My experience generally (in the U.S.) is that our society is built from a collection of systems, that when viewed from a distance, appear to be functional. The closer you get to any one of those systems though, the more it will become clear how dysfunctional it is, how rarely it is doing the right thing, and how much it's just luck of the draw if you end up dealing with someone competent as opposed to a vindictive bully who will do everything in their power to hurt you if you press them to do the job their particular system is ostensibly responsible for.
> The closer you get to any one of those systems though, the more it will become clear how dysfunctional it is, how rarely it is doing the right thing,
An alternate explanation is that you’re only acknowledging the existence of these systems in your life when something goes wrong. You don’t notice the hundreds of different things that are going right every day because it’s working well.
How often does your power go out? How often is your water undrinkable? When you go the grocery store, is there always food on the shelves? Do you keep extra money in your wallet for the specific purpose of bribing government officials and police at every encounter?
The number of things that go right like clockwork in our modern life is actually astounding, given how complex the infrastructure and supply chains are. You just don’t think about it because it’s all background to you.
To really understand a dysfunctional society, visit a country where power, infrastructure, roads, and government offices don’t actually work regularly. Where you can’t get anything done without a bribe. It’s eye opening to see how many different things in a society can fail to function when most people aren’t interested in doing their job or being just. The US, although not perfect, is far from being as universally dysfunctional as you claim.
> how much it's just luck of the draw if you end up dealing with someone competent as opposed to a vindictive bully who will do everything in their power to hurt you
When the two options are “competent” or “vindictive bully who will do everything in their power to hurt you” that’s an extreme example of a false dichotomy.
How often are you encountering these “vindictive bullies who will do everything in their power to hurt you”? Are you just assuming they might exist and be out to get you, and that’s what bothers you?
I’ve seen this mentality show up in people who do a lot of doomscrolling of Reddit, Twitter, and other social media platforms that aggregate outrage stories from around the US. After consuming a collection of outrage stories from around the country every day for years on end, those upvoted outrage stories start to become the lens through which they view the world, despite how different it is from the reality they experience. It’s easy to start to mistake the outrage news headlines as normal life in America, rather than the newsworthy stories of something going wrong that made them headlines in the first place.
