While discussing government control, perhaps an interesting article to read and ponder upon – in China, land of the unmotivated laborer lacking our ingrained drive for perfection, police is now using prototypes of 360 cameras to search for suspects, and repeat jaywalkers are named and shamed on city screens, watched as they are by a network of cameras.
Dystopian as it may sound, happening here and now in China. What’s more worrying is that all this software has been programmed by a bunch of incompetent Chinese with nary a chance to reach western industrial excellence – which is good, imagine for a second what would happen if they were as gifted as the rest of us good white folk.
My homebuilt aircraft is of American origin and I have attended several fly-ins in the USA which gave me the privilege of interacting with people I might not normally meet socially or professionally.
One insight into differences between say France and the USA is provided by aircraft modifications. The French regulations are based on the US ones requiring a flight test for any change in aircraft flight characteristics. I recently changed my propeller and could compare my experience to that of members in the USA who had done exactly the same swap.
For them it was a straightforward matter of contacting their FSDO, agreeing to a flight test, carrying it out and submitting the results to the FAA. The exact nature of the flight test seemed to vary from region to region, some requiring 5 hours flight others requiring 10 take-offs and landings.
I submitted my request at the beginning of May and got a flight test program finalized by the end of the month, but I need a permit to carry it out. I have been waiting nearly a month simply for permission from the DGAC to carry out what was agreed.
It is very frustrating and things have definitely got worse since I first registered my amateur-built nearly 20 years ago.
Simon
A big part of the problem is that while in the USA you can do “FSDO shopping” and thus avoid the “difficult” inspectors, here in Europe you are stuck – with either your national CAA or EASA itself. If somebody says NO then that is the end of that road. And these two have just as many difficult inspectors in them as the US FSDOs… You cannot avoid a certain % of these types because the job attracts a particular character profile, so the way to deal with it is to have a choice, which in Europe you don’t have. Hence the relative ease of doing field approval mods (etc) in the USA.
I am not dealing with a dickhead as the person responsible for homebuilts at the DGAC is a recognized sportsman and spends most of his time training and competing. Authorizations at a national level are controlled by this single person who is clearly not doing his job, and is preventing others from doing their jobs properly. In this case, it is the local inspector with whom I have direct contact. Whether I fly or not is unimportant to the overall economy, but it irks me that the DGAC makes regulations while impeding my attempts to comply with them. Furthermore as a taxpayer I do not see why I should sponsor sportsmen.
Simon
LeSving wrote:
It’s a measure of the general happiness the average population in a country “feels” with respect to some quantifiable variables
It´s a rather interesting statistic I´d say. But you are right to put the term “happiness” into quotation marks, as it only applies in a derived fashion. It does not show values of how many of the people in a country said they are happy if asked, but rather what ranking it has got in terms of factors which ought to make people happy. The psychology of happiness is again something different.
Economical concerns are obviously a huge factor. Clearly, the freedom to make life choices has a lot to do with the per capita income as well as how that income is distributed. Countries with existing poverty will naturally have less freedom to make choices as they often are a direct result of being able to afford them. Consequently, and seeing some of the factors in the US such as the very expensive education, the ranking is not astonishing. Whether that means the “American Dream” is fake, is another story.
Personally I think the term American Dream is a very powerful myth which however is one of the pillars of American society. In the true sense, there are few dishwasher to millionaire stories per capita, but that does not change the fact that the American Dream as a life goal itself is a huge motivator for many people to aspire to higher things than their social standing might allow them. That makes the pursuit of happiness in America a rather different thing than elsewhere.
I´d say on the other end of the scale would be societies which live in castes, such as India, where you are born in a certain economical class and usually stay there. Somewhere in between is Europe. Actually in Europe, the fact that education is much more affordable and attainable then in the US for many people causes many European countries to rise above the US in terms of freedom of life choices.
Cobalt wrote:
Anyone who thinks Switzerland is a place full of happy people hasn’t lived there
Being Swiss I´d say I would not see this result as a measure of degree of actual happiness but rather as a consequence of the conditions in which people live. Switzerland does have a high degree of freedom for the fact that education is accessible to just about everyone who takes school seriously in the first several grades, right up to University. Obviously this means, your freedom to choose a career and the way you follow in life is relatively high. For the other factors, I´d say that most Swiss citizens would probably describe themselfs as content rather than outright happy, even though a large majority would probably ask yes to the question if they are happy. Even though a lot don´t appear so at first sight and also complain a lot.
The one factor which will keep Switzerland rather high up in such rankings is the fact that it is a direct democracy. The Swiss know darn sure that the government is not able to do anything important without asking for a referendum. Likewise, if there are enough people concerned about an issue, they have the power to launch an initiative to change the consitution. This gives the people the power over the legislative and executive in a way which does not exist in many other places and has also guaranteed that Switzerland kept the values which got it to the place it is in the world against many political hotshots who tried to change us to something more like European Social states. Yet, social security is rather high in comparison, which also helps people to be content and secure in their skin.
To expats from other countries, Switzerland can be a very hard place to live in, but it has become better. If I compare what it was when I as a kid when even the Southern Swiss citizens were looked at with anguish because they speak italian, today the fact that it is a rather mixed society is mostly accepted. This does not prevent us from quite a lot of racism going on in the work place and elsewhere but it is probably better than in other places. There are also hardly any open paralel societies developing here, unlike in some European countries where whole cities or parts of large cities are fixed in the hands of one ethnical or religious group. Of course, everything is also smaller here.
Of course there has been political discord and some protest voting going on here as well, but in general, the direct democracy has prevented Switzerland from a lot of bad choices that other countries have had made to them by their respective governments. That is not for the lack of wanting of our politicians, but they get bad legislation thrown back at them rather than just being able to vote for it.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Actually in Europe, the fact that education is much more affordable and attainable then in the US for many people causes many European countries to rise above the US in terms of freedom of life choices.
@Mooney_Driver, advanced education in the US is achieved by a greater percentage of the population than in most other countries., and more so than any European country. I think the issue in Europe is that advanced education may be “free” but that restricts availability to the point where many Europeans go elsewhere to gain their advanced education, for instance to the US where educating foreigners is big business and helps pay the education bills for Americans… helping defray costs without domestic taxation. I finished school in the US debt free and my family paid very little.
Having said that, education is a tool, not an end in itself. My measure of opportunity is whether I can live a pleasant life while accumulating personal wealth from zero wealth, thereby gaining independent control over my life through work and investment of discretionary wages… without regard to politics, government policy or group think generally. This is relatively true in the US, in my experience, high discretionary income boosted by relatively high purchasing power for every dollar earned. Aviation as a hobby is just one example, much discussed on this site, and every penny saved can be invested.
Those factors and data in my view go some way towards explaining the worldwide immigration data particularly when you consider the substantial barriers to US immigration.
Interesting figures Silvaire.
Re immigration data, well, the US remains a life dream for many and I’d say it is to a large extent due to an expectancy of America being a land of opportunity where as many regard other places as less so. This may well be myth based but for many countries it is still very true. While in many countries opportunities really are massively limited, there are others where the “greener grass on the other side of the fence” effect has a lot to do with why people emigrate.
Yes, education is a tool, what you make out of it is up to you, clearly. Many educated people fail in life because of character faults or not enough endurance to persist, as well as other factors such as where they live and who they need to convince to get a job.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The psychology of happiness is again something different.
Of course. I believe you forge your own happiness. But, culture and all other external factors decides how hard that is in real life. If you are born a slave, and always will be a slave, then you will have a harder time creating a happy life for yourself than if you are born free and have all the opportunities laid out in front of you. Still, I’m sure there were lots of happy slaves and lots of miserable free people.
The natural way of living for a human being is in a small group of people strafing the land, hunting, fishing, gathering. That is also the way of life that makes us most happy IMO. But it’s a very hard life with a very low standard of living, and only the fittest survives. You are completely free however, living as a piece of nature itself. The next step is to have a small farm, being mostly self sufficient. A substantial increase in standard of living, without loosing all that much freedom. For further increase in standard of living, a society with industry and all the things that follows is needed (school, education, work, hospitals). There is not much freedom left in a modern society. We are so restricted by “cultural demands” and artificial “duties” to make the society going, that we have to make up reasons for the very meaning of living. Just being alive isn’t enough, it’s too easy, simply because we are enslaved by the society. So happiness and meaning of life takes other forms and shapes, like interesting work, time for cool hobbies (flying 
) , local democracy, the freedom to make your own choices for all those things. In short, you have to be able to have the freedom and resources to create a meaningful life on your own, whatever that may be. For surprisingly many this simply means going back to the basics (fishing, hunting, gathering in a small group), if it only is for a week or two each year. Without that freedom and the needed resources, you are nothing but a slave of society.
Good post LeSving. Agree fully.
