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Comment by freyir | Hacker News Reader

The Nordic countries, New Zealand, Switzerland and Singapore are perceived as least corrupt by experts and in opinion polls. Do the citizens agree?

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Norway is doing pretty well for a country with such a large sovereign wealth fund; most places would have had it stolen by now. It seems they just have the ordinary run of scandals: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45173500

I love Norwegian political scandals. Compared to American scandals, they are just nothing but people are held accountable anyways. I would love to see some American politicians career ended because they took their phone to a country they should not have.

If a married US Democrat took their secret Iranian girlfriend to Iran with their government phone the scandal would last about a decade.

Only if he was Black.

Or democrat

It's worth noting that while the wealth fund is enormous, it is also being spent [1] to cover budget deficits. (More specifically, the returns are being spent.)

The government has historically tried to avoid doing so, but had to dip into the funds in 2016–2018. The rules around spending was formalized in 2001 [2], but the extent to which Norway was dipping into the funds has been controversial the last few years, with economists warning that it puts the country at risk in a future economic downturn.

Norway's wealth fund is actually codified as law, which makes it difficult for a future government to "steal" it.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/norway-st...

[2] https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

I'm Danish. Prime minister is a drunken buffoon with no apparent shred of personal integrity, and generally I hold all politicians to be only in it for the perks and the power and the sex, but no, I wouldn't call our government corrupt, just institutionally inept, because politicians are not in the business of reasoning, and the administrative apparatus is Pournelle's iron law run amok.

We simply don't do corrupt to any significant degree. Probably the niftiest social trick the Scandinavian societies ever evolved.

Come to think of it, I was offered a bribe today, just a few hours ago. Turned it down without even thinking.

The fact that you were offered a bribe today, and it does not seem like a big deal to you, makes your argument somewhat weaker.

I'm Finnish. Almost everyone I know has lost all confidence in the political system years ago.

Same, it's pretty jarring. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

What has caused that? What isn’t working?

This is anecdotal, but I think the common perception is that voting just doesn't matter - politicians make promises to get votes and don't follow through after the elections. And it's the same politicians cycling in and out, year after year. Clearly people are voting for them, but just as clearly there is a large portion of the population that feels like their concerns aren't being addressed. What's interesting is that the people I know personally who've more or less given up on politics can't be clearly identified as belonging to a specific demographic. Some of them are students, some are male knowledge workers in their 20's and 30's, some are female medical professionals and administrators in their 50's and 60's. My father, who is an academic, has the most faith in the political process among the people I know.

One of my Singaporean friends mentioned that the population is quite content with their government, they are enjoying the countries prosperity and the country is peaceful. He said, "Why change a working system?"

I'm Swiss and agree.

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