House of Eratosthenes

I was born and raised in Sweden, which leaves a cultural mark even though I moved to USA in the 1990s and have spent the better part of my adult life as an American. Coming back for a few years has been a shocking experience.
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Now, to be clear, it is my opinion that modest immigration is healthy for society and beneficial for trade, cultural development and so forth. Protectionism as a concept is counter-productive, while free trade and the ability for skilled labor to go where they’re in demand is beneficial for everyone.

Having said that, what Sweden is doing is something completely different. The once homogenous population has been forever altered by a rapid and massive addition of people from vastly different cultures and value-systems. 26,8% of the population is now foreign-born or with at least one foreign-born parent, and the national census bureau estimates that some 150 000 per year will arrive to the country of just 9,8 million residents.

There simply is no possible way to absorb and assimilate such volumes of people, period. Then you are merely creating ethnic enclaves, which due to incompatible language, culture and job skills become ghettos, which in turns brews crime, misery and extremism. Once the inflow has exceeded the capacity for absorbtion, further immigration only makes the problem worse.

The issue of a nation or locality’s “capacity for [absorption]” is a game-changer, although perhaps some among the most vocal of immigration supporters won’t be able to see it. Without that, it is fair to at least suggest the writer is nothing more than another expendable xenophobe, blogging away about his disgust that his hometown no longer looks like him. But once we raise the question of whether the regional economy can absorb these new languages, cultures and job skills, we invoke the attribute of testability, which shifts the matter from the subjective to the objective. Now, things can be measured. Whether the new policies take a potentially good thing too far, because measurable.

Then you have the Swedish school system. There really is no nice way to put it; it’s a complete disaster. The minister of education is a man-boy who spends his time making Youtube-videos showing heart-signs with his hands to boost school results, while university-level students can’t read and comprehend the course literature.

Since there is a delay in the changes in the school system, it is only in recent years the full impact of the knowledge-averse “progressive” school system is starting to be felt. Hard facts are largely irrelevant; the important thing is to sit in a group and discuss things until a consensus is reached. But with no hard facts to base the conclusions on, it becomes an exercise in futility because it’s all random assumptions and opinions

Ugh. I’m no expert on what’s currently going on in Sweden, but I’ve got a lot more experience than I care to have with that.

In some ways, I’d compare the country to a farm. Previously, Sweden acted like a sensible farmer and planted wheat here, carrots there, potatoes over there et cetera, by implementing free schooling, sound infrastructure investments, state-financed research and so forth. A few decades later, they reaped the rewards and climbed the prosperity ladder.

In the late 1960s, this pragmatic line was abandoned as leftist idealist Olof Palme took over. But there was plenty to harvest from previous years, so Sweden continued to be the land of milk and honey for a good long while. Then things started drying up, and the process has been one of gradual erosion and decline since the 1990s.

The famous Swedish health care system is a good example. 120 000 hospital beds in the late 1960s became 20 000 today. Cancer patients are put on waiting lists for months. Entire emergency wards shut down for summer. The crumbling Swedish railroad system is another symptom I examined in-depth last year. The aforementioned defense that now consist of about three fat generals and a rusty rifle (bullets withheld for budgetary reasons).

A sensible farmer would see the problems for what they are and hurry to plant new seeds, so as to return to bountiful harvests of wheat, carrots, potatoes etc. Instead, the Swedish politicians goes by dogma and plants what they think SHOULD grow. So they plant M & Ms, hot dogs and pretzels. The results won’t be fully evident for a few years yet, but as the last reserves of the old harvests are depleted, things will get…Interesting.

Good analogy. Progressives, for all their vocal infatuation with “sustainability,” when the rubber meets the road aren’t too much into it. The group-chats, the manufacture of phony-consensus, these all seem to be constantly taking the lead while sustainability takes a back seat.

On both sides of the Atlantic.

Diverse committee:
Plants CRAVE Brondo, Brondo has electrolytes, electrolytes are what plants crave,
Open mind, diversity, mindfulness.
- CaptDMO | 06/07/2015 @ 01:19
One of the world’s most beautiful people with a soaring esthetic for form and design, and originally a common sense view of liberalism. Sad to see the decline, there and elsewhere.
- Open other end | 06/07/2015 @ 04:50
[…] House of Eratosthenes says “Goodbye, Sweden” […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 06/07/2015 @ 06:42
“…and originally a common sense view of liberalism. ”
I wasn’t aware there was such a thing. From Woodrow Wilson on (or Stalin on, rather) they’ve done nothing but destroy (and murder, when they get the power they crave.)
- P_Ang | 06/07/2015 @ 07:25
@ P_Ang–you may be right but the Swedes always seemed to me to “have it together” without overreaching. But now….?
- Open other end | 06/07/2015 @ 12:32
and originally a common sense view of liberalism

This is what the Founders had — constitutional rights, freedom of conscience, that sort of thing. Wilson, Stalin, etc. were Progressives, i.e. Marxists, and were happy to murder their way to utopia given the chance.

Funny, we were just discussing Sweden and how their culture went wrong. (Sorry if it’s bad form to link to one’s blog, but this really is right on topic).
- Severian | 06/08/2015 @ 05:51

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“Goodbye, Sweden”Saturday, June 6th, 2015

“Goodbye, Sweden”
Saturday, June 6th, 2015