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Do you mean to say that there is no other alternative than to buy excessive amounts of things we don't really need? Is there really no other way? What about buying-selling of something else, so that the basic economic model is intact, but not so much junk going around?
Please don't be snarky. I'm trying to understand if there is a better way.
Buying excessive amounts of things we don't need has nothing to do with a consumer driven economy.
And why do you think buying things we don't need is a negative environment or something to be avoided? There is nothing wrong with buying things you don't need. In fact, people get great pleasure out of buying things that are enjoyable.
There is nothing wrong with buying things you don't need. In fact, people get great pleasure out of buying things that are enjoyable.
As I stated before, it is the great driving force for people choosing work over leisure. It is basic economic utility, once you have made enough to cover basic necessity, what other reason is their to work other than to satisfy one's desires? We work harder to earn more money so that we can buy all those Xboxes and designer cloths absent those trinkets why work harder?
No, that's not what I want. But part of my question asked, if more people DO become frugal voluntarily, or adopt a simple living lifestyle voluntarily, what would that do to our economy? Would it result in more production of necessary quality items that such people would want to buy? Or would the economy collapse because not enough buying is going on in general. ?
That's like asking what would happen to all the livestock if all people went vegetarian?
Too hard? Hahaha .... First thing is ... there is no "free market". Markets depend on money ... the availability, interest rates, the value of the money as measured against foreign currencies, etc. And if the money is tightly controlled and manipulated by a single entity (Federal Reserve), then it is impossible for free markets to exist. It's an illusion of a free market, but upon close examination, it's the exact opposite. These people are the antithesis of free market ... they are monopoly men who can't stand competition ... which is the foundation of free market enterprise.
I didn't say that you were complaining about the free-market. I said you were complaining about the free-market allowing wealth to be generated by corporations which they use to buy off elections through private-financing of those elections, or by controlling what is shown in the media(Foxnews, MSNBC, CNN, etc). Because in capitalism, money rules.
It isn't so much that these corporations or rich individuals intend to corrupt the system. Many times they think they are doing good for this country, they are merely contributing to the political ideology that they agree with. Anyone who gives a donation to a politician is doing basically the same thing. It isn't sinister in nature, but it can be dangerous.
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But the corporations and the government officials are simply the body and the tail of this snake (in that order) .... the head is the monetary system that literally controls EVERYTHING .... if you control the money, you control everything. Period. It's the golden rule ... "he who owns the gold, rules".
I don't like the federal reserve either, but unless you want to cut government to practically zero(including the military), it would be practically impossible to balance the budget without that ability to "print more money". What you might look at instead is some of the ideas proposed by Milton Friedman(I am sure you love the guy), who did not believe it wise to abolish the Fed, but to have set rules for how the Fed operates, to prevent exploitation. Such as in the case of "too big to fail" stimulus and the like.
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Before any solution can be considered, you have to understand the problem, then, the answer might make more sense. Public financing of elections? We already do that. Oh, you say we don't? Oh yes we do ... who's money do they use? They don't produce anything themselves. So, where do they get this money if they have no money of their own? They use the money they steal from us, and then promise to give a little bit of it back if we vote for them. Of course, they're lying, because they have no intention of doing what they say they are going to do, because they are paid liars and bribe takers ... they are on the take, and they serve the system that owns them. And because almost every last one of them (with rare exceptions) have their own skeletons in their closets ... if they don't follow the program, and start singing out of key, they wind up in the newspapers and TV embroiled in some scandal, ruined and disgraced, and run out of office.
They serve a system that is bought and paid for by money. The money that buys elections is from private individuals, especially the rich. And now corporations are allowed their "freedom of speech", as if we didn't already know that with our biased media outlets shoving their views down our throats. Everything in this world is about money. Everything that is pushed upon us was created by someone who would benefit from it. That includes the stimulus, that includes social programs, that includes trade agreements, that includes war. Just follow the money.
The people crying foul on any policy, are the ones who don't benefit from that policy. And no one votes themselves out of a job(even if they know it is the right thing to do).
I don't like the idea of publicly funded elections, but I don't like elections being bought and paid for special interests either. So what do you do?
The only solution is not to end the fed(or at least not only to end the fed). The real solution would be to strip them of their power. As long as the power is there, there will be someone wanting to seize it and use it. The real solution would be to absolve the unconstitutional 14th amendment. The real solution would be to bind the hands of government to prevent them from having the power to be corrupted in the first place. The real solution would be to spread the power back out to local governments. Then if you didn't like what your local government was doing, you would A) Have a slightly more proportional amount of control over it, or B) You could move to another city which wasn't (as) corrupt.
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No, that's not at all what I'm proposing ... I'm proposing that "consumption" is a given ... it is inescapable ... we all need to live ... we all need energy, shelter, transportation, food, clothing, and hopefully a little bit of entertainment as well. The problem isn't consumption ... the problem is lack of domestic production (jobs), because if all you have is consumption without the associated production, you're living on credit rather than income. And that's where we are, and have been for quite some time. And it's been continually moving further in that direction for decades. The reason is that moving this production off shore has increased profits for corporations, but has killed domestic production, and forced us to live on credit that increases debt to the bankers, which BTW, also controls those corporations. Right back to square one ... the Bankers! Bankers love debt when it is debt owed to them. And when they can gain this leverage by merely creating money out of thin air, and the only cost to them is paper and ink ... all the better. And when you can convince an entire nation's population to agree to become financial slaves to this banking cartel .. you wind up with exactly what we have today. It's a total fraud. Ask yourself why do we need a group of private bankers to lend us our own money, and charge us interest? It's ridiculous, but that is what is occurring.
You are again complaining about free-market capitalism. Why do you think those companies move their businesses offshore? We still own those companies, and stockholders in this country are getting rich. But what really happens is, the people who actually own these stocks are the rich. The people who worked in the factories before they were offshored are the middle-class and the poor. So the rich become richer and everyone else becomes poorer(and unemployed). And while on a certain level the bankers can be to blame for making the problem worse, the problem you are complaining about is the free-market, which is necessarily exploitative.
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All of what you just proposed are band aids and not cures. The cure is to return to domestic production ... to get rid of these disastrous "free trade" agreements and treaties that have allowed this situation to begin with. All of the things that our society and other societies need has not changed at all ... the only thing that has changed is who produces those things.
What you are proposing is isolationism and/or a massive wall of tariffs to block out foreign competition. Basically you are stating you want to eliminate foreign competition to promote domestic production. Yet, you are an advocate for the free-market?
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Secondly, our standard of living is dropping like a stone for the reasons I have already elucidated. Without income, your standard of living must obviously decline. Employed people enjoy a far better standard than unemployed people. Businesses do much better with income than with increasing debt. It's common sense. When you continue spending as if you were employed even though you aren't (as is the case with the U.S. now) disaster looms.
Our standard of living is only dropping for anyone who isn't rich. And while the rich did take a shock because of the recession, they will be the biggest gainers as the economy comes back(and will continue that way for years and years and years). It isn't that all of our companies are failing, but the companies that either don't offshore or can't offshore are failing. Those companies are still owned by Americans, and the profits are passed along to their shareholders(generally Americans) as dividends or other capital gains. This is sort of the "trickle down" theory at its greatest.
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Are you kidding me? Who is feeding you this BS? China is now the worlds largest polluter, as well as the largest slave labor camp. Substandard construction that wouldn't pass the most corrupt building inspections in the US ... that in the face of a light earth tremor collapses like a house of cards. Beijing is like LA on steroids when it comes to air pollution ... and they are facing such serious water crisises that their agricultural lands are experiencing desertification at rates exceeding any place in the world. There's your communist model, if you want to know the truth.
First, in many ways China is more capitalist than we are. The reason they pollute so much is because they are scrambling for growth at any cost, because they are international traders, and they allow foreign states to exploit them for their resources(both mineral and labor). The Soviet Union only traded with itself, so there was less a need to exploit all of the resources and labor, and more a reason to improve quality and efficiency along the entire communist "bloc".
The Soviet Union's economic growth actually kept pace with western nations from 1920 all the way to the early 70's. After which it stagnated because of corruption, and eventually failed.
Secondly, the apartment buildings that were built in the Soviet Union were of far better quality than almost all of the "stick-frame" apartment buildings built here in America. It always reminds of the difference between those apartments or hotel rooms at resorts compared to the apartments that most people live in. At a resort there might be hundreds of rooms on multiple floors, but each floor is made of concrete, and usually the walls between rooms is also made of concrete. So you normally can't hear your neighbor at all, and you could jump up and down in your 5th story flat, and you wouldn't have to hear that neighbor below you banging on the roof. Try that in the poorly built apartments in America.
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So your solution is high rise concrete structures that concentrate thousands of families within 4 square blocks like housed chickens at a Tyson's processing center? A world in which only the elite leaders get to live by the lake and drive an automobile? The rest of us relegated to transportation by foot, bicycles and buses? Heck, since we don't actually physically make anything, and just process information, we can all do that from our high rise concrete apartment, and don't even have to go out to work anymore. We can even have groceries delivered to our doors .... get all of our entertainment from the big screen TV ... and we can lock ourselves up in 1,000 sq ft cubbyholes instead of "McMansions"?
Who said anything about only elite leaders getting to live by a lake and drive an automobile? It isn't like the poor get to live by lakes right now anyway, and many of the poor can't even afford an automobile(go look at what kind of people ride the bus in most cities).
Secondly, do you know where many of the richest people in the world live? Manhattan. Do you know what kind of housing they live in? They live in high-rise apartment buildings. Go look at "Trump tower".
So why do these extremely rich people live like housed chickens at a Tyson's processing center? Because it is close to their work, and close to all the amenities a man could dream of. Manhattan is like a non-stop carnival, with thousands of restaurants of all types, shopping, and entertainment. You should feel lucky if you can afford to live like a housed chicken in Manhattan. Especially if when your wife became pregnant that the government would move you into a larger apartment in Manhattan, free of charge.
That isn't to say that communist Russia was anything like living in Manhattan, but I definitely get tired of sprawling suburbia, ridiculous traffic, and mass consumption of foreign oil to fuel it all(which causes us other problems).
Communist Russia wanted people to live by each other to reinforce the feeling of a community, which was necessary for the socialist mentality(plus it is far more efficient). I feel like our society is actually pushing people apart rather than bringing them closer together.
But I will agree that communism(or even socialism) can feel like a prison. As the government makes all the decisions for you. In communism, conformity is the rule. Minorities are squashed, and freedom is practically non-existent. To a certain degree, they control where they live, where you work, what you eat.
Of course, to some it provides a level of security that capitalism cannot. It is a guarantee of a job, it makes life a little simpler, less to worry about. And with central planning, cities can do a better job providing services(such as mass transit, electricity, internet, etc). And designing walkable and bikeable cities, with low carbon footprints and green spaces and parks for all of us to enjoy.
I didn't say that you were complaining about the free-market. I said you were complaining about the free-market allowing wealth to be generated by corporations which they use to buy off elections through private-financing of those elections, or by controlling what is shown in the media(Foxnews, MSNBC, CNN, etc). Because in capitalism, money rules.
Since I clearly stated that there is no such thing as a "free market" in operation, I couldn't possibly have been "complaining" about either scenario, and I have no idea how you could miss that.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
It isn't so much that these corporations or rich individuals intend to corrupt the system. Many times they think they are doing good for this country, they are merely contributing to the political ideology that they agree with. Anyone who gives a donation to a politician is doing basically the same thing. It isn't sinister in nature, but it can be dangerous.
No? Just lookin' out for Merika are they? Please.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
I don't like the federal reserve either, but unless you want to cut government to practically zero(including the military), it would be practically impossible to balance the budget without that ability to "print more money". What you might look at instead is some of the ideas proposed by Milton Friedman(I am sure you love the guy), who did not believe it wise to abolish the Fed, but to have set rules for how the Fed operates, to prevent exploitation. Such as in the case of "too big to fail" stimulus and the like.
Obviously, you didn't watch the presentation on the Federal Reserve. And there is so much wrong in this little paragraph, I hardly know what to say.
First, printing more money doesn't balance ANYTHING ... it simply creates more debt .... creating more IMBALANCE. Secondly, why would you need a group of private international gangsters to allow the US Treasury to print more money? What the hell did this country do for 170 years before the Federal Reserve Gangsters came to town? I'll tell you ... they followed the constitution, and didn't unlawfully transfer that authority and obligation to a private, unelected group of crooks.
Friedman was a tool, OK? His clamor about free markets proved faulty again and again .... and precisely because his alleged free markets never existed. (I have a hard time believing that this very intelligent man didn't know this). He had something with his thoughts about monetarism, and he was correct in his criticism of Keynesian economics, but there were a myriad of problems with his theories also.
As for preventing exploitation through rules governing the FED... the very existence of the Federal Reserve is exploitation right out of the gate. If you really understood the system, you could come to no other conclusion. The fact that every dollar created by the FED has debt attached to it ... by definition, you can never eliminate the debt because the dollars you might use to pay the debt has it's own debt attached at creation!! It's like paying off one credit card with another credit card. It is designed indebtedness to the gangsters at the Federal Reserve ... WHY? Who needs them? Why not have the US Treasury (governed by rules monitored by congress and the GAO) create our money as they are required to do by the constitution ... and what ever interest collected rolls right back into the US Treasury account .... meaning we are not in debt to private bankers?
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
Secondly, do you know where many of the richest people in the world live? Manhattan. Do you know what kind of housing they live in? They live in high-rise apartment buildings. Go look at "Trump tower".
So why do these extremely rich people live like housed chickens at a Tyson's processing center? Because it is close to their work, and close to all the amenities a man could dream of. Manhattan is like a non-stop carnival, with thousands of restaurants of all types, shopping, and entertainment. You should feel lucky if you can afford to live like a housed chicken in Manhattan. Especially if when your wife became pregnant that the government would move you into a larger apartment in Manhattan, free of charge.
Sorry Pal ... but the richest people in the world don't live in Manhattan apartments to be close to work .. cuz they don't work. They may keep a Million Dollar crash pad in Manhattan for convenience, and it's a far cry from what I was referring to.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
That isn't to say that communist Russia was anything like living in Manhattan, but I definitely get tired of sprawling suburbia, ridiculous traffic, and mass consumption of foreign oil to fuel it all(which causes us other problems).
Communist Russia wanted people to live by each other to reinforce the feeling of a community, which was necessary for the socialist mentality(plus it is far more efficient). I feel like our society is actually pushing people apart rather than bringing them closer together.
But I will agree that communism(or even socialism) can feel like a prison. As the government makes all the decisions for you. In communism, conformity is the rule. Minorities are squashed, and freedom is practically non-existent. To a certain degree, they control where they live, where you work, what you eat.
Of course, to some it provides a level of security that capitalism cannot. It is a guarantee of a job, it makes life a little simpler, less to worry about. And with central planning, cities can do a better job providing services(such as mass transit, electricity, internet, etc). And designing walkable and bikeable cities, with low carbon footprints and green spaces and parks for all of us to enjoy.
Sounds like to me that you're one of the communists who feel life is just much easier if you have someone tell you what to do, and how to live. You should be getting more and more comfortable living in the modern day USA.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
8,852 posts, read 10,454,406 times
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Um, to get back to the OP, maybe we could actually look at some alternatives, besides just arguing about the system(s) we have.
So at the risk of incurring the knee-jerk wrath & paranoia of the ideologues among us, might I suggest looking at the Scandinavian countries for ideas. For starters, they're consistently at the top of most lists ranking things like the healthiest, happiest, safest and sanest places in the world (which BTW, the U.S. ain't).
They also have a lot more leisure time than we do, which contributes towards a culture which seeks "other" satisfactions, drives and values besides simply making money and spending it on more "stuff". Which if you're going to replace a consumer-driven culture, seems like a pretty logical place to begin.
Since I clearly stated that there is no such thing as a "free market" in operation, I couldn't possibly have been "complaining" about either scenario, and I have no idea how you could miss that.
Look, what you were complaining about is private individuals taking control of government and using it to their advantage by passing legislation that benefits them. How does that happen? Well, how does it happen? Private individuals don't create laws or government programs, politicians do. But private individuals elect politicians. And how do those politicians get elected? They obviously run on a platform, promising certain things to certain people so they will vote for them. But if it was that simple, there wouldn't be a problem.
The reality is, in order to win you need advertisements, lots and lots of advertisements, the more the better. Good ads that run during prime-time so the most voters see them. These ads need to paint your opponent in a very negative light, doesn't even matter if they are really all that true at all(crazy distortions of the truth are just fine). Then you need posters, you need signs, you need people out talking to people, representing you. All of these things cost money, lots and lots of money. And the more the better. And it will be nearly impossible for you to win without them. So you could almost make the case that "money buys elections", or at least it will "affect the outcome by a pretty large margin".
On top of that, where do people find out about the candidates that are running? Well, mostly from TV, radio, newspapers, etc. We will just call all of these "the media". And who owns the media? Well private individuals own most of the media(minus things like NPR, but even then it is actually ran by real people who can be quite biased). So private individuals are in control of the news that you see, they control how it is presented, and they often-times present it in a very biased way(Foxnews/msnbc). And all media outlets need money and advertisers, so they tend to pander to their audience(and their advertisers).
And so now that we know that wealthy private individuals have a disproportionate amount of power over our political system. Lets look at why this is a problem.
Why was our constitution created? What is the purpose of a constitution? What are the enumerated powers of Congress? Does the constitution give Congress unlimited powers, or was its intent actually to limit the powers of Congress? Do you think many of the federal laws that are already in place(social security, medicare, seatbelt laws, etc) are constitutional? Do you think the founding fathers who created the constitution would think all these federal laws are constitutional? So if they are not constitutional, then why do they exist?
Well that is because of the liberal interpretation of the constitution through something called the "living document" theory. Which states that we should not look at the words through the intent of the founding fathers, but rather interpret the words of constitution as we see them today(we being, the current supreme court justice, not you). What this has done is give Congress practically unlimited powers. As they see things like the commerce clause and use it to justify any imposition of government, especially in regards to discussions of the "general welfare". Which means something entirely different today than it did in 1789.
So now that we know that the constitution has practically been shredded by the current generation, and that money buys elections. Then we know that money has almost complete control over our government. And the people with all the money(businessman) want to use government as a tool to provide their businesses with special benefits(such as government contracts or regulation that helps to limit their competition). And since there is no principled limit to government, they can get what they want most of the time if they have more money than their opposition.
Therefore what you are really complaining about, is private individuals who have used the market(while not free, our market is mostly free) to become rich, to buy elections, and then to use the bought politicians to pass favorable legislation to protect their own business interests. If the market had been closed, then the media would be controlled by the state, and elections would have been publicly funded, thereby eliminating control of government from wealthy private individuals(of course, corruption would still exist).
So in a sense, you are complaining about capitalism in a democracy. Because when you have privately funded elections and privately owned media, you will always end up with money corrupting the system. Being a democracy really means nothing, it just gives people the illusion that they have freedom of choice.
Of course there are a few people who are knowledgeable enough to sort of see through the facade of this system, but they aren't common. It takes a very large amount of time and energy to learn and keep up with the things that are really going on in this country, and the majority of Americans just can't be bothered with it. So this system is basically unfixable, and it doesn't do much good for you to complain about it, because we would need to do things like, putting a limit on congressional power(back to the original intent of the constitution) and to have publicly funded elections. And I know you don't want anything to do with that.
If we could only bind the hands of government so that even if special interests do buy elections, they still won't have any power(or very little power). Thomas Jefferson knew that would be a problem, and the founding fathers knew this also. That's why the founding fathers made sure the constitution would limit the power of the federal government to the things absolutely necessary, to try to prevent corruption. And the individual states were handed almost all of the power, with each state acting as a balance to every other state.
What you are complaining about is really a by-product of a system that you endorse. So I have no sympathies for you.
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Obviously, you didn't watch the presentation on the Federal Reserve. And there is so much wrong in this little paragraph, I hardly know what to say.
First, printing more money doesn't balance ANYTHING ... it simply creates more debt .... creating more IMBALANCE. Secondly, why would you need a group of private international gangsters to allow the US Treasury to print more money? What the hell did this country do for 170 years before the Federal Reserve Gangsters came to town? I'll tell you ... they followed the constitution, and didn't unlawfully transfer that authority and obligation to a private, unelected group of crooks.
First, I know practically everything there is to know about how the federal reserve operates. Secondly, I understand that the federal reserve creates debt. But the intended goal of the federal reserve was for full employment and to help stabilize the economy.
I know that you think that creating debt is automatically bad thing. But isn't something that hurts right away, youwon't necessarily feel the effects of that debt until much later. Look at your finances for a second, if you are broke then you will stop spending money. But what if when you were broke you could just borrow money, then for a while you wouldn't really be broke at all, and you would continue to spend, up until the point when you finally ran out of money again, but then if you could just borrow more money to pay down the debt you already borrowed money on, then you could just keep spending more and more money. This could continue until people stopped loaning you any more money. So we can say that borrowing money might give the short-term appearance that an economy is healthy. Especially if borrowing the money comes in something like a 30-year bond(so the government gets to hold onto that money for a very long time).
Eventually the government has to pay back the money it has borrowed, but what does it pay those bills with? By printing more money of course. But keep in mind, the FED printing money doesn't necessarily equate to inflation. Inflation can only occur when the money supply increases faster than the demand for goods and services, so as long as the economy is growing then money can be continually added to the money supply to match, and it won't hurt anyone. And since our dollar has no real value, but only value based on the health of our economy, then the Federal reserve and the process of printing money isn't necessarily a bad thing.
That is unless the Federal reserve is being corrupted by the international bankers, who exploit its ability to set interest rates and lending rules to try to bankrupt their competition, or to create an artificial bubble that only they know is forming which when pops, will put their competition out of business, as they convince Congress to give them free money(bailouts) because they are "too big to fail". And if there is an incompetent federal reserve chairman who puts economic growth over economic stability, and he holds interest rates at near zero for too long a period of time. Which allows for easy credit at low-interest rates, which begins to create a bubble(since rates are well-below market rates), and then as interest rates creep up(which causes variable-rate mortgage holders to no longer be able to pay their payments) the bubble formed from artificially low interest rates will pop, and we will all be screwed, except the bankers, who use the opportunity to buy up more assets at blowout prices.
As for the whether the Federal Reserve is necessary, the government takes in a certain amount of money from taxes collected. Taxes are almost always a percentage of total economic activity(GDP). When the GDP falls then the amount of money collected through taxes falls. If the federal government did not have the federal reserve, then it would have to basically balance its budget almost every year. In that case, in a down year it would have to either cut government services, cut pay for government employees, or raise taxes. Then in a good year they would do the opposite. All of that creates instability(and is generally politically impossible). It is much simpler to pay government employees from the fake money introduced through the federal reserve. Which is much more tolerant to fluctuations in economic activity(with the fallback being inflation, which is the equivalent of a hidden tax on everyone).
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Friedman was a tool, OK? His clamor about free markets proved faulty again and again .... and precisely because his alleged free markets never existed. (I have a hard time believing that this very intelligent man didn't know this). He had something with his thoughts about monetarism, and he was correct in his criticism of Keynesian economics, but there were a myriad of problems with his theories also.
What exactly about free-markets was Milton Friedman wrong about? Sure the United States has never had absolutely free markets, but they were a lot more free in the early 1800's than they are today. I would be interested in finding out which theory he was wrong about?
People might say(like Alan Greenspan) that he was disappointed that the mortgage companies didn't naturally protect themselves, which was his argument for deregulation. But the reality was, the real estate bust was the product of government intervention in the market, not (just) because the companies were blinded by greed.
But the simple truth is, it would be nearly impossible to run a socialist government on a gold standard.
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Sorry Pal ... but the richest people in the world don't live in Manhattan apartments to be close to work .. cuz they don't work. They may keep a Million Dollar crash pad in Manhattan for convenience, and it's a far cry from what I was referring to.
Well the richest people in the world DO work. Warren Buffet is the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, but of course he lives in Omaha Nebraska. Bill Gates I think stepped down as head of Microsoft, but he also worked. Donald Trump works, that Carlos Slim guy in Mexico works. Jon Stewart works. Oprah Winfrey works. Etc, etc.
People tend to live in the nicest area they can afford, within reasonable distance of places they need to go. People who work in New York City live in Manhattan. People living in Manhattan have the highest average income of anywhere in the country. There are people from all over the world that own flats in Manhattan. Most people who live in NYC would like to live in Manhattan(if it wasn't so expensive).
Seriously, can you imagine being on like the 20th floor, overlooking central park, with floor to ceiling windows. Then when you were hungry, you could just take the elevator to the lobby, and there was a nice Italian restaurant, then next to that is a coffee shop. And you wouldn't need a car to drive anywhere or fight traffic. And then when you needed entertainment, you had everything from bars, to movie theaters, to operas, to plays, or to just walk around in central park to see what is going on there.
So what if you are "cramped up" in 500-600 sqft of space(you live alone). How much space do you need?
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Sounds like to me that you're one of the communists who feel life is just much easier if you have someone tell you what to do, and how to live. You should be getting more and more comfortable living in the modern day USA.
Life tends to be a lot simpler when you don't have to make all your decisions for yourself. Think how simple life was when you were a kid, and your momma made all the decisions for you. She would buy the food you ate(aww meatloaf again?!). She bought your clothes, she chose where you lived, she bought the car she drove you around in, she made the decisions. Sure you could make requests, but it didn't mean you would get what you wanted. And there were times that you resented her "overbearing" ways, and you couldn't wait till you were out on your own so you could start making your own decisions. And maybe you are much happier now, living on your own, not under her rules. But is life actually simpler now than it was back then?
Think about it really, why did you move out of your moms house anyway? What was so bad about living there? Cause she didn't let you party all the time, and you didn't want your girlfriend to think you were a loser? Mom thought your girlfriend was a ****, and wasn't good enough for you? Tired of the meatloaf? So you moved on to Ramen noodles, TV dinners, and frozen pizza's?
There is nothing wrong with living in a large apartment complex. I mean, if you were 10-years old again, wouldn't you want to live somewhere where you could have lots of friends that lived very close to you? With a public park nearby, with basketball courts and tennis courts? Maybe a soccer field and a pond? And you could just walk there, or ride your bike there. You wouldn't have to beg your mother to give you a ride(and her be too busy to take you).
Maybe you wanna go to the store to get some bubble-gum, or you want to go watch a movie. How are you going to get there?
The convenience of having dense housing cannot be overlooked. Most of why Americans seem to dislike apartments is just a cultural thing. You are expected to want certain things, and expected to have certain things. And many associate apartments as being for poor people, or laden with crime(which is largely true in America, but not as true elsewhere)
Um, to get back to the OP, maybe we could actually look at some alternatives, besides just arguing about the system(s) we have.
So at the risk of incurring the knee-jerk wrath & paranoia of the ideologues among us, might I suggest looking at the Scandinavian countries for ideas. For starters, they're consistently at the top of most lists ranking things like the healthiest, happiest, safest and sanest places in the world (which BTW, the U.S. ain't).
They also have a lot more leisure time than we do, which contributes towards a culture which seeks "other" satisfactions, drives and values besides simply making money and spending it on more "stuff". Which if you're going to replace a consumer-driven culture, seems like a pretty logical place to begin.
To simplify: You're trying to compare apples to fish. While it's worth looking at anything for ideas, never forget that these are two entirely different nations.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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And how do their ideas not apply? Sure, the countries are different, but the basic human drives and values aren't. Although I will admit that even those might be different for some "ideologues" over here.
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