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The World’s Most Innovative Economies

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Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#91

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #16
OskarS wrote: post #15

>The Swedes themselves promote an atmosphere of great personal ambition — unlike some European neighbors that emphasize the collective — and that’s a boon to innovation, he said. >“In the culture, people are super individualistic — this means that people have ideas and are very interested in pursuing them in this way in order to become wealthy,” said Henrekson. This is very true, and a thing which is often misunderst…

Yes! If the government can provide effective healthcare that should at least in theory be a great boon to social mobility and entrepreneurship as that means people can much more easily move to a new job. Tying healthcare to employers is antithetical to that. I suspect the real issue doing that in the US is simply because it's so varied. You've got several individual demographics within America that are bigger than Sw…

[deleted]

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#93

Post by mikeash »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #88
mikeash wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.

Should we ever be afraid of admitting that science has a limited scope and things like spirituality could be outside its scope? That seems to be an acceptable fear right now.

Spirituality does indeed seem to be outside the scope of science, because it's not real. If it were real, it ought to be amenable to scientific investigation. The notion that it's real but can't be scientifically investigated makes no sense to me.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#95

Post by dv_dt »

cylinder wrote: post #82
fornever wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your overall point I unfortunately don't think your characterization of Sweden is true anymore. Your education prospects now depend on which school you go to, especially with blatant grade inflation. My friends are putting their kids in queue for elite elementary school the day after they are born. Even if you can make it to college the traditional route you'll have trouble finding an apartment and…

As always rapidly increasing population decreases quality of life for all except those already established at the top of the pyramid.

That's feels like an odd statement considering many mature first-world economies actually seem to be dealing with the economic effects of transitioning to a flat to slightly negative population growth rate.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#96

Post by Symmetry »

cmdrfred wrote: post #74
brotherjerky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can look at the numbers here: http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/... Medicare, Medicaid, etc: 25% Social Security: 24% Military: 16% Safety Net Programs: 10% Federal / Veteran Benefits: 8% Looks like some people get services, just not everyone. At the state level, California: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin... Health Care 35% Pensions 18% Education 16% W…

So then the question is are our elected officials corrupt or incompetent?

The biggest problem is that the electorate doesn't trust the elected officials in this matter. To bring down healthcare costs you need to be able to reject treatments that are much more expensive but only provide slight benefits. Organizations like the NHS in Britain are very good at this. But whenever someone gestures in that direction in the US you have people up in arms about "death panels" and the idea is quickly dropped.

I don't know though. Maybe if politicians just came out and said "This proposal will produce 10 extra deaths per year but we'll be saving $50bn so we think it's worth it" then people would be willing to embrace that.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#97

Post by fsloth »

mikeash wrote: post #86
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall. Perhaps its a little arrogant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for huma…

We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.

Spirituality and myths are different things. Spirituality is about psychological states, thus has a basis in the physical reality.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#98

Post by Symmetry »

novaleaf wrote: post #92

French Guiana is colored around 15th place in the map, but isn't listed at all in the top 50 list. I wonder what happened there.

It's part of France and so it would make sense to give it the same color as the rest of France. But on the other hand the don't color Greenland as part of Denmark, so who knows.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#99

Post by mikeash »

fsloth wrote: post #97
mikeash wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.

Spirituality and myths are different things. Spirituality is about psychological states, thus has a basis in the physical reality.

Spirituality seems to have many different meanings. The one you propose may be valid but it's one that's entirely compatible with atheism and materialism, so I don't think that's what the other commenter was thinking of.

Re: The World’s Most Innovative Economies

#100

Post by cjblomqvist »

fsloth wrote: post #77
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall. Perhaps its a little arrogant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for huma…

"Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall." Correlation does not mean causality. Saying atheism leads to anti-depressant use is like saying eating ice cream makes people drown. (Yes, I borrowed that from the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_doe…

And to add to this, Swedish people score among the highest for happiness. I'd like to see the other commenter explain that...
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