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On 20/02/2012 21:15, Stefano Vaj wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPoR7a5t_e2+52EoxS8P7iNVb7LHLutNsVESuRhPtJfUbofSPA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">On 20 February 2012 11:30, Anders
Sandberg <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:anders@aleph.se">anders@aleph.se</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
But the Scandinavian model does not scale well to big and
diverse societies, since the consensus-seeking is not possible
or efficient enough.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
This might in fact be an argument against "big" and "diverse"
societies. :-)<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Indeed. I suspect that small homogenous societies can be quite
functional and happy - at the price of entrepreneurship, individual
freedom and dynamism. If we look at where the groundbreaking
intellectual insights have occured, they tend to appear in
cosmopolitan zones, not in the middle of homogenity. <br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPoR7a5t_e2+52EoxS8P7iNVb7LHLutNsVESuRhPtJfUbofSPA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>But of course many people were very frustrated with the
Scandinavian models in the sixties and seventies of last
centuries. A few even emigrated.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Exactly. As an emigrant I feel quite free. And last year more Swedes
emigrated than during the big emigration to America in the 1880s -
although besides the US it is the rest of Scandinavia, Britain and
China that are popular. Many tend to return eventually, but it seems
that the most entrepreneurial stay abroad. <br>
<br>
Free migration is a good way of keeping states in line - if their
policies are too bad, people vote with their feet. Not
frictionlessly, but enough to put some check on the policies (or
just allocate people more economically efficiently). <br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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