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Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

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Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#121

Post by tekkk »

xornox wrote: post #78
HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't explain what life is like due to losing that industry. We are told of Utopia in Europe, but aren't told these stories.

Nordic countries are quite good if you want give away some personal freedoms. A reverse side of security is always loss of liberty in some way. Some people like it and some not. I don’t.

I bet Americans are feeling pretty free with the on-going mass-shootings and rampant outright bribing of politicians by corporations and lobbyists. I am happy with the security. To me American system feels insane and is characterized by delusional statements like yours. You think you are the absolute free'est country on earth, while it's in practise no different to any other developed country. Yet you preach about it like you invented it. Sure you can shoot big guns and pay your own education, but i bet in some undeveloped countries you could run your own kingdom. There you could do whatever you wanted! Such freedom, a true American dream

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#122

Post by verttii »

ptr wrote: post #91
verttii wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia is certainly performing well. But since it's so tiny it's really hard to compare against a giant like USA. Although much of the same problem applies to Nordics. We use Google, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Apple - all American products. Whereas the Nordic countries produce very few major digital innovations used globally. Also, I didn't know Estonia was a Nordic country.

What's your point? The Nordics have a relatively high contribution of "innovations", higher than other countries that don't work "half the hours". Examples: Linux, Spotify, Unity, King, the radio base stations that your phone might be connected to, ...

But even Linux was ultimately developed in USA. So was/is Unity. I don't know if Linux would've ever been the success it is had Linus Torvalds stayed in Finland developing it.

I'd hope we would have a big list of recent examples of major innovations from the Nordics but unfortunately nearly all the major digital products or innovations seem to be decades old. I can't think of almost any globally really promising Finnish digital startup right now.

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#123

Post by verttii »

leftbrain wrote: post #115
verttii wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia is certainly performing well. But since it's so tiny it's really hard to compare against a giant like USA. Although much of the same problem applies to Nordics. We use Google, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Apple - all American products. Whereas the Nordic countries produce very few major digital innovations used globally. Also, I didn't know Estonia was a Nordic country.

> We use Google, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Apple - all American products. You say we use them now. But some of these companies are barely past their teenage years. Nokia as a company is around 150 years old, they didnt win fast and they are still in business (but not in the phone business) How long any of these current, not winners but ”winning it right now” last? Who knows. They are still young, but the…

But on the other hand, any meaningful comparisons get harder and less relevant for us if we use a time span of the past 150 years. I don't know if it really even matters that much that most companies die eventually. They're still producing lots of value right now. While Nokia is certainly not doing particularly well nowadays despite having a long and partially very successful history.

Edit: year

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#124

Post by verttii »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #98

It is fairly easy to pick up a success, make a story around it and generalize. But in the same time Finland is at the top of European countries on the depression. Is there any relation between flexible work and depression? No idea, just throwing random "leads the world" facts.

I really doubt it's that. Probably more to do with how little sunshine there is over the winter (which is long and cold).

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#125

Post by sharadov »

snark42 wrote: post #83
sharadov wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Scandinavian countries are all in essence "nanny states", great to live in if you are not too ambitious or entrepreneurial. Also because of low-population density and abundant natural resources, their experiments with regard to social-welfare have worked. Unfortunately, that model cannot be replicated in the rest of the world, let alone highly populous countries.

> great to live in if you are not too ambitious or entrepreneurial. While it clearly hasn't worked out this way (yet) having that social safety net actually should encourage entrepreneurial activity since you have a lot more freedom to fail. Once you succeed you sell out though, because it's easier to grow/expand in other locations.

The labor laws make it hard to hire and fire. So yeah you can start something, but can't do much if the employee does not work out.

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#126

Post by coldtea »

dantheman wrote: post #119
coldtea wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The poor do not get poorer. It's not a zero sum game. The size of the pie is constantly increasing in absolute terms. Much slower than the pie increases. In fact slices (salaries) in the US have been almost stagnant since the 70s, while the "pie" got 10x the size...

1. Almost stagnant means that they did not increase their % of wealth - their wealth increased. 2. Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s.

>Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s.

Actually the most important good, a house, is much more expensive to buy/rent than in the 60s/70s.

There were times when a middle class family with one working member could afford a house and send the kid to college without huge debt - something near impossible now even with 2 working members.

As for goods, those are hardly a compensation, if people work crazy hours, with stagnant pay, and get less share of _their_ society's wealth (their current society's, not compared to 20, 30 or 1000 years ago, which is what matters. We don't compare ourselves with medieval serfs or cavemen to see if we're doing OK, and we don't pat ourselves in the back in 2019 if we live in a trailer park because we have electricity and some rich person in 1800 wouldn't).

So, yeah, thanks to cheap foreign manufacturing one can have more stuff (just not the important stuff, like house and healthcare and education and better job conditions).

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#127

Post by coldtea »

rayiner wrote: post #120
coldtea wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers are benefiting from it, at least financially. The median income in the U.S. is more than 20% higher than in Finland, adjusted for cost of living The difference is useless in the U.S. as its eaten away but healthcare, college costs, and several other kind of expenses... Not to mention the quality of life, infrastructure, etc those extra 20% get you (even if they weren't eaten away) is way worse...

See above re: healthcare expenses. College costs are also small in comparison to a lifetime of earning thousands of dollars less. Most college graduates in the US have no debt, and the median debt for those that do is $10,000-25,000. Higher American salaries make that up in just a few years. Finnish National pension isn’t any more generous than Social Security, and other expenses are tiny in comparison. As to “qualit…

There are 44.2 million borrowers who owe a total of over $1.5 trillion in student debt. That's a 35K average, but there are people owing 50K and 100K.

Not sure where you see the "higher salaries making that up in just a few year", since ex-students are saddled with debt for decades after graduation, and tons of young people can't find decent jobs. Low unemployment doesn't mean "enough paying jobs".

>As to “quality of life”—that’s subjective.

Well, not really.

>If I wanted to live in a 900 square foot house without air conditioning, like the average Finn, I’d move back to Bangladesh.

Well, if you mainly have Bangladesh experience to compare to, it's no wonder why America looks like such a wonderland to you.

For the average American it would be a huge upgrade to live "like the average Finn", even if they don't have the larger (shoddily built, average American houses are the worst I've seen in the west, and I'm not even getting into trailer parks and ready-mades) house.

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#128

Post by LIV2 »

asparuh_kostov wrote: post #6
algui91 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were transitioning to a six-hours workday, as far as I know. - https://www.sciencealert.com/sweden-is-shifting-to-a-6-hour-... - https://www.thelocal.se/20140408/swedish-workers-to-test-six... Experiments shown an increment in productivity and happiness.

Well I work and live in Sweden (notice I put work first?) and it's far from 6hrs/day for most industries. Actually now that I think about it I don't know a single person who only works 6 hours per day. The idea is great though, wish it were true :/

Depends on whether you consider breakfast & fika to be work hours ;)

Re: Why Finland leads the world in flexible work

#129

Post by dantheman »

coldtea wrote: post #126
dantheman wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Almost stagnant means that they did not increase their % of wealth - their wealth increased. 2. Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s.

> Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s. Actually the most important good, a house, is much more expensive to buy/rent than in the 60s/70s. There were times when a middle class family with one working member could afford a house and send the kid to college without huge debt - something near impossible now even with 2 wo…

Agreed, healthcare, education, and housing -- the three most regulated and corrupt industries have grown at an accelerated rate. The are hurting people -- they are caused by unlimited loans (education), corruption/bureaucracy/regulation (healthcare), and housing (government regulation/zoning). These have nothing to do with income and production, but instead are caused by poor governing policies and regulation.

Also goods, e.g. electronics, media, communication, food, are of a higher quality than they were in the 70s -- a substantial qualitative difference that is hard to measure and compare over time.

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