Will the ideal society look like Denmark ,Switzerland , or Singapore ? Is small better, or must big government be contained in small states?
Social Democracy
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I swear if this is billsands
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@billbatard
Yeah, I agree, as a socialist the social democracy module in which we gradually adopt more socialist policies slowly but surely is, in my opinion, the best way to enact socialism.
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@billbatard
It's hard to implement social democracy in a republic because a republic has checks and balances against mob rule...so it's a lot harder to implement 2 poor people robbing 1 rich dude mob rule democracy.
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@billbatard
I'd say Switzerland and Denmark more so than Singapore, for sure. Singapore is actually not the Asian Soc-Dem, South Korea is. Singapore is something I call a technocratic republic where elections are solely there to appease the masses.
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@billbatard
Germany, as in present-day Germany obviously, is the most ideal soc-dem there is in my eyes.
Legal note: This doesn't affect my allegiance to my nation, be it Germany or not. This is my view on 'ideal', not what I serve regardless of ideals.
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@billbatard
The ideal society wouldn't implement a democratic system because (majoritarian) democracy as its been practiced is immoral. It's a means to validating coercing minorities and dissenters out of their property, labor, and resources using a consensus fallacy. Places like Denmark, Switzerland, and Singapore have benefited from the capital inflows of the late 20th century, but when their welfare burns through them, as they eventually will, then like Sweden, they'll have to start privatizing.Will the ideal society look like Denmark ,Switzerland , or Singapore ? Is small better, or must big government be contained in small states?
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@billbatard
How about we be more like Hong Kong instead? (economically speaking)
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@Athias
Sweden is currently a capitalist nation with protections for the wealthy.
The state taxed successful industries heavily, and used the proceeds to subsidize industries that were inefficient, corrupt, and failing. This meant that interest rates on capital were prohibitive, especially when you tack on double-digit inflation.
To protect workers, the state required that wages could not be cut, and also enforced a panoply of restrictions on firing, layoffs, and other means of adjusting hours. Swedish products shot up in price, and the government was forced into a series of devaluations of the krona that made purchases of imported products beyond the reach of much of the middle class.
The electorate took a dim view of all of this. The tax system was a Rube Goldberg mechanism, with a level of complexity and arbitrary favoritism that encouraged distortion of investment into whatever happened to be taxed less, rather than whatever might produce useful products. Gunnar Myrdal, hardly a conservative, famously asked in 1978 whether Swedes “had turned into a people of swindlers.”
Fortunately for its citizens, but unfortunately for those who think Sweden is still socialist, the Swedish government, more or less by universal consensus, turned sharply back toward capitalism beginning in about 1995. It deregulated the domestic industry, privatized its education and pension systems, and opened the economy to international trade and competition.
It is fair to say that Sweden was socialist, at least in terms of temperament and the direction of public policy. In 1975, Sweden’s state-owned well over half of the productive resources in the country, and directed prices in much of the rest. It subsidized debt, in part paradoxically by having enormously high tax rates with generous deductions for borrowers. Its attempts at “Keynesian” policy interventions were clumsy, were mistimed, and created disastrous uncertainty in investment returns even in the portions of the economy that were still market-oriented.
The reason it did this is precisely because capitalism, wherever it is practiced seriously in a system with rule of law and protection for property rights, always creates prosperity.
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@Athias
The real question we should be asking is what would it take to become like Sweden and get the government out of the business of education and in the business of funding charter schools where poor people can choose the best privately run school available?
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@Greyparrot
Sweden is currently a capitalist nation with protections for the wealthy.It is fair to say that Sweden was socialist, at least in terms of temperament and the direction of public policy. In 1975, Sweden’s state-owned well over half of the productive resources in the country, and directed prices in much of the rest. It subsidized debt, in part paradoxically by having enormously high tax rates with generous deductions for borrowers. Its attempts at “Keynesian” policy interventions were clumsy, were mistimed, and created disastrous uncertainty in investment returns even in the portions of the economy that were still market-oriented.The state taxed successful industries heavily, and used the proceeds to subsidize industries that were inefficient, corrupt, and failing. This meant that interest rates on capital were prohibitive, especially when you tack on double-digit inflation.To protect workers, the state required that wages could not be cut, and also enforced a panoply of restrictions on firing, layoffs, and other means of adjusting hours. Swedish products shot up in price, and the government was forced into a series of devaluations of the krona that made purchases of imported products beyond the reach of much of the middle class.The electorate took a dim view of all of this. The tax system was a Rube Goldberg mechanism, with a level of complexity and arbitrary favoritism that encouraged distortion of investment into whatever happened to be taxed less, rather than whatever might produce useful products. Gunnar Myrdal, hardly a conservative, famously asked in 1978 whether Swedes “had turned into a people of swindlers.”Fortunately for its citizens, but unfortunately for those who think Sweden is still socialist, the Swedish government, more or less by universal consensus, turned sharply back toward capitalism beginning in about 1995. It deregulated the domestic industry, privatized its education and pension systems, and opened the economy to international trade and competition.The reason it did this is precisely because capitalism, wherever it is practiced seriously in a system with rule of law and protection for property rights, always creates prosperity.
Yes, but Sweden is still very much a welfare state (e.g. union edicts are enforced, state-run health care, and municipally run education system even to the university level, etc.) Sweden hasn't set it self apart by being an exemplar of capitalism--that hasn't been true since the 70's. Sweden sets itself apart by decentralizing and allowing its municipalities to function independently. Granted, this is more efficient than for example, the U.S. welfare state, and Sweden has increased its strides to privatize health care and education. But this only makes my point: Sweden could no longer rest on its laurels and siphon the success it had in the late 20th century. It eventually had to privatize less it wished to share the same fate as Greece eventually did.
The real question we should be asking is what would it take to become like Sweden and get the government out of the business of education and in the business of funding charter schools where poor people can choose the best privately run school available?
Or we can ask: why must the government fund them? Is it possible to fund these charter schools where government has no influence on how these schools are regulated?
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@Athias
Or we can ask: why must the government fund them? Is it possible to fund these charter schools where the government has no influence on how these schools are regulated?
The first step to becoming more like Sweden would be breaking the teachers union monopoly blocking the privatization of education. Current laws mandate compulsory membership into the teacher's union upon employment at government schools with no right-to-work relief.
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@Greyparrot
With the exception of "becoming more like Sweden," I agree.The first step to becoming more like Sweden would be breaking the teachers union monopoly blocking the privatization of education. Current laws mandate compulsory membership into the teacher's union upon employment at government schools with no right-to-work relief.
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@Greyparrot
all teachers in sweden belong to a union all of them BY LAW