Ah, Sweden
June 13, 2012 13 Comments
Got a chuckle that one of the ‘Ask A Libertarian’ questions was: “What about Sweden, which seems like a great place to live?”
Yes, I’m sure some of the people who think Sweden ‘seems like a great place to live’ have actually lived there, or have some other significant basis for this viewpoint. But according to my Sweden theory, which to date has never been disproved, most of them just find Swedish people sexy and think/imagine they are sexually-liberated in a way that would accrue hot sexual benefits to the marginal new resident such as, hypothetically, themselves. Which, well no wonder it ‘seems like a great place to live’.
OBLIGATORY IMAGE UPDATE: Swedish bikini team
Sweden: “seems like a great place to live”
Most lefty American Sweden lionizers indeed imagine something along the lines of your hypothesis, in my experience. Besides being sexy and loose, Swedes are super SWPLs; therefore, they would FIT RIGHT IN.
And they’re right about the Swedish upper middle class of my (sixties) generation, who are über- SWPL and currently set the tone in society. However, my group and our somewhat older social betters so loved the world that they have invited a good-sized chunk of it to come live with us, thus guaranteeing that we will have a strong dose of nasty ethnic bloc politics just like the US. Too bad.
It’s simple. Sweden is Breivik tier. All other countries? Non-Breivik tier.
Ah fuck me, Norway, Sweden, shows how much I know about Europe
Sonic, you suggest they’re wrong and you base that on their not having actually lived Sweden. That same argument works against you too. In which case, all you can truly say is: “Maybe the system does work well in sweden and maybe it doesn’t”.
I think the system there does work. God knows why.
I think it’s too easy on people who make affirmative claim X based on basically nothing substantial whatsoever to limit the retort to, “Maybe X is true and maybe it isn’t”.
But if stating an opinion about living standards in sweden (“great place to live / not a great place to live”) requires actually living in sweden then by implying their not living there means they can’t actually know you abandon yourself to the sword of your own argument, in which case “maybe” is all you could say.
You keep trying to suggest there’s a symmetry but there isn’t. Some folks have made a positive claim about Sweden, I have not. That is the only reason we’re talking about Sweden in the first place (and not some other country or something). If that reason ultimately stems from the image of sexy Swedes gleaned from Art Movies and 70s home decor magazines, then ridicule is absolutely in order.
Why are you so anti ridicule?
well, the soviet union wasn’t able to come up with home-decor magazines depicting an image of quality-of-life, money in fair abundance and so forth. Sweden does have a high quality of life and the welfare state seems to manage there. The only black blot on the picture is represented by places like malmo where muslim immigrants rule the nest.
Why the system should work well in sweden (and presumably norway, pretty much finland too) is beyond me. Some say it’s because in those countries being unemployed and living on welfare is frowned upon and attribute that not only to the culture of the place but also to the society’s homogeneity. You did seem to say those who make a claim about quality of life in sweden must live there (or have lived there) to make any claim yet it’s insinuated that you believe the system there, in practice, must suck. I thought you’re into debates/arguments
I’m insinuating that Sweden must suck? How can you misunderstand so completely. I have said no such thing about Sweden. I have said no thing about Sweden (except that they are very sexy). I would be delighted to have no conversations about Sweden whatsoever (that do not involve the bikini team, early 70s ‘art movies’, etc). I am not the one who keeps bringing it up, others are.
Of course, that would be fine if there were some logical basis for the Swedophilia, and some informed reason why it should inform amateur U.S. political debate as often as it seems to. But for the most part there is not. And, I think you would concede I am right about that. So how can it not be germane to point that out in response?
Let’s say it this way: if I had my way, it’s not that I would convert anyone to the notion that Sweden sucks. Instead, if I had my way, ‘Sweden’ would not regularly come up in political conversations in the first place. Because, there is no (non-sublimated-sexual-based) reason that it should. Understand now?
Sweden is used as an example of how a welfare state can work well. Why shouldn’t examples of successful models be used as a guide?
And that makes some sense asdf if/when the people citing Sweden as a welfare state that ‘works well’ have some actual basis for thinking this. If, on the other hand, they think this because of hazy memories of Christina Lindberg movies and ABBA concerts, I think it’s funny!
What the precise breakdown is between type 1 and type 2 Swedophiles is, of course, open to debate. You can see which way I lean, I think. But you are free to supply evidence/argument to the contrary. I just have never encountered any.
Instead of addressing the evidence (say, excellent scores on many of the metrics we use to measure well being) your just attacking people and saying they are disengenous.
I might as well say anyone who likes capitalism has a sexual fetish for Ayn Rand, rather then actually address the pros and cons of capitalism.
It’s precisely the gaping hole left by the dearth of such ‘evidence’ in all too many odes to Sweden that invites my Christina Lindberg theory, of course. Like I said, I’m happy to look at ‘evidence’ if/when offered. This isn’t often.
When it does happen, all too often I find that the metrics ‘we’ supposedly use to ‘measure well-being’ appear, under scrutiny, to be – more or less – almost subconsciously constructed to be proxies for sexiness. Hence they don’t even help me reject my theory anyway.