> I (perhaps foolishly?) believe that America has the opportunity to be a role model for the rest of the world in terms of how a society can work.
Yes, you believe foolishly. See below for why.
> But for all its problems, America has a lot going for it. It's a relatively free society, there is social mobility (more for some than others, it's true) and it's a nice place to live, even just in terms of its geography. (I live in California and so that of course will make me biased). Consider - America is a country that, despite all its problems, people risk their lives to get into. There's a simple reason why America continues to attract illegal immigrants - it's better than wherever they came from.
Background: I am an United States citizen now working in northern Europe.
To quote a TED Talk, "If you want the American Dream, move to Denmark."
The United States is not a free society. Is it more free than China? Yes. Is it more free than the majority of the OCED? No. They have gotten very good at selling the "American Dream", that is the sole reason people still risk their lives to get into it.
The dream cracked for me when I realised that despite 10 years of programming experience, I could not get a job in the U.S.; whereas, one month after searching for work in Europe and I had a job offer.
"Well, why didn't you start your own business in the U.S.?" My answer is simple: I am sick of living "at the pleasure of the king". To live in the U.S. is to be constantly unsure of where you stand with respect to the law. This applies doubly so if you start a business.
This problem with the law results from two positions:
1. Ignorance of the law is not a defence.
2. Interpretation of the law can change.
This brings up some major problems. Principally, how can I know the law if the interpretation (and thus the application) of the law is not constant? Add in low levels of corruption (on average, the bad ones are really bad) and different application of the law as a function of a person's class and you might begin to understand why I want no part of living at the pleasure of the king.
Marking a bug as "wontfix" because the developers of the RoR platform are arrogant enough to say, and I quote, "[...] figure out what other software is putting that version in your environment and stop it from doing so" is now called mature?
The dialogue on this bug alone was enough for me to put RoR in my rear-view mirror and not look back.
Which would you rather use: a tool which demands it is the only tool on your system which can set environment variables (RoR), or a tool which plays well with others (Django)?
Yes, you believe foolishly. See below for why.
> But for all its problems, America has a lot going for it. It's a relatively free society, there is social mobility (more for some than others, it's true) and it's a nice place to live, even just in terms of its geography. (I live in California and so that of course will make me biased). Consider - America is a country that, despite all its problems, people risk their lives to get into. There's a simple reason why America continues to attract illegal immigrants - it's better than wherever they came from.
Background: I am an United States citizen now working in northern Europe.
To quote a TED Talk, "If you want the American Dream, move to Denmark."
The United States is not a free society. Is it more free than China? Yes. Is it more free than the majority of the OCED? No. They have gotten very good at selling the "American Dream", that is the sole reason people still risk their lives to get into it.
The dream cracked for me when I realised that despite 10 years of programming experience, I could not get a job in the U.S.; whereas, one month after searching for work in Europe and I had a job offer.
"Well, why didn't you start your own business in the U.S.?" My answer is simple: I am sick of living "at the pleasure of the king". To live in the U.S. is to be constantly unsure of where you stand with respect to the law. This applies doubly so if you start a business.
This problem with the law results from two positions:
1. Ignorance of the law is not a defence.
2. Interpretation of the law can change.
This brings up some major problems. Principally, how can I know the law if the interpretation (and thus the application) of the law is not constant? Add in low levels of corruption (on average, the bad ones are really bad) and different application of the law as a function of a person's class and you might begin to understand why I want no part of living at the pleasure of the king.