I've seen them make that 'argument' before. 'Sweden is socialist, vote for Bernie Sanders because he will make America like Sweden!!!' It's obviously disingenuous, but so are practically all of their arguments.
Firstly, Scandinavia isn't even remotely socialist outside of the broadest definitions of the word. If I psyche myself up as a Marxist, Scandinavia is absolutely capitalist: the economically productive means are practically completely privately-owned, not worker-owned (and not State-owned, for those who claim that State ownership is socialism), and welfare statism isn't intrinsically socialist.
Technically, Marx failed to predict the rise of welfare statism, but neo-Marxists have provided an 'explanation': welfare statism is a method that the bourgeoisie use to satiate the proletariat. Welfare statism is compatible with socialism, but all extant welfare states are, to Marxists, entirely capitalist. Marxists thus oppose these welfare states; they are still bourgeois. A laissez-faire welfare statist economy is far from Marxist socialism.
Secondly, even if it was socialist, it would still be positing a false cause. The success of those countries comes from their being high-IQ and monoethnic. Japan has those two strengths and has a third in addition, collectivism. Japaneseness still exists, despite it being under siege by the Japanese Left since the 1970s if not earlier. The worst offenders are Japanese Marxists and Japanese Greens: there is an overlap between anti-Japaneseism, Marxism, and ecocentrism.
Contrast that with the countries that these proponents of socialism are from, and they're moving in the exact opposite direction: lower-IQ, multiethnic, and atomistic/hyperindividualistic. People, firstly, do not care about, and, secondly, do not trust, each other. There is exceedingly little sense of We-ness; I-ness has largely replaced it. Those are among the reasons that their respective countries are unlike Japan. Japan, of course, is also moving in the same direction, but it will still be several decades before you see the kind of behaviour exhibited in this video seriously decline. I see the same regression in the parts of Asia with which I am more familiar; there, the young are noticeably different, in a bad way, from the old. A few years ago they even started asking students their 'pronouns' in the place with which I am most familiar. Looking at that country more widely, the film industry also betrays how affected they are by these winds of change: LGBT movies are a thing now (as in Japan), but they were not just ten years ago, and drug problems abound.
Scandinavia isn't as worthy of emulation as these people think: Sweden, for instance, has one of the highest rates of antidepressant use in the world.
I've seen them make that 'argument' before. 'Sweden is socialist, vote for Bernie Sanders because he will make America like Sweden!!!' It's obviously disingenuous, but so are practically all of their arguments.
Firstly, Scandinavia isn't even remotely socialist outside of the broadest definitions of the word. If I psyche myself up as a Marxist, Scandinavia is absolutely capitalist: the economically productive means are practically completely privately-owned, not worker-owned (and not State-owned, for those who claim that State ownership is socialism), and welfare statism isn't intrinsically socialist.
Technically, Marx failed to predict the rise of welfare statism, but neo-Marxists have provided an 'explanation': welfare statism is a method that the bourgeoisie use to satiate the proletariat. Welfare statism is compatible with socialism, but all extant welfare states are, to Marxists, entirely capitalist. Marxists thus oppose these welfare states; they are still bourgeois. A laissez-faire welfare statist economy is far from Marxist socialism.
Secondly, even if it was socialist, it would still be positing a false cause. The success of those countries comes from their being high-IQ and monoethnic. Japan has those two strengths and has a third in addition, collectivism. Japaneseness still exists, despite it being under siege by the Japanese Left since the 1970s if not earlier. The worst offenders are Japanese Marxists and Japanese Greens: there is an overlap between anti-Japaneseism, Marxism, and ecocentrism.
Contrast that with the countries that these proponents of socialism are from, and they're moving in the exact opposite direction: lower-IQ, multiethnic, and atomistic/hyperindividualistic. People, firstly, do not care about, and, secondly, do not trust, each other. There is exceedingly little sense of We-ness; I-ness has largely replaced it. Those are among the reasons that their respective countries are unlike Japan. Japan, of course, is also moving in the same direction, but it will still be several decades before you see the kind of behaviour exhibited in this video seriously decline. I see the same regression in the parts of Asia with which I am more familiar; there, the young are noticeably different, in a bad way, from the old. A few years ago they even started asking students their 'pronouns' in the place with which I am most familiar. Looking at that country more widely, the film industry also betrays how affected they are by these winds of change: LGBT movies are a thing now (as in Japan), but they were not just ten years ago, and drug problems abound.
Scandinavia isn't as worthy of emulation as these people think: Sweden, for instance, has one of the highest rates of antidepressant use in the world.
Thank goodness for a thorough, yet tightly written explanation of social welfare states rather than "Fabian Socialism" spam from a certain someone