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Current Events » in reply to Re: Re: Re: "Canada, Sweden, and Norway"

Re: Re: Re: Re: "Canada, Sweden, and Norway"
ER — (archived)

I don't think there's any question that a small country can more effectively administer any kind of program, particularly if it is geographically compact and demographically homogeneous. There's a cute story about one Indian administrator who once told a Scandinavian advising him on social programs "I have a country to serve, you live in a classroom experiment".

But this particular economy of scale is difficult to quantify, and can very easily be misused to cavalierly dismiss the economic viability of any legitimate proposal. When two countries of comparable economic development and social organization have widely disparate per capita consumptions, the difference is not just due to size, efficiency must be playing a role.

The per capita argument not only applies to the providing of the service, but the economic cost of the service as well. In a small country, total tax revenues are lower, too. I think it is very curious why some "western" countries have such high pc consumption, and other comparably prosperous ones have much lower ones. Remember, this data is just about electricity generation, automotive fuel is not considered here. America's place as ninth is nothing to be proud of, even if 8 countries are even less efficient than we are.

Why do the Icelanders use so much electricity per capita? They extensively use geothermal and their climate is milder than some other countries in the list, so it can't be for home heating.

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