I find it very intellectually dishonest to compare Scandinavia and the United States, or any other large country for that matter.
* All in they are 26 million. The US is 310 million.
* The US is geographically HUGE with millions of square miles.
Nordic countries less so.
* Scandinavian populations are less diverse than the US.
* The US is a superpower and must support a large military.
I don't think we can look at Sweden or the other countries as a model society. Sure, there are good ideas in there, but the question arises -- will it scale?
* Healthcare and social services -- will it scale from 26MM to 310+?
* Infrastructure -- will it scale from 100K kilometers
of roads and railways to 10MM kilometers of roads
and rail?
Then there are issues of States' rights in the US. Getting a federal law passed is only the first part. Next, each state has to figure out how it will be implemented, added-on, or blocked.
Having said all this, I don't know who we can look to. Maybe no one.
Must support a large military? I think not. We choose to support a large military, far above what is necessary.
And for the questions of scale, I don't really see the relevance. Forgive me if I'm wrong on this, but don't states already do their own infrastructure projects (aside from once-a-century stuff like the freeway system/east-west rails)? Don't they have the option to do their own healthcare (Romneycare etc.)? And aren't most states pretty much on the scale of a Scandinavian country population and size-wise (or smaller)?
As I see it, the states should be experimental grounds for any number of different systems of government and implementations, with the successful ones being adopted by the others (ideally). If Texas wants to have a bare-bones capitalist model and California wants to be a semi-socialist one, why not? Why do things have to be decided at the federal level?
If the US does not project a global military presence on "the high seas" international trade will stop due to piracy in key places. It's really that simple. Singapore and the Suez Channel will become effectively unpassable unless you buy of 30 different military forces or shoot your way through.
Immediate consequence : availability of oil throughout 90%+ of the globe drops to 5-10% of what it was before in Europe, 40-50% of what it was in the US. In other places it'll be worse. Slightly longer term consequence : it becomes impossible to produce electronics.
This is assuming no-one else replaces the US doing this. But, who CAN do this ? China might be able to, but I don't think USians will like the consequences of that (e.g. their territorial expansion project ... their attitude to what happens to basic resources ...)
What are you talking about? The US Military does not enforce free trade on the high seas. I am not aware of it taking any day to day role against piracy at all.
Singapore has its own navy. Why would you need to buy off 30 different military forces to sail the straits of Malacca? I'm not an expert on Egypt but I'm sure they can enforce free passage on their own canal.
You're talking as if the US is the only rational state actor in the world. It is not. This is not The Pirates of the Caribbean, and the US is not the British Empire circa 18th century.
Population density is lower in nordic countries(except for Denmark) than in US, so maintaining infrastructure is more expensive over here per capita than over there.
Smaller domestic markets are also an issue over here, as well as language barriers which also complicates exporting products to an extent.
I claim that the system in nordic countries would not fit to US because of way, way lower purchasing power. Imagine cutting your pay by 33 % and having the local grocery prices hike up by 25 % for example. Good? No.
I think you have it backwards. They are trying to emulate us, not the other way around. That was my take from the article.
> Having said all this, I don't know who we can look to. Maybe no one.
That's precisely right. If you're at the front of the pack, you can't follow someone else's footsteps ... because there aren't any.
There are, however, very specific sectors where other countries excel. It certainly wouldn't hurt to look there for guidance. In the end, though, the only thing we will have to guide us are our principles and convictions, hoping that they will lead us to a better place.
The US is not on the front run. At least in term of happiness, which is basically the only relevant factor. I think that on average, it's slightly better to live in a country like Gernamany, Denmark, Canada, etc than in the US.
When you figure out how to measure happiness, let me know. If you think simply asking people is a good way to find out, you're even more naive than I already think you are.
Of course, there is no exact method of measuring happiness. But you can estimate whether some policy increases happiness, whether some person or society is happier than another etc. There are lots of ways of estimating happiness.
Points 2 and 4 are frankly just wrong. I know the idea of a peace loving utopia is a fun one, but claiming that there is no need for a military and just out of hand dismissing the US as "corrupt" without any quantifiable evidence is frankly just lazy and ignorant.
I'd say that in a pure numbers game. i.e. 1 mil to 500k troops you may be right. The military as an idea is undergoing a dramatic transformation that's been happening since the dawn of the nuclear weapon. The challenges we face now are quite different than the ones we faced throughout any other time in history. We need to look at the military like a startup of sorts. How do we tear down the big bloated corporate structure and enable to act quickly and derisively in a global battlefield where a small group of determined individuals has the ability to inflict the same amount of damage that used to take tanks and a large standing force. I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do think it's important that we acknowledge that the danger has changed not simply gone away.
Although according to Transparency International[1] US isn't any more corrupt than an average European country and does damn well compared to the southern countries, although tailing nordic countries quite a bit. Still, doing very good in comparison to the rest of the world.
Of course, there can never be too little corruption in a country, so everyone has room for improvement on that part. Even us nordics.
I'd like to see a European country openly invade Middle East ignoring the UN Charter and get away with it.
I'd also like to see a European country poison the markets with loads of toxic assets causing massive turmoil around the world and, again, get away with it (with a hefty bonus).
The kind of changes we see in social-oriented countries today are forced upon by American neoliberals who wish to expand their influence. They operate in the name of capital, not people.
In 2009, 16% of Finland's exports were from Nokia, and they employed a good percentage of the population of the entire country. Would you say Finland is corrupt? Or do you think you are simply biased against the US?
But how much did they pay for politicians? Do you know how bad light they get if they take any money? Do you know how much corporations on US pay for politicians so they only do good things for them?
The US is geographically HUGE with millions of square
miles.
Nordic countries less so.
I think this is wrong. If a Nordic country annexed Antarctica tomorrow, it would become geographically huge but it would have no effect on any real differences between that country and the US (not any more so that claiming part of the moon). Geographic area isn't a useful metric on its own.
US states are comparable with smaller countries like Sweden. So area / population is not a reason, why good policies from e.g. Sweden can't be copied – just implement them on a state level. The main problem is different culture – individualism, guns etc.
Not only is that a naive statement, it is simply not true.
First, states are too dependent on interstate commerce and trade to operate as micro-countries. We need the federal regulations for several reasons:
- How do you tax a pipeline than runs from
Louisiana to Texas?
- Or a power grid that spans an entire region of states?
- Or how do you provide social services to people who live
in New Jersey but whose work is taxed in Manhattan?
My point was, that the dependecies / coupling between the US are not the reason, why coping policies from countries like Sweden won't work. Sweden is part of the EU. Countries in the EU are not so interconnected as the US, but still are quite a lot - higways, power grid, money transfers, usually the same currency. There really aren't many policies, that are only feaible in smaller countries.
You know, lots those problems have already been solved in the EU. It isn't necessarily that complicated. Especially if you keep the federal structures where it makes sense.
> * All in they are 26 million. The US is 310 million.
How would that matter? Divide and conquer is a trusty algorithm.
That should be an advantage for the US. You already have the states, which would be a matching subdivision. On top of that, the federal government could be compared (badly) to the EU.
the 26 million of the nordic countries matches Texas quite perfectly. North Carolina is comparable to Sweden in population.
> * The US is geographically HUGE with millions of square miles. Nordic countries less so.
Wut? Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland are very sparsly populated. We still need good infrastructure to handle transportation of electricity, timber and steel/ore, all generated in the north but consumed in the south, some 1200 km apart.
> * Scandinavian populations are less diverse than the US.
In what way? Sure we don't have many Mexican immigrants, and we didn't trade with slaves. But is that really the most important measurement of diversity? We sure do have political diversity.
> * The US is a superpower and must support a large military.
Having said all this, I don't know who we can look to. Maybe no one.