A big problem here, and I'm sure that you noticed, is that what you have in Sweden at some point required a "buy in" by the citizens and trust in your government to uphold the system. Here we have half the population who are so bound by their habitual thinking and emotional/cognitive obscurations that they are bound to consistently vote against their best interests.
A big problem here, and I'm sure that you noticed, is that what you have in Sweden at some point required a "buy in" by the citizens and trust in your government to uphold the system. Here we have half the population who are so bound by their habitual thinking and emotional/cognitive obscurations that they are bound to consistently vote against their best interests.
Yes, true. Like the habitual thinking (which is truly mind-boggling to a Swede), that in 2023, the right to carry arms is more important to defend than the right to affordable healthcare.
The reason we don't have the Swedes' kind of public "buy-in" is that a significant percentage of our citizens have been convinced by RW racist propaganda that they don't want their hard-earned money being taxed to benefit people who are not like themselves, even if that means voting against their own interests. I wonder if Sweden would have as much buy-in if their population was as diverse.
"People who are not like themselves..." - you can just say Black and brown people and non-Christians. Let's just be honest that it is the right-wing racism and Christian-nationalism.
I was going to make this point explicitly. As long as it is perceived that these programs will benefit "them", people will cut their own noses off to prevent one of them from getting something they didn't explicitly earn
That's it exactly. That's why we can't have nice things. That's why we have many people who can't afford medical care, some of whom die prematurely as if they lived in the middle ages. That's why we have high infant mortality and maternal mortality, a large uneducated population condemned to poor wages, a lot of poor children, and on and on. We even have a political party that was on covid's side in a pandemic!
The biggest struggle in America is that there's a strain of hyper-individualism that causes reflexive hostility to anything that might benefit the whole, because Americans overwhelmingly do not view themselves as part of a greater whole.
Sometimes this creates moments of great unity, such as after Pearl Harbor or 9/11, when Americans suddenly feel great panic about their own security. But that's a reflexive response; usually, Americans prefer to view themselves as being entirely in control of themselves and dependent on no one, even if that's not the case.
Whether we agree or not, Americans imagine themselves as a nation of independent small business owners and pioneers, not as employees and serfs. We reflexively distrust the government for a whole host of reasons; doesn't matter if you think that the government is going to take your guns and force you into rainbow colored death camps, or if the left thinks the government is going to force you into a military dictatorship. In America, there's a real flavor of hating the government reflexively.
The other problem is that in America, we are constantly reminded of the fact that we are a very large nation, and that we can't really trust the other side or other parts of the country to vote according to our own interests. The right talks about coastal elites, the left talks about the south and flyover country hicks.
Or, as I like to put it: whenever you think about allowing the government to try and manage something, ask this: do you want your healthcare in the hands of Ted Cruz and MTG if you're on the left? Do you want it in the hands of AOC and Bernie Sanders if you're on the right? We do not trust the other side to actually, you know, consider anything as sacred. Nor should we, as the right has wanted to gut most programs for a generation, and their voters have agreed.
There's one other thing: the population of the US is 33 times greater than the population of Sweden, and thus it's much easier to form consensus. Sweden's population is about 10 million; for comparison, the population of New York city is 8 million. It's smaller than New York and Los Angeles combined. The population of the United States is 331 million; and that fact is why it's so hard for anyone to agree in a democracy. The larger your democracy, the harder it is to gain any kind of agreement on what should be done.
I don't know that the left really talks about flyover hicks in the way you suggest. On the other hand, do you think many of us should not be at least worried about the voters who vote for the GOP all the time? I live in NJ - a state made fun of by all, so I understand being disparaged.
There is another factor beside population size which is worth consideration in your otherwise good start at analyzing this issue. It is the relative homogeneity of the population in Sweden, and when looking, do consider the backlash by Swedes (or Norwegians, or Danes) against peoples who do not fully assimilate -- if that is even possible. Our tensions constantly devolve from perceived differences, most of which deal with ethnicity, but some with class, and some -- an increasing number -- over gender. Liberal thought teaches "tolerance" for difference -- perhaps not good enough to satisfy the demands of multi-cultural advocates, but a good place to start. In any case, no one likes to pay taxes to support people who are perceived to be unlike themselves.
At the time of our founding it was widely thought that Republics only worked on the small scale and that we couldn't succeed. An open question is whether we proved everyone wrong 100 years ago or if we've got another 100-200 years to go before the results are final.
My view is that republics work best at medium scale; too big and they become too fractured and disparate, too small and they become too insular and attached to various personal entities.
Very small republics and very big republics tend to have the problem of being unable to agree on anything, though sometimes they swap problems; for example, in India the ruling party for over a generation was basically a Gandhi-family run party.
Balancing the needs of a large nation is vary hard, regardless of government type. But it's much harder when the various regions do not trust each other and actively view their needs and desires as being entirely different or hostile to one another.
The size of the population I don't think matters as Civil Wars in Central America would attest; our own Civil War with 1/10th the population or any of the numerous ones in history with much, much smaller populations. However, I would agree that it takes a monumental event to focus the country towards a common goal.
A big problem here, and I'm sure that you noticed, is that what you have in Sweden at some point required a "buy in" by the citizens and trust in your government to uphold the system. Here we have half the population who are so bound by their habitual thinking and emotional/cognitive obscurations that they are bound to consistently vote against their best interests.
Yes, true. Like the habitual thinking (which is truly mind-boggling to a Swede), that in 2023, the right to carry arms is more important to defend than the right to affordable healthcare.
The reason we don't have the Swedes' kind of public "buy-in" is that a significant percentage of our citizens have been convinced by RW racist propaganda that they don't want their hard-earned money being taxed to benefit people who are not like themselves, even if that means voting against their own interests. I wonder if Sweden would have as much buy-in if their population was as diverse.
"People who are not like themselves..." - you can just say Black and brown people and non-Christians. Let's just be honest that it is the right-wing racism and Christian-nationalism.
I was going to make this point explicitly. As long as it is perceived that these programs will benefit "them", people will cut their own noses off to prevent one of them from getting something they didn't explicitly earn
That's it exactly. That's why we can't have nice things. That's why we have many people who can't afford medical care, some of whom die prematurely as if they lived in the middle ages. That's why we have high infant mortality and maternal mortality, a large uneducated population condemned to poor wages, a lot of poor children, and on and on. We even have a political party that was on covid's side in a pandemic!
The biggest struggle in America is that there's a strain of hyper-individualism that causes reflexive hostility to anything that might benefit the whole, because Americans overwhelmingly do not view themselves as part of a greater whole.
Sometimes this creates moments of great unity, such as after Pearl Harbor or 9/11, when Americans suddenly feel great panic about their own security. But that's a reflexive response; usually, Americans prefer to view themselves as being entirely in control of themselves and dependent on no one, even if that's not the case.
Whether we agree or not, Americans imagine themselves as a nation of independent small business owners and pioneers, not as employees and serfs. We reflexively distrust the government for a whole host of reasons; doesn't matter if you think that the government is going to take your guns and force you into rainbow colored death camps, or if the left thinks the government is going to force you into a military dictatorship. In America, there's a real flavor of hating the government reflexively.
The other problem is that in America, we are constantly reminded of the fact that we are a very large nation, and that we can't really trust the other side or other parts of the country to vote according to our own interests. The right talks about coastal elites, the left talks about the south and flyover country hicks.
Or, as I like to put it: whenever you think about allowing the government to try and manage something, ask this: do you want your healthcare in the hands of Ted Cruz and MTG if you're on the left? Do you want it in the hands of AOC and Bernie Sanders if you're on the right? We do not trust the other side to actually, you know, consider anything as sacred. Nor should we, as the right has wanted to gut most programs for a generation, and their voters have agreed.
There's one other thing: the population of the US is 33 times greater than the population of Sweden, and thus it's much easier to form consensus. Sweden's population is about 10 million; for comparison, the population of New York city is 8 million. It's smaller than New York and Los Angeles combined. The population of the United States is 331 million; and that fact is why it's so hard for anyone to agree in a democracy. The larger your democracy, the harder it is to gain any kind of agreement on what should be done.
I don't know that the left really talks about flyover hicks in the way you suggest. On the other hand, do you think many of us should not be at least worried about the voters who vote for the GOP all the time? I live in NJ - a state made fun of by all, so I understand being disparaged.
There is another factor beside population size which is worth consideration in your otherwise good start at analyzing this issue. It is the relative homogeneity of the population in Sweden, and when looking, do consider the backlash by Swedes (or Norwegians, or Danes) against peoples who do not fully assimilate -- if that is even possible. Our tensions constantly devolve from perceived differences, most of which deal with ethnicity, but some with class, and some -- an increasing number -- over gender. Liberal thought teaches "tolerance" for difference -- perhaps not good enough to satisfy the demands of multi-cultural advocates, but a good place to start. In any case, no one likes to pay taxes to support people who are perceived to be unlike themselves.
At the time of our founding it was widely thought that Republics only worked on the small scale and that we couldn't succeed. An open question is whether we proved everyone wrong 100 years ago or if we've got another 100-200 years to go before the results are final.
My view is that republics work best at medium scale; too big and they become too fractured and disparate, too small and they become too insular and attached to various personal entities.
Very small republics and very big republics tend to have the problem of being unable to agree on anything, though sometimes they swap problems; for example, in India the ruling party for over a generation was basically a Gandhi-family run party.
Balancing the needs of a large nation is vary hard, regardless of government type. But it's much harder when the various regions do not trust each other and actively view their needs and desires as being entirely different or hostile to one another.
The size of the population I don't think matters as Civil Wars in Central America would attest; our own Civil War with 1/10th the population or any of the numerous ones in history with much, much smaller populations. However, I would agree that it takes a monumental event to focus the country towards a common goal.