u/JonathanLindqvist

For a united Scandinavia, how do you like this compromise?

1. *Keep norwegian as the common language.* It just seems to me to be in the middle of the three languages. I've also heard that it's the easiest for English people to pronounce, which leads me to suspect norwegians have the best english accent, but I speculate.

2. *Merge Copenhagen and Malmö into a single capital of Scandinavia*, called simply Copenhagen or perhaps Greater Copenhagen. It sits nicely near many major cities in Scandinavia, it connects somewhat to continental Europe and it has a large population already.

3. *Keep the swedish flag.* It contains no red and signals to the world that we are sweet summer children.

(4. I can't think of any compromise that would make the finns happy, but we should definitely learn basic finnish in school.)

It's an axiom of socdem that private actors are allowed to start businesses and sell products for profit, in some industries. But should the state offer generic alternatives to some of the non-essential products? Say, cars. Should there be a brand of basic cars that are produced by the government and sold nearly at production cost?

I think the answer for essential products, like food, medicine and energy, is a fairly strong *yes.* But I wonder if I should abandon the idea about non-essential ones. For one thing, I feel like it would be hard to not be unfairly competitive. For instance, the state could (in theory) just continue to pump in funds into a certain company, effectively doing to private companies what big companies often do to small ones (e.g. temporarily push down their own prices until the competition just goes bankrupt). We run into some of the same problems of pricing that we often find in socialist economies.

You'll sometimes hear, from postmodernists, that men are fleeing to the right because they're losing power. This is not true. But it is ironic. Because it is that very analysis, the postmodern one, that is causing the flight.

Postmodernism isn't a buzzword by the right. It is a very sophisticated and explicit philosophy. There is plenty to read about it online, in every reputable philosophy encyclopedia, but the central claim (in my reading) is this: there exist no natural categories. They believe that categories are constructed in order to exclude (i.e. to discriminate, meaning to separate). The most prominent example of postmodernists are the feminists, and so the typical categories are man/woman, peoples, national borders, to some degree species, but also things like truth and morality. Class-analysis fits well into the same philosophy.

The central claim is the main axiom. The observed differences then are usually explained by social constructivism: if men and women were raised and treated the same, they would become the same. Similarly, the power-analysis is also primarily a derivative, not an axiom. There is no way of objectively comparing "grand narratives," but there is still one thing they all have in common, namely their influence (power). There's no logical reason to be cynical about it, i.e. to directly translate power-imbalance into oppression of the haves over the have-nots, so I can't quite explain why it always is. An evolutionary psychologist would probably say that the organism has motivations and uses power to satisfy them, but to most postmodernists, power has been raised from the level of "resource" to the level of "motivation." I don't know if this step is logical or historical (empirical). Either way, it is agreed upon by postmodernists that because all groups of humans actually have the same potential, but some are excluded due to social constructions, then inequality of outcome is due to oppression/theft. 

There are very good philosophical reasons to entertain postmodernism. A good one is to ask how to define a category, say "human." Do humans have speech? Many wouldn't qualify. Do humans have 46 chromosomes? Many wouldn't qualify. Bipedal? Some are excluded. This or that? Exceptions exist. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that identity is atleast partly self-decided.

Perhaps most obvious from postmodernism, and probably the main reason why men are moving to the right (apart from immigration, which itself is aligned with postmodernism), is the group-analysis. Basically, the idea that we can put people into groups and determine privilege (or oppression). Some call it identity politics. This is very alien to many men, especially workers. Evolutionary theorists know this best: males in nearly all sexually reproductive species compete against each other for resources, including status and power, because that differentially grants them reproductive access. A class-analysis does work, but in most cases, a group-analysis does not. In fact, postmodernism seems like lunacy to most people, men and women, but it's a bit hard to understand. As with anything, there are some reasonable lessons to be learned from here, like the tendency for people to mimic those who look like them and therefore men are more likely to succeed merely because they see other men succeed. But the effect size isn't huge. 

The claim that all inequality is because of oppression/theft is what defines the extreme left, I'd argue, and it rests on the assumption that there are no natural differences. Postmodernism fits well. And that is exactly why social democrats need to denounce them. Social democracy is not extreme left. It's basically regulatory capitalism + strong unions + 10-ish welfare items. I get the sentiment of wanting to distance ourselves from the extreme right, especially in countries like the US where socialist policies are urgently needed. If the extreme left had some influence in the US, that would be good, for a decent while, because their first steps align with social democracy. But the distance between socdem and the extreme right is already obviously true. What is needed is to differentiate ourselves from the other extreme, if we want voters to come back. And that is harder. Most people don't even understand that the mainstream feminism, which is the postmodern one, should count as the extreme left. "How can equality be a bad thing?" It is when it denies nature, or when it claims that inequality is evidence of violence. 

Social democracy can be loosely defined as "mostly free market capitalism + strong unions + 10-ish welfare articles." I'm wondering: how many welfare articles do you believe should be provided to the citizens by a socially democratic government? Here are the ones I have, ordered from "obviously" to "not sure."

1. Education.
2. Healthcare (including elderly care).
3. Emergency services (police, firefighters, ambulance).
4. Food/water (Note: cheap calories and micronutrients, not lobster and caviar. In other words, rice and beans, flour, vitamin supplements and salt and butter. There will still be a private market for food, candy, etc. Almost nothing changes in a social democratic economy compared to a strictly capitalist one).
5. Infrastructure (sewers, roads).
6. Pension (perhaps a baseline pay, but more based on how much you've worked during your life).
7. Childcare.

Then there are a few less obvious ones:

8. Electricity? As technology develops, some things become so ingrained that they become the new standards. 150 years ago, electricity wouldn't have been a given. But it might be, today.
9. Internet? Same argument as above, and of course it's a humanitarian crisis that many nations don't have uncensored internet (it's perhaps the major assimilating tool in the world).
   j) Housing? This one is hard. Firstly, what would happen to our mortgages if suddenly everyone got free apartments? Secondly, how could we afford this without making the terrible swedish mistake of the "million programme" which are now borderline ghettos? Still, if we could start anew right now, surely housing would be a human right. (Probably, there will still be a private market for housing. I'm not sure about the implications of that though, but I do know one thing: no one should be homeless. Let's assume that as a founding axiom, and then base our discussions around it.)
   k) Public transportation? We don't have this for free in Sweden, but maybe it should be a thing? (This is not a base need, and unlike internet and electricity, vandalism is sure to be a thing. So maybe that's a bad idea.)
   l) Communications? Like telephone, postal services? I realize it might seem stupid, because it is currently very affordable, but I'm pretending we're doing this a priori, i.e. if we were to regulate from a blank slate.