Should guns be outlawed in America?

[Andrespetmonkey]

Kudistos Megistos said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

Wow, well first of all scandinavians aren't brainwashed borderline servents to a dictator. Secondly, when did I say or how do "scandinavians think they're better off than the rest of the world".

The vast majority of my (surprisingly many) conversations with Scandinavians are what make me believe this. Unless I'm getting a very unrepresentative sample, the "we're number one" attitude seems to be more common there than anywhere else in the Western world besides Canada.

And they may not be brainwashed to worship a dictator, but they may well be influenced by living in small countries that have done little to influence the course of world history and feel the need to develop a superiority complex to counter their inferiority complex.

@ top sentence: Well I guess we are getting different impressions then, don't really know what to say to that...

@ at bottom: Sure, could be the case.

Why have they emigrated, if their home country is so great? Doesn't make any sense to me!

Out of the people I know, work-related. Not looking for work mind-you. E.g. The Dad in a family in an ambassador, and I think he moved with his family every 4 years.

Anyway, if their point of comparison is England, of all places, of course they'll think their home country is great. It's a pretty bad comparison. Even Poles are going home in droves because they realised they were better off back home.

Andrespetmonkey said:

My point is that with the governments running Sweden, Norway, Finland and iceland, the countries are very successful and is a great place to live, statistics say it, the people say it, the tourists say it. You have yet to present a convincing contradictory argument to this

What statistics? This is what the socialist-biased Human Development Index has to say about quality of life:

1.  Norway 0.943 ()
2.  Australia 0.929 ()
3.  Netherlands 0.910 ()
4.  United States 0.910 ()
5.  New Zealand 0.908 ()
6.  Canada 0.908 ()
7.  Ireland 0.908 ()
8.  Liechtenstein 0.905 ()
9.  Germany 0.905 ()
10.  Sweden 0.904 ()
11.  Switzerland 0.903 ()
12.  Japan 0.901 ()
13.  Hong Kong 0.898 ( 1)
14.  Iceland 0.898 ( -1)
15.  South Korea 0.897 ()
16.  Denmark 0.895 ()

The US ranks ahead of all of them except Norway. And Norway is the Western world's only oil-state.

Hmm maybe it depends on the criteria of which it's based, this is what I saw:

As for what the tourists say: since when did tourists ever get an accurate picture of the countries they visit? Do you think they visited the slums in Malmo? No, they visited the nice places.

That's true. Other 2 points still stand.

I love how you've just tried to twist it so that you're now the sensible centrist who accepts facts he doesn't like and I'm some rabid extremist.

Please try to be more intellectually honest when you argue and stop arguing to moderation. And stop assuming that your claim is a given and that anyone who doesn't agree with you is refusing to "accept the facts".

Ok, sorry.

Andrespetmonkey said:

Never said there wasn't any corruption in scandinivia, there is. Just not a lot according to the statistics:

 

Note how it says "corruption perceptions index". All that tells us is how people view their politicians, not whether they're actually more corrupt. Something like that is nigh-on impossible to measure.

These aren't just wild guesses...

Transparency International commissioned Johann Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau to produce the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).^[4] The 2010 CPI draws on 13 different surveys and assessments from 10 independent institutions.^[5] The institutions are the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, Global Insight, International Institute for Management Development, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank.^[6] The 13 surveys/assessments are either business people opinion surveys or performance assessments from a group of analysts.^[2] Early CPIs used public opinion surveys. Countries must be assessed by at least three sources to appear in the CPI.^[7]

SamuelRSmith said:
I dislike Scandinavia being used as a poster boy for socialism for multiple reasons.

1) Most of Sweden's largest and richest companies were founded before the socialist party ever existed. Ikea and Volvo (perhaps Sweden's two most famous brands) certainly were, and Sweden was unregulated capitalism, back then.

2) Scandinavia is an extremely resource-rich region, with small, indigenous populations who have a (stereotypically) strong work ethic. What part of the world wouldn't do well with these circumstances?

3) Scandinavia is an extremely "safe" region. Very little war, or natural disasters have plagued the countries. They are also surrounded by extremely affluent and friendly neighbours with great trade policies between them.

What region or country wouldn't do well with the above circumstances? Capitalistic or socialistic? It's a shame that no other region in the world has similar circumstances, but with a far more capitalistic society. I'd argue that the capitalistic version would probably be far better off than Scandinavia.

This guy gets it!

A Scandinavian country could be governed by a retarded chimp and he'd still make a good job of it. They have so many advantages that they should be top of the world without even trying. Indeed, I'd say that they're underperforming, when you take into account all the advantages they have.

Hell, if people are going to use places like Norway and Sweden as poster-children for socialism, I'm gonna use Zimbabwe as my poster child for capitalism. See what a mess they're in? Their socialist policies are obviously to blame!

If this has anything to with me, I'm not using these countries as a "poster-boy" in any way. If you go back and see my first post about them all I was saying is that they seem to be doing very well with a socialist system in place, that's it.