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The US rarely looks into how other countries solve problems. (i.e. Universal Healthcare, High Speed Trains and so), this is the sad part of "American Exceptiona

• nozzlegear 1y ago
  A less cynical framing is that the US is a much different culture from European countries, and is massively larger in scale. Depending on the problem, some of their solutions simply can't or don't apply.
  • FireBeyond 1y ago
    This is exactly the framing. "What worked there can't work here", whether it's firearm control, socialized medicine or education, whatever. We're either bigger, or denser, or less dense, or ... essentially whatever suits the argument.
    • _heimdall 1y ago
      A lot of people are uncomfortable having an opinion without being able to rationalize it. I have to assume many, maybe most, people that give reasons like you mention just flat out don't want the policy and reach for a reason to justify it. I can say I don't want gun control laws. Not because it doesn't work elsewhere or couldn't work here. I just fundamentally disagree with it and don't want to live in a place where the only ones with guns are state officials.
    • int_19h 1y ago
      The other weird thing in US discourse about other countries is that when it does enter the conversation, the "rest of the world", or at least other developed countries, are often treated as some kind of monolithic entity culturally and politically. For example, a lot of people on both left and right in US believe that the rest of the world is single payer, and generally that "single payer" is synonymous to "public healthcare". Similarly with gun control, there's no recognition of the fact that there are countries in Europe where you can own an AR-15 just fine, and countries (different ones!) where silencers are over the counter items not requiring any special registration.
      • neither_color 1y ago
        Most Americans would be shocked to know that in Thailand there are signs at the airport advising you on the correct firearms procedures https://www.airportthai.co.th/en/aot-reiterates-the-guidelines-to-carry-firearms-and-ammunition-on-board-aircraft/ https://www.airportthai.co.th/en/aot-reiterates-the-guidelin... edit: But I will say it works both ways. Most countries do not know what it takes to keep hundreds of millions of people of various backgrounds together under a common way of life with a certain risk vs entitlement balance. Americans as a whole are more risk tolerant AND accepting of failure and reinventing yourself. In most cultures it's a great shame to quit your job with benefits, start a business and not succeed. In the states it's not shameful. You tried? Awesome.
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      Yes, that's my point. We are literally different people with different cultures, values and problems. Case in point: the firearm control you mentioned. I won't get in a gun control debate here, I have my own complicated views on the matter, but it's an undisputed fact that Americans have a right to own guns (maybe with limitations, maybe not) and many Americans deeply cherish that right. There is no gun control solution we can take from Europe that you could apply to the US, it's simply not compatible with our culture, not to mention our own Bill of Rights. It's not a bad thing to recognize that.
  • yboris 1y ago
    I got a Master's Degree in Education and spent 2 years in Educational Psychology Ph.D. program and absolutely 0 time was spent looking at how other countries do education. It's baffling how despite numerous other countries outperforming the US in educational outcomes we do not even look at other approaches!
    • bdangubic 1y ago
      cause we are the best and when you are the best you simply do not look back :)
      • noisy_boy 1y ago
        Best enough to even sing about it :)
        • _heimdall 1y ago
          Is national pride a problem now? I'd expect any country to have something like a national anthem and patriotic songs.
          • theendisney 1y ago
            Yes, in the Netherlands we have a culture of moaning about everthing. Youd beter not dare suggest sonething is good enough! This complaining is the only thing we are proud of. lol (If we had patriotic songs worth remembering im sure i would have) The problem is this, hoe do you fix something you are proud of? It seems a contradiction?
            • _heimdall 1y ago
              Agreed, I lives in the Netherlands for a couple years and can agree there isn't much patriotism so much as pragmatism! (I actually mean that as a good thing, I was a very fond of NL and the friends I made there). Speaking as an American, though, I can both be proud of something and recognize its faults. I'm proud of the core principles that America was based upon, for example, but very much recognize how far we've deviated from them and how much we need to fix.
  • freehorse 1y ago
    Which part here exactly cannot work in the US? I am talking about brushing one's teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride, which sounds as plain simple as possible to me. Is it regular brushing teeth that fails in the US for cultural reasons? Fluoride in the toothpaste? Supervising kids while brushing their teeth to make sure they do not swallow? It is an honest question.
    • majormajor 1y ago
      AFAICT most US toothpaste has flouride in it already. (For now, at least? How long until that gets cracked down on as dangerous?)
      • seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        You can get fluoride free toothpaste, mainly for babies/young toddlers.
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      In a word: poverty. People do not have free dental care, and poor people aren't guaranteed to have a toothbrush, toothpaste or sometimes even a sink to brush their teeth in. Fluoridated water is one of the few dental protections available to everyone regardless of their income. It's cheap, minimal and cost-effective cavity protection at scale for the entire country.
      • carlosjobim 1y ago
        > poor people aren't guaranteed to have a toothbrush, toothpaste There is no person in the world who cannot have a toothbrush and toothpaste if they want to. And if you find one such person, they won't have access to any centrally treated water.
      • wqaatwt 1y ago
        > and poor people aren't guaranteed to have a toothbrush, toothpaste Considering that the number of such people is very low it would be very cheap to solve this issue.
  • hayst4ck 1y ago
    You're not wrong in that our culture is different, but that cultural difference is chiefly a self fulfilling prophecy of "the government can't do it," promoted by billionaire owned media, so that those same billionaires can run for-profit industries like healthcare and transportation. The cultural difference is that our rich people are too rich, our media is too centralized, and none of those in power want to enrich and empower the country, when they could enrich and empower themselves.
  • rafabulsing 1y ago
    The scale argument is thrown around a lot as a justification for why the US couldn't possibly implement universal healthcare. The elephant in the room that I'm always surprises at how rarely it's mentioned in these discussions is Brazil, which is a huge country of comparable size (both territory and population wise), and it manages to make UHC work even though it's also a much poorer country. It's not perfect by any means, but it's definitely much better than nothing. So the US should absolutely be able to at the very least match that, but really most likely it should be able to do much better. That it doesn't is very much a choice.
    • bumby 1y ago
      Did Brazil start with a Byzantine kluge of private and public providers and intermediaries? Genuine question, not snark. I think the US would prefer a UHC if we were starting from a blank slate. The difficulty is mapping a path from what we have now to that.
      • majormajor 1y ago
        > I think the US would prefer a UHC if we were starting from a blank slate. The difficulty is mapping a path from what we have now to that. Do you remember when Republicans went on and on about how "Democrats rammed through the ACA without a single Republican vote"? As if that represented a problem on the Democratic Party side, and not the Republican one? Despite the similarities to models proposed by Republicans in the past, and the relative conservative step it represented from "Byzantine kludge of often poor-to-no-coverage" to "something with a higher floor"? That's how hard it would be to find a Republican to "prefer a UHC if we were starting from a blank slate." It's important not to underestimate the distrust of government services and regulation of any sort of the Republican base. The conservative media - talk-radio, then cable, then social/podcasts - has been intentionally undermining the credibility of government services at every opportunity for 40 years. And the politicians hamstring and sabotage whenever they get a chance to try to make sure that services offered in the US are sub-par compared to elsewhere. It's a well-oiled machine running a cycle that keeps people focused on anything else but the services they actually use all the time so that cognitive dissonance can't creep in. (Granted, sometimes, when necessary to acknowledge those things, they'll fall back to making it clear that YOU earned/paid for the things you use, but those other gross poor people are just freeloaders.) It's like with abortion - for decades "overturning Roe V Wade" was what Republicans said they wanted to do. And people kept trying to convince themselves "oh they don't really mean that, they wouldn't do that actually anymore." Take their word on it about wanting to tear down government services.
  • panick21_ 1y ago
    This is the excuse all American use about literally every single issue anytime anybody points out that other do things better. Most often without actually having thought about it beyond 'muhuhu US BIGGG! USA! USA! USA!'. If you want to make that argument, actually make it, because if you try, 99% of the time its not actually true, its simply ignorance.
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here except that you take a dim view of Americans.
      • hannasanarion 1y ago
        The point is that flouride has the same effect on your teeth no matter how many hectares of lifeless desert happen to be controlled by your government.
        • nozzlegear 1y ago
          Interesting, though I think you may have missed a good deal of my own point. Regardless, I wasn't actually commenting on the fluoride situation, I was commenting on the belief that American exceptionalism is the reason we don't look at Europe and other countries for a slew of solutions that won't work here. It had nothing to do with fluoride, so I think your comment and hostility are a bit off the mark.
      • panick21_ 1y ago
        My point is that those that continually point out 'but some things don't apply to the US because X and Y' are mostly themselves just falling into the same trap and almost never actually explain why X and Y change anything, making their 'defense' just more of the same.
  • DeepYogurt 1y ago
    Scale is a scapegoat. Take the US region by region and you can find analogs around the world.
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      The US isn't several countries put together, region by region. It's one big ass country. I really don't see how taking it region by region somehow eliminates scale issues when you still have to apply it to the entire country.
      • _heimdall 1y ago
        It's a federal country of many states though. The original design of the US is fairly similar to the design of the EU today, US states used to be offered much more independence.
        • nozzlegear 1y ago
          Sure, I don't disagree that in a vague sense the EU and US are kinda similar in terms of countries and states. > US states used to be offered much more independence. But even in your own example with the EU, the EU still mandates many health policies for its member countries: food safety; air and water quality; tobacco, sugar and alcohol regulations; and so on. That's not at all dissimilar to what the federal government does in the US, except our states don't implement those policies/directives themselves because the feds enforce it all.
          • _heimdall 1y ago
            Sure, but you're making my point. The comment I was replying to pointed out that the US isn't several countries put together. As you describe, the EU is several countries put together and yet the US actually pushes more power to the states.
            • wqaatwt 1y ago
  • _heimdall 1y ago
    There shouldn't be a scale issue with regards to fluoride in the water. It is either scientifically shown to be beneficial or it isn't, scale and geography likely have nothing to do with it.
    • nine_k 1y ago
      Does it not depend on the chemical composition of local water? The US is vast, geologically diverse, and water quality varies hugely across it. Denmark can likely make a decision that's good for the entire country.
      • scott_w 1y ago
        Actually, what most countries seem to do (according to other comments I’ve seen here), is just delegate to local bodies, so country size is a complete non-issue.
      • _heimdall 1y ago
        It could, what do you have in mind with regards to chemical composition that may require fluoride in some circumstances? And are those conditions manmade? If so, would we be better off reversing the proximal issues rather than adding fluoride to try to fix it?
    • attila-lendvai 1y ago
      a decades long study with a gazillion of potential confounders is never "either scientifically shown to be beneficial or it isn't"... let alone the precautionary principle in a complex system with a gazillion variables... (i.e. things we don't know we don't know)
  • Aeolun 1y ago
    This argument works fine for high-speed rail, not so well for insurance and healthcare.
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      If you focus only on the scale part of my argument, sure. But I think the culture part of my argument is more than enough of an answer for insurance and healthcare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43521734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43521734
  • thowawatp302 1y ago
    Why is it less cynical, what does the scale of the US have to do with it?
    • nozzlegear 1y ago
      Maybe it's just me, but I find the argument that "Americans won't do X cool thing that Europeans/the rest of the world do because they [are dumb/are corrupt/love money/hate each other/believe in American exceptionalism]" to be a very cynical and lazy argument. Note that the person I was replying to was talking about policies and goals like UHC and High Speed Rail, not specifically about fluoridated water – that was the context in which I was replying.
      • panick21_ 1y ago
        The simply reality is, culture matters. And if your culture has a strong believe in exceptionalism pointing out how others are better at something often creates backlash and an increase in opposition rather then a decrease. And this is known by people who do professional advocacy work, on topic I am familiarly with, such as city design and transportation. They take great care to make sure all the examples are from the US, even if those examples aren't nearly as good as others. Because they know, when speaking to American audiences, you lose the audience if you suggest in X town, they should do Y that is done in Europe. In the US selling something as domestic innovation is usually the best, "if people in Indiana can do it, you can do it even better". To just ignore any explanation that points out that culture matters, and believing that only 'hard' factors matter, is incredibly foolish. Cultural believes, such as exceptionalism absolutely do a play a huge role in determining what happens in the real world. To point that out, is not cynical or lazy. And this does not just apply to the US, it many countries have different forms of that.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    I feel like this always comes up in these sorts of arguments, that the US is so unique that solutions that work elsewhere can't work here. And yet this point is always hand-waved in, without and specifics discussed, and is just presented as a given. I really don't buy it, at least not as a general statement.
• rayiner 1y ago
  Those are two odd examples. The Affordable Care Act is similar to the Netherlands health insurance system: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2011/lessons-abroad-dutch-health-care-system-part-1 https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2011/lessons-abroad-du... (“These similarities are not entirely coincidental. American public officials, health industry leaders, and scholars made frequent visits to the Netherlands in the run-up to the debate over U.S. health care reform, borrowing ideas and, on occasion, citing the Dutch system as a model for what the U.S. might achieve.”). As to rail, both the first-gen and second-gen Acela is based on the French TGV.
  • redczar 1y ago
    The U.S. has a pitiful amount of high speed rail. It serves no point to mention that this pitiful amount of high speed rail is based off of TGV. The comparison to the Dutch healthcare system is not apt. While the Heritage foundation may used ideas from the Dutch system our system is quite a bit more Byzantine and inefficient. We spend twice as much per capita on healthcare and have worse outcomes and fewer people covered. Our citizens have far more per capita medical debt than the Dutch. We didn’t really implement the Dutch system and we didn’t really learn from the French how to build and maintain high speed rail. Saying we learned healthcare from the Dutch because we have doctors like they do makes as much sense as your argument.
    • seper8 1y ago
      You're also twice as fat so I think spending twice makes perfect sense
    • 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
      The original claim was "The US rarely looks into how other countries solve problems". That claim appears to be false. Why does the US execution not match that of the countries it looks into? I think it's because talented people in the US disproportionately go into the private sector, leading to an incompetent public sector. American distrust of their government is arguably justified.
  • seanmcdirmid 1y ago
• jimt1234 1y ago
  When I was a kid the schools taught us the metric system, telling us it was the world standard, and would become the standard is the US by the time I was an adult. That was over 40 years ago. And that pretty much sums it all up.
  • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    see that proves it - the U.S can't adopt the metric system, it's too big, you don't want to have to break out the megameters! /s
  • tastyfreeze 1y ago
    The US legally switched to metric when England did. It is taught in all schools and used for international trade. But, just like in England there is a mix of imperial and metric units used domestically. If you dont travel internationally, like many Americans, there is little need to use metric. Another generation and there won't be many people left in the US that didn't at least learn metric.
    • ascorbic 1y ago
      It's not like England in that respect at all. Yes, there is a mix of usage in the UK but it is very limited. People use metric for everything except miles in cars, pints in pubs, and height and weight of people.
      • tastyfreeze 1y ago
        From what I have read about metrication, England required all industries to change. The US government doesn't have authority to do that and US industry wasn't going to change all their tooling at great cost if they didn't need to.
  • Aeolun 1y ago
    At least they were right about one thing. It definitely is the world standard.