While that is technically true, it doesn't create the type of diversity you can really tap into since some folks are too poor to realistically participate in society, and a lot of society is too segregated for different viewpoints to be in the same place.
Just wow... I guess you would have different sentiment if you would be on the poor side of the inequality scale. Sentiment about poverty being good because it gives 'vastly different life experiences'?
One of the things we can be actually proud here in Europe (mainly western part though), a rather strong middle class and tons of help to the poor (maybe too much according to some).
I know its nice to find cheap poor folks desperate to work for peanuts, and you can pat yourself in the back how the environment gives everybody a chance to thrive, but that's not an American reality, just a self-perpetuating pipe dream.
US is great for the ultra-rich, good for the rich, not-so-good for middle class and outright shit for the poor. But good luck trying to get this accepted in the US where folks are spoon-fed from the childhood how US is best in everything, rather than some healthy amount of critical thinking.
Generally everybody, but in my humble experience Americans (and French) especially, profit greatly when (have been) living abroad for some time. Then we can have actual conversations what is great here and there and what outright sucks.
The claim that the US is an experiment has a long precedent.
>No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth.
While your response is entirely predictable, it’s obvious why such a reaction misses the point because the scope is much wider than one issue.
Yes, it was said during a time when slavery was the norm. But the “experiment” also included allowing systems that challenged that notion rather than maintaining the status quo. That’s the point.
I don't think this really addresses the core issue, being that experimentation is used as an excuse to not apply the results of the experiments after they've been performed.
I don't think the idea is that experimentation is de facto bad. It's the use of experimentation as a tool to avoid implementation following experimentation that's being decried.
I think you are correct, but also think that’s why Jefferson deliberately rooted the virtue of experimentation in our ability to use reason to interpret the results.
If someone is acting in bad faith, the fault is not in the experimental process but rather their faculty in interpreting the results. We wouldn’t throw out experimentation in science just because a researcher was biased in their result. The OP seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Too right. What’s the alternative? Living in a stagnant dictatorship governed by caprice and bllsht? Making sure your citizens remain ignorant and downtrodden? Jefferson is undeniably problematic by our standards and judged by the standards of his time, but he had a way with words (and was pretty handy at some other stuff too!). He tried to do some good in the world from his position of privilege, through the lens of the world as he saw it… There are many ideas and actions of his that I disagree strongly with, but I can allow that he got some stuff very right and expressed his thoughts and ideas extremely eloquently.
You are correct, however my point was that when we see bad faith acting people will continue to use the same descriptive language of it being an "experiment" when there are active, known harms
