A New Swedish Growth Model

If any Virgin enterprise gets bigger than about 50 or 60 people he cuts off their access to Virgin funds until they figure out how to grow by division. For an enterprise like Sweden we should probably add five noughts to the Richard Branson figures and start to worry when the nation state creeps above 5 or 6 million. Currently Sweden is at eight and a half million so it is time for the Branson treatment.

In a country with the land area of Sweden and a population of this size, underpopulation should be regarded as a national scandal...seen from a global viewpoint. Gunnar and Alvar Myrdal once had some thoughts along these lines but the old books have been long forgotten and the ideas corrupted. Nobody bothers to read the old books anymore, although here the internet may turn out to be a big help.

Instead of trying to integrate a trickle of refugees into their cradle to grave social system...which is all it can cope with...Sweden should be taking the more expansive American 19th century approach and parcelling out land by the county, by the townsworth and by the parishworth to any family or clan willing to make a go of it for a generation without recourse to the Swedish Model's benefits.

Tell these 'New Builders' to create their own welfare state within the Swedish Confederation with associate membership of the confederation until convergence sets in (sounds familiar?). This after all was very much the deal the Swedish emigrants to America accepted with such alacrity a century ago when they took themselves across the Atlantic Ocean by the boatloads to settle in New Sweden.

But before such ideas can be considered, Sweden will have to abandon its love affair with their 20th century Swedish Model. It might help if the economic historians like Lennart Erixon began talking of a New Stockholm Model.

Disaggregate. Look upon the Next Swedish Model as a confederation of a couple of dozen of these New Stockholm Models. That is an idea that would sit very comfortably with the idea of sustainable development and a Baltic Confederation of small nation states...the real alternative to the European Union. The Swedish Model is Dead! Long live the Stockholm Model!