It’s certainly unfortunate to see some Nordic countries adopt more neoliberal policies, but this isn’t really that surprising. The same has happened in China (who started off far more Socialist than any Nordic country) and virtually most nations around the world as there has been a clear shift towards such policies with more right-wing governments in control. There’s much debate as to why, but that’s a conversation for another time. But it’s important to note that politics is very fluid and constantly changes in response to current events (e.g. a global recession or world war). However, just because a government might shift more right or left does not mean that what it shifted away from is necessarily bad i.e. in the case of social democracies.

Capitalism isn’t just about exploitation nor is that the intended purpose, but is rather an unfortunate side-effect of the system. One of the problems with socialism is that there seems to be a lack of incentives built in that would help foster innovation, which we certainly need to tackle something like the climate crisis, and a market system does provide those incentives. So, I am in favor of taking the better aspects of both capitalism and socialism that can help reduce the negative side-effects that come about from each operating independently.

One last thing I’ll say is that most of the time pure ideologies end up being pure fantasy and are not realistic if they were to be fully implemented. The more we retreat into our separate political silos on either end of the political spectrum, the less we’ll be able to cooperate and work towards addressing real crises or making progress at all. I think this is effectively echoed by this article with the final line reading, “‘Widening polarization about political, religious, and scientific issues threatens open societies, leading to entrenchment of beliefs, reduced mutual understanding, and a pervasive negativity surrounding the very idea of consensus,’ the researchers write. Understanding the role that metacognition plays in this polarization may help us step back from it.”