It's weird how people (in this case, you) claim that capitalism won't work, even though it has never been tried. But socialism, yeah..let's try that over and over and over again. It always ends up in tears - but let's just try it ONE more time :)
Listen - I understand that it's easy to be seduced by how scandinavia is portrayed. Sweden is damn near destroying itself with immigration. Old people are dying in their downshitten beds and the police are quitting their jobs at record speeds. It's a society in slow decay.
In Norway, a country that I know even better, I can agree that it looks good on the surface. And it's not that bad. But it's a strange society. Everyone is equally medicore. We have half the population on welfare, anxiety, depression and straight up welfare frauds. 5% of all children are taken by the child protective system. It's gone too far, even people working there admits it. We have very little innovation due to terrible schools. We score very bad even though we are one of the richest countries in the world. We have only one college in the top 100.
That being said, we are intelligent and hard working people. But it is also a little bit of a lie that we have always been a capitalist hybrid society. In the 80s and 90s we were pretty much as capitalist as any country has ever been. Same with Sweden. And guess what..that's when we blossomed. Innovation was incredible - especially in Sweden. But as they (and us) has gone more towards socialism..our society has decayed.
We have bad health care. Bad schools. Bad education. We have to wait up to 2 months to get an appointment at the doctor. Most people just pay for private health insurance instead. I guess you don't see Michael Moore report on that? ;)
I am not socialist... nor do I think it works. I believe in fair reward for innovation and free market but you need nets so people don't fall off it. No system is perfect and systems need change according to the situation.
Yes, the open borders was a very bad idea. Everyone agrees on that.
Mediocre? By whose standard. Scandinavia has some of the best human development index. Bad schools? Bad education? You have some of the best scores worldwide. Again, by whose standards? It's good to push forward but it's also important to keep things in perspective.
No really. We rank terrible. Bedtime now. Ill cough up some rankings tomorrow. Thanks for the discussion btw! Thumbs up