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Comment by theredbox | Hacker News Reader

Finland is no paradise nor is the US of A. No country is. There are some cons and pros to every country. Finland is a sleepy country where nothing much happens. Yes you have a universal healthcare but so is this healthcare expensive compared to some other "capitalist heavens" like Singapore or South Korea.

Also there is no "cheap" in Nordic countries. Everything has a certain minimum level of quality set for everyone which makes things needlessly more expensive.

If you crave cheap junk food you are out of luck. Eating or drinking out is so expensive that people just stay at home and cook. That does not sound like freedom but a society engineered by the elite to do what they think is the best for that society.

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I'm amused that in the context of "freedom" you manage to complain about the lack of cheap junk-food - something that is actually very available if you look for it.

I moved to Helsinki, from Scotland, and while it is true there is beaurocracy that can feel stifling, the country is broadly free by any measure you'd care to make. Certainly as much as in the "land of the free" (whatever that even means).

No country is perfect, but Finland is a nice place to live.

Why by the elite? Finland has proportional representation so it is likely it's political system represents views that cross a large spectrum of the population.

I think most Europeans are against cheap junk food and an underpaid service industry.

I think you don't get it... Finland doesn't have much of an elite.

A CsomethingO who got posted to a scandinavian country by his multinational employer put it well in a newspaper interview. He was expected to wear suit and tie Monday-Friday, but if his home needed some work, then people expected him to drive to some bigbox store and afterwards get up on a ladder and do it, just like any of his subordinates.

Your electrician might drive a BMW or Mercedes, like any random suit. That's not "needlessly expensive", that's a country where the electrician is part of the "elite". A societal choice. The "elite" is the majority. The richest people's children go to the same school as everyone else, which produces a shared fate.

Yet, even in the Nordic countries you have McDonalds and BurgerKing, the sheer definitions of cheap junk food.

You're conflating "cheap" as price with value ((quality & quantity)/price). Junk is still too expensive if costs too much. Jack in the Box is terrible food but the location just south of the Googleplex on Shoreline has outrageously high prices ($20-25 average with tax for a male late teenager or large adult male). That's low value crap. If it were monetarily-cheap, in addition to nutritionally-cheap, then it might make sense every now and then.

They manage cheap by local standards in many places, but they usually have to use more expensive labor and ingredients in Europe to match both legal requirements and customer tastes.

At least in regards to your last paragraph, I’ll take that over freedom

I'm sorry your post seems to have been downvoted. To me, it reads like the voice of experience speaking. I've never been to Finland, so your thoughts add to my idea of what it must be like.

Thanks for sharing. I hope you'll continue to do so in the future.

Moreover, the Nordic countries are rated as "happiest" but they're also populated by seemingly very boring populations that seem to be very happy just being. I wonder what the relationship between these characteristics really implies.

Perhaps it's that they can "just be" while people in less happy places struggle.

what a moronic comment.

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