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Iceland is a special case. It is tiny, with only 320,000 inhabitants. That is 1/1000th of the population of the US. And the population is also highly homogeneou

by geertj 14y ago

Iceland is a special case. It is tiny, with only 320,000 inhabitants. That is 1/1000th of the population of the US. And the population is also highly homogeneous. The fact that they can pull off a peaceful "revolution" like this doesn't mean anything for the majority of countries in the world.

stygianguest 14y ago
True, Iceland is tiny. Barely a country one might say. But the argument of size needs more motivation, why does size matter? Although I tend to agree with the sentiment. We always hear the same arguments: yes [solution for a big problem] works great in [scandinavian country] but it is so small and homogeneous, the same could never work in [larger european country or USA]. Surely measures that have been applied successfully elsewhere, even in a small country, are more likely to succeed here too?
- nhaehnle 14y ago
  The Icelandic political system is certainly helped by the fact that Iceland is small, because it means that politician are closer to their constituents and therefore more likely to act in their interest. Furthermore, organizing effective social movements does not scale very well. Organizing 1000 truly active participants - by which I mean people who are willing to do more than just tweet and write blog posts - is as difficult in Iceland as it is in the US, but in Iceland that already gets you close to 1% of the population, whereas in the US it is basically nothing. The same arguments don't really apply to topics like health care, because the limits of social organization are not as important there.
lotsofcows 14y ago
I don't understand this comment or the earlier ones saying Iceland is "unimportant". It's a modern democracy with a rich history. It's suffered one of the worst financial crashes and recovered more rapidly than the rest of us. It's got crime rates, happiness ratings, longevity and education rates that make other first world countries jealous. Are you saying democracy doesn't scale? Tax doesn't scale? That the lessons of one country are irrelevant to bigger but otherwise comparable countries?

by geertj 14y ago

stygianguest 14y ago

True, Iceland is tiny. Barely a country one might say. But the argument of size needs more motivation, why does size matter? Although I tend to agree with the sentiment. We always hear the same arguments: yes [solution for a big problem] works great in [scandinavian country] but it is so small and homogeneous, the same could never work in [larger european country or USA]. Surely measures that have been applied successfully elsewhere, even in a small country, are more likely to succeed here too?

nhaehnle 14y ago
The Icelandic political system is certainly helped by the fact that Iceland is small, because it means that politician are closer to their constituents and therefore more likely to act in their interest. Furthermore, organizing effective social movements does not scale very well. Organizing 1000 truly active participants - by which I mean people who are willing to do more than just tweet and write blog posts - is as difficult in Iceland as it is in the US, but in Iceland that already gets you close to 1% of the population, whereas in the US it is basically nothing. The same arguments don't really apply to topics like health care, because the limits of social organization are not as important there.

lotsofcows 14y ago

I don't understand this comment or the earlier ones saying Iceland is "unimportant". It's a modern democracy with a rich history. It's suffered one of the worst financial crashes and recovered more rapidly than the rest of us. It's got crime rates, happiness ratings, longevity and education rates that make other first world countries jealous. Are you saying democracy doesn't scale? Tax doesn't scale? That the lessons of one country are irrelevant to bigger but otherwise comparable countries?