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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

From the outside looking in, there's nothing strange about it at all.

In stark contrast to every other developed country, America has built into a very individualist society. In so many aspects of life it comes down to "me before us". Healthcare, education, work, welfare and so much more. With everyone scrambling hard to make ends meet, violence and anger are always just under the surface.

Either you get in and take yours for you, or you get left horribly behind.

Ben Harper said it best - "Everyone I know is in the fight of their lives."

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In the more cooperative, pre-1960s era, there was basically no welfare, no Medicare, no federal student loan program, and by any metric, things were rougher and poverty was very rampant (around 30% Americans lived in poverty in 1950s). And yet, it was precisely at that time where civic society flourished, and it’s decline coincided precisely with the introduction of Great Society programs and Civil Rights.

Of course, reduction of poverty and civil rights were huge wins and unquestionable positives, but I believe it’s actually us making the society more prosperous and more just, that was what made us more individualistic and less civically engaged — because we don’t need each other as much anymore.

That's one way of framing it. The other way of framing it is that individual liberties are more valued than group securities in America. For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths.

Group securities require giving up individual liberties.

Hard to say which way is "better" or "winning". America is divided on which way to move. One side optimizes for life over liberty, the other side optimizes for liberty over life.

You can see it happening right now with covid. One side cares more about preserving lives, the other side cares more about preserving liberties.

Right to bear arms was about not allowing (British) government suppression, which was seen as a group security actually.

For sure, I didn't say it was "bad", I just said it's not "strange" that cooperating has disappeared.

The system is designed in a way that discourages it.

And yet, the same country that normalized globally that it should be a jailable offense to grow the wrong plant, or reshare information attached with a license.

"Liberty for me but not for you", I think.

For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths.

It has been long argued over whether 2nd Amendment rights are individual or collective. In fact, proponents of gun control typically argue that 2A “right to bear arms” is in fact collective, and not individual, in order to justify gun control efforts. It was only in 2008 Heller decision that it was ultimately affirmed as individual right.

How many people die from guns excluding accidents, law enforcement, suicides, etc in US?

How many of them illegally owned guns or had committed a crime with them?

How poor the area was?

What is the impact of media on encouraging mass gun shootings?

It's established that publishing news of suicide encourages more copy cats and the participants are co-related in some way. News of young people committing suicide encourages other young people and so on.

I support improved gun control laws but how much of it will be solved by it at the cost of freedom?

1) when I look at the direction of politics in most European nations, I see a similar trend; perhaps not as far advanced in some cases, but all pointing in a similar direction 2) What you describe seems to be more or less another name for the problem, rather than a description of the cause.

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