criteria for rating USA

[varwoche]

Americans of all political stripes routinely refer to America as the world's greatest nation. To what extent can this be quantified? What would the list of criteria be? I envision a scorecard where, for each criterion, a scorer enters:

1) score -10 to 10
2) weight 1-10
3) significance 1-10
4) intent -10 to 10

Suppose a huge event is equally bad as good. It would be scored as zero, but with high significance rank. (Significance won't impact score; it's here to better understand scorer's perspective.)

Should positive intention count for something?

I'm hopeful this thread will be confined to the criteria, not the scoring. Otherwise it turns into a cluster*.

A random strawlist:

- freedom of speech
- role during WWII
- role during Cold War
- etc. (all wars)
- justice system
- constitution
- bill of rights (enumerated?)
- military power
- standard of living
- quality of health care
- quality of education
- social welfare
- abortion law
- death penalty law
- pollution / environment
- racial equity
- gender equality
- freedom of thought/belief
- crime
- mid-east policy

There may be benefit to breaking down some items into "per law" and "in practice".

 

[Chaos]

Americans of all political stripes routinely refer to America as the world's greatest nation. To what extent can this be quantified? What would the list of criteria be? I envision a scorecard where, for each criterion, a scorer enters:

1) score -10 to 10
2) weight 1-10
3) significance 1-10
4) intent -10 to 10

Suppose a huge event is equally bad as good. It would be scored as zero, but with high significance rank. (Significance won't impact score; it's here to better understand scorer's perspective.)

So if I understand you correctly, 9/11 - to pick a random example - would rate as significance 10 and score -10?

 

[Jon_in_london]

A random strawlist:


- military power
- social welfare
- abortion law
- death penalty law
- mid-east policy

Problem is varwoche, many would argue that, for exaple, loads of death penalty is a good thing while others would say bad.

Same to all the others above, they are all subjective.

 

[Ed]

I think that you would say

Death Penalty 10 (if you think that the way it is is good. 0 if you perceive it as bad)

Ditto the other stuff.

 

[The idea]

Americans of all political stripes routinely refer to America as the world's greatest nation. [...]

- role during WWII
- role during Cold War
- military power
- crime

Imagine that the US turns into a dictatorship with one-party rule, censorship of political ideas, secret police, etc.

The past would not change, so the role of the US during WWII and the Cold War would be as it was. Many people would try to flee, but the majority of people would probably remain. The military power could still be high, especially if a greater proportion of wealth were dedicated to the military.

Would the majority of criminals leave? Would they decide to stop committing crimes? Would there be little corruption in the ruling party? Would the secret police not abuse their powers?

What are we talking about here? Are we talking about a political system (that is not a dictatorship right now) or are we talking about a physical landmass and a particular collection of millions of human beings?

 

[epepke]

Americans of all political stripes routinely refer to America as the world's greatest nation.

Great doesn't necessarily mean "great." It might mean "great" instead.

Many years ago, MAD magazine had a piece called "Ripley's Believe It or Don't." One of the bits said, "Alexander the Great really wasn't all that great, but nobody wanted to call him 'Alexander the So-so.'"

To get serious and clarify for a moment, "greatest" does not necessarily mean "best." It means, well, greatest.

There are a lot of crappy things about America. There are also, on the onther hand, some things America gets right. Like universities. Despite high tuition rates, a general lack of public funding, etc. more people have better access to finer higher education than in any other country in the world, perhaps than in the rest of the world combined. But that's beside the point.

Also, personally, I'd say that there are some countries I actually like better than I like America and would rather live in, if I only had the means (which I don't at present).

However, America is, by a fairly large margin, the only remaining superpower in the world. In that sense, it is the greatest, and I think it would be somewhere between perverse and completely stupid to assert otherwise.

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: criteria for rating USA

So if I understand you correctly, 9/11 - to pick a random example - would rate as significance 10 and score -10?

I probably muddied the water by including significance (the model as envisioned will not use it as part of score).

The keys are Score and Weight:

The score measures how positive or negative an event is in terms of grading the country. Weight defines how much weight is assigned to the criterion versus the other criteria.

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: criteria for rating USA

Problem is varwoche, many would argue that, for exaple, loads of death penalty is a good thing while others would say bad.

Same to all the others above, they are all subjective.

Exactly. Which is why I want a generic model for which anyone could provide the inputs.

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: criteria for rating USA

However, America is, by a fairly large margin, the only remaining superpower in the world. In that sense, it is the greatest, and I think it would be somewhere between perverse and completely stupid to assert otherwise.

OK epepke, let's toss the word great. I want a system to grade how good or bad countries are. One of the criteria indeed should be military power. It would be up to the individual scorer how much weight would be assigned to this particular criterion.

 

[epepke]

Re: Re: Re: criteria for rating USA

OK epepke, let's toss the word great. I want a system to grade how good or bad countries are.

Sounds good to me. Of course, you also have to be willing to toss out the number of times you've heard Americans say that America is the greatest country in the world.

I think that the UN has some pretty well designed scores for this, which would work just fine in a poll here. Canada won for a couple of years, and then they dropped way down. I'm too lazy to look them up right now.

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: criteria for rating USA

Imagine that the US turns into a dictatorship with one-party rule, censorship of political ideas, secret police, etc.

The past would not change, so the role of the US during WWII and the Cold War would be as it was. Many people would try to flee, but the majority of people would probably remain. The military power could still be high, especially if a greater proportion of wealth were dedicated to the military.

Would the majority of criminals leave? Would they decide to stop committing crimes? Would there be little corruption in the ruling party? Would the secret police not abuse their powers?

What are we talking about here? Are we talking about a political system (that is not a dictatorship right now) or are we talking about a physical landmass and a particular collection of millions of human beings?

Good questions. I believe we are talking about everything -- geo-political, intra political, cultural, environmental ... any criteria that might impact YOUR assesment of one country versus another.

As to the temporal issues you mention: This reminds me that the model should weigh recent history higher than ancient history.