The latest rankings are out for competitiveness among societies, I nearly wrote economies, which is how the SMH puts it, but since no economy is distinct it makes no sense, the competition is really among tax collectors. Anyway, the fascinating thing is that, apart from the US, which has slipped from number 1 to number 2, most of the top 10 are those socialists from Scandinavia. So what's going on?
Maybe it has to do with scale, our organs collaborate among themselves, if the liver was in constant competition with the feet for resources and both spent half their time trying to sell their services to the stomach, we'd feel sick most of the time and never be able to compete with other species for resources. So while individuals can compete within a society, for whole societies to "be competitive", maybe they need to release their constituent parts' energies through higher order collaboration.
The rankings from the Sydney Morning Herald are
GROWTH COMPETITIVENESS INDEX RANKINGS
2003 RANKING 2002 RANKING
1. Finland 1
2. United States 2
3. Sweden 3
4. Denmark 4
5. Taiwan 6
6. Singapore 7
7. Switzerland 5
8. Iceland 12
9. Norway 8
10. Australia 10
11. Japan 16
12. Netherlands 13
13. Germany 14
14. New Zealand 15
15. United Kingdom 11
16. Canada 9
17. Austria 18
18. Korea 25
19. Malta --
20. Israel 17
And look at those soft Germans and consensus-seeking Japanese doing better than the lean and mean Kiwis. There's more.
BUSINESS COMPETITIVENESS INDEX RANKINGS
2003 RANKING 2002 RANKING
1. Finland 2
2. United States 1
3. Sweden 6
4. Denmark 8
5. Germany 4
6. United Kingdom 3
7. Switzerland 5
8. Singapore 9
9. Netherlands 7
10. France 15
Maybe because the Scandinavians understand that if the community, via the state, takes over the supply and maintenance of education, health services, transport, social and civil support, people have much more time available for creative thinking and doing. Tim Flannery in The Future Eaters makes the case that a great deal of human creativity comes not, as the adage puts it of necessity, but of luxury and that in those societies where even a single failure can be disastrous, we become cautious, fearful and very conservative.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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