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Comment by poshli | Hacker News Reader

The PP is a fringe radical party that if they somehow become the majority party in Iceland, they're not going to retain it for very long. I would not recommend that famous dissidents like Snowden move there immediately.

I like visiting Iceland too, the few Icelanders I know can't wait to move though. The winter weather and high price of everything is a bit of a drag.

I am not an expert on Iceland but I have read that it's really controlled by interests behind the two main industries of fishing and smelting. Iceland is really pushing tourism these days, since flights to Iceland are incredibly cheap.

I recommend reading The Grapevine

http://grapevine.is/

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PP is a new party, but is it fringe and radical? Using social-liberal political philosophy[1] to focus on issues arriving from the digital Revolution[2], it seem like a very similar party to the green party but with a different focal point.

We still have political parties today that focus on questions that arrived from by the industrial revolution. Unless we want to just delegate the digital revolution as a minor footnote in society, it might be time to view the changes in society as a reason to look at government and ask if it too should change.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution

I would guess that it isn't so much the winter weather and the price of goods that is making folks want to leave: I'm in Norway, which traditionally has expensive goods and bad weather. Everyone complains about their weather, but from my experience, the locals don't find it to be all that detrimental to life - I've had to learn to dress better for the weather and stuff like that. (of course, I don't know how strong the icelandic currency is at the moment, so that could be an issue for buying those goods). The second one - that it is really controlled by interests behind the two main industries - is likely much more key. Having a small island country with only two main industries makes it so that folks don't have as much opportunity as they would in mainland Europe or Canada. Not only that, but one of the main industries - fishing - can be rough work in itself. The place being an island also prevents some of the options for avoiding the high prices for goods: Here I can take a (free!) bus just over the Swedish border and buy things more cheaply, but they'd have to take a flight somewhere.

There's a lot of negativity among young adults here in Iceland. I can understand them to some extent because housing has become insanely expensive because of inflation, lack of new housing and airbnb companies. What I don't undestand is the "everything is terrible" attitude that's been so poisonous in recent year. Yes, we have bad weather and most of our politicians are hopeless but it's always been like that. The grass isn't greener on the other side.

The grapevine is great but often let themselves down with clickbait and hyperbole.

As an Icelander living abroad for almost a decade now, if you think the grass isn't greener or the other side how do you explain the rapid increase in Icelanders who are expats over the last decade? Are all these people just wrong in thinking they've found a better live abroad?

Plenty of people have left and found a better life, I'm not trying to say otherwise. I just hate it when people use the weather and the government as reasons to move because every country has its problems. A large number of Icelanders move to another country sometime during their lifetimes but a large percentage of them move back at some point. That tells me that maybe things aren't so bad over here.

For plenty of people something like the weather or the government really is the reason they moved.

The government was a major reason for my move. I moved after the collapse, which was entirely caused by Iceland's dysfunctional government policies (none of which have really changed), and the measures put into place post-collapse largely benefited homeowners at the expense of the rest of us.

I didn't want to spend the next decade paying for other people's bad financial decisions at the cost of the currency & my purchasing power having fallen around 1/2.

Similarly people move from say the UK to Spain for the weather. As I'm sure you know Iceland doesn't just have "bad" weather, it's on a whole different level where working around the weather often becomes a major logistical difficulty. Whole towns often become snowed in during the winter.

So it's hardly a surprise that someone would move just to be rid of that.

Since you said flights were so cheap I got a bit curious and did a search for a 7 day trip (admittedly from the airport near, which is small). I was not expecting the drastic difference in prices there though.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ To: KEF, RKV March 1 2017, 7 days Unlimited stops/airport changes.

http://imgur.com/a/X3KYr

Some of those flights are ridiculously cheap though so you were right.

The flight cost is almost negligible!

British Airways, and possibly other airlines, offer packages where you do a short layover in Keflavik or Reykjavik, then they provide you transportation to Blue Lagoon, then get you to your plane from Blue Lagoon.

Hotel and Airbnb and hostel costs are very high compared to everywhere else in the world.

Last time I went, I brought a small tent.

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