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Fascinating take. I’m American and have spent 4 months in Sweden, 2 months in Mexico, and weeks in a few other places. A couple questions… (1) How closely cor
by iambateman 1y ago
Fascinating take. I’m American and have spent 4 months in Sweden, 2 months in Mexico, and weeks in a few other places.
A couple questions…
(1) How closely correlated is wealth to your cultural-quality opinion?
(2) Sweden has generationally-better car culture than the US and it makes a difference. I believe that their sensibilities are worth learning from. Is that the kind of thing you’re thinking about?
I think it’s unfair to say that because place X has Y problem, it’s worse than place Z. But I do think that the world has a lot to teach our specific locality which can speed up improvement.
- unsupp0rted 1y agoIf you take a bunch of Swedes and drop them into a foreign city, raising the city’s population by 15%, does life in that city get better or worse? After say 5 ~ 15 years of adjustment, that is. If you take a bunch of ___ and drop them into a Swedish city, raising its population by 15%, does life in that city get better or worse? How many years until it gets better? Will even the 2nd or 3rd generation make it better?
- iambateman 1y agoThe book Factfulness is worth looking at. It points out that in Sweden, in about 1900, there were still open sewers. Lots of people emigrated from there (including my great-grandparents) because they believed America was a better choice. It’s remarkable how much improvement can happen in a century.