Johan Norberg - Swedish Myths and Realities

Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism, sits down with reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan to sort out the myths of the Sweden's welfare state, health services, tax rates, and its status as the "most successful society the world has ever known."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• johan
• magazine
• michael
• moynihan
• nanny
• norberg
• reason
• reasontv
• state
• sweden

[h0la0la]

älskar att alla skriver på engelska när i princip alla som ser på klipp om sverige är svenskar

[uruson]

I've never understood this need for "growth".

Anyone with half a brain will realize that the earth doesn't get 8-10% bigger each year.

[uruson]

@mootant Exponential growth does not work when it's tied to any finite resource.

And what you speak of is clearly covered in my comment under "Re-use".

[mootant]

@uruson Your whole reasoning how it's bad not to include the cost of using up the resources in the long term makes no sense because of that. Once resources are taken to the surface they mostly stay there and can be cheaply reused.

[uruson]

@mootant As I didn't ask any questions in my replies, do you have a point to go with that sentence?

[mootant]

@uruson Because mined resources stay close to the earth surface.

[uruson]

@mootant You immediately run into problems if you set up a system reliant on exponential growth.

In any case, "growth" does not equal "improvement", as you seem to claim.

You can improve without growth, and you can grow without improvement.

Person X lacks T, whilst persons Y and Z have one each.

They do not often use T, and the three of them could easily be accommodated by a single one along with a usage schedule.

[uruson]

@mootant I dislike how Economics seem not to be tied to the earth.

A much better model would be to estimate the value of everything inside the earth, followed by estimating how much we can access, after which you set the price.

Then you would evaluate the costs of your options:

1. Come up with ways to access more of the earth.

2. Re-use what you have.

3. ...New sources.

[mootant]

@uruson It's you that's missing the point. Let me repeat what you said with slight modifications. It's year 1800. Earth doesn't get bigger every year. But people's conditions DO get better every year because they learn how to get more out of acre of land and because of technological progress. If anyone in 1800 said that growth is bad, Earth is finite and so on he'd be simply wrong.

The only difference is that you're around year 2010 and say the same thing.

[uruson]

@mootant Either you're intentionally missing the point, or you're just very dense.

In the first case, you don't deserve a response, and in the second case, you wouldn't understand it if you did get one.

I wish you luck in your quest to misunderstand comments on Youtube.

[mootant]

@uruson Earth doesn't but so what? Do you understand that without economic growth you want to have Chinese/Indians/Africans stay as poor as they are?

[uruson]

@clustertm512 There may very well be a comment addressing the concern you express, but I wouldn't know as I, like you, didn't bother looking.