Quote from: aminorex on March 10, 2014, 11:34:14 PM

Quote from: oda.krell on March 10, 2014, 08:55:16 PM

Hey, I know what I'll do: I'll just warm up my earlier point: how come those pretty "socialist" states like Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands outperform (on pretty much every metric) more economically permissive countries like the US?

CH is one of the most decentralized nations on Earth and in no-wise comparable to the others. It is extremely "economically permissive".
What do you consider to be less economically permissive about SW or NL? There is no minimum wage, for example, in Sweden. Both are historical mercantile powerhouses.
Perhaps you aver to tax rates? By that criterion China should be a great exemplar of the free market paradigm.
There are so many factors differentiating the nations of the Earth that factor analysis is, at least, very hard, on purely frequentist statistical grounds.
I definitely think the remarkable degree of cultural homogeneity in Scandinavian nations makes it much more feasible to operate a collective project there.
You can get a large majority on board without huge incentivization or massive application of force.
NL and Scandinavia are also supremely Protestant (cf. BJA).

All true. Also, not at all pertaining to why I brought up those countries.

Because despite your more nuanced answer (relatively decentralized state for Switzerland, homogenic society/protestant work ethic for Scandinavia) the simplistic (a.k.a. retarded) battle cry of the libertarian/armchair-anarchist in here seems to be "kill the state", not "reduce the state to its optimal level".

Let me put it differently: I'd be more than happy to discuss in which areas, in which countries, for this and that reason, the state has taken over more control than it should have. I however laugh at the notion that a complete removal of the state would somehow lead to a guaranteed improvement of our current living conditions.