Voting with your feet

I'm about 100 pages into Howard Zinn's "People's history of the United States." It's interesting, but not very new or shocking, and irritating when it gets sentimental. One of the things he mentions in his chapter on the Colonies is how white people would often end up living with Indians and choose not to return to white civilization when given the chance, whereas no Indian chose to join white civilization.

This idea caught my attention because I believe that people's choices reflect their values. We hear so much about our American values being destructive, and yet many many people choose to come to America, and not just people who are suffering or are refugees. My family came as refugees, yes, but many people came for work or grad school and tried to get green cards and stay. So I wonder a little bit sometimes why people criticize our country so much and yet choose to live here.

Furthermore, there are things like better healthcare and sanitation that people accross the board seem to want. I learned this from the book "Three cups of tea," written about a philanthropist who builds schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It seems that women dying in childbirth is pretty sucky, and if someone could prevent this then it seems like everyone in that woman's community would be happier. But perhaps that isn't true. Maybe the cost of better healthcare and nutrition isn't worth it.