system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV:America’s diversity should NOT be a reason for not implementing certain systems (i.e. nationalized healthcare, better worker’s laws, etc,.).

When it comes to a lot of Euro/Asian/Canadian-styled economic & political systems- including nationalized healthcare, free/cheap higher education, mandatory parental/sick leave, general social democracy, etc,. -a lot of arguments I hear against this in a US context tend to be ones that, while I’ll still disagree with, I could at least understand. 

One common argument that *does* irk me, however, tends to be America’s vast ethnic, social, religious and sexual diversity. Many people who’ve followed this argument believe that because of our vast diversity, things like healthcare and cheaper higher education are either very difficult or even impossible to 

Of course, this is CMV, so I do expect to see what I may or may not be wrong with. This argument, however, 

Let’s list some general arguments and what I believe are wrong with them:

- “Other countries are very homogenous and, because of this, it’s impossible to implement their systems in this vastly diverse country, especially with our ethnic diversity!“ First off: Yikes! Second, it ignores the realities of both said countries today and the genetics vs. social realities of different ethnicities. In the past 5-15 years, many previously-homogenous countries (especially European ones) have seen vast increases in ethnic diversity. Although this has revealed big problems, the issues revolving around things like healthcare, their worker laws, their education systems, etc,., haven’t changed or been threatened simply due to increased diversity. Poor political decisions unrelated to minorities (i.e. the Finnish healthcare debacle last year) and general issues not inherent in a socialized system have played a big part in the recent decline in quality of systems such as the NHS (like poor funding measures performed by shitty politicians). These issues just so happened to coincide with recent mass immigration measures. Also, don’t you think it’s at least a *little* racist/fucked up to suggest that physical differences between the ethnic majority and minority will play a part in this? What, so you’re saying that a black man or a Hispanic woman can’t inherently have the same quality healthcare and treatment as a white man? It sounds so 1890’s and wrong. Never mind the many studies in the past 30-40 years that suggest that, despite obvious differences (hair, skin tone, etc,.), most of us are pretty much genetically and physically the same, thus proving no issue with how one should get treatment and their general quality. Oh, and the studies that claim increased health issues in certain ethnic populations? Yeah, I’d imagine it being pretty hard to keep your health up when you’re stressing over your job, your life standards, your finances, etc,., due to a system and society that treats you like a fucking savage 24/7 for the past 400+ years... especially when your healthcare costs more than what you’re both able to pay for and what you’re shitty insurance system will allow you to get. This goes for both America and the rest of the world (with the exception of costs for the latter, of course). Maybe if we *stopped* doing this shit, we wouldn’t be here, now would we? Race is a social construct, and therefore, we must tear that construct down if we want equal ethnic health standards in our country. This partially includes the introduction of a socialized (or generally cheaper) healthcare system.
- “Our cultural differences throughout the country will make it very hard to implement these systems”. Will it be hard? Sure. But that doesn’t mean this is impossible. For one, while our country has been divided throughout the past 10+ years, this isn’t inevitable. America in the 50’s-early 60’s, despite it’s issues, at least had a government that was much more together and less divisive. Democrats and Republicans were, indeed, more willing to work together and stop fucking around. If the past American government/culture could do it, so can today’s. And even in today’s horse shit political culture, it doesn’t mean we are completely incapable of putting these systems into place. Recent studies have shown that American citizens are increasingly *begging* for a nationalized healthcare system in recent years, with some of the support even reaching between political lines! 

Of course, I could be missing certain arguments relating to this topic, and maybe I *am* wrong on at least some of my claims. Still, I feel like the whole “our country is too diverse for these systems” argument is both false and full of falacies (if not straight up harmful).
gpt
>“Our cultural differences throughout the country will make it very hard to implement these systems”.

There's another layer to it which is federalism in relation to these differences.  Nearly all US social programs other than those for the elderly (Social Security and Medicare) are run by the states, even when they're federally funded.  We're not really operating as a country, we're operating as 50 separate jurisdictions.  Medicaid is (mostly) federally funded but fully stated operated.  States operate food stamps, temporary assistance to needy families, unemployment, and on and on.  In areas like education, states operate with near-total autonomy.  And in many of these cases there are constitutional impediments to the federal government taking on a direct role.

So when you combine federalism with those cultural/political differences, you end up in a situation where in some states, the people operating the programs are actively working to undermine them.  Just look at the red states that refused to accept the **federally funded** expansion of Medicaid to provide healthcare to their populations out of pure ideological spite.  When you have a very diverse country, and part of that is opposition to these policies, it's never going to work out quite as well.

It's not just the refusal to expand Medicaid.  You also see ideologically-averse state imposing onerous requirements on recipients of public assistance that frustrate the aims of the programs or even forcing couples to get married in order to access benefits.  You also have states like Wisconsin deliberately running higher education into the ground out of pure animus towards it.

So that just doesn't work as well as a European system where the national government is implementing whatever program you care to name directly, rather than being forced to leave implementation in the hands of a diverse group of state officials, some proportion of whom oppose said program.