6 ms·

How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013)

59 points by cnnx 9y ago

tim333 9y ago
Liassez-Faire may have made Sweden rich but most western countries went from a poor state 150 years ago to prosperous now pretty much regardless of the political systems they had. Even Russia did kind of ok. I think the advances were driven by improvements in technology more than anything else.
- kazen44 9y ago
  The industrial revolution and (relative) free trade made that possible 150 years ago. Also, the vast amount of resources required to industrialize thanks to colonialism also helped tremendously.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Did colonoalism, at the time, contribute much to industrialization in terms of resources? My impression is that during the age of steam, colonial trade/extraction was mostly limited to luxuries and food, and colonies certainly provided a market for the factories, whereas the building of an industrial base was still mostly a regional thing. Case in point: Germans tried to copy both colonialism and industrialisation, with polar opposite different levels of success.
- bjoli 9y ago
  Also, Sweden did not participate in any war since 1814. During the world wars the industries of most of Europe was ruined, and Sweden's industry got an enormous boost by being the only functioning one in europe.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Improvements in technology are undoubtedly the centrepiece of any sane economic history theory of the last 5-10 generations, and longer. Interestingly enough... Liassez-Faire theories, marxist theories, or macroeconomic theories and other "Big Idea" economics don't tend to have a theory of innovation anywhere near the core of their concepts.
  - gohbgl 9y ago
    Undoubtedly, Laissez-Faire and socialist economies have different technology improvement rates.
  - hollerith 9y ago
    Maybe it's not that simple. The technological improvement that did the most to improve standards of living is learning how to use fossil fuels 300 years ago for transportation and to do other kinds of mechanical work, like pumping water out of mines. That improvement came out of what was then already the wealthiest country (on a per-capital basis). Moreover it was the country whose legal system offered the best protection for private property. That would be quite the coincidence if tech innovations have nothing to do with economic policies.
- p0ints 9y ago
  > Even Russia did kind of ok. That may be true from 10 thousand miles away. Upon closer inspection, there's a huge difference in current wealth and standard of living between Russia and say Finland, while 100 years ago they were roughly the same. Not to mention the unimaginable wealth of natural resources that Russia has, which, under proper political and economic policies, could make it into a Norway-like paradise.
  - 127 9y ago
    And if you put the starting point of your charts to the end of communism, you will see a radical growth in the average wages and the quality of life of citizens.
  - yostrovs 9y ago
    Finland was part of Russia 100 years ago, which led to another experiment comparing systems for the next 70 years. The results are always the same.
    - fulafel 9y ago
      Very different from slavic Russia back then though, having previously changed hands from swedish to russian empire.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >Not to mention the unimaginable wealth of natural resources that Russia has, which, under proper political and economic policies, could make it into a Norway-like paradise. Norway wasn't "made into a paradise" by its natural resources, it was just lucky to be the sole exception unafflicted by the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
oblio 9y ago
Personal anecdote and gross generalization: people who consider Sweden or the other Nordic countries socialists are Americans or have been “Americanized” through consumption of US media. Don’t feel ashamed, I’m also one of these people. These countries actually are social democracies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy Big difference based on just 1 word. Also, Sweden was never truly poor, by world standards. You don’t have to believe me, check the Maddison Project. Even when it was “poor” 200 years ago, it was probably 100-200% richer than my home country, Romania, and probably another 100-200% richer than the truly poor parts of the world.
- mlevental 9y ago
  I don't understand? Romania and the rest of Eastern was almost all serfs 200 years ago. are you saying because people had clothes (as opposed to I guess indigenous peoples in Africa or something) Romania wasn't poor (and therefore Sweden was actually wealthy?
  - oblio 9y ago
    I'm not sure how exactly my comment is not clear, but I'll clarify anyway :) (Edit: found it - the last phrase in my comment should say "at that time", unfortunately I can't edit my comment) Let's pick some moments in time, say 1500, 1800, 2000 and some countries, say Sweden, Romania and Asgard® (I'm going to use a fictitious country name to avoid offending anyone from a poorer country :) ). My statement was that in 1500, 1800 and 2000, the wealth levels for these countries were like this: Sweden > Romania > Asgard. for all 3 moments in time (or any other, more or less) The description in the article doesn't make sense, he's appealing to our modern sensibilities. Of course Sweden in 2000 is richer than Sweden in 1800. But it doesn't make any sense to compare things like that. If you want to get a true measure, you need to compare things at that point in time: Sweden in 1800 with Romania in 1800 and with Asgard® in 1800. So, for your comment: > are you saying [...] Romania wasn't poor and therefore Sweden was actually wealthy? 1. Romania in 1800 was comparatively poorer than Sweden in 1800, but richer than Asgard® in 1800. So, Romania was still poor, but not as poor as other places. 2. Sweden, as a result, "was actually wealthy" for that time, compared to many other countries in the world, at that time.
RobertoG 9y ago
If somebody is interested in a more data driven view, I would recommend this paper (1) by Ha-Joon Chang: "This free trade phase, however, was short-lived. Sweden started using tariffs as a means to protect the agricultural sector from American competition since around 1880. After 1892, it also provided tariff protection and subsidies to the industrial sector, especially the newly-emerging engineering sectors [..]. Because of this switch to protectionism, the Swedish economy performed extremely well in the following decades" "The Swedish state made great efforts in facilitating the acquisition of advanced foreign technology, including state-sponsored industrial espionage. However, more notable was its emphasis on the accumulation of “technological capabilities” [..]. It provided stipends and travel grants for studies and research, invested in education, helped the establishment of technological research institutes, and provided direct research funding to industry" (1) - http://www.personal.ceu.hu/corliss/CDST_Course_Site/Readings_old_2012_files/Ha-Joon%20Chang%20-%20Kicking%20Away%20the%20Ladder-The%20%E2%80%9CReal%E2%80%9D%20History%20of%20Free%20Trade.pdf http://www.personal.ceu.hu/corliss/CDST_Course_Site/Readings...
crdoconnor 9y ago
Sweden did well after WW2 for much the same reason that the US did: it was industrialized and not destroyed. It's always tempting to believe that there was something special about their "ideological prowess", but that isn't really the case. With or without laissez faire they would have done well. With or without a welfare state they would have done well. Econ 101 is "people respond to incentives". Think tanks representing the rich and wealthy (of which libertarianism.org/CATO is one) have a strong incentive to try and give laissez faire credit for every positive economic development ever. It's what makes their donors wealthy. The Kochs (a major source of funds for this website) would particularly like you to think this because of some of the truly epic fights that they have had with the environmental protection authority. To them, "regulation is bad, mkay". Guess why? Hence why, even though I'm sure he honestly believes it, Johan Norburg gives free markets credit for Sweden solving their infant mortality problem.
- patricius 9y ago
  > Hence why, even though I'm sure he honestly believes it, Johan Norburg gives free markets credit for Sweden solving their infant mortality problem. What would be a better explanation in your opinion?
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    The standard explanation: Sweden built a good social welfare system.
lkrubner 9y ago
This article leaves a lot out. For instance, the loss of population to North America. In the early 1900s Sweden had a population of 4 million and it also had a diaspora of 4 million. In other words, it had lost nearly half its people overseas. The ruling class was terrified by the loss of people and so subsidizes for housing were introduced. Sweden thus became the first Western nation to introduce housing subsidies. The subsidies were for a particular kind of house, of which several survive. You can see a few in Stockholm near certain parks. But more so, the standard of living in Sweden remained well behind that of other Western nations till after World War II. The big increase in the standard of living was something that happened during the post war boom. All Western nations grew rapidly then, but Sweden was able to close the gap between itself and other Western nations. We could argue all day about whether the boom or the socialists deserve credit, but it seems clear that laissez faire had nothing to do with it.
pensativo 9y ago
People already poited out that a) Sweden wasn't very poor in the first place b) didn't participate much in conflict during the time; and, most importantly c) technology was extremely influential in the sense that there was just more to go around. I want to point out that I think (c) is by far the most important fact but that the post ignores; however, it also ignores lesser factors such as the widespread participation and effects of labor unions. I see the post as grossly oversimplifying (by conveniently ignoring many other historical factors) while the last time I check, this is something that's still very much debated by modern economists.
data_required 9y ago
Here is a better article on Sweden's economic history, with far more data backing it up: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/sweden-economic-growth-and-structural-change-1800-2000/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/sweden-economic-growth-and-struc... 1. Sweden's economic growth relative to the rest of the world continued quite strongly for 40 years after the Social Democrats took power in 1932 and built a large welfare state. 2. In fact, the period with the strongest economic growth rate in absolute terms was 1950-1975, the period when laissez-faire was most clearly abandoned. 3. The libertarianism article doesn't once mention the absolutely crucial fact that Sweden did not participate in the two world wars. In fact, Sweden has been pacifist since the early 1800s. It really helps a lot when your country is not twice ravaged by major wars, and Sweden also makes a habit of investing more in its people. 4. The fact that Sweden and several other countries can sustain a rich economy with healthy and happy people, at the same time as it has high taxes, is itself a death knell for the claim that libertarianism is always and forever the best ideology. If something drastically different from libertarianism is most strongly associated with wealth & health, then libertarianism clearly isn't necessary. The libertarianism article is not without merit (some kinds of trade liberalizaton and other liberal reforms were obviously a great idea in retrospect), but like most articles written by proponents of an ideology, it fails to acknowledge other important pieces of the puzzle.
- mediascreen 9y ago
  While I agree that the question is more complicated, it took until 1974 before tax rates were anywhere near where they are today [0]. Also, while not involved in any wars, I'm not sure i would call Sweden pacifist during the last century. For example Sweden had the 4th largest airforce in the world in the 1950s [1] And, except for tax rates, Sweden has a pretty liberal economy [2]. [0]http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/public-finances/local-government-finances/local-taxes/pong/tables-and-graphs/mean-tax-rates-whole-of-sweden/ http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subjec... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force#Expansion_during_the_Cold_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force#Expansion_du... [2]https://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden https://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden
  - 9y ago
Melchizedek 9y ago
While it is true that Sweden was economically liberal when it grew rich, liberalism is not enough -- you also need stability, an educated high-IQ population and high trust/low corruption. The mass immigration (and the word 'mass' is really an understatement) of people with much less education and non-Western culture/values is destroying those other factors, not to mention the fact that they overwhelmingly vote socialist to increase welfare payments. While Sweden's economy has seen some growth (but really not that much per capita) due to limited liberalization, a floating currency and most of all a huge increase in household debt to pay for soaring house prices caused by population growth (also due to immigration) and extremely low interest rates, the chickens will eventually come home to roost. Sweden really has no future.
- oblio 9y ago
  > Sweden really has no future. Bold claims are like low percentage shots. A developed country, full of highly educated people, in a peaceful part of the world, should be able to self-correct to some degree. It might, relatively to the rest of the world, not be in as good a state as before, but saying “it has no future” is stretching things quite far, IMO.
  - mieses 9y ago
    The self-correction needed is cultural and will take too long. Decades of progressive indoctrination will not be be undone overnight. It's a safe bet that it's too late.
    - oblio 9y ago
      And what do you think will happen? Sweden will become a warzone? I highly doubt that. It will still be rich and developed, just with lower social cohesion.
      - mieses 9y ago
        Social cohesion is not the issue or a goal. There will be a lowering of freedom, individualism, and other "western" values at the expense of becoming "rich", "developed", and other metrics than can be measured as data rather than on subjective cultural scales. It's interesting that this anti-humanist statistical model of human development is championed by the left. Anything to spite "western" culture.
jazzyk 9y ago
Pretty simple, really: 1. Neutrality - not being ruined by 2 consecutive world wars 2. Profiting from wars - in Sweden's case, by selling arms and minerals (Bofors, iron ore, etc.) to both warring sides. "Peace-loving" and "neutral" Sweden continues to be a major exporter of arms, all the while relying on protection of its allies (spending a mere 1% of its GDP in 2015 on its own defense) 3. Until the influx of immigrants (started slowly 30 years ago), a homogeneous, protestant, population. https://www.politico.eu/article/neutral-sweden-arms-pedlar-extraordinaire/ https://www.politico.eu/article/neutral-sweden-arms-pedlar-e... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=SE&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...

59 points by cnnx 9y ago

Liassez-Faire may have made Sweden rich but most western countries went from a poor state 150 years ago to prosperous now pretty much regardless of the political systems they had. Even Russia did kind of ok. I think the advances were driven by improvements in technology more than anything else.

kazen44 9y ago
The industrial revolution and (relative) free trade made that possible 150 years ago. Also, the vast amount of resources required to industrialize thanks to colonialism also helped tremendously.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Did colonoalism, at the time, contribute much to industrialization in terms of resources? My impression is that during the age of steam, colonial trade/extraction was mostly limited to luxuries and food, and colonies certainly provided a market for the factories, whereas the building of an industrial base was still mostly a regional thing. Case in point: Germans tried to copy both colonialism and industrialisation, with polar opposite different levels of success.
bjoli 9y ago
Also, Sweden did not participate in any war since 1814. During the world wars the industries of most of Europe was ruined, and Sweden's industry got an enormous boost by being the only functioning one in europe.
dalbasal 9y ago
Improvements in technology are undoubtedly the centrepiece of any sane economic history theory of the last 5-10 generations, and longer. Interestingly enough... Liassez-Faire theories, marxist theories, or macroeconomic theories and other "Big Idea" economics don't tend to have a theory of innovation anywhere near the core of their concepts.
- gohbgl 9y ago
  Undoubtedly, Laissez-Faire and socialist economies have different technology improvement rates.
- hollerith 9y ago
  Maybe it's not that simple. The technological improvement that did the most to improve standards of living is learning how to use fossil fuels 300 years ago for transportation and to do other kinds of mechanical work, like pumping water out of mines. That improvement came out of what was then already the wealthiest country (on a per-capital basis). Moreover it was the country whose legal system offered the best protection for private property. That would be quite the coincidence if tech innovations have nothing to do with economic policies.
p0ints 9y ago
> Even Russia did kind of ok. That may be true from 10 thousand miles away. Upon closer inspection, there's a huge difference in current wealth and standard of living between Russia and say Finland, while 100 years ago they were roughly the same. Not to mention the unimaginable wealth of natural resources that Russia has, which, under proper political and economic policies, could make it into a Norway-like paradise.
- 127 9y ago
  And if you put the starting point of your charts to the end of communism, you will see a radical growth in the average wages and the quality of life of citizens.
- yostrovs 9y ago
  Finland was part of Russia 100 years ago, which led to another experiment comparing systems for the next 70 years. The results are always the same.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    Very different from slavic Russia back then though, having previously changed hands from swedish to russian empire.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >Not to mention the unimaginable wealth of natural resources that Russia has, which, under proper political and economic policies, could make it into a Norway-like paradise. Norway wasn't "made into a paradise" by its natural resources, it was just lucky to be the sole exception unafflicted by the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

oblio 9y ago

Personal anecdote and gross generalization: people who consider Sweden or the other Nordic countries socialists are Americans or have been “Americanized” through consumption of US media. Don’t feel ashamed, I’m also one of these people. These countries actually are social democracies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy Big difference based on just 1 word. Also, Sweden was never truly poor, by world standards. You don’t have to believe me, check the Maddison Project. Even when it was “poor” 200 years ago, it was probably 100-200% richer than my home country, Romania, and probably another 100-200% richer than the truly poor parts of the world.

mlevental 9y ago
I don't understand? Romania and the rest of Eastern was almost all serfs 200 years ago. are you saying because people had clothes (as opposed to I guess indigenous peoples in Africa or something) Romania wasn't poor (and therefore Sweden was actually wealthy?
- oblio 9y ago
  I'm not sure how exactly my comment is not clear, but I'll clarify anyway :) (Edit: found it - the last phrase in my comment should say "at that time", unfortunately I can't edit my comment) Let's pick some moments in time, say 1500, 1800, 2000 and some countries, say Sweden, Romania and Asgard® (I'm going to use a fictitious country name to avoid offending anyone from a poorer country :) ). My statement was that in 1500, 1800 and 2000, the wealth levels for these countries were like this: Sweden > Romania > Asgard. for all 3 moments in time (or any other, more or less) The description in the article doesn't make sense, he's appealing to our modern sensibilities. Of course Sweden in 2000 is richer than Sweden in 1800. But it doesn't make any sense to compare things like that. If you want to get a true measure, you need to compare things at that point in time: Sweden in 1800 with Romania in 1800 and with Asgard® in 1800. So, for your comment: > are you saying [...] Romania wasn't poor and therefore Sweden was actually wealthy? 1. Romania in 1800 was comparatively poorer than Sweden in 1800, but richer than Asgard® in 1800. So, Romania was still poor, but not as poor as other places. 2. Sweden, as a result, "was actually wealthy" for that time, compared to many other countries in the world, at that time.

RobertoG 9y ago

If somebody is interested in a more data driven view, I would recommend this paper (1) by Ha-Joon Chang: "This free trade phase, however, was short-lived. Sweden started using tariffs as a means to protect the agricultural sector from American competition since around 1880. After 1892, it also provided tariff protection and subsidies to the industrial sector, especially the newly-emerging engineering sectors [..]. Because of this switch to protectionism, the Swedish economy performed extremely well in the following decades" "The Swedish state made great efforts in facilitating the acquisition of advanced foreign technology, including state-sponsored industrial espionage. However, more notable was its emphasis on the accumulation of “technological capabilities” [..]. It provided stipends and travel grants for studies and research, invested in education, helped the establishment of technological research institutes, and provided direct research funding to industry" (1) - http://www.personal.ceu.hu/corliss/CDST_Course_Site/Readings_old_2012_files/Ha-Joon%20Chang%20-%20Kicking%20Away%20the%20Ladder-The%20%E2%80%9CReal%E2%80%9D%20History%20of%20Free%20Trade.pdf http://www.personal.ceu.hu/corliss/CDST_Course_Site/Readings...

crdoconnor 9y ago

Sweden did well after WW2 for much the same reason that the US did: it was industrialized and not destroyed. It's always tempting to believe that there was something special about their "ideological prowess", but that isn't really the case. With or without laissez faire they would have done well. With or without a welfare state they would have done well. Econ 101 is "people respond to incentives". Think tanks representing the rich and wealthy (of which libertarianism.org/CATO is one) have a strong incentive to try and give laissez faire credit for every positive economic development ever. It's what makes their donors wealthy. The Kochs (a major source of funds for this website) would particularly like you to think this because of some of the truly epic fights that they have had with the environmental protection authority. To them, "regulation is bad, mkay". Guess why? Hence why, even though I'm sure he honestly believes it, Johan Norburg gives free markets credit for Sweden solving their infant mortality problem.

patricius 9y ago
> Hence why, even though I'm sure he honestly believes it, Johan Norburg gives free markets credit for Sweden solving their infant mortality problem. What would be a better explanation in your opinion?
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  The standard explanation: Sweden built a good social welfare system.

lkrubner 9y ago

This article leaves a lot out. For instance, the loss of population to North America. In the early 1900s Sweden had a population of 4 million and it also had a diaspora of 4 million. In other words, it had lost nearly half its people overseas. The ruling class was terrified by the loss of people and so subsidizes for housing were introduced. Sweden thus became the first Western nation to introduce housing subsidies. The subsidies were for a particular kind of house, of which several survive. You can see a few in Stockholm near certain parks. But more so, the standard of living in Sweden remained well behind that of other Western nations till after World War II. The big increase in the standard of living was something that happened during the post war boom. All Western nations grew rapidly then, but Sweden was able to close the gap between itself and other Western nations. We could argue all day about whether the boom or the socialists deserve credit, but it seems clear that laissez faire had nothing to do with it.

pensativo 9y ago

People already poited out that a) Sweden wasn't very poor in the first place b) didn't participate much in conflict during the time; and, most importantly c) technology was extremely influential in the sense that there was just more to go around. I want to point out that I think (c) is by far the most important fact but that the post ignores; however, it also ignores lesser factors such as the widespread participation and effects of labor unions. I see the post as grossly oversimplifying (by conveniently ignoring many other historical factors) while the last time I check, this is something that's still very much debated by modern economists.

data_required 9y ago

Here is a better article on Sweden's economic history, with far more data backing it up: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/sweden-economic-growth-and-structural-change-1800-2000/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/sweden-economic-growth-and-struc... 1. Sweden's economic growth relative to the rest of the world continued quite strongly for 40 years after the Social Democrats took power in 1932 and built a large welfare state. 2. In fact, the period with the strongest economic growth rate in absolute terms was 1950-1975, the period when laissez-faire was most clearly abandoned. 3. The libertarianism article doesn't once mention the absolutely crucial fact that Sweden did not participate in the two world wars. In fact, Sweden has been pacifist since the early 1800s. It really helps a lot when your country is not twice ravaged by major wars, and Sweden also makes a habit of investing more in its people. 4. The fact that Sweden and several other countries can sustain a rich economy with healthy and happy people, at the same time as it has high taxes, is itself a death knell for the claim that libertarianism is always and forever the best ideology. If something drastically different from libertarianism is most strongly associated with wealth & health, then libertarianism clearly isn't necessary. The libertarianism article is not without merit (some kinds of trade liberalizaton and other liberal reforms were obviously a great idea in retrospect), but like most articles written by proponents of an ideology, it fails to acknowledge other important pieces of the puzzle.

mediascreen 9y ago
While I agree that the question is more complicated, it took until 1974 before tax rates were anywhere near where they are today [0]. Also, while not involved in any wars, I'm not sure i would call Sweden pacifist during the last century. For example Sweden had the 4th largest airforce in the world in the 1950s [1] And, except for tax rates, Sweden has a pretty liberal economy [2]. [0]http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/public-finances/local-government-finances/local-taxes/pong/tables-and-graphs/mean-tax-rates-whole-of-sweden/ http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subjec... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force#Expansion_during_the_Cold_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force#Expansion_du... [2]https://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden https://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden
- 9y ago

Melchizedek 9y ago

While it is true that Sweden was economically liberal when it grew rich, liberalism is not enough -- you also need stability, an educated high-IQ population and high trust/low corruption. The mass immigration (and the word 'mass' is really an understatement) of people with much less education and non-Western culture/values is destroying those other factors, not to mention the fact that they overwhelmingly vote socialist to increase welfare payments. While Sweden's economy has seen some growth (but really not that much per capita) due to limited liberalization, a floating currency and most of all a huge increase in household debt to pay for soaring house prices caused by population growth (also due to immigration) and extremely low interest rates, the chickens will eventually come home to roost. Sweden really has no future.

oblio 9y ago
> Sweden really has no future. Bold claims are like low percentage shots. A developed country, full of highly educated people, in a peaceful part of the world, should be able to self-correct to some degree. It might, relatively to the rest of the world, not be in as good a state as before, but saying “it has no future” is stretching things quite far, IMO.
- mieses 9y ago
  The self-correction needed is cultural and will take too long. Decades of progressive indoctrination will not be be undone overnight. It's a safe bet that it's too late.
  - oblio 9y ago
    And what do you think will happen? Sweden will become a warzone? I highly doubt that. It will still be rich and developed, just with lower social cohesion.
    - mieses 9y ago
      Social cohesion is not the issue or a goal. There will be a lowering of freedom, individualism, and other "western" values at the expense of becoming "rich", "developed", and other metrics than can be measured as data rather than on subjective cultural scales. It's interesting that this anti-humanist statistical model of human development is championed by the left. Anything to spite "western" culture.

jazzyk 9y ago

Pretty simple, really: 1. Neutrality - not being ruined by 2 consecutive world wars 2. Profiting from wars - in Sweden's case, by selling arms and minerals (Bofors, iron ore, etc.) to both warring sides. "Peace-loving" and "neutral" Sweden continues to be a major exporter of arms, all the while relying on protection of its allies (spending a mere 1% of its GDP in 2015 on its own defense) 3. Until the influx of immigrants (started slowly 30 years ago), a homogeneous, protestant, population. https://www.politico.eu/article/neutral-sweden-arms-pedlar-extraordinaire/ https://www.politico.eu/article/neutral-sweden-arms-pedlar-e... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=SE&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...