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Comment by bbddg | Hacker News Reader

Well how would you explain any of the Nordic countries if you thought there was a connection between GDP and Unionization? Norway has 70% of their workers covered by a Union contract and has a higher GDP per capita than the US. Along with some of the lowest levels of inequality of any nation.

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Norway is running on a natural resources boom. They're basically Saudi Arabia but with lighter skin and more human rights (and arguably are more homogeneous culture, no 1000yo religious disagreements or 100yo arbitrarily drawn map lines to create issues like the middle east oil states have).

They openly admit they're boned if the wells run dry or oil goes out of fashion so they hedge by investing in everything else with the game of making enough money in a short enough time (off oil) that they can fund themselves with the appreciation on the nest egg after oil is no longer a money printer. (Saudi Arabia and other wealthy oil funded states are doing similar things to diversify/hedge against future income reduction)

The US is famously a country with no natural resources.

US oil production is 1/20th of that of Norway (per capita)

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...

Who knows. May be that's because Norway has a higher average IQ [1]. May be that's because Norway has a lower cultural diversity index [2]. May be cold climate is the factor: those who didn't work froze to death way before industrial era.

[1] https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...

Okay so now it doesn't have to do with unions but with IQ and "cultural diversity"?

Why is the US so rich if it has so much cultural diversity unlike Norway then?

Well...

Another possible reason is that there are unions and then there are unions. The same way as bringing democracy to Libya does not magically make it prosperous [1].

https://www.statista.com/statistics/455600/gross-domestic-pr...

So to bring this back to the topic at hand you think that the Amazon workers Union drive is on the "military intervention in Libya" end of the spectrum... For some reason?

Or the connection between the US having low unionization rates and a high gdp per capita could be a coincidence?

You can't only associate correlation and causation when it's convenient.

You are basically hinting that low unionization made the US rich but Norway got rich despite high unionization because they have higher IQ or it’s cold there. I would call that cherry picking.

Maybe there's a positive correlation between high IQ and unionization though ;)

I'm saying that may be without unions Norway would be even richer? It's kinda similar to "my grandpa was smoking two packs a day and lived till 102".

Maybe with more unions the US would be richer? Maybe it's not the cold weather that makes Norway rich...

Wow, so many racist tropes in one sentences. For those who didn't bother to click on his references. Norway IQ - 99. US IQ - 98.

Also, nice dog whistle with the "lower cultural diversity index".

Is it really impossible to believe that a homogeneous culture might have some benefits to a smoothly functioning and cohesive society?

Is it really impossible to believe that a dog whistle culture might pose some danger to a smoothly functioning and cohesive society?

I’m no dog whistler. I am very clearly and unabashedly making the assertion that there probably are benefits to having homogeneous culture. If you have any arguments against that statement itself, please make them instead of attacking my character.

It’s pretty anti-intellectual to shut down some hypothesis just because you don’t want it to be true.

Please also note two things that I am NOT saying: I am not stating that there are no benefits to a heterogenous culture, and I am also not saying that one type of culture is necessarily better than the other in all respects.

Easy man. I just proposed a hypothesis just like you did. Why are you fuming?

If you have any arguments against that statement itself, please make them instead of attacking my character.

It’s pretty anti-intellectual to shut down some hypothesis just because you don’t want it to be true.

I am sorry for fuming a little.

I’m just sad that there’s topics that are not really possible to have any kind of rational discussion about just because they might lead to un-comfortable conclusions or even if they sound like they might be too close to “forbidden thoughts” (even though they are not, I don’t think anything I said was actually “racist” and deserved your dog-whistling comment)

No, racist pseudoscience is not an important cause of Norway's GDP/capita numbers. Flagged.

Where in my post did I mention race?

Or "racist pseudoscience" is a newspeak for "I don't like what you're saying, but I cannot think of any reasonable objection"?

>May be that's because Norway has a higher average IQ [1]. May be that's because Norway has a lower cultural diversity index [2]. May be cold climate is the factor: those who didn't work froze to death way before industrial era.

Here, the bit where you said that cold climate resulted in Norwegians have genetically higher intelligence than other countries.

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