The world is much bigger than the US, and those of us on the outside don't worship your founders.

> It's usually a good bet (i.e., it pays off more times than not), IMHO.

If that was actually true, why do you put up with The State? Why do you not overthrow it? Seriously: if the state/government is bad why do you even have it?

Is the (municipal) State being a bad actor when it paves roads and runs water-sewage? Is the (state/provincial) State a bad actor when it runs schools? Is the (federal) State being a bad actor when it protects waters with Coast Guard and Navy and enviornmental regulation, when it inspects food, funds science and medicine?

It seems to me you get what you expect: the (e.g.) Nordics expect government to be a good actor and try to live up to those expectations; (some?) Americans expect government to be a bad actor and try to dismantle it… creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps if more Americans expected and fought for / 'demanded' better government they would get it.

This is a ridiculous fallacy, one that gets people killed. Many a failed revolution, ill-fated coup or catastrophic invasion began by assuming the state was just people. The Battle of Stalingrad, the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Gulf War. The state is a giant apparatus that doesn't know right from wrong, it just responds in the way it's supposed to like a sheepish animal. It happens in Congress, in the CCP Politburo, pretty much anywhere. The inhuman indifference of the state is a feature of modern legislation we call Rule of Law.

Technology is similarly indifferent, and it's common that cryptocurrency is deliberately designed to exacerbate the fallibility of people. Unpegged stablecoins, shit memecoins, rugpull tokens... that's what I would call "consumer fraud" in a functioning economy. Or "gambling" at the very least.