12 ms·

This is a very interesting idea and has some good potential for social change. So much energy, so misplaced. As a scandinavian my first thought is: Don't Americ

by jorleif 12y ago

This is a very interesting idea and has some good potential for social change. So much energy, so misplaced. As a scandinavian my first thought is: Don't Americans realize that there might a point where it is cheaper to provide (or more exactly, force) better education and social security on those at risk, than increasing the police force and incarceration rates? There is something that is not quite right with this narrative that Gladwell spins though. His past examples are about the winners of their era. On the other hand, the contemporary examples are losers who end up killed and squeezed by the police. Presumably, in the earlier mafia era there were also plenty of losers, we just don't hear about them. The main thesis which I think is sound, though, is that innovation often (usually) involves a certain amount of breaking societal norms (which includes laws). It can take violent forms, such as the mafia, but also less violent law-breaking is often present. Think Napster, as a clear example but why not include Uber and AirBnB as well? Often innovation is not just about new technology, but rather re-negotiating social contracts. For this reason, when technological or social change introduces new economic opportunity, often it becomes populated by people who are willing to violate laws. I think as societies, we should try to figure out how to better utilize the violent and rebellious behvior of people, while limiting the detrimental effects. The same adrenaline addict might kill himself and a few pedestrian on a motorcycle when evading the police, but could instead be allowed to risk his life in some space exploration program or why not a technology startup.

vasilipupkin 12y ago
Note that just because something works in a country of 10mln, that doesn't mean it will work just as well in a country of 300mln. It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. You can always find a sample of 10mln Americans that does just as well on all metrics as Sweden or better.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Last time I checked, the US had 50 states, giving 6 mln people per state on average. I think such solutions implemented on state level should work exactly as well as for a country of 10mln.
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    maybe. We just don't know. To assume that cultural factors have zero influence on success of such policies is probably incorrect.
    - vasilipupkin 12y ago
      haha. Why did I get downvoted for this? I am not implying anything racial or anything like that. I am talking about culture specifically. Illinois has a political culture of corruption that is probably worse than Sweden, as an example.
      - k__ 12y ago
        Probably because most people think there are too many prisoners in the US and everyone who implies it should stay that way is seen dense/backward. Didn't downvote, but I have the same opinion as those people.
        vasilipupkin 12y ago
        I agree with you but that has little to do with swedish style welfare. Too many prisoners is due to draconian drug policies which are thankfully changing
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- jorleif 12y ago
  I don't disagree, but experimentation should still be on the table. Maybe a certain state or municipality should be sponsored to try policies more along the scandinavian kind. Of course this is problematic. How do you for example stop everyone from moving into that particular priviliged district, etc?
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    states do have very different welfare policies. Some more generous than others. Texas has comparatively little relative to Massachusetts. Guess which way the net flow of people that are supposed to benefit from those policies happens
    - MagicWishMonkey 12y ago
      Poor people don't have the resources to move around the country. Wealthy people are the ones who relocate and they don't benefit much from social welfare programs (if you ignore tangential benefits like not getting your car broken into by someone who needs money to eat).
- fdsary 12y ago
  Why don't the Americans do it on state or city level then? Sincerely Swede
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    because of a complex interplay between Federal and state welfare programs. But also, they do more in some states and less in others. What I am saying is, if every state went to a Swedish model, it's not necessarily true that we would be better off. Paradoxically, the Swedes themselves could become worse off. Americans consume more because they have more disposable income, which means they can import things from Europe. What will happen if taxes are so high that Americans start consuming a lot less ?
    - vidarh 12y ago
      Taxes in the US are not nearly as much lower than in Scandinavia as people like to think, though of course it varies quite a bit depending on state income taxes. When you take into account "necessary but privatised " bits like health insurance, it erases most of the remaining difference.
      - true_religion 12y ago
        The thing about health care is that it doesn't feel necessary when you're young, and healthy. Its when you're old, or are having children that you start to care about the health care system.... and by then its too late to revolt.
      - vasilipupkin 12y ago
        I don't think that's accurate, Swedish overall tax burden is something like 45% of GDP
        seanflyon 12y ago
        For comparison US taxes are 24-27% of GDP according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...
- nawitus 12y ago
  > It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. I think it's likely. In fact, by default policies should scale linearly from 10 millions upwards.
  - slyn 12y ago
    This is pretty reductive and ignores the fact that America is exceptionally racially, culturally, and economically different from region to region, state to state, city to city, et al. Policy that works great in NYC isn't guaranteed to work great in LA. Laws that work well in Dallas or San Antonio might have negative effects in Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis.
  - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    By default? What default are you talking about? Sounds like fairy-tale default. Saying policies can just scale linearly from 17m people in the Netherlands to 1300m in China, needs an explanation a little more elaborate than 'it's the default'.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      Policies scale by compartmentalisation. A population of 1300m is not administered as one big lump of people. Nor is a 17m one.
      - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
        The point is, when you compartmentalize 10m people in 10x 1m provinces with local governments, it's relatively easy to have these 10 provinces be directed by a singular governmental policy. But when you try the same for a 100m population, or a 1000m population, you'd get 10 compartments of 100m, 100 compartments of 10m below this, and 1000 compartments of 1m. To expect each to follow the national policy is very difficult to do. You either need a strong dictatorship, or you need to accept that different compartments may elect radically different policies, which is why I don't think you can just implement and scale a policy to 1300m as easy as one can to 17m. That's why you see huge differences for example between states even in things we expect to all agree on. There's very few national policies that simply scale to all states exactly the same, the military probably being a big one. But things like education, police or fire departments, housing, healthcare or even marriage, can be radically different. But here in the Netherlands? On tons of topics like education, police, healthcare or marriage, it's exactly the same in every single province, because we're pretty much one big state, despite quite large differences between provinces. e.g. 2 hours north-east, I can't understand the local language, here it's mostly protestant but two hours south is mostly catholic. But despite big differences in culture, language, religion, but also industries and demographics, it's extremely homogeneous in policies. To me that says that you can't just scale a policy to 300m like you can to 17m.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Don't Americans realize that there might a point where it is cheaper to provide (or more exactly, force) better education and social security on those at risk, than increasing the police force and incarceration rates? That was the theory pushed fairly successfully by many social reformers in the 60's and early 70's. The net result, or at least the concurrent event, was a massive crime wave. The fact of the matter is that Americans are not Scandinavians. For homicides where the offender is known, more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2012.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c... Further, within the US, people tend to behave more similarly to where they come from (even if it was many generations back) than to some American average. I don't have data for any Scandinavian nations, but Tino Sanandaji has some data comparing Swedish Americans (a group which apparently self-identifies enough to be statistically significant) to Swedes: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one-picture.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o... So it's very unclear that a Scandinavian approach would work here.
- woah 12y ago
  What crime wave?
- vidarh 12y ago
  > That was the theory pushed fairly successfully by many social reformers in the 60's and early 70's. The net result, or at least the concurrent event, was a massive crime wave. The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries. > more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia. Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely. The US has a poverty problem first and foremost.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries. How much spending do you believe is necessary to control crime via social security/etc? Is there some consumption level at which crime is expected to vanish? Note that the US currently spends 60% of it's budget on redistribution and 4% on police protection. What would the optimal spending levels be? http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_total http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_total Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely. What factors? Most of the obvious ones that I can think of (poverty, government dependence, unemployment) fail for this purpose since blacks do not make up anything close to 50% of people suffering from them. Could you please state concretely what these factors are and why you believe the effect vanishes?

by jorleif 12y ago

vasilipupkin 12y ago

Note that just because something works in a country of 10mln, that doesn't mean it will work just as well in a country of 300mln. It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. You can always find a sample of 10mln Americans that does just as well on all metrics as Sweden or better.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Last time I checked, the US had 50 states, giving 6 mln people per state on average. I think such solutions implemented on state level should work exactly as well as for a country of 10mln.
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  maybe. We just don't know. To assume that cultural factors have zero influence on success of such policies is probably incorrect.
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    haha. Why did I get downvoted for this? I am not implying anything racial or anything like that. I am talking about culture specifically. Illinois has a political culture of corruption that is probably worse than Sweden, as an example.
    - k__ 12y ago
      Probably because most people think there are too many prisoners in the US and everyone who implies it should stay that way is seen dense/backward. Didn't downvote, but I have the same opinion as those people.
      - vasilipupkin 12y ago
        I agree with you but that has little to do with swedish style welfare. Too many prisoners is due to draconian drug policies which are thankfully changing
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jorleif 12y ago
I don't disagree, but experimentation should still be on the table. Maybe a certain state or municipality should be sponsored to try policies more along the scandinavian kind. Of course this is problematic. How do you for example stop everyone from moving into that particular priviliged district, etc?
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  states do have very different welfare policies. Some more generous than others. Texas has comparatively little relative to Massachusetts. Guess which way the net flow of people that are supposed to benefit from those policies happens
  - MagicWishMonkey 12y ago
    Poor people don't have the resources to move around the country. Wealthy people are the ones who relocate and they don't benefit much from social welfare programs (if you ignore tangential benefits like not getting your car broken into by someone who needs money to eat).
fdsary 12y ago
Why don't the Americans do it on state or city level then? Sincerely Swede
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  because of a complex interplay between Federal and state welfare programs. But also, they do more in some states and less in others. What I am saying is, if every state went to a Swedish model, it's not necessarily true that we would be better off. Paradoxically, the Swedes themselves could become worse off. Americans consume more because they have more disposable income, which means they can import things from Europe. What will happen if taxes are so high that Americans start consuming a lot less ?
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Taxes in the US are not nearly as much lower than in Scandinavia as people like to think, though of course it varies quite a bit depending on state income taxes. When you take into account "necessary but privatised " bits like health insurance, it erases most of the remaining difference.
    - true_religion 12y ago
      The thing about health care is that it doesn't feel necessary when you're young, and healthy. Its when you're old, or are having children that you start to care about the health care system.... and by then its too late to revolt.
    - vasilipupkin 12y ago
      I don't think that's accurate, Swedish overall tax burden is something like 45% of GDP
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        For comparison US taxes are 24-27% of GDP according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...
nawitus 12y ago
> It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. I think it's likely. In fact, by default policies should scale linearly from 10 millions upwards.
- slyn 12y ago
  This is pretty reductive and ignores the fact that America is exceptionally racially, culturally, and economically different from region to region, state to state, city to city, et al. Policy that works great in NYC isn't guaranteed to work great in LA. Laws that work well in Dallas or San Antonio might have negative effects in Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  By default? What default are you talking about? Sounds like fairy-tale default. Saying policies can just scale linearly from 17m people in the Netherlands to 1300m in China, needs an explanation a little more elaborate than 'it's the default'.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Policies scale by compartmentalisation. A population of 1300m is not administered as one big lump of people. Nor is a 17m one.
    - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
      The point is, when you compartmentalize 10m people in 10x 1m provinces with local governments, it's relatively easy to have these 10 provinces be directed by a singular governmental policy. But when you try the same for a 100m population, or a 1000m population, you'd get 10 compartments of 100m, 100 compartments of 10m below this, and 1000 compartments of 1m. To expect each to follow the national policy is very difficult to do. You either need a strong dictatorship, or you need to accept that different compartments may elect radically different policies, which is why I don't think you can just implement and scale a policy to 1300m as easy as one can to 17m. That's why you see huge differences for example between states even in things we expect to all agree on. There's very few national policies that simply scale to all states exactly the same, the military probably being a big one. But things like education, police or fire departments, housing, healthcare or even marriage, can be radically different. But here in the Netherlands? On tons of topics like education, police, healthcare or marriage, it's exactly the same in every single province, because we're pretty much one big state, despite quite large differences between provinces. e.g. 2 hours north-east, I can't understand the local language, here it's mostly protestant but two hours south is mostly catholic. But despite big differences in culture, language, religion, but also industries and demographics, it's extremely homogeneous in policies. To me that says that you can't just scale a policy to 300m like you can to 17m.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Don't Americans realize that there might a point where it is cheaper to provide (or more exactly, force) better education and social security on those at risk, than increasing the police force and incarceration rates? That was the theory pushed fairly successfully by many social reformers in the 60's and early 70's. The net result, or at least the concurrent event, was a massive crime wave. The fact of the matter is that Americans are not Scandinavians. For homicides where the offender is known, more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2012.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c... Further, within the US, people tend to behave more similarly to where they come from (even if it was many generations back) than to some American average. I don't have data for any Scandinavian nations, but Tino Sanandaji has some data comparing Swedish Americans (a group which apparently self-identifies enough to be statistically significant) to Swedes: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one-picture.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o... So it's very unclear that a Scandinavian approach would work here.

woah 12y ago
What crime wave?
vidarh 12y ago
> That was the theory pushed fairly successfully by many social reformers in the 60's and early 70's. The net result, or at least the concurrent event, was a massive crime wave. The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries. > more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia. Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely. The US has a poverty problem first and foremost.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries. How much spending do you believe is necessary to control crime via social security/etc? Is there some consumption level at which crime is expected to vanish? Note that the US currently spends 60% of it's budget on redistribution and 4% on police protection. What would the optimal spending levels be? http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_total http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_total Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely. What factors? Most of the obvious ones that I can think of (poverty, government dependence, unemployment) fail for this purpose since blacks do not make up anything close to 50% of people suffering from them. Could you please state concretely what these factors are and why you believe the effect vanishes?