick lacking health insurance), and triple ditto on the War on Drugs versus legalization (or at least a repeal of mandatory sentencing laws and partial decriminalization, leaving it to the good judgement of trained professional judges how to deal with offenders). I repeat, much of the country sincerely believes the cheap and efficient way of keeping order is just too damned altruistic.
- Basic science on ecological issues is treated as tribal and political. COME ON, PEOPLE! GAME CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF EXTINCTION RISK!
- The perverse act of trying to educate more and more scientists and engineers and then leaving free productivity on the table by refusing to actually employ them at any reasonable rate. America brain-drains the rest of the world to fuel its research laboratories, and then tosses out the large supermajority of those trained researchers once actually proven themselves competent by getting their PhDs.
- Treating double-digit percentages of the population as discarded stock by keeping them in both urban and rural ghettos, neither training nor educating them nor making them productive in any way at all, but still paying large sums of money to beat them up for feeling bad about it.
These are just the ones that come to mind for me. I think points (2) and (3) are actually the strong ones, really.
My overall complaint is: America really seems to think it has no problems that need solving, nor glories that beckon, larger than bickering over whether Teslas or Hummers are nicer. As a matter of fact, there are both important problems to tackle around the world and awesome glories to be reached, and running an entire society as a single overgrown status contest instead of handling all those problems and glories is just a little too "pre-evolved" for me.
Simple thought experiment, right out of the LW imagination: imagine Fnargl has some goal he wants accomplished, on the scale of a new Manhattan Project. How does he do it? Well, why do we keep deliberately choosing to run our society more stupidly and even less humanely than Fnargl would?
u/mcgruntman [+2] (2 hours later)
Democracy is a wonderful philosophy, but in my opinion would never be as effective as a benevolent dictatorship (or similar). Add to that, what most of the 'democratic' world has barely even qualifies as democracy at all.
u/None [+11] (4 hours later)
Democracy is a wonderful philosophy, but in my opinion would never be as effective as a benevolent dictatorship (or similar).
Yes, well, that'll be a lovely insight the next time you find a benevolent dictator in your closet.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (15 hours later)
find a benevolent dictator
You're actively working on creating one for us, aren't you? FAI will be the benevolenest dictator do ever dictate.
u/None [+3] (19 hours later)
Excuse me, I think we need to play "if by politics".
If by politics you mean organizing the material substrate of society so that everyone can live their lives efficiently, FAI can do that.
If by politics you mean actual social relations between people, FAI shouldn't do that.
Disentangling those two is going to be tough -- people have a lot of their lives tied up in using bits of matter to relate to each-other. Besides which, FAI is a long way away. The most I've seen done to bring it closer was Bostrom releasing Superintelligence, which seems to have raised the Very Serious Issue status of FAI from "those cranks at LessWrong think that's a thing" to "that's a thing".
I'm such a novicey novice at this that it'll take years before I can say, "oh yeah, a specific viable indirect-normativity design would generate an agent that would solve the problem something like this way", and even that would be a rough sketch, since you're talking about not only optimizing based on massive amounts of information about society and well-approximating lots of computationally hard problems. An eventual FAI would probably have an advantage in both departments, but I'd bet we'll be surprised by some social problems that really do turn out subject to some hard complexity constraints.
u/Rhamni [+3] Aspiring author (3 hours later)
I don't think moving away from democracy is the way to go, but certainly things could be done much better. I think democracy would work much better if, for one thing, we forced all full time politicians to wear cameras that recorded what they do all day. They'd be allowed to turn them off to go to the toilet or if for some reason there was a genuine national security reason, etc, and the lines would have to be argued about, but just killing privacy for politicians I think would go a long way towards making it easier for people to see who they are. It would also require a pretty transparent bureaucracy, obviously.
Other measures could include forbidding legislators and regulators from working for the companies they have worked with, as well as having publicly financed elections and a complete ban on receiving political donations once you qualify for such support.
u/None [+6] (4 hours later)
The trouble with "cameras that could be turned off to go to the toilet" is that then whenever politicians want to do smoke-filled-room type things, they will hold those meetings in bathrooms.
The trouble with "for a genuine national security reason" is that if you allow anyone with any stake in the issue to classify what "national security" is, the scope of "national security" will be steadily expanded to ensure their job security. Furthermore, the act of obtaining a national security clearance (to be able to be a person who can judge what is a national secret) is itself a process that creates stakeholders: the people who can decide what the classification level is for information themselves have clearances and are in well-paying national security jobs. Which puts us right back at the beginning.
Publicly financed elections are a good idea, I think, on the average - the main trouble is that then you have a sensitivity/specificity problem on the lower side. Yes, the main Democratic and Republican parties (this post was labeled for American issues, so I'll keep assuming American perspective) will field candidates who are shoo-ins for getting money, but what about third parties? How do you set the third party bar low enough to be responsive to new upswellings of public sentiment, while high enough to not give money to frivolous campaigns?
I'm not disagreeing with the general direction of your suggestions, but there's a decent amount of exploitability here that needs to be grappled with - or at least acknowledged - before I'm willing to declare them the best of all ideas.
u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (4 hours later)
Yeah, these are problems you would need to work out. I think if people got used to being able to look up politicians going to the bathroom they would lose interest fairly quickly, so we'd be rid of that problem. Similarly with national security things it probably wouldn't be easy to work out where the lines should be drawn. I suspect it would have come down to a binding national vote. I obviously don't have finished proposals, I just think these would be good directions to go in.
For public financing, the way I usually hear it you would only finance people and parties based on their results in the previous election, while leaving it legal to fund parties that do not have any power (Although you'd stop them from keeping money gained before one election to use in future elections). I have no idea what to do about Primaries, since that's not something we do in Sweden.
u/Integrated_Delusions [+4] The Flying Kiwi (8 hours later)
I guess the best way to draw the lines for national security is to make the assumption that a dedicated and funded group would seek to use any piece of information that is released in a harmful manner, then try to figure out how much damage they could do with knowing the budget/development plans/etc for any given proposal. You'd have quite a bit of the process of making new laws regarding people interacting with each other getting through (so abortion, discrimination laws, stem cell research, gun control, stuff like that), but I doubt discussions of public roads/buildings, or planning for events would be allowed through, just on the basis of how much damage a few people with wildly different utility functions can do.
I've always wondered why elections weren't handled by an independent governmental division. Something with no allegiance to the party system whatsoever. Allow all the private funding you want, but the funding goes towards a specific election in a specific riding/district/whatever, not to a specific candidate. So if you wanted to support Governor X or Congressman Y, you would donate to their specific election fund, which is used to pay for the ads of both (or all, if you live in a multi-party system) parties. That way, you get private funding (though admittedly probably far less so, since you couldn't outright buy politicians, but on the plus side, you can't outright buy politicians) and can still have a much more balanced coverage of the issues, which would mean the candidates would have to win on the strength of their policies or their personalities, not their ad campaign. The third party agency would make the ads, book the ad time, and generally run the campaigns for both/all parties, and any other interference coughcoughadsbySuperPACscoughcough would be illegal. One of the major issues I can see with this method would be the introduction of new parties, though this presents less of an issue in the States.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
Mmm. If you're interested in this type of stuff (bodycams and the like), I think you should look up the theory on something called sousveillance.
u/MaxDougwell [+3] (13 hours later)
An interesting observation! Of course, a benevolent dictatorship has nothing on a benevolent democracy (or similar) where everybody can agree on the bestest, most benevolentiest leaders to run the country by general agreement and the system is innately resistant to usurpation (due to it's aforementioned "benevolence" attribute). But let's not abandon our inferior non-benevolent democracy just yet! We've still got to examine the very best and most effective of governments: The benevolent anarchy! This is where everything just works out because everyone is already benevolent and government is unneeded in any form. The most effective solution to your government woes.
u/rationalidurr [+2] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (a day later)
Parents can be benevolent and are consider dictators for a good part of their child's life, but that doesn't mean they always know what is best for their children.
So I think it would be better to have a benevolent, mentally flexible dictator who has both the resources, time and cause to always strive towards making a best choice.
Ideally it would be a group of dictator/best buddies. People who can make decisions but have enough persons around them, with whom they share trust, ideals and power.
u/mcgruntman [+1] (a day later)
For your first point: do you allow a child to choose it's own bed time? Or how many sweets it should have?
I more-or-less agree with the rest. The problem with having group power though is what happens when the leaders disagree - either no action is taken, or actions are not all pulling in the same direction. See the problems caused by whole countries swinging from 'left' to 'right' every electoral term.
By the way I don't think what I'm (halfheartedly) proposing is necessarily plausible, I just think it has some benefits.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
For your first point: do you allow a child to choose it's own bed time? Or how many sweets it should have?
There really ought to be some point at which you do. Otherwise, the child only ever learns about bed-time or limited quantities of sweets as Parental Commands, rather than as necessary ways of heading off such undesirable consequences as falling asleep at mid-day or getting sick to one's stomach (or getting obese, but unfortunately modern parenting seems to accomplish nothing to stop that).
u/mcgruntman [+1] (a day later)
Of course. I guess I just model society-as-a-herd's collective intelligence to be more akin to that of a toddler than that of a teenager.
u/IomKg [+1] (a day later)
i dont think i have enough information to really comment on most of this topic, but
And some people may say "Oh, go to a community college, they're cheap!" but then you have to look at how much worse off you are in competing for jobs, depending on where you graduate from.
Aren't universities\colleges supposed to teach as opposed to provide better jobs? I mean sure that is a good added benefit you get as a result of getting a degree, but i got the impression that was never supposed to be the main benefit. Because if you assume that a job is the priority i think the curriculum should probably be changed anyway.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
This is actually kind of how the system is presented in the states, college exists to prepare for job. So the economic model/expectation is "pick right college to receive job" It's not even about education, it's about political/professional connections so that you can have an 'in' to your desired industry.
u/IomKg [+1] (a day later)
Presented by who though? I am not from the USA, so its possible that's just the way where I come from and not the case there.
The reason I asked who presents those places that way though is because while where I come from technically universities and colleges are not for getting a job, the general sentiment among most people is that getting a degree is something you do to get a job.
u/paladinneph [+1] (5 days later)
presented by the education system throughout elementary/middle/high school.
...you see the problem?
"the more expensive your education is, the better," says the person selling education for a living "and I have absolutely no reason to lie about that."
u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)
Agreed, universities, at least initially, were definitely more about learning. But the way society is currently leaning, it's much easier to get a good paying job when you have some sort of degree(s).
There are many jobs that won't even consider you unless you have, at minimum, a bachelor's. And most of the highest paying, standardized jobs (not counting professions such as celebrities and certain CEO's) in the country involve having some sort of degree. College, initially, was indeed set up to promote higher learning, and there's still a lot of that going on, don't get me wrong. But it's also the best way to succeed, on average, in our current society.
EDIT: The issue here is that the job sectors of our society have shifted, ensuring that getting a high paying job is difficult to impossible without a degree. It's not necessarily the college's fault, but it IS how things are currently set up. And due to the ever increasing automation of unskilled labor, it's unlikely that creating well paying jobs for the average Joe isn't looking good. Hence my desire for the school system to shift, allowing for a greater number of people to go to decent schools without breaking the bank, or sinking themselves into debt.
u/IomKg [+1] (2 days later)
Well there are 2 things in that case,
If you think finding a job is important why waste time on the degree, wouldn't it make much more sense to just have a job oriented certificate? after all it will just be way cheaper to teach job oriented skills rather then an actual academic degree.
Isn't one of the main points that make prestigious places prestigious the fact that they are fairly exclusive?
u/Kishoto [+1] (3 days later)
True. But exclusive in what way? It makes sense for them to be difficult, intellectually. Based on what universities want, you want the smartest people around. But the high price can be more than daunting for a lot of people. Also, not helping the problem, is the non-standardization of high schools. Billy Joe from Middle Montana High School, from a class of 14, can't compete with Joe Vandervilt from the high end magnet school that costs $10,000 a year. If given the same opportunity, school wise, it's quite possible for Billy Joe to have more raw talent than Vandervilt. But you'd never know.
u/IomKg [+1] (3 days later)
That's the thing, where i come from at least there are colleges which are cheap and extremely hard, yet they are not -nearly- as good in getting you into a high paying job... so the exclusivity must have "value" for the employers by itself. I find that to be irrational, but a lot of human behaviors are irrational..
Also it is still possible that one of the reasons that expensive and prestigious places are so well linked into high paying job is the connections you make during your time there, specifically your links to high socioeconomically positioned people. Snd said people will usually prefer to go to more expensive places just to differentiate themselves from "low class" people...
u/Kishoto [+1] (4 days later)
Yup. Classic elitism. Pretty much a fixture of human society for as long as we've been around. Not sure how fixable it is :(
u/paladinneph [+1] (5 days later)
"Any human with above room temperature IQ can design a utopia. The reason our current system isn’t a utopia is that it wasn’t designed by humans." -http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
so pick a specific issue.
healthcare? easy. it's expensive because it's not regulated- hospitals can charge whatever they like, which results in huge price-gouging. a procedure that costs an arm and a leg (pun intended) in one hospital can be relatively inexpensive in another hospital just down the street. regulate the system to decrease costs, and people wouldn't need insurance to afford healthcare.
education? even easier. teacher's unions enforce tenure after only one year in good standing. this increases costs while decreasing effectiveness- the exact opposite of what we want. eliminate teacher's unions and tenure in elementary through high schools. this will also allow us to have better control to implement further corrections.
the problem is, these solutions assumes a ruling authority with god-like power to change things unquestioned. this is not true.