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Is there an idea (law, custom, practice) in another country that you wish yours would adopt?

There are so many....

Germany has a smart law that scales traffic offence tickets to the wealth of the driver receiving them. So a ticket costs the same percentage of the violators wealth in each case.
In America all tickets are the same. Germany does that better than we do.

Germany is also developing non fossil energy sources at a furious rate and has become perhaps the world's leader in clean energy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany Boy I wish we we're doing this...

France has a safe, clean, efficient nuclear power system based on breeder reactor technology, recycled nuclear waste, fixed plant designs, rigid safety standards, intolerance of graft and social responsibility. Damn we need that here...

Canada has stopped putting people in prison for marijuana. Le Sigh....

Many civilized nations have ceased treating drug addiction as a crime and as a health issue. America funnels drug addicts into for profit prisons.

Guaranteed paid vacations, maternity leave, healthcare, there are a lot of ideas I wish america would borrow. What if anything would you want your country to borrow from. Other nations?

Germany and renewable energy are opposite. They closed clean nuclear power plants to open coal power plants, to protect the environnement.
That is the most stupid move I have ever seen in my life. They are poisonning their country and theirs neighbourhood.

Hmm what I would like France to get from other countries ?
The right to bear weapons (2nd amemdment). I mean, seriously, if I beat a buggler in my house he may (and will) file a claim... we need the right to defend ourselves.
Elected people to behave correctly like in Scandinavia. Here in France you can steal public money, and have 20% of the votes.
People just don't care.
Oh and, more green space (greeneries) and streetcare/trolley ! I don't know for the North but the South really need those!
And eventually people to get more disciplined, like japanese. French are monkeys, I saw them fight for a sandwich at an Army show / fair. Not young people mind you, good old honourable people. Disgusting.

Public transportation that isn't late all the time. Go to Japan to learn how to do it.

Scottish take on r*pe allegations (apologies for the spelling. Work filter, not trying to look edgy).

Onus is on the accused to show the alleged victim gave active consent.

If the alleged victim was drunk/stoned/unconscious etc, considered incapable of giving consent - much the same legal thinking as people under the age of consent.

Australia has Proportional Representation voting and it's a legal requirement to vote. I'd like that here in the UK.

So many things but talking about them would probably lead to an inevitable violation of the US politics ban.

So I'll say why the feth can't we have fewer SUVs America? The rest of the world doesn't seem to buy oversized cars they don't need. I'm not even talking about the environment or road conditions here. I'm talking about parking. You live in DC damnit why the hell does every soccer mom need an SUV? You know you're not going camping anytime soon. Stop taking up all the parking these spaces are narrow enough as it is I can barely get out of my Fiesta XD Don't even get me started on those monster trucks. Not actual monster trucks just the really big trucks that need like two whole spaces to fit into. There isn't a farm for fifty miles Tom why the feth is that thing adjacent to the Sidewalk?!

There are countless things that work better abroad than here in Italy.

I'd just go with one: I wish we had the same US or Australia policy about illegal immigration. We not only allow everyone in, but litterally send our navy and allied countries' ships to grab illegals a few km away from african shores.

Luckily things are changing (but for how long?) and even Bruxelles recognized the madness about this matter. But we should still do a lot about it.

I'd also like a different voting system that awards the party (or coalition) that gets the highest amount of votes. Here in Italy we have three major sides and without the 40% they cannot win, but that percentage is basically impossible to reach with three parties involved.

Civilised working hours.

Luckily I myself moved away from that something like 3 jobs ago, but in this day and age many people end their workday past 7pm because you need to squeeze a 2h lunch break. End the presentialist BS while we are at it. Actually substitute 3/4 of the whole Spanish business management and get them the body snatchers treatment for something else. Not particularly picky, anything will be an improvement.

 LordofHats wrote:
So many things but talking about them would probably lead to an inevitable violation of the US politics ban.

From my point of view, it's basically the anti-US politics thread so much that you're inadvertently talking about US politics by virtue of talking about non-US policies.

So I'll say why the feth can't we have fewer SUVs America? The rest of the world doesn't seem to buy oversized cars they don't need. I'm not even talking about the environment or road conditions here. I'm talking about parking. You live in DC damnit why the hell does every soccer mom need an SUV? You know you're not going camping anytime soon. Stop taking up all the parking these spaces are narrow enough as it is I can barely get out of my Fiesta XD Don't even get me started on those monster trucks. Not actual monster trucks just the really big trucks that need like two whole spaces to fit into. There isn't a farm for fifty miles Tom why the feth is that thing adjacent to the Sidewalk?!

Looking at the average person in the area I live in, I'm guessing the use case is in transporting the farm animals they call themselves and their family. I'm not going to claim the average weight is well over 300 lbs, but I wouldn't be surprised. I dunno. they're annoying, dangerous, impossible to see around, and impossible to park next to, but at this point, I'd just settle for them actually using the third of the road on THEIR side, rather than driving down the god damned middle of the road.

And they're the limp-wristed version of the SUV anyway. A lot of them don't even have 4WD, which would make it functionally worthless for anything I would want something that large for. A few years ago, I had to drive to work during a heavy snowstorm here. The running joke is that if there's a few raindrops, you can expect SOMEONE in the city somewhere to have flipped their car. It's a joke, but it's more real than you'd hope. Anyway, I drove to work, and up a hill maybe a mile from the office, there was a suv that spun sideways in the middle of my half of the four lanes. They were frantically going back and forth trying to get the thing to move, but were utterly stuck. I got out and helped them push, and was surprised to see the damn thing was not only 2WD, but it was REAR wheel drive. I got them back down the hill and out of my way and told them that they weren't going to get up that hill, and that they should go a few blocks either way and try to get around it, and then I took my Sebring up the hill with zero issues whatsoever.

I wasn't 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure I saw them in the rearview mirror trying to go up the hill again as I got out of sight.

 godardc wrote:

Elected people to behave correctly like in Scandinavia. Here in France you can steal public money, and have 20% of the votes.
People just don't care.
Oh and, more green space (greeneries) and streetcare/trolley ! I don't know for the North but the South really need those!
And eventually people to get more disciplined, like japanese. French are monkeys, I saw them fight for a sandwich at an Army show / fair. Not young people mind you, good old honourable people. Disgusting.

It will even get you into the second round for presidential elections.

Also, if "monkeys" fighting over a sandwhich represent "good old honorable people", I can't imagine what young people have done to serve the "mind you"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
So many things but talking about them would probably lead to an inevitable violation of the US politics ban.

So I'll say why the feth can't we have fewer SUVs America? The rest of the world doesn't seem to buy oversized cars they don't need. I'm not even talking about the environment or road conditions here. I'm talking about parking. You live in DC damnit why the hell does every soccer mom need an SUV? You know you're not going camping anytime soon. Stop taking up all the parking these spaces are narrow enough as it is I can barely get out of my Fiesta XD Don't even get me started on those monster trucks. Not actual monster trucks just the really big trucks that need like two whole spaces to fit into. There isn't a farm for fifty miles Tom why the feth is that thing adjacent to the Sidewalk?!

Isn't complaining about big cars in the US basically a hate crime, very un-American. Or perhaps they need it to... ahum... compensate


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Public transportation that isn't late all the time. Go to Japan to learn how to do it.

This is a good one, 10-20% of the time I got to work I either have to deal with cancellations or delays, on a 20 min journey!

I thought it would be nice to copy the pre-made American private homes. This would reduce the cost of building houses, make it more beautiful and better designed streets, save people time and reduce hackwork.

I mean, not a specific design of the house but in general the idea of pre-built standard houses.

 daedalus wrote:
... I'm not going to claim the average weight is well over 300 lbs...

Did you just quote NOFX?

I'd like Canada to adopt Australia's compulsory voting system, and Spain's opt-out organ donor, and Norway's metal scene.

I'm glad someone noticed.

 Freakazoitt wrote:
I thought it would be nice to copy the pre-made American private homes. This would reduce the cost of building houses, make it more beautiful and better designed streets, save people time and reduce hackwork.

Spoiler:

I mean, not a specific design of the house but in general the idea of pre-built standard houses.

It has its nice points, you wouldn't believe the speed with which American neighborhoods can be built, but combined with American cultural norms it does result in suburban sprawl and the absurdity that is the front lawn. I can't stand massive neighborhoods where the houses and the streets look all the same.
I like the German Parliamentary system, maybe not the system itself but how the parties treat fringe groups as actual fringe groups and try to govern from the center. Although the taking months to form a cabinet thing. I'm not sure how to feel, if the deliberateness is good or bad.

Russian arms design. There's some things the US could borrow like the cost-effective design of the Pantsir-S1 SAM and the precursor round in the RPG-30/32.

When I was down in South Africa a few years back, I noticed every house in a poor neighborhood had a solar panel. There was some sort of gov't subsidy for installing the panels and the people could sell excess power back to the utility. It's a shame the ANC is so inept.

1. Canadian or Swiss medical system.
2. German vocational education.
3. Britain's Haggis Launcher Point Defense air defense system.
4. Brazil's Carnival.

I'd love to see Russia copy from the Netherlands an actual functional democracy that functions not just in theory but also in practice, without being ruled from the shadows by the military, secret police and organised crime syndicates.
Apart from political systems I'd like to see Russia copy some Dutch Calvinist cultural attitudes, specifically their modesty, diligence and egalitarianism.
Additionally the fondness for bicycles. I love bicycles and think there is no greater possible way of transportation within a city.
What I'd like to see the Netherlands copy from Russia are also some cultural attitudes, specifically a more collectivist rather than individualist mindset, patriotism and love of tradition, and a more pro-active attitude in the world.
Additionally, Russian food. Dutch food is gross.
Basically, I want the Russians to be a bit more like the Dutch and the Dutch to be a bit more like the Russians

Finally, I'd like to see both the Netherlands and Russia adopt Switzerland's form of direct democracy. Because indirect democracy often isn't that democratic at all. There needs to be a way for the people to intervene directly if the government goes against the will of the people on an issue.

 Frazzled wrote:
1. Canadian or Swiss medical system.
2. German vocational education.
3. Britain's Haggis Launcher Point Defense air defense system.
4. Brazil's Carnival.

Yep all of this.

The U.S. needs more ruins of ancient civilizations like Turkey, Greece, Rome, etc. I guess we have some cool stuff like mounds and pueblos, but we need more!

The guy who built Carhenge had the right idea!

In general I would like the EU's consumer protection laws in the US. The stuff companies can do to customers here in the states in ludicrous.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

What I'd like to see the Netherlands copy from Russia are also some cultural attitudes, specifically a more collectivist rather than individualist mindset, patriotism and love of tradition, and a more pro-active attitude in the world.
Additionally, Russian food. Dutch food is gross.
Basically, I want the Russians to be a bit more like the Dutch and the Dutch to be a bit more like the Russians

Finally, I'd like to see both the Netherlands and Russia adopt Switzerland's form of direct democracy. Because indirect democracy often isn't that democratic at all. There needs to be a way for the people to intervene directly if the government goes against the will of the people on an issue.

Its going to be a cold day in hell before people stop being selfish in the Netherlands. Also the Netherlands is pretty pro-active, there is a reason foreign affairs refers to the NL as the smallest of the big countries. We're just pro-active in different ways, but for our small size we have a bit of a disproportionate influence/effect.

Bitterballen are all the food you need in the NL, the rest is like eating garden clippings.

Also when has the government went against the will of the people? Also accounting for the fact that the electorate doesn't always have the best idea of what's going on. Knowing the relative ignorance of friends and family I'd not be to comfortable with them being able to directly influence national politics based on what they read on FB the past week. How can we have a "will of the people" when 95% only has the most basic (if even) grasp of the issue?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
In general I would like the EU's consumer protection laws in the US. The stuff companies can do to customers here in the states in ludicrous.

The EU also has stricter privacy laws on the books than the US. I'm surprised the US doesn't copy some as they seem very basic to protect the individual.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

What I'd like to see the Netherlands copy from Russia are also some cultural attitudes, specifically a more collectivist rather than individualist mindset, patriotism and love of tradition, and a more pro-active attitude in the world.
Additionally, Russian food. Dutch food is gross.
Basically, I want the Russians to be a bit more like the Dutch and the Dutch to be a bit more like the Russians

Finally, I'd like to see both the Netherlands and Russia adopt Switzerland's form of direct democracy. Because indirect democracy often isn't that democratic at all. There needs to be a way for the people to intervene directly if the government goes against the will of the people on an issue.

Its going to be a cold day in hell before people stop being selfish in the Netherlands. Also the Netherlands is pretty pro-active, there is a reason foreign affairs refers to the NL as the smallest of the big countries. We're just pro-active in different ways, but for our small size we have a bit of a disproportionate influence/effect.

Bitterballen are all the food you need in the NL, the rest is like eating garden clippings.

I'll give Dutch cuisine that, the fast food is pretty damn good. I also like a lot of the dishes of Indonesian origin. But apart from that, Dutch cuisine is a sad, sad story. You need to start using more dill in your dishes, and sour cream. And for the love of God, please stop trying to mash everything.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Also when has the government went against the will of the people? Also accounting for the fact that the electorate doesn't always have the best idea of what's going on. Knowing the relative ignorance of friends and family I'd not be to comfortable with them being able to directly influence national politics based on what they read on FB the past week. How can we have a "will of the people" when 95% only has the most basic (if even) grasp of the issue?

Plenty of times. The list of broken campaign promises is infamously long in any country with indirect democracy. You are right when you say that people don't always know what is going on and they sometimes make really stupid decisions (brexit anyone?). But that is democracy. Stopping people from making stupid decisions means stopping them from making decisions at all (as it is in most indirect democracies) which actually isn't really democracy anymore. Democracy means rule by the people, which means that a democratic government must respect the will of the people (or at least that part of the people that elected them) even if that will is ill-informed or detrimental to the interests of the government. Currently, it is all too easy for the government to ignore the will of the people or not even ask the people about it. A truly democratic country is always democratic, and not just once every four years.
I'd love to see a system more like Switzerland, where you get a parliamentary system but in which ordinary people can intervene at any time, rather than just once every four years. The Netherlands made a really promising step towards this with the introduction of the referendum, but then it was abolished by the same party who once championed it, simply because people voted against them in the Ukraine referendum.

I notice there's a bunch of cultures that practice summer weather all year round. I want Canada to adopt that.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

What I'd like to see the Netherlands copy from Russia are also some cultural attitudes, specifically a more collectivist rather than individualist mindset, patriotism and love of tradition, and a more pro-active attitude in the world.
Additionally, Russian food. Dutch food is gross.
Basically, I want the Russians to be a bit more like the Dutch and the Dutch to be a bit more like the Russians

Finally, I'd like to see both the Netherlands and Russia adopt Switzerland's form of direct democracy. Because indirect democracy often isn't that democratic at all. There needs to be a way for the people to intervene directly if the government goes against the will of the people on an issue.

Its going to be a cold day in hell before people stop being selfish in the Netherlands. Also the Netherlands is pretty pro-active, there is a reason foreign affairs refers to the NL as the smallest of the big countries. We're just pro-active in different ways, but for our small size we have a bit of a disproportionate influence/effect.

Bitterballen are all the food you need in the NL, the rest is like eating garden clippings.

I'll give Dutch cuisine that, the fast food is pretty damn good. I also like a lot of the dishes of Indonesian origin. But apart from that, Dutch cuisine is a sad, sad story. You need to start using more dill in your dishes, and sour cream. And for the love of God, please stop trying to mash everything.

Mashing is a genius attempt to try and lessen the impact of some dishes like boerenkool, which frankly is like eating nettles without doing so.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Also when has the government went against the will of the people? Also accounting for the fact that the electorate doesn't always have the best idea of what's going on. Knowing the relative ignorance of friends and family I'd not be to comfortable with them being able to directly influence national politics based on what they read on FB the past week. How can we have a "will of the people" when 95% only has the most basic (if even) grasp of the issue?

Plenty of times. The list of broken campaign promises is infamously long in any country with indirect democracy. You are right when you say that people don't always know what is going on and they sometimes make really stupid decisions (brexit anyone?). But that is democracy. Stopping people from making stupid decisions means stopping them from making decisions at all (as it is in most indirect democracies) which actually isn't really democracy anymore. Democracy means rule by the people, which means that a democratic government must respect the will of the people (or at least that part of the people that elected them) even if that will is ill-informed or detrimental to the interests of the government. Currently, it is all too easy for the government to ignore the will of the people or not even ask the people about it. A truly democratic country is always democratic, and not just once every four years.
I'd love to see a system more like Switzerland, where you get a parliamentary system but in which ordinary people can intervene at any time, rather than just once every four years. The Netherlands made a really promising step towards this with the introduction of the referendum, but then it was abolished by the same party who once championed it, simply because people voted against them in the Ukraine referendum.

Well breaking campaign promises makes sense though for two reasons. First, reality has a habit of shifting on a day to day basis, promises made a year ago might not be so great now. Second, keeping to campaign promises would be easy if you could have single party governments, but you can't. People need to be aware that campaign promises are basically wishlists for the best of circumstances, they aren't gospel. The purpose of having a representative democracy is that we elect people that can actually invest time into what the issues are, because that is what is most efficient. Look at retirement age, if you would leave that up to the, pardon my French, idiots of the public it wouldn't have been raised. Which would have meant we could have looked forward to the collapse of the entire wellfare system due to budget problems. That is exactly the problem, people are too uninformed and selfish to make hard choices. A country shouldn't be ruled by the "will of the people", 50%+1 because that means that 49.9% is basically going to get fethed over. It would also lead to incredibly scizophrenic policy every 4 years.

The referendum showed exactly why it was a bad idea. Nobody cared and those people that cared enough to vote against it were hilariously misinformed. I can't be the only one who remembers the interview with a voter who voted against the treaty with Ukraine and pointed at Russia (I mean really!) when asked where Ukraine was. And the Ukraine referendum was one of the harmless ones, what if it had been about the retirement age? People seem to think the welfare system is funded by money grown on trees.

And they didn't remove the ability to have referenda, just the part that made them legally binding because it became clear how open to abuse it was.

 Easy E wrote:
The U.S. needs more ruins of ancient civilizations like Turkey, Greece, Rome, etc. I guess we have some cool stuff like mounds and pueblos, but we need more!

The guy who built Carhenge had the right idea!

We do!
Monks Mound.


Pueblo Native Americans.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Scottish take on r*pe allegations (apologies for the spelling. Work filter, not trying to look edgy).

Onus is on the accused to show the alleged victim gave active consent.

If the alleged victim was drunk/stoned/unconscious etc, considered incapable of giving consent - much the same legal thinking as people under the age of consent.

"Active consent" does not necessarily produce physical evidence that can be presented in court. Declaring a man guilty by default of rape because he didn't get his sexual partner to express her consent in writing is obscene.

If we're just freewheeling about "what would be cool", that'll fly even if you're talking about the US.

Just don't start arguing stances and such.

Things I'd like to see, however unrealistic? Or things that would be practical?

I'd like to see better mass transit in American cities. I'm not sure which nation they should work from, but it wouldn't take much to improve over the quality of mass transit in the average American city.

High-speed rail would be neat. And unlike Japan or France, we have the room available to really make high-speed rail work. Down side is we can't get either side of the Great Political Divide to actually finance fixing the infrastructure we've got, much less spend the billions needed to build and maintain high-speed rail. Maybe once the oil runs out and airliners become a luxury we can't afford anymore.

I do like the idea of making voting a legal requirement. Over here a 40% voter turnout is considered INCREDIBLY high. 20% is typical. But you better believe 100% whine about how the votes turn out, especially the ones that didn't bother voting.

There's quite a bit of other stuff too, but that would tread awfully close to the political ban.

High speed rail would be nice, but the main issue is there is no demand for it. Its not necessarily that politicians can't or wont approve it, its that there isn't a genuine need for it. And I suppose the same goes for public transportation in general in the US.

Outside of a few metropolitan areas like LA, San Fran, and New York, there just isn't really anywhere that public transportation is viable on a large scale simply because everybody in these areas owns personal transportation and is willing to use it. They've had it ingrained in their behavior that they drive themselves everywhere, and everything has been built around accommodating that. And trying to jam a good quality mass transit system into an area that hasn't been built with that in mind is a bit of a logistical nightmare.

No private company is going to want to invest in something like a high speed railroad from LA to San Francisco because they won't immediately have many customers. The idea is of course that you'd end up having commuters between the two cities, but till you have this system up and running you won't have any. And unless you have customers on day 1, then you're never going to build it because you have no revenue stream.

Really the only way to get it in place would be to build it all at once and run it at a massive financial loss for the first few years till you'd established enough consumer confidence that you'd have people living in one city begin having jobs in the other. If you build it piecemeal with public funding you're going to lose the voter's interest very quickly and just have a massive waste of tax money and nothing to show for it. Which makes it a dead issue politically.


Mandatory voting I think would be a good idea. Along with making Election day a national holiday lasting a period of at least 3 whole days, during which time employers must give all of their employees at least one day off to go vote. Enforcement of this law would be tricky.

I would also like a law limiting campaigning. Political campaigning related to an election I would confine to say 6 months prior to an election. Outside of that period, no campaigning would be allowed. No ads, no calling, etc...

 Grey Templar wrote:
Election day a national holiday lasting a period of at least 3 whole days, during which time employers must give all of their employees at least one day off to go vote.

Since we have permission This right here ^ Doesn't even have to be a day off. Just let them go vote and if they don't show up for work they don't show up for work oh well its one day out of 365 every couple years I don't think the world will end.

I would also like a law limiting campaigning. Political campaigning related to an election I would confine to say 6 months prior to an election. Outside of that period, no campaigning would be allowed. No ads, no calling, etc...

I just want a law that forces political pollsters to adhere to the do not call list (I have no idea if any other countries have this issue). They're currently exempt from it, and while I get that having to adhere to the list will throw off polling data I really don't care.

Stop calling me. I'm sleeping

 Grey Templar wrote:
.

No private company is going to want to invest in something like a high speed railroad from LA to San Francisco because they won't immediately have many customers. The idea is of course that you'd end up having commuters between the two cities, but till you have this system up and running you won't have any. And unless you have customers on day 1, then you're never going to build it because you have no revenue stream.

Isn't Elon Musk working on doing exactly that with his hyperloop?