” I would love to get a whole new set of ideas sometime, and a choice of more than 2 parties on the presidential ballot. Wouldn’t that be true freedome? ”
Yes, it would be more freedom to have more political parties. However that would mean trying to build fragile coalitions to govern. I believe that one reason that the American model economic model is successful is because we have little discent. We have some rancor in our political debate but pretty much everyone eventually falls into line. That allows us to work, work, work more efficiently.
I think that, with technological advances that allows the government to track everyone, we might be headed to a Star Trek kinda life where everyone is “happy” but then again everyone has to ask for the captain’s permission to go to the “hollow deck”
Having traveled around the world, I notice that, in America, friends rarely disagree. If they did disagree they wouldn’t be friends anymore. In other parts of the world, friends and family would sit down at the dinner table and vehemently disagree. Yet they still love each other and remain friends. For example, in America, a socialist and a capitalist could never be friends.