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Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

> The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?

The real question is should we make America more collectivist. Without a convincing answer you'll never get anywhere.

In the context of COVID it’s pretty clear collectivist countries had citizens more likely to follow a lockdown and therefore have a better response to Covid.

Just look at the countries that did best, it’s pretty clear.

That being said I wouldn’t say collectivism is superior in general, but for Covid it was helpful

We're already quite collectivist. It's just that some of us are collecting more than others. The "CARES act" gave billionaires more than it gave the 99%. [0][1][2] This was version 2 of the egregious "bailouts" concocted in 2008-9, which were already giant transfers of wealth to the already rich. Every complication in these 10,000-page monstrosities is another place for lobbyists to hide loot for their employers. This is collectivism for the rich.

A change to the sort of collectivism we're taught to fear would be a vast improvement. From the beginning of the pandemic, it was obvious that the just and effective way to "lockdown" would be to pay everyone to stay home. Give everyone who stays home money, for every week they stay home. That would have been more fair and less distorting to the economy. Unfortunately there are no lobbyists representing "everyone".

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-cares-act-sent-you-a-...

[1] https://time.com/5845116/coronavirus-bailout-rich-richer/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/14/coronavir...

Now here's an exercise to the reader:

Find a more collectivist country that has a positive brain drain (meaning it attracts talent) from the US.

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