> Can't I just wish for a high-pressure economy in which unemployment is low,
> businesses are eager to train, educate, and cosset their workers, and I can
> vote with my feet for the most pleasant employer?
Not unless you've got a Danish or Swiss passport. I'm not sure what your point is about social democracy, though; even the so-called "Swedish model" was hardly a static, homogenous thing, but was full of fascinating experiments, innovations and colossal blunders, too. Social democracy did have some fundamental problems: it could only work in semi-peripheries which weren't being too tightly squeezed by the USA; it relied upon very homogenous ethnic populations (e.g. Austria, as compared to Switzerland, which developed a kind of cantonal industrial policy instead of a national social democracy) and relatively authoritarian governments; and it didn't offer much to women and other marginalized groups in the economy. Critiquing these things is necessary if we're going to reinvent social democracy or any kind of even moderately socially just society on a global scale. I do find it significant that South Korea is introducing electoral reforms which will create a German-style proportional representation system there -- this to me says that the Pacific Rim may be about to create EU-style welfare states, as disgruntled and unemployed citizen-workers push for some major democratization of their economies and societies. If only one could say the same about the US...
-- Dennis