Finland and Sweden had such a sweet deal going for decades. All the benefits of membership but none of the costs.

Now they’re going to get what? A nine-figure obligation to buy shitty US-made suicide helicopters so that you can host a den of heavily armed drunken rapists who will be the first folks smashed into paste on the day one of a shooting war into St. Petersberg?

Name one Unaligned state that didn’t come out of the Cold War better than they started? Meanwhile, all the big power players in NATO - your UKs and Germanys and Hungarys and Slovenias - are absolutely eating shit right now. Ukraine just asks to join NATO and now half their country is owned by Russia. Just an absolute raw deal, even before you compare them to any of the BRICS.

A great deal of western economy runs on exploitation of Latin America and Africa where western companies commit crimes against humanity on the daily basis.

Undeniably. But the benefit of this exploitation accrues first and foremost to the ownership class.

Scandinavian companies are directly involved in exploitation happening in developing countries

US cut-outs in Scandinavia function in much the same way as the 50-state strategy for the domestic arms industry. This secures political patronage by way of kickbacks and sinesures to elites within the Scandinavian domestic polity. But it does not benefit Scandinavians writ large. The beneficiaries are entirely within the foreign rooted patronage network and have contracted over time as the network grows more efficient.

Scandinavia is not a closed economy

The economic benefits of Scandinavian socialism are geographically and linguistically limited. Traveling overseas for medical care and education is a luxury, particularly when your conditions are chronic or time-critical. And the labor for these services is primarily sourced from the Scandinavian polity. They’re not importing a bunch of Global South doctors and teachers to get the cost of their socialized programs down.

the labor needed to make Scandinavia run happens in the countries the empire subjugates

The labor needed to make the Scandinavian Treats Network flow is a consequence of colonialism. But Treats trade through the privatized economy. There is no publicly financed cheap TVs, cars, and textiles service. And the benefits of these industries accrue primarily to the bourgeois not the proletariat. That is why they’re the focus of intensive advertising and other consumerist propaganda. Nobody in Scandinavia needs to spend millions during the local soccer tournament to promote the public mail service or the local judiciary in order to garner support for it. Its the newest FIFA title and scammy financial products and the fanciest luxury watch brands and clothing styles that get the lion’s share of promotion. None of those are consequences of Democratic Socialism.

Cuba is indeed a far more principled example of socialist policies in action.

Cuba isn’t “principled”, its “embargoed”. Cubans would be more than happy to get the Scandinavian tier of treats if they were on offer.

But my point is that Cuba can still deliver public services despite being cut off from treats networks. These are distinct systems of trade.

The whole western economy runs on cheap labour and resource extraction from the colonized countries

A great deal of the western economy runs on cheap imports from industrial rivals, like China and India. But Chinese standard of living has been improving by leaps and bounds, approaching (and in cases exceeding) their western peers. I don’t think it is fair or accurate to say that a Nordish person working in the O&G sector and using an Apple phone is somehow profiting off the back of Chinese labor any more than a Chinese person using a fossil-fuel powered device while working in a phone assembly plant is profiting off Nordic extracted labor.

Scandinavian social democracy only seems to work because of the imperialism they practice on third world countries

The articles you’re citing largely focus on the weapons export industry, the knock-on-effects of fossil fuels, and the relationship between economies as a whole. They fail to discuss either the scope or benefit afforded to individual Scandinavians, relative to the handful of senior executives and majority stakeholders in these industries.

To say the US democratic model or the Middle Eastern monarchy model are predicated on imperialism would be far more accurate. But, again, the flow of trade is heavily biased towards a minority of residents. The real benefit of Scandinavian socialism isn’t that it grants access to cheap consumer goods. You can get that anywhere - from Qatar to Haiti to Taiwan - without any regard to the social system. The benefit of the Scandinavian model is in how it delivers professional health care and education labor. That’s the primary appeal of the system and it has nothing to do with cheap foreign imports.

Success of social democracy is not possible without inflicting inhumane suffering and oppression upon people in the global south

Success of social democracy is not predicated on the success of a consumerist market economy. Cuba is an excellent counterexample. It implements a raft of policies that are comparable to Scandinavian social services and reaps enormous economic benefits despite being entirely cut off from imperialist trade and cheap labor.

The real benefits of the consumer economy are the capitalist brokers, not the Scandinavian social democrats.

Is this accurate or overstated? I was under the impression the Nordic Model is more predicated on fossil fuel exports than straight-up slave labor (as compared to, say, economic success of The Philippines or India or Israel or Saudi Arabia, where dirt cheap labor from neighboring states is essential to operations). Nords would be poorer without fossil fuel exports, but they’d still function within the EU trade network and enjoy a basic post-industrial standard of life with high quality education, health care, and mass transit.

By comparison, the Pacific Rim satraps are all ruled by folks who make their money entirely off of an export market powered by dirt cheap human labor. The shipping and vacation industries through the Pacific Islands are entirely a function of indentured labor. The agricultural industry is entirely plantation labor. Its a very different beast.

That’s why 25 year olds in software are making 250k in the US

I know a few folks in software in the US, and the lion’s share aren’t making $250k/year. The ones that are all have Masters/PhDs and are leads/specialists in the Top 20 industry leaders. I don’t know who you’re working for that pays a quarter million per code-monkey flailing at python, but if there’s a job opening that pays this well please let me know. I’ve got over 15 years experience doing big boy shit for a Fortune 500, and I’d love an extra $100k/year.

The best way to get promoted is to change jobs every 3-6 years.

Europeans: “Those perfidious Russians and the nefarious Chinese are the two single biggest threats to our domestic security. Why… they’ll just hack into any old thing and fill it full of evil communist propaganda. They’ll shut down our critical infrastructure, hijack our data services, and spam us so full of phishing attempts that you won’t know what’s safe to click on! And all just to watch us fail, then laugh at us. The fiends!!!”

Also Europeans: “Google’s CEO said we need to dismantle the last ten years of digital safety standards so we can undermine the YouTube adblocker. Make this our top priority.”