Marginal Revolution: Why I love Sweden

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Why I love Sweden

A loyal MR reader asks:

Back in 2004, you wrote “I'm willing to take the Swedish model seriously. I've been to Stockholm several times and loved it”. What exactly did you love about it? What made Sweden attractive?

I won't dwell on the beauty of Stockholm, the quality of the seafood, or the intelligence and good judgment of the people. Swedish women seem OK too, and Swedish Impressionist painting is underrated. I even liked the place in December. But what I enjoy most about Sweden is the sense of freedom.

Let's be blunt: much of this freedom stems from government, and what you get is freedom from other people. People are not less free of the tax man, but in Sweden you don't need other people very much to insure your economic well-being. You can do your own thing, without much fear (relatively speaking, of course) of personal oppression from others. You really can choose which personal relationships you wish to have. Autonomy reigns. The Swedish family is, of course, fractured. For all of its collectivist reputation, Sweden is the land of the true individualist, sometimes verging on atomism. At will you can go off into the woods and eat your lingonberries, weather of course permitting.

I would not want to live there, if only because my restless self needs a large country and lots of space for travel in multiple directions. Uppsala bored me in less than a day, Malmo was OK, but what next? The yikes factor kicks in. Latin America looks so far away.

Nor do I think that living in Sweden necessarily would be good for me. But when I look at it, I like it. I like seeing it. I think it is an important social experiment. And it is hard to argue that it has been bad for the Swedes. I also think the whole arrangement, tax payments and all, is no less voluntary (and probably more voluntary) than what we do in the United States. Some of that is the small country/homogeneity thing, some is simply that Swedes recognize their high quality way of life.

I've heard it said that "socialism is the religion of the Swedes." This is not quite correct, though it hints at an important truth. I think of "being Swedish" as the religion of the Swedes. And the more cosmopolitan they behave, the more they are partaking in this religion; don't be fooled!

This "being Swedish" business is a wonderful religion for Sweden. It is not a good or possible religion for most of the rest of the world. And it is not a religion to which I have been or could be invited.

But Sweden (or should I say Stockholm?) remains one of the best places in the history of the world to date, and we are fooling ourselves if we don't recognize that.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 27, 2006 at 04:45 AM in Travels | Permalink

Comments

Perhaps surprising, the Scandinavian countries have both the most extensive welfare states, and the highest proportion of their populations willing to fight for their countries.
Graph here,
http://conservationfinance.wordpress.com/2006/10/17/does-the-welfare-state-make-you-soft/

Posted by: Lars Smith at Oct 27, 2006 8:16:15 AM

I think it was on _Reason's_ blog where one of the staff writers (maybe J. Sanchez) talked about Sweden bashing in _The Economist_ and among conservatives and libertarians. He said something to the effect, "they resent Sweden because -- let's admit it -- it is hospitable place."

I do enjoy the regular predictions of impending doom, road to serfdom, and so on for the Scandinavian economies.

Tyler, even though I disagree with you on, well, just about everything, I do appreciate your open-mindedness. Many who share the same economic-orientation tend to be a little more, shall we say, intellectually insecure.

Posted by: Cain at Oct 27, 2006 8:16:29 AM

"Many who share the same economic-orientation tend to be a little more, shall we say, intellectually insecure."

Cain, I'd have to disagree with you, or at least point out that your statement seems to lack perspective. Intellectual insecurity is fairly universal across all ideological stripes, and may even be greater among left-liberals than economic conservatives.

Brad de Long, for instance, deletes many insightful comments from his blog, particularly ones that provide factual evidence that he might be in error. And de Long is one of the smarter and more intellectually open liberal bloggers out there!

And maybe I haven't been keeping up, but I just don't see many liberal bloggers pointing out the laissez-faire success story of Hong Kong.

Posted by: Keith at Oct 27, 2006 8:35:33 AM

Well, living next to Sweden, so to speak, gives you a different perspective. Yes, it is a nice place to visit and if you visit, most Swedens are proud of their country (except for Germany, the more socialist a country is, the more nationalism is striving, but since the WC 2006, even this is changing in Germany). But you don't want to live there for a long time, because you then see the drawbacks of their life-style. The Swedes have been one of the wealthiest people in Europe, but due to their statism, they have halved their wealth in a half century.
The Sweden of today is very different from the Sweden of the past, which has lived off the savings from more liberal epochs (which is again a typical Swedish thing).
It is ok, if you want a soft life without much risks, because the government will take care of you. There is no doom and gloom about Sweden, because it prevents state collapse by transfering wealth from the people to the state and thus destroying wealth. I am really interested in how this will continue and how it will affect the culture, when this path is continued. I think Johan Norberg has something interesting to say about that :)

Posted by: Max at Oct 27, 2006 9:17:54 AM

Hong Kong is an even clearer example of how hard it is to disentagle the systematic effects from the idiosyncratic ones. If the swedish model can be hard to export for the lack of swedes in other countries, the Hong Kong prosperity is based on decades of mainland chinese money laundering and not just on laissez faire legislation.

Posted by: mic at Oct 27, 2006 9:21:24 AM

Actually, and surprisingly, I like what is happening in Mexico. There is a good and developing cadre of people who understand the power of the market. There is a declining class of statists - but the tension is still there. No Scandanavian winters is also a plus. The peso by the way has been pretty stable for the last several years.

Posted by: drtaxsacto at Oct 27, 2006 9:56:58 AM

Brad de Long, for instance, deletes many insightful comments from his blog

Mostly stupid ones, however. DeLong *does* tend to get in mysterious snits from time to time (about Max Hastings' Armageddon, for ex), but hell, what is blogging for?

Posted by: Anderson at Oct 27, 2006 10:46:36 AM

I live part-time in Stockholm, about 4 months a year. In my opinion, the being-Swedish thing, the cooperativeness, and the resepct for individuality does not depend on govt, or at least not such extensive govt. Sweden would be better, and Swedes on the whole better off, if Sweden were freer. Practically everything good about Sweden would only be strengthened and improved by reducing the welfare state and decontroling. The secrets of Sweden make their government not so bad, but they also make their market failures not so bad. The voluntary provision of public goods is high in Sweden, from snow-mobile trails to checking bad government. I think the number of Swedes who realize this is growing, and they see that the "freedom" and "voluntary," which Tyler invokes, is a sham.

Posted by: Daniel Klein at Oct 27, 2006 10:57:03 AM

In other words, Sweden is a fully non-tribal society? (Tribes there are consumer goods, not survival necessities.) I can certainly see the attraction, but overall, I think the world of "tribes" is more likely to endure.

Posted by: SamChevre at Oct 27, 2006 11:07:35 AM

"Let's be blunt: much of this freedom stems from government, and what you get is freedom from other people. People are not less free of the tax man, but in Sweden you don't need other people very much to insure your economic well-being. You can do your own thing, without much fear (relatively speaking, of course) of personal oppression from others. You really can choose which personal relationships you wish to have."

I am unsure as to what this means. Does it mean that Swedes don't expect you to be nice to other people, that they are more tolerant of eccentrics, that you can easily quit your job and live on welfare, or that you are not expected to socialize with your family?

Posted by: sourcreamus at Oct 27, 2006 11:17:49 AM

"Let's be blunt: much of this freedom stems from government"

No, let's be blunt: Government do not supply freedom - I hear Orwellian new-speak here. How can you be free in any meaningfull way if more than half your income is stolen from you? If you are not allowed to speak freely about stuff (like immigration) that you find important?

Sweden like the other Scandinavian countries is a relatively homogenous society. Nothing promotes nationalism, authoritarianism and statism more than homogeneity - and little is in higher demand for power-crazed politicians than homogeneity. Anybody remember Bokanovsky's Process?

The homogeneity is a curse, nothing else.

Posted by: US at Oct 27, 2006 11:25:16 AM

I sense a tension in this post between Swedes as true individualists and "being Swedish" as the religion of the Swedes. "Being Swedish" is a cosmopolitan creed? OK. But, what kind of individualists adopt precisely the same creed, cosmopolitan or otherwise, as the co-inhabitants of their political jurisdiction? There's no ultimate paradox here; there are ways out. But there's definitely a tension.

It sounds to me that one of the reasons Sweden works is that the universal social insurance state allows independence from the sometimes suffocating obligations of family and community. This is liberating. Though this trends toward "atomism," it stops short of all-out deracination by collective participation in a shared cultural ideal: "being Swedish" -- which has both a liberal and solidarity-based affirmation for the universal social insurance state built into it.

I think this balance of liberal autonomy and communitarian shared identity is the fantasy of many Americans on the left. But the Swedes' ability to strike the balance really is a function of small scale and homogeneity. It doesn't generalize, and even the Swedes are going to have a hard time sustaining it as the place becomes more deeply pluralistic. A homogenous ideology of cosmopolitanism among a homogenous people and a workable cosmopolitan ideology for a genuinely heterogenous society are two different things.

But I guess I'm just repeating Tyler's point in my own way.

Posted by: Will Wilkinson at Oct 27, 2006 11:38:37 AM

Over what time scales should governments be judged? On the one hand, it can take a long time for bad policies to completely play out. After all, despite its tremendous problems, the Soviet Union lasted for 69 years. On the other hand, if it takes 1000 years for the Swedish state to collapse, can it really be said to have been a "bad" state?

Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Oct 27, 2006 2:06:06 PM

"Brad de Long, for instance, deletes many insightful comments from his blog

Mostly stupid ones, however."

It's often the stupid ones that stay. You can say virtually anything that agrees with his position, but a rational arguement against his position is almost always removed.

Posted by: Anom at Oct 27, 2006 2:15:00 PM

I don't know about the freedom of speech issue in Sweden, but when "more than half your income is stolen" you're getting a lot in return. Specifically, you're getting security.

Security costs an enormous amount of money. Health insurance in the US is a case in point - many people can't afford it except through their employer, and are faced with potential bankruptcy if they switch jobs, get injured, and lose coverage on a technicality (which happens a LOT). The job portability provided by socialized medicine is of tremendous value, and greatly enhances personal freedoms.

The presence of a welfare safety net means you can go out on the trapeze and try new career strategies that are often richly rewarding, but which would be too risky for many Americans to pursue.

But I am a believer in the idea that Sweden works because of Swedes. I imagine a country where, for thousands of years, lazy, antisocial people froze to death generates both a keen sense of personal industry and a great emphasis on solid interpersonal relationships. These qualities seem well matched to a socialist-democratic state. I don't think that Americans have what it takes to make such a system work.

Posted by: Tony at Oct 27, 2006 3:16:11 PM

Freedom of speech is not as extensive in Sweden as in the US* but we still have probaly the most (classical) liberal legislation on that point in Western Europe. Racist propaganda is forbidden but you can definitly strongly oppose immigration.

*Though other provisions of law might make up for that and in fact make it easier for citizens to control goverment. For example the Freedom of Information act is a lot more expansive in Sweden and also a part of the Constitution. Also journalists have more protection for their sources which makes it harder for government officials to investigate leaks. Indeed for a government official to investigate a leak is in most circumstances a crime.

Posted by: Johan Richter at Oct 27, 2006 3:59:12 PM

"many people can't afford it except through their employer, and are faced with potential bankruptcy if they switch jobs, get injured, and lose coverage on a technicality (which happens a LOT). The job portability provided by socialized medicine is of tremendous value, and greatly enhances personal freedoms."

Dude, let's be completely clear here. You don't NEED socialized medicine to have health insurance portability. All we need are changes in the existing laws. Surprise, surprise - government is at the root of the portability problem.

Posted by: David Andersen at Oct 27, 2006 4:03:40 PM

Tony, USA is hardly the best example of a market-driven health care sector, and it is hardly the difference in government healt care expenditures that is the biggest difference between the Scandinavian model and that of the US.

I know very well I get security for the tax payments, I just haven't asked for it. In general I don't care all that much about what I get in return from the government; I don't get what I would have got, had I been able to spend the money myself, and the government solution will usually be the inferior one - how would the government know better than me what to do with my own money?

Both you and TC are blurring the distinctions by claiming that freedom is positively defined. Let's hold on to something very important: Freedom is the negation of coercion, freedom is negatively defined. When the government uses tax-money to fund some scheme that expands the choise set of one group of agents while restricting the choise set of another group of agents, no "freedom" is generated as you would have me believe - quite the contrary. The government intervention is based on/funded by government coercion of other individuals, and the alternative market solution would include no such coercion.

I live in Denmark where the economic system is not much different from that of Sweden. That people should be less afraid to take risky career choises and the like in Scandinavia than in The States I would find very hard to believe, as the reward in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia from engaging in risky activities (and hard work) is very, very small - and as the people the less risk-averse usually leaves the country after finishing their education here. I would consider the opposite to be true - if you are not used to the government watching every step you take, ready to catch you in the safety net if you get a cold, you'd be more used to take on risky activities - my personal experience tells me that the Danish welfare state makes people more risk-averse, as they gradually get used to the government taking care of everything.

I agree with you that the Swedish system would not work in The States, but my reason would be that the US society is far too dynamic and heterogenous to be able to cope with the Swedish mentality - and thank god for that!

Oh, one more thing I get from the high tax payments: Lower growth. And this matters very much in the long run...

Posted by: US at Oct 27, 2006 4:44:36 PM

I've visited Sweden many times and lived in Malmo for 6 months. I learned that bad weather makes good people. Tony's right that it is probably this evolution over time under harsh conditions that have created the Swedish spirit, but I would argue it has also resulted in an extensive regime of solidarity. They have a whole slew of fantastic customs which effectively bind people together, such as fica, basically a more formal type of coffee break with friends everyday at 3. I went to school at Lund and they had these huge "nation" parties which were just perfectly arranged. It felt like some medeval banquet: very long candlelit tables, where everybody sat eating and drinking aquavit, periodically breaking out in unison in some ancient drinking song. Tyler's right, that being Swedish is their religion, but I think it consists more of their shared, peculiar heritage which long preceded any modern cosmopolitan notions.

Further, maybe this helps explain why Americans, lacking such ancient customs, have always been relatively religious (about God, that is).

Posted by: will mcbride at Oct 27, 2006 6:25:02 PM

Freedom is the negation of coercion, freedom is negatively defined. When the government uses tax-money to fund some scheme that expands the choise set of one group of agents while restricting the choise set of another group of agents, no "freedom" is generated as you would have me believe - quite the contrary. The government intervention is based on/funded by government coercion of other individuals, and the alternative market solution would include no such coercion.

The government is not the only source of coercion! Government coercion often acts to increase the overall degree of freedom by controlling coercion by private parties. Employers of all kinds have many, many techniques of limiting the choices of their employees and "trapping" them in compromised positions.

Progressive taxation in particular is hardly a greater intrusion on freedom than flat taxation, and the tax rate, I think, doesn't matter much either - if you're going to tax at all you introduce a whole system of monitoring and coercion, and I am not aware of any alternative. Since the necessity of taxation is pretty much a given, the government can certainly use that money to increase freedom through a welfare system, a system that directly undermines the coercive power of employers and corporations.

Again, welfare has its pros and cons, and in some countries it has a LOT of negatives. But the principle that social democracies always limit freedom in comparison to free-market solutions ignores the many other concentrations of (private) power that are all too willing to control whatever and whoever they can get their hands on. The chief role of government in a social democracy, imho, is to prevent those concentrations of power from getting out of control.

Posted by: Tony at Oct 27, 2006 7:32:53 PM

Brad De Long deletes a variety of stuff. Some of it just isn't PC enough. However, he seems to have a problem with anyone who opposes neoliberalism, even if their critique is factual. He deleted one women's post just because she corrected his GDP growth statistics.

Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Oct 28, 2006 1:35:47 AM

The chief role of government in a social democracy, imho, is to prevent those concentrations of [private] power from getting out of control.

That may be your aspiration, but it is not a description of the way democracies actually work. In the real world, concentrations of private power influence the government to benefit themselves at the expense of the diffuse and weak.

Posted by: Eric Hanneken at Oct 28, 2006 2:01:05 AM

Tyler nails it. We are free in exactly the sense he points out. We pay somewhat for that freedom with slighty authoritarian customs: for example, solidarity is expected not only to family members, but to the society as a whole; you are expected to allow fellow citizens to tread on your land, if you are a land owner (this also means that you are obliged to be careful with the ways you tread); and you're expected to accept that it is morally wrong to not work.

I think Swedishness is much more portable than Tyler admits. But I think his resistance is an important sociological factor why it won't be exported much: the elites really haven't much to gain from it, and possibly something to loose (like obvious examples of less fortunate people). And other constituencies don't know what they are missing. The sense of freedom for all that exists in Sweden - Scandinavia - must be experienced to be believed. The Swedish religion isn't really socialism - it's egalitarianism.

Posted by: Dan Karreman at Oct 28, 2006 11:21:22 AM

> Employers of all kinds have many, many techniques of limiting the choices of
> their employees and "trapping" them in compromised positions.

Sure, but the only one that matters is whether or not they can beat me if I don't do as they say. That they can take away privileges they have granted me can never be as bad as the power to use force.

Posted by: Jon Karlsson at Oct 28, 2006 1:38:53 PM

“And it is hard to argue that it has been bad for the Swedes.”

This must be the dumbest economic piece I have ever read on Marginal Revolution, and that includes the illegal immigration debate.

Sweden in 1950-1960s was close to the stereotype Utoppia. GDP per capita was the third or fourth highest in the world, crime about as low as it can get, the growth rate high. Individualism, artistic creation, friendliness of the population as good or better than they are today. Health and life expectancy relatively to other countries of course very high.

Yet in 1950 taxes and government policy similar to the rest of the OECD. In the late 60s, with the overconfidence of how things were going, came the lovely high tax welfare state socialist experiment. 40 years later GDP per capita is 13th in the OECD, with the US 30% above us, and US non-Hispanic whites almost 50% above us.

The average income of Americans with Swedish ancestry (there are several million of them) is 60% higher than the average income of Sweden, from the 2000 census. Their poverty rate is 5.2%, compared with the 12-15% for the rest of the US. This is no different from the Swedish poverty rate.

(here are the 1990 figures online

http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/Swedish.txt
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/All_Persons.txt

compare first Swedes with the US average, than US average with Sweden)

Violent Crime is several times more common. Murders per capita almost doubled, rapes, armed robberies, theft per capita up several 100%.

Trust is much lower than historical figures. Since the sixties Sweden “had the parallel downward trend in political trust on national governmental level as the United States”. The famous Swedish norms are not fully gone, but significantly eroded.

http://www.iies.su.se/publications/seminarpapers/719.pdf

The quality of the health care, schools and higher education has fallen dramatically. Untill 40 years ago Sweden was a world leader in many sciences, such as medicine and chemistry, whereas today it is at best mediocre compared to other western nations, especially the US.

Of course people are in absolute terms better of because of technology, but in RELATIVE terms to the rest of the world there is little doubt it was a costly experiment.

The claim that people are “free” from one another is pointless, people can choice to be free from one another in the US if they wish to, just save for your retirement and get some insurance. Breakup of social and family ties is not something Swedes have done voluntarily; it is a byproduct of the welfare state. Loneliness among the elderly is a serious social problem in all Scandinavian welfare states.

And what exactly has the welfare state contributed to? Wealth inequallity is essentially the same today than it was in 1950-60s.

http://www.naringslivsforskning.se/Wfiles/wp/wp667.pdf

Reveled preferences is another thing: Even though it is harder to move from Sweden to the US than vice versa 50.000 Swedes live in the US, compared to 14.000 Americans in Sweden.

Several other claims are nonsensical, and based on making strong claims with no knowledge.

“You can do your own thing, without much fear (relatively speaking, of course) of personal oppression from others.”

What exactly can you do that you can’t do in any other western democracy? Live on welfare? Swedes that want good successful lives have to work in organizations, form social relationships, and submit any other “oppression” from others (by which I assume he means volantary reciprocal exchange or relationships).

However unlike for example the US Sweden is a notoriously socially conformist country, which means that even adults in social relationships tend to have much MORE fear of “oppression” from others. Adult bullying is a serious problem in Swedish organizations.

This conformism and extreme adherence to group cohesion in Scandinavia is a big topic among sociologist. One version of it is Jante

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jante_Law

Instead we get to read that “Autonomy reigns”.

Don’t get me wrong, people are reasonably autonomous in Scandinavia, and in certain regards (sexuality most important) more liberal than Americans. But in many other regards the society is much less autonomous. Socially Sweden is far from laissez faire, quite the countrary.

This is why I am not reading Margial Revolution . This was once an economics blog. But at some point they got overconfident, lazy or just tired of economic analysis. Now instead of arguments, facts or figures the posts are increasingly builds his post on his casual personal impressions.

“I like Latin American food and art? This proves immigration of unskilled immigrants is good for the US economy”.

“I liked my trips to Sweden. You really get a sense of freedom walking through the streets and eating at nice restaurants. I guess this proves the Swedish welfare state was socially and economically successful”.

“And it is hard to argue that it has been bad for the Swedes.”

Apparently the opposite was even harder to argue for, since Cowen didn’t actually try, other than making the claim.

Posted by: Teller at Oct 28, 2006 8:51:54 PM

What did you like about Malmo--the riots?
What libertarian credentials?

Posted by: Bill Stepp at Oct 29, 2006 7:57:18 AM

Teller,

Your comments are fascinating but I believe you're over-interpreting
the motivations of others. The mistake I imagine you making is
a common one: assuming that others know what you do, when in fact
that don't. Most of the people commenting here on Sweden as well
as any other english-language site have either no direct experience
of Sweden or little direct experience. This is true whether they
are arguing for or against the swedish model.

Thus when you perceive egregious mistakes and assume that because
everyone knows they are such, they must be motivated by a
malevont will. But that's what's going on, it's just ignorance,
or the normal human tendency towards fuddled thinking.

Nor would the situation be improved much if we had more native
Swedes commenting because what is really being attempted is
a comparison. Most people either know a lot about Sweden and a
little about anglo-american realities or vice-versa. When people
lack direct immediate overwhelming experience of the two contexts
then they have to resort abstraction.

What for you may be an overwhelming truth with so many roots that
one can't even list them all may well appear to someone else as just
another set of words whose validity is no more self-evident that what
another one invents using nothing more than their imagination.

I also believe you're misinterpreting Tyler Cowen's goal here;
he was, so to speak, thinking a thought and inviting comment.

But to say again I really like reading your thoughts and think
you have a depth and authority on the subject that most lack and
wish you would continue to post those thoughts.

Posted by: Mark Amerman at Oct 29, 2006 10:57:40 AM

teller,

No society is a utopia, and Sweden has been burdened with
being as presented as one, as well as having been regularly
denounced for decades now as a doomed distopia. Of course
as a citizen there (so I gather) you have your right to follow
the latter view, or at least disclaim its utopian claims, which
have not been all that strong since the crisis of 1991 anyway.

I agree with Mark Ammerman. Tyler is clearly being provocative.
He enjoys visiting Sweden and sees superficially its many positive
features, which are very real. He is provoking a readership
that inclines to think that Sweden is a hell of high taxes.
Funny that you did not mention that among the various problems
that you listed, many of them for real, if not all that bad from
a global perspective, even if from the rather narrow perspective
of some on this list for whom the only relevant comparison is
with descendants of Swedish immigrants in the US (and Ellsworth
Huntington would argue that emigrants are superior in various
behavioral ways to those who stay behind).

I am not going to do a blow by blow dissection of your arguments,
many of which are subtle (e.g. social punishment in groups arguments),
but on a crucial set of points you provided no source, and I think
you are wrong. You declared without support that health and
education are actually declining in quality. I think you are
wrong. I know that one must wait for surgery for non-fatal but
seriously unpleasant illnesses in Sweden, and there is definitely
a serious youth unemployment problem. But your claim about actual
decline in those basic services is unsupported and I suspect wrong.
Sweden remains number one in the world in the probability that a
male born will reach the age of 65. This is a serious bottom line,
easy to dismiss by an alienated citizen, but for real. And, last
time I checked, overall life expectancy in Sweden was still rising,
despite rising immigration (another issue you did not mention,
much to the annoyance of some on this list... ).

Also, while Sweden has many problems, the claim that it is wildy falling
behind in GDP is also overstated. Yes it is down, but some of its
Nordic neighbors have moved up in rank, with Denmark just behind the
US and oil exporting Norway ahead of the US (and many oil exporters
are doing very poorly, none up there with Norway, that is for sure).

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Oct 30, 2006 3:34:50 AM

No doubt Sweden is a pleasant place and even with a lower GDP, it provides for a simple modest lifestyle. But overall Sweden is an inconsequential country. It is a small country in an out-of-the-way location so that it can duck when a militaristic bully comes into the neighborhood and parasitically let others fight to make Europe free. It isn’t a model that is scalable and sustainable in other locations.

Having been homogeneous it has mistakenly open its doors to an immigration group that is virtually impossible to assimilate in large concentrations, Muslims, that will provide a formidable challenge to Sweden as it has been for the Netherlands. It has given away its advantage of a single-minded mono-cultural enclave in a remote location. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Posted by: Jason Pappas at Oct 31, 2006 12:07:04 PM

The "freedom" available in Sweden would not extend to the freedom to start a business without interference, especially if such a business competed with government-sponsored enterprises, to hire and fire workers on rational principles, to rent property on terms you and your customers agree on and to manufacture products that people wanted at prices they could afford.
You can use the government to steal other people's money so you don't have to work, but is that really a "freedom"? Isn't it more like a crime?

Posted by: Robert Speirs at Nov 1, 2006 10:45:45 AM

Robert,

You are wrong. One of the reasons the Nordic
economies work so well, including Sweden, is that
they interfere very little with business formation,
and there are very few "government sponsored businesses."
This is the common misperception of many critics of
those economies. They are actually among the freest
in the world. Their "lack of freedom" largely involves
their very high taxes, but little else.

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 2, 2006 1:10:25 PM

I'm Swedish, and I don't understand why my country is so interesting to discuss on here. And what is all that talk about climate and I read something about lazy. I can say with certainty that laziness is not a Swedish trait. I don't know where you got it from...??

Posted by: Victoria at Nov 10, 2006 6:53:10 AM

"It is a small country in an out-of-the-way location so that it can duck when a militaristic bully comes into the neighborhood and parasitically let others fight to make Europe free. It isn’t a model that is scalable and sustainable in other locations."

I'm not too sure about that. I read about all the European Battlegroups the other day. Sweden is the leadnation for the Nordic Battlegroup and contributes with 2000 soldiers while Norway contributes with 150, Finland: 200, and Estonia: 50.

/ Erik, Austria.

Posted by: Erik at Apr 22, 2007 8:28:29 AM

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