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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

"Probably the most frustrating part of the debate was that Sehon kept comparing Scandinavia to the U.S., instead of comparing his ideal to my ideal."

Sweden exists and America exists, so you can debate the merits of the two with some empirical accuracy.

Caplan-stan doesn't exist, so you can't really debate its merits with much empirical precision. Until Communism was tried, people thought it would turn out a lot closer to the ideal then what really happened.

"In the debate, I told the audience that the 2020 U.S. presidential election nicely exposes the sheer crumminess of democracy. Trump or Biden: Those are your choices."

Previously you stated that you would have turned over dictorial powers to the faculty of Harvard, now you say it's a mistake. Instead it should be STEM PhDs (aren't he people running the CCP stem PHDs).

The experiment with "narrow elite has all the power" hasn't worked out in the past. The failure modes are easy to understand. Even if you think democracy should be reformed or the franchise rules somehow amended, reasonably broad diffusion of political power seem to protect against some worst abuses and failure modes.

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Stuart Brainerd's avatar

I’m surprised that you did not mention - at least in this recap - the high degree of cultural homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries as a major source of their cohesiveness and ultimately happiness. Not to mention a largely white and highly educated population that has avoided the brunt of European wars and has largely remained politically neutral. From my experience, the predominant culture was formed from their Christian roots, and kept alive by a strong tribal instinct that has led to a balance between strong capitalist and commercial trading roots, and an impulse to support those on the lower rung of society. This has all been threatened by the high number of immigrants that have arrived who come with a very different cultural background and are not broadly accepted as a member of their tribal in-group.

While there is a lot to admire about these countries, this model could not simply be translated to the US, with a highly diverse multi-cultural population.

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