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Comment by yAnonymous | Hacker News Reader

>on the whole, things are in general pretty good, relative to most other countries in the world.

15 years ago, those relativizations wouldn't have been necessary. Sweden was a poster child of a good society and now it isn't. Many things in your country did deteriorate quickly over the last decade or so, no matter how you try to coat it.

"At least we're still better than others" is a pretty sad statement by itself when you realize that you could be doing a lot better.

My country is currently going down the same road and it's saddening to see that we didn't learn from your mistakes.

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Are you sure you're not looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses? Not trying to coat anything, but I very well remember people talking about the country going down the drain 15-20 years ago too, following various incidents/attacks/scandals.

For sure some things have deteriorated (and others improved). So it goes. What are some of these things you believe have "quickly deteriorated"? (Genuinely curious)

https://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/%C3%96vriga...

Your police have basically admitted that if worst comes to worst, they won't be able to uphold the law. 53 criminal zones, for a country like Sweden with relatively little police and military, are beyond managable.

We see the same in Germany, but people choose to ignore it. There are more and more areas in cities where you can't make use of your democratic liberties without being subjected to violence, mostly connected to muslim inhabitants that think their religion is above the law. We have more police and resources to cope with it, but it's reaching its limit.

The police identified 53 exposed zones, of which 15 are in the most serious category. It's indeed a big problem (hence this report and a lot of talk about it in Sweden).

At the same time I think a lot of people from countries where you really have areas you avoid as a citizen (say, the US) often get the wrong impression when they read about so-called "no go" areas. There's no area on this list that I would avoid going to. And I've been to many, many of them, and have friends/family living in many of them (nearly all violence is between criminals).

Again, not saying it's not a problem. It's a big problem. The police were given more resources in the latest gov't budget to deal with exactly this and will surely get more next year and it'll surely be an important topic in the 2018 election. We'll see how it goes.

What are some other things you think have quickly deteriorated? I'm interested in this outsider perspective.

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