worth noting how norway is rich off of oil
Worth noting that the Nordic model made Norway, and other Nordic countries, quite rich even before they discovered oil.
It is replicable, and continued to make Nordic countries without oil, rich as well.
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
So good on Norway to not give in to unbridled corruption and out that money on a public fund to make its own citizen wealthy
Well yes, Norway’s leader wasn’t assassinated by the US, followed by sanctions and throwing money and weapons at militant factions. I wonder why…
This is bad analysis. Natural resources don’t make countries poorer, they make the US/UK/France/Spain/Italy invade you.
Libya, rich in oil, was the richest country in Africa (and highest Human Development Index) until the west bombed it and triggered a civil war. Iran was on the way to use its oil for its own profits by nationalizing it under the democratically elected leftist government of Mosaddeq until it got blockaded and couped by MI6+CIA and a corrupt monarch got reinstated. Venezuela took millions of people out of poverty until US sanctions came in an attempt to kill the socialist government and put millions through hardship. Saudi Arabia, having a government very cozy with the US, gets away with no US coups, but has 70% of the population being effectively slaves.
There was a full-blown civil war in Libya well before the intervention of NATO (which had unanimous support from the UN security counicl).
There was a full-blown civil war in Libya
And how did the bombing help exactly? Not to mention the western participation in the formation of the civil war itself, with its constant meddling and sanctioning against the Libyan government.
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
Hmm, somebody should let the Middle East know that they’re poor.
More likely, the discovery of oil attracts the worst kind of industrialists, who will exploit the workers into abject poverty, and take all the wealth. It isn’t the oil that makes the people poor, it is the government who sells them out.
I don’t get your point? The US is one of, if not the wealthiest, country in the world. We made money off of slaves, oil, gold, child labor and now taking advantage of our working class without paying for healthcare. It also used to be innovation, but that’s going away. We should be doing even better. How many of the wealthiest in the world live here?
The argument isn’t that the US can’t do it, it’s that there are only a few countries that ever could. It’s pitched as some sort of universal fix, but can’t be done without a vast amount of pre-existing wealth.
It’s pitched as some sort of universal fix, but can’t be done without a vast amount of pre-existing wealth
Right, which we have. There are also enough wealthy countries and the EU that could stop causing chaos in developing countries while supporting our own, that would make everyone’s lives better.
You were the first person in this comment chain to mention the US (important to note that the post doesn’t, either). Nobody said the US couldn’t do this, they just explained the reason Norway can.
True and the Nordics have plenty of poverty themselves once people look closer.
(This is just saying it exists, nothing more)
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Not even a successful society is perfect. It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It’s still better than what most of the rest of the world is doing.
Norway relies on the exploitation of billions in the global south, as all of the western world does.
What does that even mean? For those of us who aren’t in the know like you are, that phrase doesn’t mean anything to us.
And if you’re open to a friendly suggestion, nix the “western world” propaganda; focus on explaining the “exploitation of billions in the global south” part.
Norway doesn’t produce cocoa beans. Norway doesn’t produce cotton, or bananas, or iron ore, or cobalt, or gold, or most basic raw materials you need to run a society. Neither do Spain, or Germany, or France, or the USA. Instead, these countries focus on the production of high value-added goods and services, which they can do because they are historically highly industrialized, developed, and have high levels of education, infrastructure and concentration of productive capital.
In this manner, Germany imports iron ore from poor countries in the global south at low prices, and exports cars at high prices. In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico. This is unequal exchange, and is the pillar of neocolonialism.
Through political, economical and military powers, the western world has ensured that the global south remains underdeveloped. IMF predatory loans and neoliberal policy impositions, support for fascists or monarchists, coups, or outright military invasions are some of the most common tools the west uses to maintain these countries underdeveloped and with cheap labor.
It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Nobody said we shouldn’t. The point is, we shouldn’t look away from the issues in a country just because they are doing better than others in some cases.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
Let better be better and then sure raise some issues. Your comment seems intentionally obtuse.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
…your argument is that we literally should not criticize ideas until they’re actually implemented and proven to be lacking? How does one establish that something is better without open critique?
I think it speaks more to who you are as a pwrson that your first reaction is to criticize an idea.
Negativity begets negativity. I choose to look for positivity and hope first, and criticize later.
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You’re seeing a motivation behind my comment that isn’t there, so you really shouldn’t call me obtuse. Is Norway doing pretty good? Yes! Could they also do better? Yes! I’m not playing crab bucket, but I’m also not sticking my head in the sand here.
Maybe next time open with the “pretty good” stuff. Before this comment everything cooking was negative which sure looks like crab bucket (not just from you, but also from you) and I’m still leaning toward obtuse by omission tbh.
I’m sorry I didn’t spoon feed my comment for you, mister obtuse.
Care to give some sources to that?
With quick google-fu Nordics seem to be in pretty comfy positions in world wide rankings. Not at the top but certainly in the best 20%
Also there is huge difference in the sense that even if you are poor in the nordics you still have right to healthcare and education. At some places you would just be fucked.
There are people who slip through the cracks (usually those with mental health/drug issues), and that the “basic level” of support hasn’t caught up with inflation…
But regardless, it’s 10000x better than the US system/the system in most other countries.
Isn’t that communism or authoritarian extreme socialism? Why do people get so confused over this. All developed nations are socialist to some extent, some more than others. Is there a different definition in the US?
The US has a hyper ignorance problem with anything that the local churches and Fox News says is bad.
So socialism is basically just authoritarian hellscape where nobody can eat, is safe, or has any real freedom in life.
So basically how we are now, but a fictionalized cartoonish version of it.
There’s a doublethink at play where Socialism is both a totalitarian slavery regime with gulags and mind control, and also just when everything is like it is now except rich people pay taxes
Cold war era propaganda led to civilizational programming that broke the minds of boomers on this subject. Boomers tend to lean hypercapitalist with a very “boot strappy” mindset ie. they did it all on their own. Collectivism is generally not a part of their worldview. It’s the rugged individual or bust. We’re all crabs in a bucket and the ones that get out are just inherently better. Out of many, comes one. It’s all bullshit.
America is the least socialist advanced economy Western nation but yes you can argue programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are socialist.
I’m not disagreeing with you I just think people need to understand what these terms all mean. Communism is… Well think back to soviet Russia, you don’t have independent companies, you don’t have brands, everything is just state issued “milk” or “wheat flakes” or “weekday tunic”. That couldn’t be farther from the extreme capitalism that is America.
However there have been some overlaps that I think confuse people because an authoritarian/ dictatorship country can look in some ways very similar to communism because of the total control from the top. But oligarchical, authoritarian capitalism is so so different from communism. It’s geared to lining the wealth of those in charge.
Socialist systems in a government would be things like: public roads, emergency services, tax funded military, agricultural systems that centralise food distribution. Things taxes pay for. That’s the best way to think of where the socialist aspects of the economy lie.
And yes you’re right us is definitely on the extreme capitalism side of what many consider normal. But still need that socialism lol
I appreciate the explanation. It’s important people know the difference. My understanding of communism is that it requires the complete abolition of private property while under a socialism private property and corporations are still permitted.
lord the ESSAY I’m sorry 😂 but appreciate you reading it because most people are so determined to right instead of reading and looking things up, that it’s damaging. These people just stop learning new things one day, forever, and it’s weird
The issue I think is that they see each political ideology as separate parties when they are just definitions of methods.
A healthy society has a mixture of approaches to different sectors. As I said public roads , infrastructure, emergency services, military defence, banking, agriculture etc. these are all things that can only work with a universal pooling and redistribution (tax), it’s not like you’re gonna just pay for the sections of road you want to use lol. Some places put more into this than others and that’s when they are deemed “socialist” places.
capitalism is needed for healthy competition which encourages growth, advancements, etc. private businesses would slump if it didn’t matter how they performed if there was nonmonetary incentive.
Then you got things like authoritarianism which is when there is an extreme concentration of power and wealth at the expense of the majority, and dictatorship means when one individual has total and utter rule (doesn’t have to be a bad thing if they dictator rules kindly but that never happens lol).
You got left and right leaning which is actually about where your priorities and beliefs are being it freedom and sharing for all, or a more rigid and traditional life. And those are different from socialism and capitalism because these are purely to describe the economic mechanics, not personal ideals.
Where do that money come from
In Norway, Healthcare is fund with the Government Pension Fund. Its an investment of petrolum benefits, but nowadays, its wealth is mainly due to speculation. In short, people in Norway benefits of the capitalist exploitation elsewhere.
From an international perspective, it does lower the wealth of workers anywhere but in Norway.
On the other side, in france healthcare was only funds by the workers, and does not participate in imperialism. It’s maybe why the french state is so direct for securing its economics interests. Capitalism is note one issue, it is many issues
France may not participate directly in imperialism these days, but it sure as hell has neocolonial and exploitative structures in place. E.g. see this Jacobin article.
Maybe I was confuse, sorry : the French is an imperialist state, directly and violently. The french army never leave the Africa, from special operation to another. Politics from African countries are so close to the french one, that a lot of them have a flat in Paris, and were in the same school. Until they disagree, and then “their plane crashed” or the small armed group of their country suddenly got a lot of ressources and make the regime fall. This sort of things happen many times, but some specific example have to be known :
- A several month strike of workers in Tchad have failed because the french state send billions to the Tchad state; at the same time in france, the retirement pensions were questioned because billions where missing to fund it
- Ore firm couldn’t begin it’s exploitation in Tchad because of the mobilization of the people. An airstrike killed them. Hundreds died. French army is the only known air force in the area.
- Fascists in the french army make children say nazis salute or slogans. In centrafrica, they participate in child prostitution
- An airstrike killed hundreds of people during a wedding in the barkan operation area.
- Egyptians targeting smuggler (allegedly) have been possible thanks to the surveillance of their Eastern borders by the french military intelligence
A lot of things will be discovered in the futur, like it was for the implication of the french state in the Genocide in Rwanda, or for the war in Libya (in order to kill the dictator that fund the campaign of the president of that time). Those things have an impact elsewhere. Military involve in “corruption” in Tchad now work for bosses in france order to watch workers mobilization ( see the movie “Merci Patron”), or people in the intelligence service involved in africa, could then be send in Kanaky (Nouvelle Calédonie) to scam separatists. It’s not a surprise that soldiers imply in regular murders, get out from theirs barracks to smash people that riots against the murder by b policeman (Nahel riots).
I know that a lot of countries feel that france did not fall under far right gouvernent. The truth is that the macron government has a lot of far right policy on a lot topics, and that the social organization of a colonialist (not neo) state worsen those policy. Not only the French state is directly imperialist, but that imperialism turn to fascism
You know that. And I know that.
But try telling that to 100 million poorly educated voters who think billionaires are acting in their best interests, and public goods of any kind are for poors and losers.
That, is the evil brilliance of Republican marketing.
It also contributes to the climate catastrophe by providing copious amounts of oil. It also enjoys the fruits of the exploitation in the Global South, hence it can redistribute said fruits of imperialism to its people, which is indeed better than the US oligarchs hoarding it all, but not by a lot.
It effectively puts a ceiling on wealth… but the ceiling is in hundreds-of-millions to billions, so who actually gives a fuck?
I think a ceiling would actually be healthy. I don’t love that we’re still pandering to the rich even with this summary. Still, it’s good to push any healthy message. I’m just saying it could be better. No one in the entire world needs more than 20 million dollars. No one. That should be the highest we allow, and even lower would be better.
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Great. Now do both.
“doesn’t put a ceiling on wealth”
eeeeehh. maybe we fucking should?
increased privatisation is happening all over the Nordics. I don’t know how much in Norway compared to here in Finland, but being in my fourth decade I can definitely see it happening and intensely. I can’t get a fucking public dentist anymore. Hell, children aren’t given free dental care anymore.
The whole point is that the floor is the important thing. In Scandinavian countries, they have a fairly firm upper bound. But they don’t suffer when people above that upper bound flee to avoid taxes
The critical part is the lower bound
In Scandinavian countries, they have
Sounds like you don’t actually live here.
We don’t have a “firm boundary” on people being rich. We just don’t have multi-billionaires. Or if we do, they’re the silent type, not the Musk/Bezos type. And even those are pretty different.
But like, how many multi-billionaires do you know from like Minnesota, Louisiana, Oregon & Oklahoma?
The progressive taxation we have is for income, not capital gains. So essentially you can never get rich by working, but if you’re just profiting from having a lot of capital (renting properties etc, even airbnb, and tons of other ways for rich people to shift their income from “labour income” to capital gains), then you have a flat 30% tax rate. And if you’re actually a billionaire, you’d just shift it all to a tax haven to avoid even the 30%.
Sure, yeah, I agree there’s a certain type of bottom — insofar that we don’t allow people to die to starvation or the elements — but that’s a fucking low bar, don’t you think?
I bet you’re one of those people who actually believe Finland is the happiest country in the world. (It’s like North Koreans talking about freedom lol.)
Jesus Christ, you have no idea…
Our ultra-wealthy pay literally nothing in taxes. They take out loans against their holdings, and when they do sell they use losses on paper to offset their gains, so they get away with paying nothing
And most of ours fly under the radar too. There’s around 300 resorts and compounds worldwide where the billionaires live their social lives away from cameras, not counting their more personal compounds
We do let people die of starvation and to the elements. In fact, we regularly have fights over if poor children deserve to be fed, and the results recently have been “no”
Lately, we’ve been criminalizing homelessness to put a capstone on decades of regularly tearing down whatever shelter they manage to cobble together.
Hell, a church got sued for letting homeless people shelter during a cold snap. People get arrested and charged for feeding the homeless in some places
And don’t get me started on medical care… It’s literally worse than you could imagine. You wouldn’t believe me even if I sugar coated it
I’m sure your life isn’t perfect, but have no idea how bad it’s gotten over here. I’d kill for a system as imperfect as the one you take for granted
You probably think I’m exaggerating about all this, but I’m really not. Luckily the administration is incompetent, because otherwise we’d be neck deep in a genocide right now. Instead, both of our political parties have settled on mass death, just so long as it’s indirect
Sheesh I hate it when Americans are like “you have no idea”.
Yes, we do. We have the internet here as well and you can’t really avoid hearing about American shit.
Why would you think I don’t know what a tax-haven when I specifically mentioned that any “proper” billionaires can get around paying even the 30%. And that’s private citizens. Google is equally a tax-avoiding scumbag company for us Nordics as it is for you. There’s just so many laws the extremely wealthy corps and individuals can use to avoid paying anything. Google’s tax rate is literally zero.
We do let people die of starvation and to the elements
Yes, we know. Hence me explicitly mentioning we don’t?
Lately, we’ve been criminalizing homelessness
And that’s clear here as well, despite there being very few homeless and practically none of them live on the street. For some 9 months at least it’s mostly too cold to sleep outside. Yet the silly hostile architecture for benches and whatnot has pervaded into the Nordics as well.
We don’t need it, but they’re still there. So there are people here working on getting rid of even the most basic securities that allow us to function like this. Also, I’m on the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska, about. And I’m in the very SW corner of Finland, on the level of Stockholm.
Does Alaska have a large homeless population? I doubt anything like in the States where the winters are milder?
People get arrested and charged for feeding the homeless in some places
I’ve seen the videos. You’re still pretending as if we don’t have selfish people here who would rather just kill all the poor. You at least have people who care and help others. Here in the Nordics, due to there being a system people can point to, personal responsibility for anyone doing badly is extremely small. People are apathetic and just default to “the system should be helping them.”
Hell, when I was properly suicidal, my mom literally just went “well what do you want me to do about it” and called the social workers with a care notice or something. The funny bit being that she is a social worker with higher education. What could she do? Idk, give me a ring sometime, or come to visit so I don’t feel as bad. But no. People just default to “the bureaucracy will help them, the bureaucracy is infallible”.
I’d kill for a system as imperfect as the one you take for granted
Except you’ve very clearly demonstrated that your assumed version of our system is pure fantasy.
There’s a reason we’re quite high in the suicide stats. Because we’re definitely not even close to being “the happiest country in the world”. I don’t ever remember my grandma laughing. She died cold and alone, hallucinating basically dream paralysis demons. With not even a nurse who would’ve know her, because the care home was being run down and there were just random nurses for a few shifts and then new ones again.
So I implore you, don’t put the Nordics on a fucking pedestal. Dismissing the problems we have, pretending this is some Lintukoto.
Would you rather be in prison with a dozen of your best mates, or literally forever alone without even the possibility of emotions and if you talk about them, you’ll be shunned?
You probably think I’m exaggerating about all this, but I’m really not
Again, just because you don’t know things about the Nordics nor see our news does not mean we don’t see yours.
What’s the point of competing who has it worse? That’s literally whataboutism that’s just dismissing Nordic problems. And you’re not even Nordic. Trying to have this discussion with fellow Nords is very hard, because lots and lots literally won’t allow themselves even an inch of wrong-think.
Our police seem very skilled, don’t they? I never had problems with them, always good interactions. Then I got arrested for weed. They put me in an isolation cell for 3 days while denying me my prescription medication, the lights were on constantly and there wasn’t even a mattress to sleep on or a blanket. Just the cold ground. Was the cell prolly cleaner than average jail cells in the US? Probably.
But would I be able to sue the shit ouf of them for literally torturing me, breaking Geneva conventions? At one point they turned of my water for hours. I have a congenital kidney malformation and due to that slight inefficiency in left kidney so I must keep good hydration.
I drew over 300 words in my own blood on the walls.
In the US there’d be a queue of lawyers on my door for all the violations, and I’d be looking at tens of thousands to millions in compensation.
Here in Finland, I can’t literally even get people to accept it happened. The only one who does is my therapist and he was born and raised in the UK only moved here later in life.
So we really don’t have to compete which sort of horror is the worst.
In the US, I’d probably be on the streets or in prison. But after years of literal solitude and nothing else, I’d actually welcome it. My own fucking mother went “weeeelll, you know, I can’t actually now what happened in the cell” when I phoned her to cry about my injuries and the injustice of it all. She implied it was my own fault that the police tortured me. And that’s the most anyone’s spoken to me about it. Finns always decline and refute it at first, then when I produce some photos (I only have those because they claimed I vandalised the cell. We then asked for the security cam footage as evidence of the crime. Weirdly it was suddenly completely lost and the charges dropped.
I would rather get beaten up and kicked than do that again. But again, both suck, they’re just different. So what’s the point in competing who has it worse and by how much?
There’s clearly problems in both places. I’m not critical of everything in the Nordics, but nor am I critical of everything America either, despite having been actively arguing against your foreign policies and criticising you in general for a few decades online.
And don’t get me started on medical care… It’s literally worse than you could imagine. You wouldn’t believe me even if I sugar coated it
Do you think the free healthcare here is some superior quality? No. The best in classes go to private clinics, the worst end up in the public system. And the wait times are ridiculous. Some of the doctors have confidently said things that are just plain untrue. I could genuinely list 30+ years of bad experiences in the public healthcare system. Sure it’s not bankrupting me, but it’s also not doing jack shit for anything and genuinely gets like 80% of their guesses wrong when it’s even the least bit subjective. You wouldn’t believe half the shit I’ve heard from supposed “professionals”.
So again, every different, but neither is good, is it? So don’t think you’d “kill” to switch places with me, when I’ve spent a good deal of the past few years considering just killing myself.
I get what you’re saying, and I’m not comparing personal experiences at all, that sounds horrible. If I thought the Nordic countries were some kind paradise, I’d be working my ass off to get there. I get that the entire world is being worn down by the billionaires
But you still don’t get it… If you lived here, your worst 3 days is something common for people who fall through the cracks. There are people kept in similar conditions for months or years at a time. Including for just having a small amount of weed
And it’s legal to do this in a lot of places. It isn’t something they have to cover up, they might not even need to justify it with a reason.
Hell, lots of people take pride in the cruelty to “criminals”.
And you don’t understand our medical system… Our outcomes are terrible. Your unhelpful free healthcare has better outcomes than what we go into lifelong debt for
And your meds… Depending on what you need, it could be hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes even with insurance. Without it, there’s no upper limit, many drugs are in the thousands… You’d have to jump through hoops with the drug companies and hope they give you enough of a discount
So yeah… You probably would be dead. And if you weren’t, you’d be just as alone, and more battered by your experiences
I get why you feel otherwise. Part of me craves disaster, because at least then it would justify my suffering. At least then my struggles would be less abstract. It’s very normal to feel that way when you don’t have hope in the future
But if we’re talking about economic and legal systems, you can’t throw your hands up and say “every system has problems”. Obviously they do. But if you want hope, and to build political momentum, you have to convince people something better is possible. And perfect or not, the Nordic model exists
On a personal level, the best advice I can give you is to fight. Find an organization pushing for people falling through the cracks, and get involved with them in whatever way you can. Whether that results in change or not, being around others who believe in the same things and doing something about it builds hope
Oh ran into char limit. And I’m writing on my phone.
So yeah tldr I’ve been part of several political parties and organisations. I have streamed politics and called members of parliament and even the head of the election law committee(or organisation whatever). Finns are just pathologically avoidant, which is slowly driving us to authoritarianism.
You don’t understand Finland because you’re ignorant of it but I’m not ignorant of the USA.
But you still don’t get it…
Yes. I very much do.
How do you know about the world. Through media. Most of your information is from media, not first hand experiences. Unfortunately for you, the media is full of stuff about the US and only occasionally maybe mentions Finland.
It’s the same sort of disparity as there is with language.
You might as well be saying “you haven’t lived in an English-speaking country so you can’t be fluent in English!”
I started reading English roughly 25-30 years ago. The point being that I was exposed to it ever since I was a kid. And I leaned into learning it. Most of the people in Finland do not have my language skills, albeit everyone has a basic level of English understanding. The same goes for the US.
Or how many States have you been in? All 50? Doubt it. A dozen? Or maybe just a handful of cities?
And you don’t understand our medical system…
I understand your lack of education. Otherwise you might understand, after several times of repeating it, that I actually do know how about your country and it’s systems.
Aside from being bombarded with American news day and night everywhere, I actually go out of my way to watch news shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but I can already hear you mocking about how “TV isn’t real life”, despite the fact that you get most of your news from it as well. Somehow it’s just iiiimpossible to understand shit like wounds getting treated with literally just sugar in federal prisons. Sure that was a random case but the episode about it gives context on why it’s a good example.
Hell, it’s completely possible that (aside from taxes paid) I’ve done more for the US than any random American I meet online. Just out of my age, so I’ve have been online for quite a while, and the amount of activism I do online. I used to be 9001 times more militant about American global policies and the drug war, but also against Trump ever since he first stood for president. And while you can dismiss online activity as “just [whateverlameexcuse]”, that’s how things progress. By people complaining.
And your meds… Depending on what you need, it could be hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes even with insurance. Without it, there’s no upper limit, many drugs are in the thousands… You’d have to jump through hoops with the drug companies and hope they give you enough of a discount
Do you genuinely think that this is the first I’m hearing of drugs (and healthcare in general) being insanely expensive in the US? You genuinely think I wouldn’t understand a meme about Americans avoiding taking an ambulance even when they’re very much in need? You think I’d just go… “I don’t get the joke o.o”?
And if you weren’t, you’d be just as alone
You don’t know me at all. I make friends extremely easily, alway have. The thing here is "you have NO IDEA* about Finnish culture, because the only time you’ve been exposed to it is some random henchman in a movie where an action hero is going/coming from Russia. And they never even bother to get anyone who actually speaks Finnish, it’s always gibberish or extremely poorly pronounced. (Imagine a deep southern accent someone trying to read Chinese without understanding the tones at all and you’ll get close to what it sounds like to us).
You don’t understand that I’ve chosen to avoid the people who won’t stand up to injustice. And that’s about the only criteria I have in adulthood. But for instance an American does not understand what it means to smoke weed in Finland.
It’s essentially similar to being gay in an extremely conservative and religious small town. You’ll get treated as the worst cock-sucking crack whore just for saying “I don’t think weed should be illegal.” And that is not an exaggeration I’m pulling out of my arse. If you understood Finnish I could share phonecalls with medical professionals who basically say that smoking weed on the weekends is literally as bad as shooting up heroine. One refused to give me meds, saying “you’ll just sell these for drug money”. One of the friends whom I grew up with, whom I have carried out of several parties, from one in a rolled up mat with him in the center, with his vomit all over. Like some sort of disgusting man-kebab.
Also, if I had lived in the US, I would’ve actually had the chance to do school at my speed. Which was way faster than the other kids. And you don’t understand it coming from a culture which so values individuality and individual achievement, but in Finland you’re not allowed to be better than others at basic education. I was literally held back because the others weren’t as fast. I taught myself how to read (no joke) at the age of five. So at the age of 7 in first year the teacher put me in an empty classroom by myself, saying “sit here and read” while others learned their letters.
Most Finns actively avoid people as sociable as me, but in the US I’d probably be on the introverted side of the spectrum.
I say I would be dead or in prison, but I also could just be making it big, as I would’ve definitely got a scholarship to a good school. I had a 9.3/10 (scale 4-10 4 is F 10 is A+) GPA when leaving basic education. What you’d call a straight A student. And I didn’t even apply myself, because I didn’t have to. I kept learning next year’s shit from my older brothers books.
I could be in jail for weed. I could be in a state where it’s legal. Could be that I would’ve been bakruptred, or could be I’d be an ace surgeon. (I’m not that interested in surgery tbh, but I was good at dissecting animals, our biology teacher said I was the first student in 20 years to extract a perch’s swimbladder without puncturing it and literally said “you’d make a great surgeon”. Couldn’t chase that either as mom forced us to love move that year and had to remake all friends and none of the teachers knew me and it was a way shittier school.)
Anyway, you’re making assumptions which even I can’t say about myself. The reason I say dead or in prison is because I wouldn’t put up with the bullshit politics and wouldve either been tossed to jail for weed or activism or some such. But in the US , I wouldn’t be alone with my sentiment. That’s why you so enshrine your rights. You actually have a sense of justice. Finns don’t. Finns merely follow rules instead of ever considering how moral or necessary the rules even are.
You can go to a city in Finland during the night when no-one is around for miles, and people will stop at a pedestrian red light, even for intersections that are clearly clear for hundreds of feet.
And I say feet, because I understand feet as well, but I don’t think you have as good a grasp on metric as I do for imperial units. Might be I’m wrong. But seeing how little empathy you show, I’m pretty sure I’m not.
The why I do it is kinda simple. The idea of America, the American dream, or whatever, is — however subjectively — kind of a cool idea. It’s a continuation of what the French started a few centuries ago, and it was going relatively well until somewhat recently. (Like, say, post 9-11.) And would you believe it I can remember where I was and what I was doing on 9/11. I don’t think you can say the same thing for anything that has ever happened to a Finnish person or relating to Finland.
But if you want hope, and to build political momentum, you have to convince people something better is possible. And perfect or not, the Nordic model exists
Yes, and the Nordic model isn’t the fantasy you have in your head anymore than a Whopper actually looks like the ad pictures for it.
I’m telling you you don’t have an idea of the pathological avoidance pretty much built into Finnish society. Hell, it’s in the very language. We don’t have gendered words or even gender-specific pronouns. And while we have a gender-neutral pronoun, we still often default to referring to people as “se”, which translates as “it”. Only really pets and formal situations does one use the proper third person pronoun “hän”.
On a personal level, the best advice I can give you is to fight
Oh wow. What a revelation my man. Wow. Crazy that it never occurred to my. Wow. All I needed to do is “fight” yeah, that’ll change the entire social fabric of Finland. Just like if you want, you can just get everyone to admit that the 2A is a garbage law only there to perpetuate the American military-industrial complex instead of having anything to do with actually having “a well regulated militia” in order to oppose tyranny. You’re living under tyranny right now and aside from Luigi, I ain’t seen no-one doing jack shit about it.
See how the language there sounded a little different? That’s because I actually know that despite learning in school that double negatives shouldn’t be used, if one is emulating colloquial speech, one would or at least could employ double negatives as emphasis for a positive. Because again, I don’t need to have lived in the US for that. Idk where you live or how much you travel, but you can probably do at least NY, Cali and deep south accents on a very stereotypical level. So can I. It’s not exactly rocket science. And whilst you live closer to those places, unless you’ve lived several years in each, you’re also mostly drawing on the media.
So I don’t know why you keep pretending like your systems are some grand secret. Feels a bit like Americans who yell loudly (in English) abroad to make themselves “easily understood” when literally everyone can speak English. (Yes, I did just use “literally” as emphasis instead of it’s literal sense.)
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000009654524.html
The Finnish Supreme Court ruled that I was in the right and that the police limited my freedom of speech illegally when stopping me from filming them when they illegally entered my apartment. In the US, I’d have made millions off that. Here I didn’t even get a letter saying I won. Read it off the news.
Also, if I had lived in the US, I would’ve actually had the chance to do school at my speed. Which was way faster than the other kid
Are you born rich? Because otherwise that’s a fantasy. We are not a meritocracy, no matter how hard we pretend. It doesn’t work that way
And I don’t even know where to start with the rest of this… I’m on my phone and can’t clip you point by point
But you think you’d make it big? Of course you fucking wouldn’t. No one does. That’s literally impossible. Even last one of our movie and music stars come from money. Every last one of them
Have you ever spoken to homeless people? I have. I make a point of doing it. I’ve slept alongside them, I’ve shared meals. Not through media, but through human connection. And they’ve both been insanely generous and tried to steal from me
Holy projection Batman, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen, not through media, but first-hand.
Oh wow quite a few broken thoughts there.
I know, I’m a bit sensitive when it comes to people telling me essentially “you haven’t tried hard enough.”
Anyway, the one childhood friend who was a man-kebab, that dude didn’t invite me to his wedding with a bitch who was equally or more an abuser of alcohol and they didn’t because was vocally for the legalisation of weed.
If you lived here, your worst 3 days is something common for people
Homelessness is common sure. But staying awake for three days while sober, shitting the eherloving shit out of yourself while eating your fingers until they literally bleed and then proceed to paint with your own blood for 70+ hours is… common in the US? And you don’t think that could be a bit offensive to me, dismissing literal torture I went through? (Sleep deprivation is torture, not to mention anything about closing off the water and not giving me my prescription meds.)
But hey, you’re not victimblaming, just dismissing it. So it’s still not as bad as literally every Finnish person I know.
But staying awake for three days while sober, shitting the eherloving shit out of yourself while eating your fingers until they literally bleed and then proceed to paint with your own blood for 70+ hours is… common in the US? And you don’t think that could be a bit offensive to me, dismissing literal torture I went through? (Sleep deprivation is torture, not to mention anything about closing off the water and not giving me my prescription meds.)
Yes that’s literally just something that happens to people. Yes, it’s definitionally torture… But it’s normal here. Normally, people paint the walls in shit, but blood is far from unheard of
If no one were living in poverty I would be more accepting of the ultra-rich’s existence.
Except that that’s hard to happen.
The very existence of an ultra-rich means that there was someone who managed to get extraordinarily high amounts of extra value from someone as compared to what they paid that ‘one’ for it and then did it over and over again, essentially leeching value out of the system, making it a -ive sum game for anyone inside it.
So when you take more than you give, you end up breaking the original meaning of money (that was “proof of work/goodwill”) and when you do that enough, the worth of work gets warped and those who do similar work, end up indirectly losing more than what they give.
The only thing that I think really needs to change is that it should be harder to get more wealthy past the point where the average person would say that you’re wealthy.
That difficulty spike should be caused by an increase in taxes that you have to pay in order to accrue more wealth so that those taxes can be redirected to the less wealthy.
You can sail as high as you want to go, but you have to raise the tide along with you.
Then your wealthiness would match my ideal of what it means to be wealthy.
That last line nails it: it doesn’t cap success, it just makes sure failure isn’t catastrophic.
But that’s one of the primary tenants of conservatism! What will conservatives do if people are allowed to continue living after they fail?
It does cap the wildest, antisocial forms of success that are insane excess.
Progressive taxation should mean you can never gain enough power, which capital is, to warp your society with power beyond your single vote, whether that power is expressed through direct bribery, lobbying, or mass media propaganda to try to trick your fellow citizens into voting and advocating against their own interests with your booming, capital powered voice that drowns out those you disagree with merely because you’ve exploited more capital into your private account than others.
I don’t see any shame, horror, or problem with putting a hard cap on how much an individual can accumulate, as other people live here too.
Despite what Elon Musk believes, this whole planet shouldn’t be his personal playground, but that’s what it means to become a trillionaire, entire governments will bow at your feet. That’s perverse. No unelected, unaccountable individual should hold so much power, unless humanity wants to live in a hell of its own making.
lobbying is direct bribery, isn’t it?
Shhh, that’s a secret, those are “campaign contributions” and nothing is expected in return! Mercy me, I have the vapors…
It’s not as perfect as this screenshot portrays though:)
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
It’s pretty good now but the wrong people in the governments of European countries are trying to ruin it. Yes, it’s better here in Europe but there is A LOT of room for improvement.
Social democratic gains in the first world are still built off exploited labor from the global South. Social democracy doesn’t address imperialism.
A rising tide lifting all boats??? Nah Elon needs to tie three gold cybertrucks together to drive around or his pp cant be the big pp
