[rodgerd]

> Why so many negative comments?

Because the English-speaking world has roughly agreed on the neoliberal economic consensus that extreme individualism, devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism is the Only Way. It is an absolute dogma, reinforced constantly through the press and the best-funded political parties.

Rich nations like Japan or Norway who are trundling happily along with more equitable societies, rather than a return to Victorian social models, need to be stigmatized lest one start asking questions like "what's the point having a country of billionaires and ditch-diggers?"

Might as well pitch atheism in Saudi Arabia.

[Dewie]

Please don't bring Norway into this. I'd rather not see it inspire yet another subthread with a bunch of cocksure foreigners who think they know what this country is like. Their analysis tends to be shallow.

[Osmium]

If that's true, why not help educate? What is Norway actually like?

[Drakim]

I live in Norway, and I think it's pretty close to an utopia.

Not that there aren't flaws, but people tend to complain for the sake of complaining.

This often makes outsiders think that it's all just a facade and that behind the scenes it's actually terrible, that Norway can't just be a good place to live, there has to be some sort of dirty secret that undoes all the good things about the place.

[Dewie]

Are you a native or have you moved there from somewhere else? I think the dual to "the grass is always greener" is that you might not realize that some things are problematic, or that there are better alternatives, unless you've have the chance to look at it from another perspective.

[Drakim]

I moved to Norway when I was 5 (from Sweden). While I technically qualify as a foreigner, I would say that I'm a vanilla Norwegian guy.

I can't really comment on being biased or not, that's obviously not the sort of thing I would know myself, but I do have a lot of friends all across the world that I talk with regularly, and find that they have to deal with a lot of small crises and huddles in life I don't have to deal with (saving up for college, paying hospital bills, high insurance costs, etc).

I know that if I suddenly lose both my arms in a car accident, or otherwise get long-term sick, the social safety net is there to get me back on my feet.

When I've interacted with the police, they have been polite gentlemen who genuinely care about their job and their community, I've never come across the power and trigger happy psychopaths that the US unfortunately seems to attract for their police jobs.

And I know by experience that even somebody who has a "low" job like working at McDonalds is pretty well off, able to buy more than just the bare necessities. Stuff like people having two jobs just to survive is unheard of.

As I said, nothing is perfect, but when I do hear people complain about Norway, it's usually from an outsider perspective, getting things like our taxes completely wrong, or from an insider perspective, complaining about dumb politicians or bad weather.

[Dewie]

Case in point of shallow analysis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236149

[hudibras]

You know that you don't have to read all the comments, right?

[funkyy]

"How dare Japan not fall under our rules, hurr durr"

Whole Asia is rising thanks to one and single fact - they stick to their rules. While whole western world is bending every possible rule to wage wars, shut protesters and buy votes.

As history teaches us east will collapse under its own degeneration of freedom so Asia can flourish. Then Asia will collapse in its self control obsession so the east world will flourish.

Its how the world rolls over and over.