The Americans I listed are influential because they created great technology, music, and movies. I agree that Japan also has a global influence because they similarly create terrific products, but Japan isn't a socialist nation. That's the whole point. Socialist nations stifle people; they destroy critical thinking at an early age because rational thinkers threaten the power structure of those regimes.
Basically, over the last 40 years, the most influential people out of Scandinavia are Bjork, Abba, the guy who invented Linux, and the Swedish Bikini Team. There is a very heavy price to pay in Democratic Socialist nations - these nations destroy the potential to achieve greatness.
Im sorry, did I miss your post containing the list of the greatest Somalians and Paraguayans? I mean, not that I care that much...
As far as I know, you should have more than a 1000 posts complaining about socialism in the US, the government on the US, these leftists in the US, etc... as far as I know, the US does not fit the neoliberal standards of capitalism. So why it is now suddenly the argument?
Anyway, [MENTION=4347]Virtual ghost[/MENTION] gave some sort of good answer. I didn't wanted to get on this subject, but this relates more to the Narcissistic disorder and to the US giving plenty of Narcissistic supply to some few people (maybe [MENTION=4050]ceecee[/MENTION] would agree) at the cost of others, but, gosh, that is really a long subject.
Well if Europe was in the position of Brazil: it would stop clearing the Amazon for the sake of environment (and we are slamming you over that regularly), there wouldn't be so many gangs since the system would clean this up through law enforcement or education (like tuition free college), there wouldn't be so much junk on most of the streets (and most of that would get recycled), there would evidently be less fraud since it would be harder to do and less need for it, GM food would be banned, traffic safety would improve, laws would regulate that your food, water and meds have less toxic elements in them, you would have legal protection against various data gatherers, if your bank scams you there are decent odds that you will get your money back ... etc. I don't really need some complex data sources to see: your posts, what the media say and how most of the the place looks on google earth. Therefore the logical conclusion is that regulation is loose or it isn't implemented.
Your mistake is that you see regulations simply as means how people deal one with another. While for me the key part is that their work is more in sync and that it adds one upon the other, what smooths the whole situation and therefore no one falls from the cliff due to circumstances. Plus there is something called "industrial standards", which are vital for having stable high tech society.
Well, I live here and I can say a few things:
- There are agencies that regulates things here. Bolsonaro and Guedes (the neolib minister and "his crew" that has a lot of influence over Bolsonaro) is destroying part of them for the neolibs and for the neolib minister, but these regulations does exist (less and less with time, but they do). The work of preserving the Amazon before Bolsonaro wasn't bad at all.
- There are law enforcement and lots of arrests. Lots of people are arrested here - not lots of the super-rich, though.
- There is free education, actually, it is just at a terrible quality on the elementary and secondary and high school in a way that private schools are needed. Most of the bests universities are public, although Bolsonaro have been destroying a bit of them because Guedes wants them to end and to every university to be private.
- There are people who clean the streets, you know? XD! Maybe less than Europe, don't know.
- We do have regulations over MEDs - a lot more than US as far as I know. It is very difficult to get melathonine (hope I written it right), for example. Although I don't like some of them - I had found out for example that I can't buy any anti-depressant or a medication to sleep unless a doctor approves me to do so.
- The fraud things more relates to a lot of people being corrupt per se here than lack of regulation. More or less regulation doesn't make people more honest.
My actual personal preference is for less regulation, I personally find bureaucracy quite annoying. But I ain't stupid nor do I have an immense power and wealth and selfishness to defend all the regulations to go down.. Nor I am a scammer to want more opportunities for deceiving.