Hacker News Reader

Comment by RadiozRadioz | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. As a UK citizen, I have long wondered what it would be like to live in one of those Nordic countries that are run well with happy citizens. Once in my lifetime I'd like to have the feeling that my government cares about me and isn't completely incompetent.

View on HN

The Nordic countries have a lot of problems too.

One example is their completely failed drug policy, which is aimed at repression instead of care and therapy.

Failed from whose perspective? Definitely not the majority of citizens.

’Failed’ is in non-functional.

There has been decades of brainwashing from the state(jointly with various Christian organisations) and an incredible amount of disinformation.

I am a Cannabis user and I’ve moved from Stockholm to Zürich because I want to live my life in peace.

That’s what you get when you have free wealth you can pump out of the ground (or ocean floor in this case). Middle eastern oil countries are very happy too with wealth shared around (for the citizens) and most costs in life covered.

Not necessarily. The UK had that too (the same north sea oil as Norway), but we failed to invest it wisely.

Norway has less than 10% the population of the UK so that oil was worth more per capita

Thatcher used the oil revenues to pay for her cuts. That way the people didn't realise the damage her policies did to the economy. And they've been believers ever since.

The UK had larger oil reserves than Norway and started developing them earlier. At one point in the 1980s 1 pound in every 10 of tax taken in the UK was directly from oil extraction taxes.

I would list Norway as exceptional since every other petro-state has had generations of corruption and most have credible histories of human rights violations.

They’re definitely governing well but without the oil it would all break down in a heartbeat.

The fun "life-hack" is now the oil doesn't matter anymore.

Norway needed it initially, but thinks to smart conservative finance policies now they don't.

As as lovely counter example, look at all of the UAE's expenditures on attempts at "destination tourism" revenue.

UAE "invested" its money into concrete. Norway invested its money into its people.

I would note that the US, while not technically a petrostate, does get almost 10% of its economy from the fossil fuel industry.

Canada could've done the same but they chose Neoliberalism.

Norway has problems too. Don't mention Sweden

As a Brit living in Sweden for 10 years (and, who now has naturalised).

It’s incomparable and the parent is definitely right to ponder. Life here is better, even if it has it’s problems.

There is no “working poor” here, serial unemployment is significantly lower. And Sweden is the “worst” nordic country right now for crime and poverty rates. Britain is far-far behind, and getting worse yearly.

I live in Sweden and was wondering how bad things are recently given the daily explosions around the country related to gang criminality.

Apparently, even the worst parts of Stockholm have crime rates comparable to the best areas of the USA, which surprised me TBH (and I think that's a lot better than the UK).

> serial unemployment is significantly lower

"Serial unemployment" sounds like a description of going from being unemployed to being unemployed, repeatedly. But that makes no sense. What does it mean?

year after year of being unemployed, or dropping in and out of work very temporarily. (not being able to hold a job)

in britain there is a concept of “the underclass” which are perpetually out of work people.

In the same way that year after year of remaining married to the same person constitutes "serial monogamy"?

Or... how stabbing the same corpse several times makes you a "serial killer"?

Serial unemployment is an actual definition in sociology[0][1]

HN seems to have a lot of people these days who don’t follow the guidelines.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.[2]

[0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242537188_Charles_M...

[1]: https://senseofmisplaced.blogspot.com/2011/03/serial-unemplo...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not a fair comparison, because everything in West compares better to post-Johnson Britain :)

Britain has been in decline since Thatcher, but is not willing to accept it.

Blair, for all his war crimes, managed the decline fairly well, but it’s been clear to anyone with an outside view that Britain is a mid-power, cosplaying as a world power.

Similar to that geezer who always has the flash car and no money to pay for it, keeping up with joneses and going into perpetual debt for it, until nobody will lend any money any more.

You will always have problems in any country. Norway ranks at 7 in happiness, Sweden at 4. The top four places are Nordic countries. UK ranks 20.

Having lived in Finland and UK, I definitely don't want to live in UK.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

How can these happiness scores be meaningful? It's all just surveys, and self reporting. It's subjective and sensitive to cultural differences.

Do you think people are lying about their happiness or that happiness isn't subjective?

Happiness being subjective to cultural differences is a feature, not a bug.

If a culture is breeding widespread unhappiness (perhaps in exchange for maximization of economic growth over all) then it's something that should be observed.

Self-reported happiness (or life satisfaction) is only a part of the ranking. The objective measures correlate strongly with the subjective ones (with some outliers like Israel). But as any metric, it's of course not perfect.

"Happiness is measured using six categories including GDP per capita, social support, and healthy life expectancy, among others."

That measurement of 'happiness' is inappropriate. Instead of simply polling people about e.g. life satisfaction it's based on a bunch of random metrics that have, at best, a mixed relationship with 'happiness.'

So for instance it turns out the 'happiest' countries in the world also have some of the highest rates of depression in the world.

Now obviously that's not literally impossible but ffs just poll people - it's not hard. Yes it will be extremely subjective, exactly like 'happiness' is!

Such polling is done extensively. Norway ranks 6th, with 94.1% very happy or quite happy.

Happiness vs life satisfaction correlates surprisingly little.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-people-who-say-t...

Not great. Very few chippies.

Notice ALL the Anglo speaking countries are a mess. I blame Freidmanomics. A most poisonous ideology. As Wahhabism is to Islam so Freidmanonics is to the Anglo speaking West.

People replying to you don’t understand the utter failure of the UK, particularly the NHS, which is an abominable evil disgrace that unnecessarily kills and tortures many people every day

Counter point: the NHS saved my life last year. I’m glad it exists and I’m grateful for the amazing people who work at its front lines.

That isn’t a counter point at all. Of course the NHS saves some people. That doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely horrific. British people are infected with some kind of brain worms where they can’t accept that the NHS is in a dire state because of fear of offending NHS workers. Let me tell you, those on the front line are the biggest critics

It’s easy to stand on the outside, pissing inwards, isn’t it? So thanks for the sweeping generalisations and absolutes, very helpful.

Since you have made no point so far, only offering spiteful generalisations and offence, I feel my lived experience is a good a counter point for those who may scroll by and want to see an alternative view.

Government cannot care. You're looking for love in all the wrong places.

I've just spent weeks in Japan, where the government very much seems to care.

Are you joking? Japan?

You do understand, that government really can't care, right? People, animals can care. An institution cannot. It is a social construct. It is an anthropomorphising projection to attribute care or hate or thoughtfulness or any other emotional human attributes onto social constructs.

Humans are just collections of cells, bacteria and some electrical impulses; all vying for survival in a hostile world.

By your definition, anything made up of anything can’t “care”.

Corporations can care, they usually care a lot about for example profits. Governments can care, the ones you’re accustomed to might care a lot about the image of the country or their own image; some can be interested mostly in the survival and prosperity of the country and its citizens though. Politicians, CEOs, Executives etc; can be self serving.

Similar to our own bodies cells: those can be self-serving too. We call that situation cancer.

With which bacterial cell am I speaking?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com