[elktown]

> every single one reversed course. Because it just didn’t work.

Didn't work for whom?

To suggest that political changes happen due to "it didn't work" seems like a pretty shallow conclusion. There are a lot that can be said about the last decades of free-market privatization & reforms in Europe, and in Sweden in particular, but that it was done out of necessity rather than a general political shift after the collapse of the Soviet Union is simply a biased take.

[rayiner]

> Didn't work for whom?

Everyone from voting public in liberal democracies (Sweden, Canada, Germany), to the voting public in less liberal democracies (India), the Islamic world (Egypt), to communist regimes (China, Vietnam).

[elktown]

What do you mean didn't work for the voting public in Sweden?

[rayiner]

The voting public didn’t like the slow economic growth and high taxes, which is why they voted for parties who promised to reform the system.

[elktown]

So "heavy investment in state-owned industries just doesn't work" is actually just you drawing far-reaching conclusions over shifting economic policies and/or voting patterns. That line of reasoning doesn't even pass the most basic correlation is not causation test.

[rayiner]

When many different societies with different political systems all try something around the same time, and all retreat from that approach a few decades later, that’s really significant real-world data. The country I’m from has socialism written into its constitution, but now is strongly neoliberal. Maybe that’s just correlation, but otherwise it has little in common with Sweden, reducing the possibility that some common third factor is in play.

[elktown]

I mean, discussions about this free-market/neoliberal political shift have been going on for a long time. To just assume state-owned industry "just doesn't work" because of that post-Soviet shift is confirmation bias on an already weak correlation.

In Sweden it's glaringly obvious that the privatizations have provided worse outcomes than before - even the free-market think-tanks are smart to avoid that subject. Unfortunately for us, they instead tend to focus on supporting voices that blame immigration for the consequences of sky-rocketing inequality. I guess they'll have to wait another decade or so before the myth building of the inherently incompetent state is on more fertile ground.