Let’s put it this way. I’d PREFER to live in America vs. Europe. I like it here, I speak English better than I speak German, my family lives here, I like our informal attitude better, I like that our economy is looser and more vibrant, I like our popular culture better.
But can I really conclude from that that America is “better” than Europe? No, because when it comes down to it, those things are personal preferences, and also just things that I’m used to. If I grew up in Germany, I’d probably be more comfortable living there than in America, although maybe not.
But, then we come to a point where things are more clear. Is America “better” than North Korea? Obviously yes. We don’t have a totalitarian dictatorship. Our people aren’t starving. We aren’t hauled out and executed on the whim of the secret police. People can come and go as they will. People can speak their minds. People can engage in a broad range of satisfactory economic behaviors, they aren’t slaves in a factory or farm.
So, North America and Europe: broadly comparable. North Korea: the society that comes closest to the one envisioned by George Orwell in 1984.
Then there are the middle cases. Saudi Arabia doesn’t tolerate religious freedom, eqaulity of the sexes, people can’t vote, etc. Yet, they can leave the country. They can engage in business. They can communicate with the outside world, so long as they do not disparage the rulers. Not a country I’d like to live in. And I think, by objective standards, a country that does not deliver as good a life as what you can acheive in NA and Europe. Or take Russia, where you deal with poverty, ignorance, mafia, corruption and lawlessness. Or China. Or any number of African countries that are dirt poor, with no educational infrastructure, and autocratic (but not totalitarian) governments. All pretty bad, and I think by objective standards demonstrably worse than NA and Europe.
Then we have another tier. Mexico, Brazil, India, Turkey, etc. Not exactly democratic, but not entirely unfree either. Corrupt, but not hopeless. Places where you can live your life, even though you face obstacles that aren’t present in first world countries. Are those countries objectively worse than NA/Europe? Well, I still think we can say that they are. They may have constitutions and bills of rights, but those rights are frequently violated, although not neccesarily in a systemic way. Their economic and educational infrastructure is worse, so people have fewer opportunities and must work harder to get ahead. They may have de jure religious freedom, but in practice you face many problems if you are a religous minority. People can speak their minds, there is a free press, but you might be harrassed for joining a union, or being an outspoken critic of the government. Still…if you could fix the many problems in those countries, you could see that they would be just as nice to live in as the First World countries.
The point is, countries can go bad. They can enslave their population, etc etc. Think of all the things you’d hate if they happened where you live. Well, there are dozens of countries around the world where that is standard operating procedure. Does that mean that we’re perfect here? Of course not. Just NA/Europe/Japan have the most free, most educated, most healthy, and most wealthy citizens in all of human history.
Plenty of other countries are on the verge of joining that group…eastern europe, South Korea, Taiwan. Or maybe they’ll fail, or maybe we’ll fail. There’s nothing magical or racial about it. Just that the rule of law, democracy, human rights and economic freedom produce good societies to live in. Any society that adopts those things will therefore become a good society to live in, to the extent that they actually adopt those things. Thats the difference between a comparative paradise like, say, Canada, and a festering hell hole like North Korea.
Yep its personal taste for sure.