Check this out (via):
Can the Nordic model be replicated? Perhaps, but not easily. The authors also note that the Nordic countries have small populations, are very homogenous, "with a preference for equality, inclusion and collective action". Most also have a long history of political dominance by social democratic parties. Those cultural and political characteristics, and the institutional complementarities that go with the Nordic economic and social model, will make it harder to export key elements elsewhere, particularly in anglo-saxon countries.
I suppose it was inevitable that Charlton Heston's Bowling for Columbine reasoning meant to excuse exceptional American firearms violence be transposed to economic matters.
Recall that the gist of Heston's specious argument was that America couldn't match the rest of the world in curbing its gun-violence because America was too mixed a society. Yes, you know what that was code for.
Now the argument is flipped but the same principle holds: Nordic societies' economic model -- the most moral, most democratic in the world; one in which poverty has been almost totality defeated -- can't possibly be exported, oh no, because the Anglosphere is composed of too mixed societies to accept it. The Scandivanians, see, are a homogenous society. Why, it just won't work. Right.
Actually, just as with the gun issue, the US could import the better model, but for a certain immensely powerful but minority class which refuses to accept it: fat rich white men. And as Hume said, the Few control the Many through Opinion. Anyone who would or has recommended the Scandinavian Model will be or has been instantly demonised as Communists -- or, as is the style lately, "engaging in Class Warfare", when it is precisely Class Warfare being waged continually in this country, but of Opinion's acceptable kind, that of the Upper Class attacking the Lower.
posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 6:42 PM
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