In many ways I found Scandinavian countries more economically free than America when I lived there. A strong social safety net is not necessarily incompatible with an economically free country.
The most significant "lawful" forces that hurt economic liberty are regulations, price fixing, and certification. They vary in intensity from having to put ingredients on the bottle to outright banning incandescent lightbulbs, from corn subsidies to fixed rates in medicare, and from getting a drivers license to getting an MD.
But they are all barriers to economic participation and malleability. But they exist for reasons - to reduce exploitation in the system.
Those social safety nets, that in theory could be taking an economically uniform portion of productivity and thus have their minimal impact, also reduce the ability for people to be exploited. Loan sharks and get thin quick schemes are modern, legal forms of exploitation, but historically bad food products, dangerous housing and machinery, and outright extortion were all exploitation schemes the regulation machine reduces.
But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
It is very similar to how easy credit creates business opportunity. Without credit, you cannot have a foundation to start out on if you have nothing in the first place. In the same way, either Scandanavian style socialism or the UBI proposals floating around can provide the foundation to enable more general economic freedom above it.
It is impossible to feel free when you are restricted to the bottom of Maslow's heirarchy. Maximal freedom comes from the top, where you have access to the full breadth of your potential. But any time you slip down to the bottom rungs again you are forced to contend with those, because survival trumps self-actualization. If you want to maximize for personal liberty of all forms, including economic, you need to make sure nobody is getting trapped down there.
>But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
I can't really reconcile these. Worst case scenario for not putting ingredients on a bottle? Death. Worst case scenario for being treated by an unlicensed MD? Death. Not requiring a drivers license? Death. Even the lightbulb one - death, in a few decades, from flooding.
Specifically what kinds of regulation can you get rid of?
This is what happens when you start with faulty definitions.
Orwellian at best.
We all know from experience how much harder and more time-consuming it is to correct errors than make them in the first place—that's a big problem with internet discourse in general—but posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive replies isn't a solution.
Edit: unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. This one is worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519373. Please stop posting like that.
What you are talking about is not "freedom". It is collective insurance.
That may be efficient and convenient if done properly. But it has nothing to do with freedom. Read other posts...
Businesses in the US are often free to impose all sorts of draconian contracts on you wish limits your freedom in many ways. E.g. anti-competitive clauses are common in the US. E.g. you can't work at at a competing company when you quite for quite some time.
The problem with American "freedom" is that it is often too much freedom to take away your freedoms. Scandinavia tends to give less freedom to private enterprise to take away freedom from you or others. Freedom is a complicated concept. It is much like tolerance. It is very hard to have a tolerant society which tolerates intolerance.
US combines the worst of two worlds in so many ways.
Sweden at least does "socialism" correct in some areas.
Consider this report an ideologically motivated propaganda piece rather than a serious analysis.