Comment by rootusrootus
9 hours ago
> That's because the US (and the UK) are about the only countries in this world that haven't had the entirety of their legal, economical and political system completely revamped at least once in the last 100 years - most countries average more than that.
I usually get downvoted when I make an observation along these lines, but I will go for it again -- IMO some of the reason Europe has pulled ahead in infrastructure and policy is because a couple world wars last century reduced much of it to rubble, including the systems of governance. The UK mostly escaped that, and the US escaped nearly all of it. Which is one reason we can still have a lot of old electrical infrastructure, for example, that is pushing 100 years old, and a Constitutional system 250 years old.
I think a major problem with the system in the US is the difficulty changing it. There is a balance, and a lot of room for differing opinions on how flexible it really ought to be, but I suspect there is broad agreement that it is too inflexible. We rely too much on changing interpretations rather than changing the fundamentals.
Perhaps we really do need to risk a second Constitutional Convention. Or we will end up with a worse alternative.
If Europe has "pulled ahead in infrastructure and policy" then why do they have nothing to show for it? They can't even protect their own sea lines of communication.
Have you been to Europe?
The comparison is stark.
I wish my country had achieved half as much in terms of infrastructure.
And in terms of protecting themselves, if the US stopped protecting Russia, the situation there would be a lot tidier.
Yes, I've been there many times. It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
2 replies →
Sounds like your only metric is military strength? Then sure, the US dominates, though it pays a lot for that privilege.
US just showed the world its military strength.
It couldn’t open the straits and begged for help from is ‘weak’ ‘allies’.
Europe wouldn’t have been all that impressed.
There are a lot of metrics, take your pick. But if you can't obtain reliable supplies of energy and other critical resources then none of the other metrics matter.