Why would anyone willingly move to an authoritarian dictatorship?
The combo of a low-information comment, a pejorative, and a divisive topic is going to be a flamebait cocktail regardless of anything else.
I feel like the question was framed properly and I can’t attribute any of those traits to it – pejorative, divisive, flame bait. Your thoughts?
There are two problems. First, the term "authoritarian dictatorship" is not as well-defined as you seem to suggest, and carries a pejorative meaning which is separate from any factual information it does contain. Second, the comment was too short to convey much information in its own right. When people post pejorative, low-information comments about inflammatory topics, that's flamebait, whether or not they intended it that way. I'm sure that driverdan had no malicious intent, but intent doesn't protect a dry forest from dropped matches.
I can understand why you would be frustrated by this response if you look at the comment as an atomic, standalone thing. But comments on internet forums aren't standalone. They're prefixes of the subthreads that follow from them, and commenters are partly responsible for what follows from their comments. Certainly they are responsible for following the site guidelines, which distill much of what we've learned over the years about how to comment in ways that don't lead to degenerate subthreads.
Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Taiwanese
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4906162/taiw...
I'm not sure how you can compare the US, which does have it's problems, but is one of the least racist (and offers many more opportunities to people that start with nothing) countries in the world to China, one of the most corrupt and authoritarian.
In China, for example, you need to include your head shot on your resume and I've known people that were told the were too fat to work at a company.
If people actually cared, they would look at the gross human rights abuses by the Chinese government.
You just don't see things like this:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china...
In the US.
I've see so many negative news reports about the US, that if it were even 1% as bad as you say it is, it would be shoved down our throats.
"They just seem normal to us because we're used to it."
When you live outside the US, you will quickly see the amount of poverty and corruption that just doesn't exist here. It's why I moved back and have no plan leaving again. Corruption in many countries is normal and accepted. It happens in the US, but it's certainly not accepted.
Have you seen what the EU is doing lately in terms of the freedom of speech on the Internet? China has already cracked down considerably and many other countries are using the same technology to suppress free speech and the EU is in the process of passing laws that do the same.
"I'm not saying china is perfect by any means,"
'not perfect' is an understatement. In terms of freedom, China is a horrible place to live. If you have money, it's great. You can buy yourself out of anything...including prison time.
That said, I love living and working in Germany. Somewhat higher taxes, somewhat lower salaries, far more time to enjoy life (5-6 weeks vacation! Legal limit of 48 working hours in a given week! My boss gets in trouble if I forget myself and work over 10 hours in a day more than a few times per year!)
The Nordic countries are probably the best places in the world to be average or below, but I'm willing to claim that the US is better for the top 10%.
If you look at income, wealth, employment, education, healthcare, life expectancy, infant mortality, there's a very large difference in the US between the 25% line and the median.
If you don't think you can get into that top 25% bracket in the US, pick another country if you can like Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, etc.
40%-45% of the world's millionaires reside in that top 25%. Full-time employment will get you $80,000+ at the 25% bracket cut-off. Healthcare is broadly high quality and easily accessible for the top 25%. Economic opportunities are abundant and unemployment is always very low outside of deep recessions. You can also hit that $80,000 income line in dozens of cities, depending on profession (much easier in tech, energy, healthcare, banking/finance).
Household net wealth skyrockets from about $100,000 at the median to $425k-$450k at the 25% line (and to $1.2 million at the 10% line).
Just consider software developers in the US. 1.25 million of them with a median income of $103,000 for 2017 (per the BLS). So there's probably ~650,000 software developers in the US earning six figures for 2019. That's more than the rest of the world combined.
The biggest downside to being in the US if you're in the top 25%, is that many of our largest cities aren't nearly as livable or safe as those in other developed nations. This also assumes a city to income match, where you're not making $90,000 trying to live well in San Francisco or New York (in which case you're generally going to struggle).
From the point of view of somebody who lives in a place with clear air and a decent paying job, I would require significant extra compensation to move my residence to a place with air pollution on the level of New Delhi, Lahore, or Beijing.
For most people, most of the time, one can have a somewhat ‘normal’ life even in the worst dictatorships, even in the middle of active war zones.
Having an American passport is a tremendous asset because you can just leave for the most part, unless you get caught up in politics, for some reason (a small risk for most people if they don’t go out of their way to draw attention).
I spent quite a bit of time in Nicaragua which has an authoritarian communist government and on the surface, it seems like any other Central American country. I’m sure I’d notice more problems if I got political, but just being there exploring for a month or so, it seemed okay.