Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Of the people on this board, maybe Sebby is the most likely to have written this:
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I'd be the first to sign up for high taxes in exchange for free school, better health care, etc. But I'd want those services administered by Swedes, Danes, or even the French. Americans would fuck it up.
In order to have a high tax, high quality service system, you need quality administrators. And you also need a population that is not addicted to consumption for consumption's sake.
People in Europe are satisfied, I think, more with experience, and smaller but higher quality items, than are Americans. Americans don't see much value in sitting in a cafe and just burning an afternoon. They aren't interested in driving a sensible car (they like Mercedes, but they don't want to own one for 15 years... they'd rather get a new, bigger gold-packaged SUV Benz every three years).
Edward Bernays fucked this place up nearly a century ago when he converted us to a brutally aspirant economy. We're like Buddhists in reverse. Nothing's ever enough, and we're obsessed with our status relative to one another.
I don't see how you convert that mindset to the more mature mindset exhibited by many Europeans. They seem to understand contentment at a level we simply cannot comprehend.
And the argument cannot be avoided that (the author addresses it), to have that level of taxation and services, one must concede some freedoms in a very direct manner. We'd rather concede freedoms indirectly. I think this is because in the indirect, predatory freedom-robbing system we have, any man can by amazing luck and skill become the predator, the Croesus-like rentier. In a system where the govt has more control, that possibility seems more remote. That's probably untrue, but the illusion is hard to counter.
