If socialists really only wanted to imitate Scandinavia, I would have less objection. Scandinavians can still own businesses and homes. Their political system has allowed them to change directions in the past, and presumably would allow that again in the future. These aspects are lacking from the more concerning flavors of socialism.
How do US states compare in the happiness/socialism measure? Must socialism be implemented primarily at the central government level, or is my of the cuff estimate that New York is more socialist than Texas wrong?
"So why do I include the degree of egalitarian redistribution as part of the definition of “socialism”? Because if you had complete collective control or ownership of the means of production, but wildly unequal distribution of resources (which would be entirely possible), that would not be socialism according to any conception of it that I’m aware of. So as a matter of how the word “socialism” is typically used, the axis including degree of egalitarian distribution has to be there."
But that's like including "successful innovation superior to government decision-making" in the definition of capitalism. Both are desired outcomes of the respective systems. They aren't pre-conditions or frameworks. And they are hardly assured. I will grant you that socialism without egalitarian distribution sounds like a failure. ;-)
Hmmm, to some extent I think Bryan and Sehon are focused on different levels of analysis. Bryan’s ideal is a system that he believes would yield good results without stipulating that anyone in particular behave in any particular way apart from some boiler plate assumptions about human nature. Sehon, I think, is taking our current democratic political systems for granted and is trying to answer the question, “what should governments do?” So he is really arguing about what policies existing governments implement and is claiming that they should care more about reducing inequality and that having more influence over domestic production to do this is fine. From Bryan’s point of view, this is cheating. He probably thinks speculating about how democratic governments ought to behave is not so useful because we have a lot of theory and evidence showing that the incentives faced by voters and politicians imply lots of bad outcomes. Though of course Bryan does have a long list of policy reforms he likes. It’s just he argues that we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for politicians to implement them.
The difficulty for Bryan is that there is no EMPIRICAL evidence that there is either a viable path to implementing his idea nor that it would be a stable equilibrium.
Actual existing political systems have empirically proven their viability as real possibilities. One can debate the merits of them using empirical data.
That is a very good point. Starting out by trying to convince someone that 10% less government spending would be good is hard enough haha. Obviously there is no way to make headway on anarcho-capitalism if people generally aren’t even sold on the benefits of reducing government influence in general. (I know this debate wasn’t actual about anarchism-capitalism.)
Most socialists value collective consesus decision making, and dislikes the idea of one random billionarie making the same decisions that they would have made anyway
Sehon is obviously a pretty sophisticated thinker (compared to most people who advocate socialism). We free market lovers should probably carefully read his book!
Finally listened to the debate. I take it back. Sehon is not a very sophisticated thinker in my view. He just takes for granted a lot of statist dogma. True, if you believe all his premises, his conclusion follows. But he doesn’t present convincing arguments for those premises.
It seems like his argument is basically "Scandinavian countries are more socialist, have less inequality and report slightly more happiness than the US. Therefore socialism is better than capitalism." That seems like a really gross oversimplification with a ton of confounders.
No, he refers to other data also supporting his claims. He wrote a whole book about it. But maybe this is a fair description of his argument in the debate (which I haven’t listened to yet). And you’re right that that’s a poor argument on its own. At a minimum, he should consider the long list of countries much less capitalistic than USA or Scandinavian countries that are awful places to live in for the typical citizen.
Is not most of the inequality in the USA _wealth_ inequality, not _income_ inequality?
Older people have more savings than younger people. The switch to 401K and away from defined benefit plans in the ‘80s exacerbated this. Add the baby boomer demographic bulge.
Entrepreneurs can have enormous paper fortunes tied up in their businesses. If they sell too much they risk losing control. They do pay taxes on what they sell. Those businesses don’t generate much income, and often don’t pay their founders much of a salary.
Demagogues conflate the two.
I also wonder if old money families favor wealth taxes as a way to inhibit the creation of new fortunes. New fortunes are often built by disrupting existing businesses. Old money families are invested in existing, income generating businesses. This means that they could pay such taxes out of income and also protect themselves from disruption.
Seems to me that what really matters is consumption. Wealth is potential consumption, and if that wealth is tied up in illiquid assets, that potential could be quite difficult to realize. Income feeds wealth. Who cares about a low income if you have a large nest egg to draw on? What most likely matters to most people is what they can acquire and their confidence of being able to do so in the future.
I think that wealth inequality is higher relative to income inequality in Sweden than in the USA. See: Sweden for instance has reasonable income equality but very high wealth inequality. Many of the southern European nations are the opposite.
So which is it that matters? Is it income inequality that matters when you wish to praise Sweden over the United States, but wealth inequality that matters when you wish to argue for a wealth tax?
So many varied thoughts come to mind. (a) _self reported_ well being is not so meaningful. It's subjective and specific to culture. Maybe people in the US report less happiness because they recognize they have unmet potential, and/or their expectations are higher. (b) Given that the US is _the_ innovation engine for the whole world, other countries have the luxury of destroying their citizens' drive and letting them essentially parasite off of the innovations of the US. Tech and pharma come to mind right away. If the US followed similar policies, we'd all be on a much more dismal trajectory. (c) Don't Scandanavian countries have significant natural resources they can just lean on? (d) When talking about any kind of outcomes comparing US to Sweden, we can't ignore the homogeneity of them compared to us. A smaller country filled with people of similar background/race/etc. can tolerate redistribution better since people feel less bitter about giving, and may feel some misgivings about over-taking. In the US we don't have that solidarity and a huge number of people are more than happy to take anything they can get with no guilt. (e) How can over-regulation not be considered a violation of rights? Almost by definition it impinges on my "rights" to do many things that really don't harm anyone else, and most especially my freedom of association. Taking 70% of my income for services I don't want or need is surely a rights violation too. The "all or nothing" notion Sehon keeps bringing up isn't really that convincing. Taxing me for _anything_ is indeed a form of theft, but as a practical matter nobody has really figured out a viable alternative for police, courts and national defense. As far as we know, it's the least bad option.
It’s politically easier to redistribute income in an ethnically homogeneous society. Unfortunately, there are indications that income redistribution undermines social cohesion. The number of freeloaders, never zero, increases. Productive citizens look for an exit.
Swedish person here: im not sure that high inequality causes happiness OR unhappiness. Ive seen upper middle class people unhappy and poor people happy in ways that condradict both BC narrative and the common inequality=mental misery narrative. I dont know how to explain it
It seems more likely that we are somewhat happier because we work less hard and have more vacations then americans.
I think sweden could be a 8-9/10 on happiness if our culture was better and more social, and our housing situation wasnt to messed up.
And if we had less winter deppression via light therapy and higher GDP. Low unemployment seems like a cause of unhappiness here to me, even when you know your ok, because its still so much bureaucracy to handle and you feel meaningless
I think it is not good to always focus on the Scandinavian countries, which is more democratic socialist Greece or Sweden, Italy or Finland, by how much?
Was South Korea a capitalist dictatorship even as North Korea was a socialist dictatorship until fairly recently?
Which country is less Democratic socialist China or Venezuela?
Wasn't Hugo Chavez elected in Venezuela meaning a Democratic Socialist?
Also I think the Scandinavian people could be better off with lower taxes and less of what their Governments provide as would be Greece, Italy and France. For example, I think that they more that the optimal amount of healthcare. I think Singapore is closer to optimal that they are on healthcare. They probably waste a lot of money on schooling also, and retirement pensions.
I found a list of countries by Government spending as a percent of GDP.
"At one extreme, one might claim that people have the right to keep any property currently in their possession; it would follow from this that it would be a violation of rights for there to be any taxation whatsoever. "
I can't answer if that is Bryan's position, but it is pretty much mine. I am a Georgist Single Land Taxer. Any other form of taxation is immoral. But acknowledging a semi-socialist position that undeveloped land belongs to everyone and thus taxing the economic rents of the undeveloped land is (barely) acceptable.
I think data on income inequality is also suspect. I recall reading that Pikety's famous tome made the consequential decision to classify income to C Suite employees as Capital instead of Labor, changing the numbers in a big way.
1. Equality is not defined (at least not in the materials I saw). Does he mean Income Inequality? Assuming so: (1) That is a very narrow view of human existence. Why not something more encompassing like Power, of which income is part of that as well as your station? What about other parts of life like leisure time vs work time? Any system where someone is not compensated for devoting their life to work in comparison to someone who doesn't seems bad to me for many reasons. (2) My recollection is Nordics have low INCOME inequality but HIGH wealth inequality. I would think that WEALTH inequality is actually the more relevant thing for socialists, so I think he should have to defend why his paragon does poorly there.
2. I didn't hear evidence that equality drives happiness. A priori, I would assume that both things are driven by other factors rather than having a direct causal relationship. I think that most equal times in societies are when there is the most poverty and destruction (unhappiness), so it's clearly false to say that equality is a primary instrumental factor in happiness.
4. I also thought Bryan could have hit this harder, but the question about whether socialism violates rights seems obvious on its face. If you think someone should be allowed to make a chair and you should be allowed to buy the chair, then you're a capitalist. Socialism would require you to get permission or consensus before producing and buying, correct? I think most would say that is totalitarian and undesirable.
"I didn't hear evidence that equality drives happiness."
I would think that envy drives unhappiness. If people would stop being jealous and just mind their own damn business, they would be much happier. Or, at least, less unhappy.
Envy has probably driven a lot of capitalism's success though, that was part of the original idea according to "Passions and the Interests", redirect 'bad' emotions to good outcomes. In that sense I wonder if unhappiness is really that bad on net, at least within milder ranges
I would add the point that human progress is greatly driven by a few leading economies with most of the others playing catch up by drafting on the advances of the lead huskies. Even if socialism is a reasonable fast-follower strategy, it still depends upon, or free rides, on the more dynamic policies of capitalism.
5. It seems as if he lays happiness numbers at the feat of capitalism vs socialism, yet anyone here could list huge changes and reasons on either side of the ledge that differ between Sweden and the US. Furthermore, I haven't looked, but I imagine that happiness has not increased in the US in the past 20 years as the Govt has ramped up spending as share of GDP dramatically. Wouldn't that serve to call into question the statement that increased govt intervention drives increased happiness?
If somebody is "happy" when a govt gun is stuck in their face, then what is the standard used, mindless freedom from self-responsibility, ie, Leftism. This is the same absurd principle used by Rightists claiming that faith in fantasy causes "happiness. Both Left and Right are the products of the unfocused mind. Capitalism, the product of the focused, active, reasoning mind,is the only society consistent w/mans life. Consistent egalitarian socialism is impossible because it would be a consistent attack on the focused mind. There would be no production. Everyone would die. And that iss the carefully hidden goal of egalitarian socialism. Death. Further the prosperity of partly socialist economies is a measure of capitalism. Socialism is an attack on the focused mind, the cause of production. Socialists loot capitalism, then claim that socialism caused the loot. For virtuallly all of mans 300K years, govt-owned or custom-"owned" economies have produced only sustainable poverty, dispair and faith in the supernatural. Mortality was/is late teens to 30, near-starvation was a virtually universal DAILY experience, med and sanitation were virtually unknown, indoor cooking and heating w/wood and dung caused respiratory disease, people drank, cooked, bathed, pissed and shit in the same water w/animals. Violence was much more and nobody even knew about individual rights. Capitalisms 300 years has come close to ending 300K years of global poverty and war. But capitalism requires a focused mind, ie, absolute,fundamental self-responsibility and, as Ayn Rand said, "the risk of knowledge." Multi-billionaire Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos, made that clear, "If youre not occasionally failing, youre not trying [to succeed] hard enough. Thus another hidden goal of socialism, the Garden Of Eden, ie, absolute lack of self-responsibility and a consistently unfocused mind. Socialism is Western Zen. Its death-worship.
Danes are happier and more prosperous (taking into account diminishing marginal utility of wealth) than the US. By your logic it automatically makes DK more capitalist. Would you consider adopting the Danish welfare state model in the US an improvement over the status quo?
Happier and more prosperous by what standard? If you can provide a rational standard, then your question is valid. Further, Denmark greatly benefits from the capitalist global trade thats led and protected by the US. And how much money would Denmark need to shift from welfare looting to defense without the US, capitalist-funded nuclear umbrella? You take facts out of a realistic context and put them into a "good intentions" context. Socialism was refuted by science in the 19th century. Socialism decreases production by looting money from the most productive people and giving it to the least productive people. All under the direction of unproductive, Leftist scientifuc frauds. There is no Garden Of Eden where people with unfocused minds are prosperous and happy. Man must live by the sweat of his mind. Your head is in a Leftist bubble.
It’s pretty ironic that Denmark is living off the literal fat of Americans because Ozempic and Wegovy have made Novo Nordisk responsible for the largest part of Denmark’s GDP. Is that capitalistic. Also if those drugs make Americans happiness go up, which system gets the credit.
Those facts are Denmark benefiting from the global capitalism led and protected by the US. Mans life requires a rational unity of concretes, not an empiricist chaos of concretes. You isolate concretes from each other in your mind to evade the unity which is the vast and increasing global capitalism which benefits increasing numbers of people. How prosperous was Denmark prior to its global trade?
It is difficult to make the case that high government spending causes well being in this debate. There are many freedom oriented policies that Scandinavian countries have that the US does not. School voice in Sweden comes to mind. Perhaps that causes higher rates of well being instead of taxes. Perhaps
Second, if high taxes (say 65-70%) create well being, what would higher taxes on high income people do, say 99%? Higher well being? How about 115% tax on high incomes? Imagine how many more people would obtain services, products and transfer payments without having to work for them. I know a lot of people who live off others and live well who are very happy.
Im swedish and libertarian: Ive seen peoples envy (or concern for the inequalities in society or whatever word we like to say) be fairly constant no matter what the actual inequality numbers are
It seems more related to their current station in life, what news they read, and their mindset and personality.
My “envy” got nonexistent after reading progress books and humanitys path to prosperity. I used to be very concerned about inequality to the degree that my mental health sufferdo
Admirably brief.
“Scandinavians are not that much happier”
If socialists really only wanted to imitate Scandinavia, I would have less objection. Scandinavians can still own businesses and homes. Their political system has allowed them to change directions in the past, and presumably would allow that again in the future. These aspects are lacking from the more concerning flavors of socialism.
How do US states compare in the happiness/socialism measure? Must socialism be implemented primarily at the central government level, or is my of the cuff estimate that New York is more socialist than Texas wrong?
"So why do I include the degree of egalitarian redistribution as part of the definition of “socialism”? Because if you had complete collective control or ownership of the means of production, but wildly unequal distribution of resources (which would be entirely possible), that would not be socialism according to any conception of it that I’m aware of. So as a matter of how the word “socialism” is typically used, the axis including degree of egalitarian distribution has to be there."
But that's like including "successful innovation superior to government decision-making" in the definition of capitalism. Both are desired outcomes of the respective systems. They aren't pre-conditions or frameworks. And they are hardly assured. I will grant you that socialism without egalitarian distribution sounds like a failure. ;-)
Hmmm, to some extent I think Bryan and Sehon are focused on different levels of analysis. Bryan’s ideal is a system that he believes would yield good results without stipulating that anyone in particular behave in any particular way apart from some boiler plate assumptions about human nature. Sehon, I think, is taking our current democratic political systems for granted and is trying to answer the question, “what should governments do?” So he is really arguing about what policies existing governments implement and is claiming that they should care more about reducing inequality and that having more influence over domestic production to do this is fine. From Bryan’s point of view, this is cheating. He probably thinks speculating about how democratic governments ought to behave is not so useful because we have a lot of theory and evidence showing that the incentives faced by voters and politicians imply lots of bad outcomes. Though of course Bryan does have a long list of policy reforms he likes. It’s just he argues that we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for politicians to implement them.
The difficulty for Bryan is that there is no EMPIRICAL evidence that there is either a viable path to implementing his idea nor that it would be a stable equilibrium.
Actual existing political systems have empirically proven their viability as real possibilities. One can debate the merits of them using empirical data.
That is a very good point. Starting out by trying to convince someone that 10% less government spending would be good is hard enough haha. Obviously there is no way to make headway on anarcho-capitalism if people generally aren’t even sold on the benefits of reducing government influence in general. (I know this debate wasn’t actual about anarchism-capitalism.)
Most socialists value collective consesus decision making, and dislikes the idea of one random billionarie making the same decisions that they would have made anyway
Sehon is obviously a pretty sophisticated thinker (compared to most people who advocate socialism). We free market lovers should probably carefully read his book!
Finally listened to the debate. I take it back. Sehon is not a very sophisticated thinker in my view. He just takes for granted a lot of statist dogma. True, if you believe all his premises, his conclusion follows. But he doesn’t present convincing arguments for those premises.
It seems like his argument is basically "Scandinavian countries are more socialist, have less inequality and report slightly more happiness than the US. Therefore socialism is better than capitalism." That seems like a really gross oversimplification with a ton of confounders.
No, he refers to other data also supporting his claims. He wrote a whole book about it. But maybe this is a fair description of his argument in the debate (which I haven’t listened to yet). And you’re right that that’s a poor argument on its own. At a minimum, he should consider the long list of countries much less capitalistic than USA or Scandinavian countries that are awful places to live in for the typical citizen.
I haven't read this book (and honestly I won't), so yeah I'm just responding specifically to this post he made here.
Is not most of the inequality in the USA _wealth_ inequality, not _income_ inequality?
Older people have more savings than younger people. The switch to 401K and away from defined benefit plans in the ‘80s exacerbated this. Add the baby boomer demographic bulge.
Entrepreneurs can have enormous paper fortunes tied up in their businesses. If they sell too much they risk losing control. They do pay taxes on what they sell. Those businesses don’t generate much income, and often don’t pay their founders much of a salary.
Demagogues conflate the two.
I also wonder if old money families favor wealth taxes as a way to inhibit the creation of new fortunes. New fortunes are often built by disrupting existing businesses. Old money families are invested in existing, income generating businesses. This means that they could pay such taxes out of income and also protect themselves from disruption.
Seems to me that what really matters is consumption. Wealth is potential consumption, and if that wealth is tied up in illiquid assets, that potential could be quite difficult to realize. Income feeds wealth. Who cares about a low income if you have a large nest egg to draw on? What most likely matters to most people is what they can acquire and their confidence of being able to do so in the future.
It might improve your comment to replace “acquire” in your last sentence with “consume”.
Maybe so. Read it as consume and see what you think.
I think that wealth inequality is higher relative to income inequality in Sweden than in the USA. See: Sweden for instance has reasonable income equality but very high wealth inequality. Many of the southern European nations are the opposite.
So which is it that matters? Is it income inequality that matters when you wish to praise Sweden over the United States, but wealth inequality that matters when you wish to argue for a wealth tax?
So many varied thoughts come to mind. (a) _self reported_ well being is not so meaningful. It's subjective and specific to culture. Maybe people in the US report less happiness because they recognize they have unmet potential, and/or their expectations are higher. (b) Given that the US is _the_ innovation engine for the whole world, other countries have the luxury of destroying their citizens' drive and letting them essentially parasite off of the innovations of the US. Tech and pharma come to mind right away. If the US followed similar policies, we'd all be on a much more dismal trajectory. (c) Don't Scandanavian countries have significant natural resources they can just lean on? (d) When talking about any kind of outcomes comparing US to Sweden, we can't ignore the homogeneity of them compared to us. A smaller country filled with people of similar background/race/etc. can tolerate redistribution better since people feel less bitter about giving, and may feel some misgivings about over-taking. In the US we don't have that solidarity and a huge number of people are more than happy to take anything they can get with no guilt. (e) How can over-regulation not be considered a violation of rights? Almost by definition it impinges on my "rights" to do many things that really don't harm anyone else, and most especially my freedom of association. Taking 70% of my income for services I don't want or need is surely a rights violation too. The "all or nothing" notion Sehon keeps bringing up isn't really that convincing. Taxing me for _anything_ is indeed a form of theft, but as a practical matter nobody has really figured out a viable alternative for police, courts and national defense. As far as we know, it's the least bad option.
It’s politically easier to redistribute income in an ethnically homogeneous society. Unfortunately, there are indications that income redistribution undermines social cohesion. The number of freeloaders, never zero, increases. Productive citizens look for an exit.
Great point about self selection, Chuck.
Swedish person here: im not sure that high inequality causes happiness OR unhappiness. Ive seen upper middle class people unhappy and poor people happy in ways that condradict both BC narrative and the common inequality=mental misery narrative. I dont know how to explain it
It seems more likely that we are somewhat happier because we work less hard and have more vacations then americans.
I think sweden could be a 8-9/10 on happiness if our culture was better and more social, and our housing situation wasnt to messed up.
And if we had less winter deppression via light therapy and higher GDP. Low unemployment seems like a cause of unhappiness here to me, even when you know your ok, because its still so much bureaucracy to handle and you feel meaningless
I think it is not good to always focus on the Scandinavian countries, which is more democratic socialist Greece or Sweden, Italy or Finland, by how much?
Was South Korea a capitalist dictatorship even as North Korea was a socialist dictatorship until fairly recently?
Which country is less Democratic socialist China or Venezuela?
Wasn't Hugo Chavez elected in Venezuela meaning a Democratic Socialist?
Also I think the Scandinavian people could be better off with lower taxes and less of what their Governments provide as would be Greece, Italy and France. For example, I think that they more that the optimal amount of healthcare. I think Singapore is closer to optimal that they are on healthcare. They probably waste a lot of money on schooling also, and retirement pensions.
I found a list of countries by Government spending as a percent of GDP.
Here are the top countries:
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spending-to-gdp
Cuba 58.8 69.2 Dec/21 %
France 58.1 59.1 Dec/22 %
Italy 56.7 57.3 Dec/22 %
Belgium 53.5 55.4 Dec/22 %
Finland 53.4 55.8 Dec/22 %
Austria 52.7 56.1 Dec/22 %
Greece 52.5 57.7 Dec/22 %
Germany 49.7 51.3 Dec/22 %
Sweden 48.1 49.4 Dec/22 %
Faroe Islands 47.8 50.9 Dec/22 %
Hungary 47.8 48.3 Dec/22 %
Spain 47.8 50.6 Dec/22 %
Serbia 46.9 47.4 Dec/22 %
Iceland 46.1 49.8 Dec/22 %
United Kingdom 45.6 44.5 Dec/22 %
Slovenia 45.5 49.5 Dec/22 %
Denmark 45 49.8 Dec/22 %
Portugal 44.8 47.7 Dec/22 %
Czech Republic 44.6 46.5 Dec/22 %
Japan 44.5 47.2 Dec/21 %
Netherlands 43.5 46 Dec/22 %
Poland 43.5 44.1 Dec/22 %
Luxembourg 43.3 42.9 Dec/22 %
Slovakia 42.3 45.6 Dec/22 %
Cuba is not democratic but France, Italy and Greece are, so you cannot just use the Scandinavian countries and ignore the others.
"At one extreme, one might claim that people have the right to keep any property currently in their possession; it would follow from this that it would be a violation of rights for there to be any taxation whatsoever. "
I can't answer if that is Bryan's position, but it is pretty much mine. I am a Georgist Single Land Taxer. Any other form of taxation is immoral. But acknowledging a semi-socialist position that undeveloped land belongs to everyone and thus taxing the economic rents of the undeveloped land is (barely) acceptable.
But any tax on productivity is immoral.
I think data on income inequality is also suspect. I recall reading that Pikety's famous tome made the consequential decision to classify income to C Suite employees as Capital instead of Labor, changing the numbers in a big way.
A couple points
1. Equality is not defined (at least not in the materials I saw). Does he mean Income Inequality? Assuming so: (1) That is a very narrow view of human existence. Why not something more encompassing like Power, of which income is part of that as well as your station? What about other parts of life like leisure time vs work time? Any system where someone is not compensated for devoting their life to work in comparison to someone who doesn't seems bad to me for many reasons. (2) My recollection is Nordics have low INCOME inequality but HIGH wealth inequality. I would think that WEALTH inequality is actually the more relevant thing for socialists, so I think he should have to defend why his paragon does poorly there.
2. I didn't hear evidence that equality drives happiness. A priori, I would assume that both things are driven by other factors rather than having a direct causal relationship. I think that most equal times in societies are when there is the most poverty and destruction (unhappiness), so it's clearly false to say that equality is a primary instrumental factor in happiness.
3. The common knowledge of Nordics being socialist and successful is also disputed. https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-myth-swedish-socialism-again
4. I also thought Bryan could have hit this harder, but the question about whether socialism violates rights seems obvious on its face. If you think someone should be allowed to make a chair and you should be allowed to buy the chair, then you're a capitalist. Socialism would require you to get permission or consensus before producing and buying, correct? I think most would say that is totalitarian and undesirable.
"I didn't hear evidence that equality drives happiness."
I would think that envy drives unhappiness. If people would stop being jealous and just mind their own damn business, they would be much happier. Or, at least, less unhappy.
Envy has probably driven a lot of capitalism's success though, that was part of the original idea according to "Passions and the Interests", redirect 'bad' emotions to good outcomes. In that sense I wonder if unhappiness is really that bad on net, at least within milder ranges
I like that distinction! Envy is clearly something people are inclined or disinclined to feel, often irrespective of physical circumstances.
I would add the point that human progress is greatly driven by a few leading economies with most of the others playing catch up by drafting on the advances of the lead huskies. Even if socialism is a reasonable fast-follower strategy, it still depends upon, or free rides, on the more dynamic policies of capitalism.
5. It seems as if he lays happiness numbers at the feat of capitalism vs socialism, yet anyone here could list huge changes and reasons on either side of the ledge that differ between Sweden and the US. Furthermore, I haven't looked, but I imagine that happiness has not increased in the US in the past 20 years as the Govt has ramped up spending as share of GDP dramatically. Wouldn't that serve to call into question the statement that increased govt intervention drives increased happiness?
If somebody is "happy" when a govt gun is stuck in their face, then what is the standard used, mindless freedom from self-responsibility, ie, Leftism. This is the same absurd principle used by Rightists claiming that faith in fantasy causes "happiness. Both Left and Right are the products of the unfocused mind. Capitalism, the product of the focused, active, reasoning mind,is the only society consistent w/mans life. Consistent egalitarian socialism is impossible because it would be a consistent attack on the focused mind. There would be no production. Everyone would die. And that iss the carefully hidden goal of egalitarian socialism. Death. Further the prosperity of partly socialist economies is a measure of capitalism. Socialism is an attack on the focused mind, the cause of production. Socialists loot capitalism, then claim that socialism caused the loot. For virtuallly all of mans 300K years, govt-owned or custom-"owned" economies have produced only sustainable poverty, dispair and faith in the supernatural. Mortality was/is late teens to 30, near-starvation was a virtually universal DAILY experience, med and sanitation were virtually unknown, indoor cooking and heating w/wood and dung caused respiratory disease, people drank, cooked, bathed, pissed and shit in the same water w/animals. Violence was much more and nobody even knew about individual rights. Capitalisms 300 years has come close to ending 300K years of global poverty and war. But capitalism requires a focused mind, ie, absolute,fundamental self-responsibility and, as Ayn Rand said, "the risk of knowledge." Multi-billionaire Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos, made that clear, "If youre not occasionally failing, youre not trying [to succeed] hard enough. Thus another hidden goal of socialism, the Garden Of Eden, ie, absolute lack of self-responsibility and a consistently unfocused mind. Socialism is Western Zen. Its death-worship.
???
>Further the prosperity of partly socialist economies is a measure of capitalism.
Would you be happier then if the left introduced Denmark-style welfare state in the US?
How does your comment reply to mine? What is your missing context?
Danes are happier and more prosperous (taking into account diminishing marginal utility of wealth) than the US. By your logic it automatically makes DK more capitalist. Would you consider adopting the Danish welfare state model in the US an improvement over the status quo?
Happier and more prosperous by what standard? If you can provide a rational standard, then your question is valid. Further, Denmark greatly benefits from the capitalist global trade thats led and protected by the US. And how much money would Denmark need to shift from welfare looting to defense without the US, capitalist-funded nuclear umbrella? You take facts out of a realistic context and put them into a "good intentions" context. Socialism was refuted by science in the 19th century. Socialism decreases production by looting money from the most productive people and giving it to the least productive people. All under the direction of unproductive, Leftist scientifuc frauds. There is no Garden Of Eden where people with unfocused minds are prosperous and happy. Man must live by the sweat of his mind. Your head is in a Leftist bubble.
It’s pretty ironic that Denmark is living off the literal fat of Americans because Ozempic and Wegovy have made Novo Nordisk responsible for the largest part of Denmark’s GDP. Is that capitalistic. Also if those drugs make Americans happiness go up, which system gets the credit.
Those facts are Denmark benefiting from the global capitalism led and protected by the US. Mans life requires a rational unity of concretes, not an empiricist chaos of concretes. You isolate concretes from each other in your mind to evade the unity which is the vast and increasing global capitalism which benefits increasing numbers of people. How prosperous was Denmark prior to its global trade?
It is difficult to make the case that high government spending causes well being in this debate. There are many freedom oriented policies that Scandinavian countries have that the US does not. School voice in Sweden comes to mind. Perhaps that causes higher rates of well being instead of taxes. Perhaps
Second, if high taxes (say 65-70%) create well being, what would higher taxes on high income people do, say 99%? Higher well being? How about 115% tax on high incomes? Imagine how many more people would obtain services, products and transfer payments without having to work for them. I know a lot of people who live off others and live well who are very happy.
>people who live off others and live well who are very happy.
Happy by what standard?
Self-rating.
I like that distinction! Envy is clearly something people are inclined or disinclined to feel, often irrespective of physical circumstances.
Im swedish and libertarian: Ive seen peoples envy (or concern for the inequalities in society or whatever word we like to say) be fairly constant no matter what the actual inequality numbers are
It seems more related to their current station in life, what news they read, and their mindset and personality.
My “envy” got nonexistent after reading progress books and humanitys path to prosperity. I used to be very concerned about inequality to the degree that my mental health sufferdo