Rant on Swedish politics

The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them

Roger Scruton

Some people can see fifty years into the future. The founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, is such a person. I do not have this ability. However, I have lived long enough to realise that I can see 10-15 years into the future. Nobody can predict the future, but most people can only see a couple of years ahead. The Swedish politicians fit the description. When such people are in charge, the short-term always crowds out the long-term.

The Swedish political establishment's willingness to experiment is mind-boggling. Since 2000, around 90% of the Swedish population increase has come from non-ethnic-Swedes. I am not sure this is a problem, but I am worried that it might be. Will the Swedish institutions survive? Will Sweden continue to have a largely secular, egalitarian, high trust culture in which men and women have equal rights? Human societies are fragile. That is the message from many historians as well as conservative thinkers like Roger Scruton. I wish Swedish politicians would be humble enough to realise that they might be wrong. If they are wrong, the consequences will be dire. Unfortunately, being conservative is an insult in Swedish.

A deal that will not happen

I wish I would be in a position to strike the following ten-year deal with the Swedish population and their politicians:

1. Spend resources on the integration of existing immigrants. Stop immigration that is not directly profitable for Sweden. The government can pick ten experts across the political spectrum and give them the task to successfully integrate existing immigrants into Swedish society. These experts should have "skin in the game" (i.e. take the consequence of their actions). Probably a good start to move their own families into an immigrant-heavy neighbourhood.

2. Spend resources on the future competitiveness of Sweden. The government can pick ten experts across the political spectrum and given them the task to improve the standard of the educational system. The objective should be to have Swedish schools score in the top 20% internationally (currently below 50% in the PISA statistics) and have 4 universities in the top 100 in the world (currently 1, Karolinska Medical School). These ten experts should also have "skin in the game" (but I don't know how to arrange that).

After ten years have elapsed, task #1 and #2 should have their final evaluation:

• If both tasks are accomplished, then the immigration can be allowed to increase again.
• If only task #2 is accomplished Sweden could probably still be able to afford to increase immigration, if that is what the Swedish population wishes. 
• If none of the tasks is accomplished, people should realise that the system is in permanent decline and costly immigration would not be sustainable.

Here is some more background about the situation in Sweden

This deal would be the best way to force Swedish politicians to deal with the long term. In Sweden's third largest city, Malmo, around half of the population is now immigrant. The Swedish press is full of articles describing the failure of the immigration policy; immigrants are not getting jobs, children of immigrants are more likely to drop out of school, asylum seekers are committing crimes, and ghettos are being formed outside the larger cities in the country. The government is even giving employers subsidies if they hire an immigrant rather than a Swede. What is never discussed is the objective of the immigration policy. All established political parties (representing around 95% of the electorate) have jointly decided that the objective is to be a "humanitarian empire" - to use a phrase from Carl Bildt, the non-socialist foreign minister. People should have the right to come to Sweden and they should not be forced to become culturally Swedish. Any establishment person questioning this objective, is branded a racist. The result has been a massive immigration of people from turbulent regions of the world, in particular Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq, and more recently Syria. The Swedish welfare state is generous in letting everyone live on social security until they find a job or eventually die. The state also has a generous policy of letting asylum seekers bring their whole family to Sweden. The policy of testing whether an asylum seeker has valid reasons for asylum has already been undermined by a decision to automatically give all Syrians automatic permanent residency. Throw your passport away and claim to be Syrian and you are taken care of for life. There is no end to the stupidity. Immigrants that fight for ISIS in Iraq will get psychological counselling when returning to Sweden.

All mainstream Swedish politicians provide identical diagnoses why immigrants are not getting jobs. It is because the Swedish society is racist. The left-wing is propagating the idea of structural racism, which is an idea that can only be defined in the negative. As long as immigrants are not getting jobs, there is evidence of structural racism. End of story and there is no need to empirically test anything. Unfortunately, all mainstream non-socialist parties agree with this analysis and none of them is taking the ideological discussion. For an outsider, it might seem obvious that a Somalian with five years of primary schooling or an Iraqi civil engineer not speaking Swedish after five years will struggle to find a job in a highly developed economy. However, if you utter such a statement as a Swedish politician you party leader will humiliate you in public. You would be forced to retract or resign. My own view (here) would pariah  in Sweden.

Sweden was in a similar bind in the 1970s. At the time, Swedish society was in the grips of virulent Marxism. A portion of university-educated people managed to push their extreme agenda on a naive population. For instance, most television programmes for children had a political slant, not surprising because many of them were bought from the Eastern European countries. When a non-socialist parties came to power in 1976, they continued with the same socialist policies of its predecessor. Eventually, the non-socialist parties realised their mistake and began to discuss ideology with the electorate. It took them a good ten years and in the process they were helped by the rise of Reagan and Thatcher. History is repeating itself. Eventually, once the mind-viruses of multiculturalism and structural racism have been cleansed, the non-socialist parties will find their roots. This process will take a good ten year, once it gets started. However, Sweden will suffer from the consequences for at least a generation.

Swedish is a rich country and has a relatively hard-working population. I say relatively because Asians and North-Americans work harder. However, compared to Southern Europe, the Swedish work ethic is top notch. Swedish consensus-management is even a strong competitor to Anglo-Saxon or Asian management practices - at least when managing large companies. Sweden has a history of producing many large multinational companies. Most of these were formed before the Second World war, but several have also been formed during the economically successful decades following the war. This is a side of Sweden that still exist. Sweden will reap benefits for another generation.

However, I am deeply worried about the long term future of Sweden. And this is not only due to poor quality of many of the immigrants. If it so wishes, Sweden could probably afford to be a humanitarian empire. What Sweden cannot afford is to stop creating new multinational companies. Somebody has to pay for the party and the prime candidate is the export-led industry. Problem is now that not enough knowledge-intensive companies are being created. I believe the root cause is a deteriorating education system.

School performance is tracked in OECD's Pisa studies. The Swedish schools are not performing. The scores drop in immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods, but they drop equally in ethnic-Swede dominated neighbourhood. They drop in the public, as well as in the private schools. They drop for pupils performing on the bottom as well as on the top level. The Marxist/Mao-inspired reformers tried to kill the Swedish school in the 1970s (i.e. no grades, no home work, no second foreign language). The ideological idea was to force down intelligent pupils and raise dumb pupils. Fortunately, many teachers disapproved of the new state-mandated pedagogy. Forty years later, most of the old-school teachers are dead. Left is a system is disarray. New cosmetic changes have been introduced every five year, but the test scores keep dropping. What a surprise.

The solution is simple; pay teachers well (can be discussed, but not much money is available), give authority to the teacher in the class room (undiscussable), set grades from year 1 (undiscussable), have separate tracks/subjects for smart and dumb kids (undiscussable). Most of these ideas are undiscussables. Here is a typical columnist in the largest Swedish daily newspaper (in Swedish) policing the debate. Johannes Åman writes the following about the high Asian Pisa scores: Asians receive high scores because they work longer hours, so based on productivity they are not efficient at all. Think about the logic for a moment. He argues that the South Korean system is destroying its children. The Singapore success is due to Singapore being a city state. So much for intelligent analysis. The title of his article, "Different kinds of failures", shows how far from reality Swedish journalists are. I do not think wholesale copying of the East Asian system is suitable. However, the key point of the columnist is to make several possible solutions undiscussable. Any attempt to actually study Asian countries is now void, because they are just not efficient.

A similar story can be told about the Swedish university system. The politicians are against elitist universities so funding is spread over many universities. So despite a large government budget for higher education, there is only one Swedish university ranked in the top 100 (Karolinska Medical School). Singapore was not an independent country 50 years ago and it already has two universities in the top 100. A lot of Swedish students study pathetic subjects like gender or media studies. Such topics are imported from the US and modified so the Swedish academics can have their own discourse without international pressure to publish. Sadly, but understandably, students with high grades shun becoming teachers. Who wants a low status occupation and having to deal with obnoxious parents?