Hacker News Reader

Comment by perfobotto | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I read articles like “Nordic country succeeds doing X” I always wonder if that would work on a country that is not 6 million people with tons of natural resources available per capita (Oil, timber, ore). Sadly I generally think not, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong …

View on HN

Finland is not really a country that relies heavily on natural resources.

First page I found ranks the US as having more income from natural resources than Finland.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/natural_resources_...

I never understood comparing Finland and other small countries with the US.

Finland's population is less than that of NYC.

That's why you compare per capita.

That's where you learn some systems are just not scalable.

There is a reason why we use complexity measures in computer science.

Why do we assume a-priori all social systems are scalable by 10 to 20 times?

That seems unscientific.

Why do you need to compare the entire US? Only 20 states have more people than Finland does. Also, if Japan with its 125 MILLION people can have 0.3 homeless per 100k (about half of what we have in Finland) why can't California with 40M people pull it off. The GDP in California is 70k per capita, In Japan its 40,2k.

Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all, healthcare for all, etc on an island with only 2000 people, you’d tell me that was too few people and you can’t do it that way. So it seems that the only case where it will work is for a country with the exact number of people in the exact latitude as the countries that are already doing it, which are coincidentally the only places where it has been tried?

Or maybe, you’re just coming up with excuses.

>Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all, healthcare for all, etc on an island with only 2000 people, you’d tell me that was too few people and you can’t do it that way.

No?

> Or maybe, you’re just coming up with excuses.

Where did I say that? Look up logical fallacies.

Why do you assume social systems are easily scalable? That seems like an a priori belief without any scientific support.

You really think that economies of scale are some kind of myth?

Finland has very few people. It's like comparing Luxemburg with India, do you think you can just reapply what works in small countries regardless of scale?

It is measured as percent of GDP, so is not an absolute ranking. So you can absolutely compare Luxembourg to India if you’d like.

But your really can’t. GDP per capita doesn’t capture so many parameters and conditions (like being landlocked surrounded by wealthy countries that use you as a de-facto tax haven)

It’s not GDP/per capita, but total GDP. To say the USA earns more of its GDP from natural resource extraction than Finland does is completely meaningful if the claim being shot down is “Finland can only afford these programs (and the USA cannot) because of all the money they are making from natural resources.”

Oh, I'm glad to learn today that looking at a single variable can erase all the potential differences between countries and culture and bazillions of other factors.

The main reason it doesn't work in US is, you don't tax the rich and corporations like you should, and because your tax dollars are spent on inefficient massive military industrial, intelligence industrial, prison-industrial, and medical industrial complexes, that are effectively theft of government budget. End the limitless corruption and be amazed what you can afford. :)

Homlessness solutions are very expensive and, in countries such as the UK, very inefficiently managed. We have a system here where you can ask for help and if you are classed as vulnerable you often will get it.

The best 'help' is offered to people with kids. This will often be a low budget B&B type accomodation which is usually just one room. It will be a step up from living on the street but only just.

Next best comes to people who've just been released from prison, drug addicts and alcoholics. They may be offered a bed in a hostel full of people with similar problems. Not surprisingly, the sensible ones choose to stay on the street. Those who are truly vulnerable will take the bed and may end up worse off in the long term.

At the bottom of the pile are people who just made a few bad decisions or had a temporary bout of depression. These people are not judged as vulnerable and can literally just go and screw themselves, the system wasn't set up to help these kinds of folks.

Of course, there are success stories where people have worked their way through the system and eventually been offered a state-sponsored place of their own but such stories are not the norm.

I have been homeless and I got lucky, a complete stranger offfered me help and I grabbed it with both hands. I got sweet nothing from any agency - of which their are multiple here. They are part of the problem since they employ lots of people who would never get a job elswhere and have huge cash resources to misappropriate.

I don't know if the Nordic example given here would fare better but it certainly could not do worse.

OCCNS (Our Country Can Never Succeed) Mentality: Our country can never succeed at doing X because our people have the OCCNS mentality.

It's just a bad excuse.

The question is valid, but I disagree with your belief. If anything, I would expect the default outcome of an abundance of natural resources per capita to be Dutch disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Reply on news.ycombinator.com