Scandinavian Economic Trade-Offs Are Good

First argument: “Scandinavia isn’t really all that socialist”

Writer gets off to a very rocky start here. The argument goes as follows:

1. Scandinavian countries rank higher than the US in many indicators of business and economic freedom
2. Therefore socialism is not working for these countries.

A smart writer would have avoided #1 as obviously fatal to his whole argument. But this guy bravely goes there, God only knows why.

If one wanted to quibble about the definition of socialism, this would be a great place to, you know, bring up the definition of socialism. But this writer gives no indication of knowing what socialism is or even offering a provisional definition. Instead he says that capitalism = freedom and Scandinavian countries have more freedom so they are obviously capitalist — but we should still not be like them because socialism is bad.

Forget about whether what Scandinavian countries do is or isn’t socialism. Are their economic policies good or not? The writer obviously got lost in the weeds here.