Via Joel Kotkin, this great quote from Milton Friedman, which puts the success of the so-called Scandinavian model into some perspective:
When a local economist told Milton Friedman “In Scandinavia we have no poverty”, he replied: “That’s interesting because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either.”
Today I learned something refreshing: there are countries where the party of the free market doesn't support intellectual property laws. I was reading today about the Pirate Bay – the infamous giant Swedish aggregator of pirated music, movies, software, and more – and it led me to read this very interesting and copiously cited Wikipedia article on the Swedish Pirate party. It was founded in 2006 on a single issue: pro-piracy, anti-intellectual property. The party didn't do as well as expected, with under 1% of the parliamentary vote in 2006, but it brought the issue to the foreground of Swedish politics for a little bit a few years ago. After heavy reporting on the issue, one Swedish paper found that 61% of Swedes had a positive image of the pro-piracy movement. Earlier this year, six MPs from the Moderate Party – a free market party that has been included in governing coalitions – wrote a letter calling on the government to "decriminalize all non-commercial file sharing and force the market to adapt." Can you imagine the same in America – the Republicans, the supposed party of markets, telling the RIAA and MPAA to fuck off, because pirates are just part of the free market? Maybe if Naomi Klein had heard of the pro-piracy movement, she wouldn't idiotically mistake intellectual property with free market ideology.
Via Slashdot, an article from the English-language news site about Sweden thelocal.se: "Children concerned about parents' web habits":
Children in Sweden are becoming increasingly concerned by their parents' internet habits, according to a new report from Children's Rights in Society (Barnens Rätt i Samhället - BRIS). [Only in Sweden!]
Last year the organization dealt with 1,895 IT-related cases, up sharply on figures from the previous year. Further investigation revealed that more than 100 of the children who made contact with BRIS did so because they were in some way worried about their parent's behaviour on the internet.
Dads visiting pornographic websites represented the most common complaint, while philandering fathers were also a cause for concern.
"It seems that my dad is 'unfaithful'," wrote one 15-year-old boy.
"I read his MSN conversation log. I was just curious. And then I saw that he was talking to, like, young girls. And the disgusting part is that he's 53!
"And they talk about sex and how they're going to meet and everything. It makes me want to puke. It really makes me feel bad.
"I don't know if I should tell mum because I'm worried they'll get a divorce. Please, what should I do?"
