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We Aren't the World: Why Americans Make Bad Study Subjects
Lasrick writes "This is just fascinating: Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics, and explain why social science studies of Westerners — and Americans in particular — don't really tell us about the human condition: 'Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.'"
Ummm... We certainly aren't primitive.
As far as gun loving rednecks, that's just a small, overly-vocal part of our community. Every community has the small group of overly vocal nut-jobs that makes them look bad. Hell, yours has you, doesn't it?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
"Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.'"
Are they saying all the Americans are fat birds, unable to fly?
Well Duh, studying one of the richest and most powerful nation is stupid. You can only learn so much about a group studying it's extremes, not to mention powerful societies tend to do there own thing (because they don't see a need to copy things) and the longer in power the more noticeable it becomes.
Nuh-uh, I don't live in a community you stupid American. Dumb Americans always assuming stuff about other peoples.
small? there are 300 million guns in this country.
If one was trying to scientifically "draw broad generalizations" about humans, why would you ever select samples from just one nation (regardless of which one)?
Use a dozen nations, some more developed than others. Heck, use one hundred nations. How else would you be abled to defend statistically valid results?
Leaving out any arbitrary set of 330 million humans would seem to lead you further away from meaningful conclusions. Are Americans not also human?
Singling out one country for inclusion or exclusion sounds like something other than impartial, apolitical science for drawing "broad generalizations".
If you don't like America (or wherever), that's fine and dandy... but please don't call your hand-picked findings the "human condition". Especially if you're going to choose the humans based upon any one individual's peculiar set of ideals.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
The instrumental goal underlying a lot of psychology and economics research is "what should we do in the U.S.?" It's all dressed up in basic-science, idealistic language, but ultimately what the penguin taxpayers funding the research most care about is penguin economics and penguin psychology, not so much the rest of the birds...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now scientifically proven! ;)
It should be possible to mod an entire article as flamebait...
*grabs popcorn*
Around half of your voting population continually chooses the GOP. Ignore the theoretical ideals you place on the GOP, listen to what the candidates say and how they try to obtain votes. Do it objectively and critically. I think that says it all.
I'm not saying the Dem's are any better, they're not, but they do make appeals to a more sophisticated electorate as well as pandering to the lowest common denominator.
It's all lies on both sides, but as an outsider, the GOP are certainly far more primitive than their counterparts in Europe for example.
----
I recently took a personally antithetical subjective look at some conservative blogs recently, allowing myself to be sucked into it, trying to believe it, and agree with it. It was a very scary experience, and that's what I ended up seeing that kind of culture does, instilling fear to manipulate people against their own interests and their own peers, because of different religion, social norms or the apparently abhorrent idea of peaceful resistance or a workforce strike.
The GOP ideology would appear to be, you either walk away (quit your unfair employment, leave the country or similar), or you kill or threaten with violence the people you disagree with. Having an informed, reasoned discussion where everyone can put their viewpoints across, and people can be called up on misinformation never seems to enter into it. It's always about about 'gut feelings' and just 'knowing whats right'.
Rednecks are a very small part of the gun culture. They happen to be the most vocal of us. Kind of like how the really weird and disgusting LGBTQ people seem to be the most vocal of those people.
"We aren't the world! We aren't the children! We aren't the ones who make a better day..."
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
The article isn't actually about the Western world, or how Americans are "bad study subjects". Rather, the research TFA talks about is indications that Western assumptions about cognition are based on Western culture, rather than biological design*. In essence, the researchers acknowledge that some of the basic fundamental ideas of perception may not be so fundamental.
It really has nothing to do with Americans being inherently bad study subjects. Rather, it accuses the field of anthropology of focusing too heavily on a single (though changing) culture throughout its history. In other words, sampling bias exists.
* "Design" In the "structure and function" sense, not the "somebody intentionally built this" sense.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations
Uh, that's because America is diverse as fuck. Hell, humanity is diverse as fuck.
Trying to draw accurate yet broad generalizations about humanity are impossible.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Roughly 30% of the population was all it took to throw the British out on their ear. It may be a minority in terms of simple math but in all reality having 30 percent of a people invested into any ideaology in a society of our nature is substantial at the same time.
This summary has almost nothing to do with the underlying article, and the headline draws a completely erroneous conclusion. It isn't about Americans being bad study subjects at all, but rather the idea that extrapolating between two cultural groups that have vastly different environments is much harder than previously thought.
A sentence from the cited article might explain the different behaviour experienced when running the "Ultimatum" game with the Machiguenga
The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies.
So if one offers a valuable and rare commodity to people living a life near sustenance, one gets other results than if one does the same experiment with people who have most of their needs (over)fulfilled and do not need the stakes of the game? That is IMHO not surprising but quite in line with Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Maybe social scientists (and economists) should start to evaluate the context of their experiments more carefully. Alas they are missing the 'laws of nature' whose violation leads to checking every plug.
Nuh-uh, I don't live in a community you stupid American.
According to TFA, this makes you exceptionally close to the typical American, who have been shown to be the group of humans most likely to view themselves outside a culture or community.
The US is completely fractured ... To try to come to conclusions with that - and I haven't read the article, but I'll wager it's a very small sample size - is ludicrous.
You're simultaneously completely missing the point of TFA, and yet hitting it dead on. According to TFA, not only aren't Americans uniformly distributed, but the whole world isn't, in ways that haven't been considered before. Certain assumptions, like having a perception based on interpreting straight lines in a 3D context, turn out to only be valid among a Western population who, for example, grew up with straight walls. The researchers in TFA aren't saying that Americans are particularly bad study subjects, but rather that even basic perceptions long thought to be universal are really influenced by culture.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
So what does their study say about "western" who have been raised rural?
You may safely assume they fall under the "primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks" stereotype and omit them from humanity as well. Given contemporary social science I suspect any America "raised rural" would necessarily occupy the "least human" end of the humanity continuum.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Men raised in the honor culture of the American South have been shown to experience much larger surges of testosterone after insults than do Northerners.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Another AC made the same point. But do you really think that every one of those people owns exactly 3 guns? There are probably a fair number of people who have a single pistol, shotgun, or rifle, and a fail number of people who need to use one for work... I don't know if I'd call such people "gun loving".
We have 1.5 million active military personnel, and another 1.5 million reservists. That's a full 1% of our population. Another approximately million Americans work as sworn officers of some kind. I couldn't find statistics on armed guards, but I'd bet that comes in at a million as well.
The pool you are left with: people who own several weapons who could probably be called "gun loving".... that pool is probably under 10%.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Rednecks are a very small part of the gun culture. They happen to be the most vocal of us. Kind of like how the really weird and disgusting LGBTQ people seem to be the most vocal of those people.
I assume this is at -1 for Unpleasant Truth?
It never ceases to amaze me how self-proclaimed "intellectuals" have the exact same hangups about unpleasant but true speech as all the folks they like to pretend they outsmart.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's more widely used outside the US.
This headline is the most hateful and prejudiced comment about Americans I have heard all day!
Wow, you must live a very sheltered existence. I would be flattered if someone said that about me. I don't want to represent the average.
Just to make your day even more interesting: I have noticed at least 3 posts from people living in the US who took offence at this article. This means that some >0 percentage of the US population who can both read and write, either don't know what "make bad study subjects" means, or they aspire for their nation to be totally average in every way.
There, what I just wrote is now the most hateful and prejudiced comment about 'Americans' you have heard all day.
Winning wars happens when the soldiers with the above decide they like the rebels better than the entrenched government. That's what happened in the US Revolution and many other successful revolutions.
If you really think a government run by the MAFIAA, banks, etc. is going to remain more popular than one that opposes them forever if they continue to turn the screws, you will be very surprised someday when the tides suddenly turn.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
In the last election cycle the Republicans tried to point out that what America calls poor would not be called poor in most other nations. But they got lots of flak and backed off. But there is some truth in noting that "there is no food in the fridge in my kitchen" sounds crazy to people who don't have homes, and those who do don't have kitchens, and those who do dont have fridges! It like the story about the poor written by a rich kid. "There was a poor man. His butler was poor, His chauffeur was poor, His cook was poor and so was his maid.
A household barely on the poverty line in USA is richer than 80% of the world! About 10% of the world, or 700 million people or twice the population of USA, lives in less than $365 a year! Again these dollar figures are not the foreign exchange rate based dollars. These are "purchase power parity" dollars. Which means the $365 buys in the poor country, what $365 would buy in the USA.
So the conclusions of this study are rather obvious.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Try having a reasonable discussion with Americans (even many Democrats) as to WHY socialized medicine would be worse than what we have now. All you get is "Ugh, socialism." Yeah, I know that. Guess what? The roads and schools are socialized too. And they work pretty well.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
We aren't the world, we aren't the children
We aren't the ones who make a brighter day
So lets stop giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
Ain't true we'll make a better day
Just you and me
Ummm... We certainly aren't primitive.
Especially when you consider the subjects for most of these tests are undergraduate university students, mostly from prestigious universities.
Anyway, if you don't want to read the article, here is are a few of the differences mentioned:
1. Americans are more likely than any other group to be "fair" to anonymous strangers, and expect those strangers to be "fair" to them.
2. Americans are more likely than any other group to ignore consensus, and make independent judgements.
3. Americans are more likely than any other group to perceive "unnatural" straight lines and right angles.
I use the three shells where I live on the east coast of America.
Outstanding perspective on a sensitive subject.
I have long thought that focusing on an insistence on commonality between race because of guilt for colonial history for example was missing the point that there are cultural differences which do influence behavior.
Now we have a valid framework to examine how cultural differences can collide and through a proper examination of cultural difference to begin to resolve problems that we have not had any mental equipment to figure out solutions to. These are groundbreaking ideas with so much promise to help us understand our divided world better.
This isnt about how Americans, Hispanics, Blacks or Stone age tribes are wrong, its about why the error in thinking that they are all "the same underneath" has a rational explanation in cultural difference and how this is a sensible route for western analytical science to start addressing the problems that it brings.
Great!
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
The internet does as well. In fact it has made the minority seem like a majority for a long time. It is amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
I agree- good point!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I assume this is at -1 for Unpleasant Truth?
It never ceases to amaze me how self-proclaimed "intellectuals" have the exact same hangups about unpleasant but true speech as all the folks they like to pretend they outsmart.
You sure are reading a whole lot of context into nothing more than a couple of down-mods. What do you make of the fact that the original post about "gun-loving hill billy rednecks" was also down-modded to -1? How do you know it wasn't "self-proclaimed intellectuals" who did that too because they realize that neither stereotype is particularly accurate?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In the late eighties, I (like many other undergrads) were required to "volunteer" to be the subjects of psych and sociology studies when we were in intro psychology classes.
I talked a good bit with a particular political science prof whose specialty was survey research and the measurement of public opinion. I noted that no reasonable researcher would try to extrapolate such a biased sample to be representative of the world population. He pretty much agreed and lamented the situation.
Yet, that was exactly what was being done. Ignoring the myriad flaws in the research I could see with just the viewpoint of participating, none of the people doing the studies that I talked to saw any reason to control for the completely unrepresentative sample.
They were quite happy to make predictions equally about inner city youth, Appalachian rural elderly and middle aged residents of The Hamptons all from studies that were exclusively late teen early twenties college students.
I was appalled that this "goop" might end up being used as the basis for social policy decisions.
Way to entirely miss the point.
First of all, the American rebels started with just hunting rifles, with no cannon or other serious military gear of the time. The Revolutionary War got started because, against all odds, the rebels sucessfully captured armories.
But really, that's not the point. If you're fighting against actual military equipment, it will be a civil war, and both sides will have actual military equipment - that's not why you need an armed populace. Tyranny never starts with the Army being sent against civilians - that just defines the point at which tyranny has won.
Tyranny starts with Brownshirts. Unofficial (but government sponsored) death squads that pull people out of their houses in the middle of the night and disappear them, or just shoot them right there in the street. That beginning is where an armed populace can fight back. There are historically only a handful of people willing to be Brownshirts. If only 10% of that armed 30% are brave enough to actually fight back, then the Brownshirts lose, and tyranny falters.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies.
Henrich's approach to the ultimatum game seems flawed. He mentions that he offers the equivalent of a few days wages, which is probably too much. The game is usually played for significant, but smaller sums, such as the value of a free lunch. For a sufficiently large starting sum, even tiny portions are enough to be worth something. For example, if you were asked to decide on a split of $200 out of a total $2000, you would probably want to spite the splitter. But you would also probably be overruled by your desire to get a free $200. It's only when we start looking at a smaller total with similar proportions -- say, $2 out of $20 -- that we start to see small portions being worth sacrificing to spite the other guy.
Proportionality is a bad metric in this scenario, and he should probably use some thing like "hours of equivalent labor" instead. (And in that case, he better hope everyone is used to making equal amounts of money in such an hour, which is certainly not true in Western societies.) By sticking to proportionality as a metric long after it becomes meaningless, Henrich buries the signal in noise. He has made it too easy for the splitter to "buy off" the decider.
The Pacific Standard description of the game also misses the point when they say that (for Western subject) the game tends towards and average 50/50 split. The average isn't nearly as interesting as the highest refused split/lowest accepted split, which tells you exactly how much someone is willing to sacrifice to spite the other party/the minimum "fair" proportion. This figure tends to be down near 30%. (It is up for debate how the subjects are internalizing this number as fair... whether it is closer to, say, "half of an even share (25%)," or "half of what the splitter makes (33.33%)," or some other figure.)
He is correct in that it will be culturally influenced. That is a big part of the point. In fact, when the experiment was originally devised, it was considered surprising that people would refuse any split at all. It is, after all, free money split between anonymous parties in exchange for no work at all. The reason people behave in this "illogical" manner is because reputation has worth, and if you want to avoid being cheated in society, it pays to have a reputation for being spiteful and willing to take a small loss to inflict punishment on those who wrong you. No transaction happens in a vacuum. The point is that the social gaming conditioning "leaks through" into our behavior even though the experimenter has (usually) done his best to remove all social components that would reward such spiteful behavior.
Now, Henrich has spent a few years doing this sort of thing, and it's been looked over by plenty of competent people, so I'm presuming his team's understanding is really not so shallow as it is presented here. But still, it is a bit odd to look at this collection of anecdotes that seems to demonstrate "culture matters" and come away with the conclusion that Westerners, and especially Americans, are weird. This is especially true when so many experiments of the previous century were aimed at identifying cultural behaviors and disentangling them from basic human response... in essence, all experiments which prove both that humans are similar (because they respond similarly under highly controlled conditions) and that culture matters (because that what influences them to behave slightly differently under different conditions). An experimenter has to be keenly aware of the culture under test, because experiments can amplify subtle differences if it doesn't account for them.
The British of 1776 didn't need any of that stuff - they didn't really lose any major battles other than Yorktown, and they only had that because of the intervention of the French navy. If it weren't for the French that battle would not have been decisive, but the overall outcome of the war would probably not have changed much (though it might have been more drawn out, or diplomatic in resolution - which could have made the US look more like one of the Commonwealth nations).
The American Revolution is a classic example of how you can win almost every battle and yet lose a war. 30% of the population being armed means that anything an opposition army does results in LOTS of people dying on all sides. Sure, you can bomb cities into ruins, but you can't just march in and take over with any kind of continuity. Few really want to stomach that kind of mess, so there are limits on what any government can accomplish. The British might have won Lexington/Concord, but 300 casualties in a single day wasn't really anything the citizens back home really wanted to hear about, and it just set the tone for the entire war.
Just look at Iraq. It isn't exactly smooth sailing for the US over there despite a huge advantage in military power.
I'm sick and tired of people who believe that US governmental tyranny exists talking about it as though it is a Us vs Them argument.
In the real world, not some fantastical universe you have created, but in the REAL world, there exists an extremely large portion of the population who does, (or who will, in this universe you have created) agree with the government. They may agree that your guns should be taken away from you, or that you should no longer be able to ban gays from marrying, or that you should not be able to have tax-free churches any more...all of which are things, by the way, that many tea-tards have used as example of "tyranny" by the government.
In the REAL world, if you were to rise up against this government, you'd also be rising up against the (approximately) half of the US population that put that government in place.
This is not called "rising up against an oppressive government."
This is known as a CIVIL WAR, and we've already had one.
So think about that the next time you want to "rise up against the government." You'd actually be rising up against a whole lot of average americans who VOTED to put that government in place, and if you think they will take kindly to your attempts to "take your country back", you will have another thing coming.
From the experiment with the Machiguenga (follow link in summary) , the split between players matters less then it does in 'Western' (i.e. American) society. They are much more likely to share their wealth among the tribe after the game is over. So it doesn't matter who walks away with what amount during the game.
From a practical point of view, the giver in the game has more certainty of getting his share up front than he does in trusting the (outsider) sociologist to give the remainder to the other participant as agreed. So get the money now and split it with the village afterwords.
Have gnu, will travel.
Our students. Our. Yes, I realize I will get flamed for that...
The Revolutionary War got started because, against all odds, the rebels sucessfully captured armories.
Well, that and massive military support from the French government. The hugely unpopular and undemocratic war debts from which campaign then led to the collapse of that government in the French Revolution. Which then led to the death of 40,000 in the Terror, the rise of the dictator Napoleon and another huge English-French world conflict. Yay freedom, I guess.
So basically, if you want to argue from history, if a ragtag band of rebels wants to overthrow a tyrannical regime by force they pretty much have to have the support of another tyrannical regime that hates the first one and wants to use the rebels as a proxy war. But that doesn't make for a nice Hollywood movie.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Americans have fought other Americans several times in our history. The side currently in power will declare any resistance as terrorists, murders, and nut job radicals so our armed forces have little problem pulling the trigger on them.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
It is amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
It IS amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
Secondly, those combat troops would be more likely to join in overthrowing the government than they would be to shoot at American people.
Ah, just like police riot squads would rather shoot tear gas grenades at their fellow officers than at unarmed street protesters?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Oh yeah, cuz 'm betting the rest of the planet admires and is impressed with our fascination for steel underground zombie apocalypse shelters...
Those leaders were being informed that if they applied weapons of mass destruction on their own people they'd have the UN and the US climbing up their nethers... Who would threaten the US Guberment that way???
Its even worse than that... you seen the armed camps in Wyoming and Montana? You think any one of them could play nice with another for more than a Fortnight? Sorry, once you start playing the "My way or the Highway" game you're gonna have 5,000 little pissed off fifedoms yanking in different directions. The larger organized system will swat you like a bunch of flies.
All of this presumes the government has any intention of doing anything to you at all. If it all went to hell tomorrow, what makes you think the government would just fold?
The first two seem like positive things to me.
The point of the article is not that they are good or bad, but that they are not normal. Americans are not just different on these issues, they are the most extreme. In no other society is "fairness" to strangers more given or expected. Americans are not only more likely to offer a "fair deal" to a stranger, but they are also more likely to pay a price to punish an unfair defector.
The researchers found that in some societies, not only is stinginess tolerated, but excessive generosity is punished. The reason given is that in these societies, accepting a gift incurs an obligation to reciprocate. So the generosity is rejected to avoid the future obligation.
Americans are often surprised when they travel abroad, and see foreigners walk unconcerned past someone in obvious need of assistance. We are also sometimes surprised at other societies' intolerance for dissent or non-conformity. Americans say "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", but the Japanese equivalent is "the nail that sticks up will be hammered back down," which expresses the opposite sentiment.
Iraq failed because Rumsfeld couldn't find his own rear end with arrows in his panties to guide the way.
We aren't currently winning Afghanistan because the country is a nasty mountainous, hell hole that's chewed the ass off every army that ever marched through it. Nobody has ever won a war against the locals, because it always degenerates to a guerrilla war with people who know the home field better than you and are willing to make it a war of attrition over decades to wear you down. Worse, if we'd have just spent a lousy $12,000,000 when the Afghan's kicked the Russian out, we would have precluded the Taliban, The World Trade Center, and the current conflict. So we just keep bringing stupid to the party and paying large for it a decade down the road.
Not everyone who merely owns a gun is a gun nut.
Every distinction highlights something while obscuring another. For example, the very choice of presenting certain "games" to people from other cultures brings forth the differences in behavior, but obliterates the impact of introducing a certain interaction that is not familiar to another culture. While this make perfect sense for certain comparative studies, what is wrong here is the surprise factor. Assuming that a framework derived from the study of only one culture can be applied to all mankind is the mistake here, it isn't a problem of the US culture.
The basis of the biological and social aspects of the human species have been reseached before from other disciplines. If anybody wants to read more about it, I can recommend one approach that is well explained in two books: The Tree of Knowledge and Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Enjoy.
I'm not sure you could pick any single population of people (other than the human race as a whole) and call them an "average representation." I'm guessing that in some aspects, every culture will have some attributes in which it differs markedly from the average.
In the particular subset tested, Americans were different, but it seems to be drawing a bit of a broad brush to say that it follows that all sociological studies run on Americans will come out different, while implying that other study subjects would be superior.
I agree with you, there are a lot of people in America who can not afford health care, and thus do not make use of the system. However, the problem with healthcare cost is directly perportonal to our governments involvment. Our social forms of insurance (medicaid and medicare) are right at the top of the list for reasons that our health care is not affordable. The Government set the "cost" of a procedure at a level were almost no profit can be made, and then only pay on average half of that "cost". The net result is that health care providers have to charge everyone else extreme prices just to stay in business. To sum it up our governments current involvment in our health care system IS the problem, and increaseing their involvement will only make things worse. Private insurance is just as bad as the governments insurance programs. Private insurance companies (at least in the US) exist to maximize their profits. That means that their primary function in our health care system is to be a leach that draws cash out of the patient care environment. It is therefore most ironic (moronic) that the latest batch of legislation aimed at fixing our healthcare system mandates that everyone must get insurance. They could have passed a law that mandated paying your medical bills and at least the health care provider would see the money, but instead Obama, in his great wisdom, mandated an increase to our problems.
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
I use the three shells where I live on the east coast of America.
I figure that must be bash, ksh and what? csh? zsh? ash? Don't keep us in suspense here!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
People in the army have families.
East to kill people - not so easy to keep others from killing everyone you care about.
Americans are fat
Americans are people
Therefore, we can conclude all people are fat.
This is a general challenge with free societies (democracies etc). A small vocal minority can control the framing of issues and you can end up with a choice between
1) Guns and freedom.
2) No guns and no freedom.
Or whatever combo of polarizing issues. This makes me want to go back to ancient Greece (Thebes?) where democracy didn't mean voting it meant participation. Leaders were drawn by lot you had to serve if chosen or forfeited your citizenship (which is a fair balance between rights and obligations to your country IMHO vs vote if you feel like it, and for whoever has the most "trustworthy" face we currently have). Not sure if it would be better or worse but would be worth a shot. The alternative that we've seemed to settle for is:
1) Those that want power can run
2) To get power you need lots of money so generally you are rich and have rich friends
3) You almost always have to be a part of a major party and toe the party line rather than have independent thought on each of the issues you face
4) Generally you have to be from a "respected" profession (doctor, lawyer, business owner)
These leads to a disproportionate representation of the monied, socially talented, and professional classes in government. Shy people: don't count, poor people, don't count, people with moderate opinions that aren't easily worded as "contrasting" sound bites to distinguish you from your competitor don't get elected etc.
With a large enough body of randomly chosen representatives you get a true cross section of the population, "parties" are represented proportionately, people don't owe favors to the people that got them into power, they aren't coming in necessarily with a "better idea" of how the money should be allocated (usually my business/industry or my special interest friends) and even if they do the chances of having say all the pro-choice guys coming in with the same favors owed to the same groups is much lower, people actually have to discuss issues and think rather than cling to the accepted opinion (even worse in Canada where I'm from where you have a party whip to make sure you vote the right way and can be expelled from your party for voting otherwise).
Ha, he doesn't know how to use the three shells!
But by that definition there is no right either. It might be fair to say that there is no left or right in mainstream American politics anymore. The vast majority pretty much agrees that a police state is what we want, need, and deserve.
The only difference is in verbiage. The two sides flap their lips a bit differently either to appeal to CEOs of giant evil corporations or to jealous angry people who want to more or less get rid of anyone who makes more money than they do.
Democrats: blah, blah, blah, soak the rich, blah, blah, blah.
Republicans: blah, blah, blah, money talks bullshit walks, blah, blah, blah.
Both want life in America to be indistinguishable from that of a one huge prison. With true bipartisan support these efforts have made great strides in the past decade, fast approaching a total transformation into something resembling East Germany.
I can remember when the Democrats represented personal freedom, when they were usually in agreement with Libertarians on social issues. I can also remember when Republicans represented financial freedom and came close to agreeing with Libertarians on financial issues. Both parties have replaced Libertarian ideology with Fascist ideology for the stuff that really matters to them. Both sides have given up fighting for freedom of any kind and have embraced tyranny with open arms and puckered lips.
I suppose that the old Republicans have become Tea Party Republicans, but what happened to the old ACLU Democrats? They seem to have lost any voice in American politics. I sorely miss them. They were valuable allies in the fight for non-monetary individual rights, for civil liberties and personal freedoms. I never did understand why they believed in freedom in their personal lives but championed slavery in their work. Well so long as it isn't actually called 'slavery'. It would also be nice to know why the Republicans wanted to keep the government out of their bank accounts, but welcomed them into their homes, into their bedrooms, into every aspect of their lives not related to money. In any case both sides have finally come to their senses, seen their inconsistency and fixed it by embracing every aspect of government control in their lives.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You need some work on the proper use of American (you're not your).
I have a feeling you meant English.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Suppose the US government decides to use nuclear weapons against Americans - who are they going to get to operate the weapons? How many American soldiers would obey such an order?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Psychologists used to use a group of Minnesotans "the Minnesota Normals" to classify behavior as "normal" or not.
A hot woman licking her lips doesn't make you think of Ludevisk? - Pervert.
Well, they abandoned the "Minnesota Normals" years ago. (Come to think of it, the two words don't really go together well.)
But now they tell us that Americans aren't the most accurate global standard either? - How shocking! Who knew?!
IMHO part of the problem is many Americans see themselves and the government as separate and opposing things while the government is supposed to be the will of the people. It's been ridiculous on many occasions, but one of the most stupid was both Reagan and Carter declaring they were complete outsiders to government that were going to pull the government into line. I think more recently Romney, once again more of an insider than just about anybody (just like Reagan he ran a State government for a while), pretended not to be part of government at times.
Seeing government as the "other" creates so many stupid "only in America" ridiculous X-Files conspiracy theories which means it's seen as easier to keep a dozen automatic weapons in the gun cupboard and dream of some sanitised bloodless revolution (instead of messy realities like Syria) than it is to talk to your local representative about what is pissing you off.