I made that statement without emperical evidence, since i consider it a logical implication.
Consider credit ratings: a few tiny nations have the highest ratings. But their combined assets represent nothing compared to the states. The US is rated lower, because the US is expected to fight its own fights. These tiny nations are rated higher, because the big guys are expected to cover their stability.
The same is true for my freedom: it is garantueed by the states, based on a sacrifice the people of my country would not make themselves. That sacrifice is huge: economic extortion of your social underclass to risk their life; the financial investments that leave very little of tax payers money for any "ordinary purpose" like education. And dont just look at your defense budget, your and mine security depends on your intelligence spendings just as much.
Remember WW2 where you saved our ass? The marshal plan were you rebuild my country? The war on Serbia, where you cleaned up our backyard? The war in Libia, where you allowed us to distance ourselves from a dictator we were doing bussiness with?
You have our back. In your shadow, we are not only safe from China or Russia, but even from ourselves.
But we get all that, without the sacrifice. We can be anti-war. We can spent all our money on education, rather than security. We can have freedom of the press, because our government does not represent any meaningfull stakes. Even our southern neigbours, Belgium. They did not have a government for more than a year. Imagine that!
If you guys would be truly free to vote in your own interest, to be informed correctly about that interest, to have true civil rights ... You would not be a superpower, you would be Canada.
For a short while that is, until China would invade, or the rich middle eastern countries would take full control.
Consider credit ratings: a few tiny nations have the highest ratings. But their combined assets represent nothing compared to the states. The US is rated lower, because the US is expected to fight its own fights. These tiny nations are rated higher, because the big guys are expected to cover their stability.
The same is true for my freedom: it is garantueed by the states, based on a sacrifice the people of my country would not make themselves. That sacrifice is huge: economic extortion of your social underclass to risk their life; the financial investments that leave very little of tax payers money for any "ordinary purpose" like education. And dont just look at your defense budget, your and mine security depends on your intelligence spendings just as much.
Remember WW2 where you saved our ass? The marshal plan were you rebuild my country? The war on Serbia, where you cleaned up our backyard? The war in Libia, where you allowed us to distance ourselves from a dictator we were doing bussiness with?
You have our back. In your shadow, we are not only safe from China or Russia, but even from ourselves.
But we get all that, without the sacrifice. We can be anti-war. We can spent all our money on education, rather than security. We can have freedom of the press, because our government does not represent any meaningfull stakes. Even our southern neigbours, Belgium. They did not have a government for more than a year. Imagine that!
If you guys would be truly free to vote in your own interest, to be informed correctly about that interest, to have true civil rights ... You would not be a superpower, you would be Canada.
For a short while that is, until China would invade, or the rich middle eastern countries would take full control.