Author Archives: Stefan Geens

Asymmetric accounting

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The rather lax updating schedule around here has had to do with a string of long weekends on the archipelago and a move. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly, though I really should finish off that site redesign first. It’s impressive how soon after acquiring a bicycle, which I did last week, one becomes a bicycle fascist. Those ample biking lanes that snake through the center of Stockholm — you know, the ones that until last week, in my pedestrian ignorance, I would wander onto for extended periods of time — have now become hallowed ground, to be defended from the promenading proles by highly aggressive cycling tactics, strafing past them at rakish angles so that they know, they must know, that if they venture onto bicycle lanes they are doing something terribly dangerous and very very wrong.

Never mind that I’m not wearing a helmet (yet), and that my light doesn’t work, and that the sense of exhilaration I feel after far too many years of not cycling is making for crazy cruising speeds, and that frankly, other cyclists are going a bit too slow for me and not paying enough attention to those overtaking from behind at great speed. But these are but minor quibbles I have with myself. I am simply impressed by the ease with which I have managed to switch my allegianceNot unlike the manner in which Kungsholmen, the part of Stockholm I have just moved to, has suddenly eclipsed Södermalm as the undisputed happening place in Stockholm. towards the becycled, of which I am now one.

What’s going on? I believe the technical term for my mental processes here is “asymmetric accounting”, whereby the wrongs done to me and my particular clan are always perceived as more grievous than the same wrongs I do unto others and their clans. Conversely, favors I do for others are worth more than the same favors done for me. An everyday word for this is hypocrisy, though it is only ever blatant in those cases when you get to switch clans at short notice — me buying a bicycle, for example, or aggressive drivers who become militant pedestrians once they park their car.

Asymmetric accounting is deeply ingrained in all of us — every parent knows it is impossible to reconcile sibling rivalries with appeals to an objective notion of fairness. I suspect a genetic origin: A perennial sense of injustice, of deserving more, of needing things at the expense of others — these are healthy instincts from an evolutionary perspective. It may not be that greed is good, but it certainly is good for you.

At the level of the clan, the ethnic group, and the nation, asymmetric accounting has driven history. The divergent popular histories in the Balkans, of the Semites and in the Caucasus, to name a few, all accentuate those wrongs that were suffered, not those that were meted out. American perceptions of US foreign policy over the last 100 years tend to accentuate the positiveBelgian perceptions of its colonial policy have long suffered from this effect too, of course, lest anyone try to levy accusations of asymmetric accounting at me beyond my cycling crimes, to which I’ve now owned up., leaving it to others to accentuate the negative — among Muslim countries especially, as Bernard Lewis likes to point out. This observation is not the same as the relativist assertion that the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle: I’m saying that asymmetric accounting is a mental process that everyone is susceptible to, irrespective of where the truth lies.

For asymmetric accounting to do real harm, it needs to be coupled to the notion that members of the opposing group are fungible — that all are guilty by association for perceived transgressions, and hence that any are fair game for retributive justice. Such dehumanization of the enemy is a prerequisite for modern terrorism, as it has been for traditional warfare until recent examples came alongExamples of recent humane wars: US intervention in Somalia and ex-Yugoslavia.. And so Beslan happened, and 9/11, and before it, World War II, and I.

Is there any chance that an awareness of our biases in the tallying of grievances might lead us to correct for this, rationally? If and when I stop cycling through red lights across zebra crossings, you’ll be the first to know.

Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, VIII

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The eighth in an occasional series.
 
Ten: Predatory seating
Nine: Culinary relativism
Eight: Preëmptive planning
Seven: Premature mastication
Six: Irrational discalceation
Five: Radiotjänst i Kiruna AB
Four: Temporal engineering
Three: Tunnelbana vision

In New York, on the subway during rush hour, the locals have adopted highly evolved rules of behavior aimed at maximizing the efficiency of the transfer of passengers out of and then into the carriages at subway stops, with a view to getting the train rolling again ASAP. The process is one of constant sorting — between stops, new passengers and those not about to get off slowly trade places with those who are almost at their destination. Then, when the doors open, passengers about to get on the train leave a wide berth for those streaming off. They don’t get on until everybody who wants to get off does so.

The efficacy of these rules is self-evident. How they came about spontaneously is puzzling only until you’ve literally stood between a New Yorker and her way home in the evening. The elbow in your groin was not just a rude push aside; it was a public service announcement, whose content was: “During rush hour, getting out of each other’s way is not just a courtesy, it is the fastest way to your destination. Jerk.” It’s called militant utility maximization, and it is what makes New York so special.

In fact, this week I shall miss riding the New York subway, because those who do will be able to savor watching clumps of scared-looking Republicans from Topeka or Tampa as they learn this very lesson.

On the Stockholm tunnelbana, meanwhile, rush hour is still a Hobbesian state of nature. Getting on and getting off is attempted simultaneously. Some people who get on first will take one step past the door and plant themselves there, which is so convenient for them, so not for everyone else. In fact, there was one guy I saw on my ride home tonight (and if you guessed that he prompted this little tirade then you guessed right) whose thought process must have gone something like this:

It’s rush hour and I am standing right in front of the door through which I will eventually leave this train. That is quite clever of me. Oh look, we’ve arrived at a station that is not my destination and now my door opens. I shall just stand here, then. It seems that the young mother with the baby stroller behind me would like to get off, and the old lady with the walking aid would like to get on. I wonder how they are going to do this with me here. This could be quite difficult for them. Of course, I would never consider actually stepping out of the carriage for a moment, because this is not my destination — why would I get off the train if this is not where I get off the train?

Had I been the mother, that moron’s ankles would have been a lot bluer, but then I’m not quite up on the ethics of using baby strollers as weapons when there are babies in them. I myself practice the New York school of (dis)embarkment: A polite “ursäkta” (excuse me), a count to one-and-a-half, and then the full-on barge, taking assorted stragglers with me. And all so that they can get home faster tonight.

Murder by numbers

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Via Strang’s Blog: Olle Wästberg, until just now Sweden’s consul general in New York, returns to Sweden on the wings of an an article extolling New York City’s crime rate in comparison to that of Sweden. Favorite topic!

Before I go on to question the validity of the comparison, let’s assume for a while that the numbers are valid at face value, as reported by Wästberg (and I certainly accept that the statistics are for similar populations):

New York had 598 murders in 2003. Sweden had 189 in the same year, according to the National Council for Crime Prevention. New York had 1,875 rapes, and Sweden 2,565. Assaults: 18,764 in New York against 65,177 in Sweden. Burglaries: 29,207 in New York against 122,700 in Sweden.New York hade 598 mord år 2003. Samma år hade Sverige, enligt Brottsförebyggande rådet, 189 mord. New York hade 1 875 våldtäkter och Sverige 2 565. Grov misshandel: 18 764 i New York mot 65 177 i Sverige. Inbrott: 29 207 i New York mot 122 700 i Sverige.

I found myself asking the question — If you had to choose between these two crime rate options for your society, which would you prefer? The answer is not immediately evident to me: I don’t grow attached to possessions, and am not a woman, so I gravitate towards the murder rate as being the ultimate arbiter of my personal safety. As long as I have my life at the end of the ordeal, I can cope with the rest, goes my thinking. But then, it’s a fact that most murders are committed by acquaintances, and if there is anything I am proud of it is my ability to choose friends with a propensity not to commit murder.

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Let’s chart these crimes by category, in order of severity. How to acccount for the comparatively gentle slope of New York’s numbers? Gun ownership would be an explanation, were it not for the fact that guns are outlawed in New York.

I can think of two reasons, off the cuff, that might explain New York’s favorable “yield curve” for crime, and neither depend on levels of crime prevention spending:

First off, it is damn hard to be alone in New York. Walk home along Avenue B at 3am on a Monday and you’ll still have at least 10 potential witnesses to any crime — quite a deterrent. There is safety in numbers, and I used this basic observation to ensure that I never even came close to being mugged in my 12 accrued years of New York living, including extensive expeditions into what were considered dodgy areas at the time. At an average Swedish location, on the contrary, you are hard-pressed to find witnesses, let alone victims (so I’ve heard).

Second, in New York, people live on top of one another, and across from one another, and down the hall. In Sweden’s cities, too, there is such a thing as the apartment, though far rarer is the doorman (read private-sector crime prevention) — but in addition, more Swedes than New Yorkers live in isolated communities, removed from neighborhood watchers. All else being equal, then, more opportunities for burglary exist in Sweden, if only because the same amount of people are forced to live in approximately 370 times the spaceFrom Wikipedia: NYC surface area: 1,214.4 sq km. From CIA: Sweden surface area: 449,964 sq km..

But now for the boring part: Sweden’s crime statistics are structurally overreported. I’ve already covered by how much, and why, the murder rate is overreported. And Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention weighs in with several further good reasons [Swedish] why its crime rates might be actual multiples of those of other countries.

To return to Wästberg (and Patrick at Strang’s) thesis, which is that Sweden could benefit from more crime prevention spending — If I care predominantly about not dying, then I have to disagree, and here is why: Take a look at the causes of violent death in both Sweden and the US, from current reliable statistics that involve the counting of actual bodies. In Sweden, the murder rate is around 1 per 100,000 per year, and the suicide rate is around 16 per 100,000, for a grand total of 17 per 100,000 per year. In the US, the murder rate is 6 times as high, at around 6 per 100,000, whereas the suicide rate is a bit lower, at around 14 per 100,000, for a total of 20 per 100,000 per year.

Clearly, these totals are in the same ballpark. But it is also clear to me that if Sweden wants to reduce the overall number of violent deaths without spending more money, it should start spending less on crime prevention and more on suicide prevention. In other words, more psychiatrists, fewer police. But even if we were not being glib, and even if we were running for office on a law and order platform and promising more spending, I’d be prioritizing investment in Sweden’s collective mental health.

The kräftskiva

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Somewhere towards the northern end of the Stockholm archipelago there is a red wooden house atop its own island, snug in a glade of pines and birches. There is smooth slanting rock to the east for morning sunning, same to the west for sunset viewing, a dock, an outhouse, a fire pit on a spur, a flagpole, and a sauna, all placed at polite distances from one another, connected by meandering paths through low brush. When I arrived there, I felt like I had landed into that immersive computer game Myst — onto an island built from an improbably aesthetic assortment of elemental shapes and textures. The rock faces are veined with pink, and the water they curl into sloshes with waves that are a little too fractal. The cotton-tufted sky is doused in polarized light that should not ever produce such blue hues in real life.

There are distinct soundscapes too. Sit to the west, towards the prevailing wind, and you notice the hissing of the reeds at the water’s edge, set against deeper notes of swaying pine trees. Higher up, a flagpole line beats a syncopated tang. The outhouse door operates with a squeak-thudA dunny for the D’ni, perhaps? Sorry, you have to be an Australian geek before that’s even remotely funny.. I half-expect to find a puzzle here, and indeed there is a strange round metallic contraption hidden amid a clump of trees, though I rather suspect divining its mysterious purpose would involve getting to know the outhouse composting system rather intimately.

It is on this island that Helena G. and two dozen of her friends celebrated her birthday last weekend, at a party that managed to sublimate all that is essential about the Stockholm weekend getaway. We trickled in via ferry and car, and then rowed the final stretch. Once there, I dumped my bags and quickly made for the water. The island had to be swum around; a marking of the territory, perhaps. Then, we sunned for hours, stuck like fridge magnets to the sloping rock, holding our towels in place.

As I lay there, A conversation I was half-monitoring veered past a word I couldn’t contextualize. Mambo? It’s a neologism derived from sambo (to live (bo) together (samman) as a couple but not be married) but it means to live with one’s mother. Were there any more such words? Certainly, I was told, as Swedes are nothing if not socially innovative. For example, there is kombo, which means to live together with a friend (kompis); ensambo, to live unattached alone (ensam); and särbo, which can mean to be attached but to live apart, for example when a relationship that begat children is undergoing a downgrade — and which upon first hearing I first thought was written serbo, i.e. to live with a Serb. There would have to be a pambo, then, too (to live with one’s father)? Yes, everyone conceded, though without much enthusiasm, as they turned back towards the sun. I decided I could take a liking to punning like this in Swedish: Bilbo, to live in one’s car (bil)? Lesbo, obviously? Hobo, without fixed abode? People were finding spots further afield. Limbo, when moving from one apartment to another? Bimbo, when you’re living on the set of Big Brother? OK, I’ll stop. Wait, no, yobbo, to live with a hooligan?

Much later, it was time to drag considerable amounts of booze to the spur, where the tables were being set for the kräftskiva, or crayfish party. Silly hats were donned, the aquavit glasses were filled to the brim but never for long, and drinking songs sounded out across the water towards the setting sun. The center of attention, however, was the crayfish themselves, hundreds of whom were sacrificed in an orgy of focused determination that lasted hours, until the fingers bledIf Ridley Scott’s aliens ever made a sci-fi horror film, I imagine it would involve hordes of giant Swedes with heinous headgear methodically ripping apart crustacean carapaces before bringing these mangled bodies to their mouths to suck out the flesh.. These things must have negative net calories, considering the effort it takes to eat them, and how the hunger for them never slakes.

A vignette from later still: Realizing that the sauna experience is just like jogging but while sitting still, and that it is thus a far faster and more civilized form of achieving the same inevitable result — total body meltdown. Furthermore, a dunking in a dark Baltic is a far more effective resuscitation tactic than a cold shower could ever be back in Stockholm.

The next morning, it was time to swim around the island again, followed by coffee and a day of lazing before taking a slow boat full of good food back to Stockholm. Weekends in the archipelago truly rank among the world’s best.

Sweden's population reaches 8,999,993

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Sweden passed the 9-million registered inhabitant mark last week. This fact is only of interest to those who are simultaneously enthralled by the decimal counting system and by numbers that have a large and nearly equal proportion of fives and twos as their prime factors — also known as base 10 numbers with lots of trailing zeroesThe nearest number to 9 million that is remotely of any interest is the 602,489th prime, 8,999,993..

But there is news buried in this “news”. That horde of babies currently rampaging through Stockholm’s streets? They are not (merely) the figment of your hormonally-laden imagination as you careen inexorably towards the end of your child-bearing years — there are real statistics to back up your suspicion that there is an inordinate number of children being made of late.

Statistics Sweden, the closest there is to a God keeping score, has all the raw historical population data, and also provides us with a running monthly population update. I used both to construct this souped-up spreadsheet, from which I made the pretty charts you see below.

I used monthly data from 2003 and the first half of 2004 to make a seasonally adjusted, annualized projection for Sweden’s total 2004 births, deaths, immigration and emigration figures. With this projection, the data suggests the following interesting (to me) conclusions:

bvd.gif

1. There is a clear baby boom underway. There will be 16% (!) more live children born in Sweden this year than just 5 years ago (a projected 102,225 live births in 2004, compared to 88,173 children born in 1999, which was the trough year of the most recent Swedish baby “bust”). When placed in conjunction with the below-trend death rate of these past two years, Swedes will manage to raise their numbers by 0.14% this year purely through their procreative prowess.

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2. Net immigration has long been the main driving force behind Sweden’s population growth. It was the only source of growth from 1997 to 2001, when Sweden experienced more deaths than live births. For 2004, net immigration is projected to outpace net procreation (live births minus deaths) by a factor of almost two to one (23,630 to 12,721, or 0.26% year-on-year to 0.14%).

3. This most recent baby boom has nothing to do with echoes from previous baby booms. Just look at the spacings of the peaks and troughs: Sixteen years between the 1944 peak and the 1960 troughSweden did not participate in WWII, so Swedes did not have to wait for the men to return home before getting busy; also, note the lack of a spike in the death rate — not necessarily something to be proud of.; 19 years between the 1964 peak and the 1983 trough, as women started having children later; but only 9 years between the 1990 peak and the 1999 trough.

cbcpc.gif

This latest upswing is due to entirely different factors — one theory I’ve heard is that this downswing came artificially early as couples refrained from having children amid the recession of the early 90s. Then, apparently, these couples were suddenly too busy having careers in the IT-stoked boom years of the late 90s, and postponed children again. Whatever the reason, there is now a backlog of “barnnödig” qv the truly excellent word kissnödig. couples, and they’ve all simultaneously decided to have their children now, before it’s too late.

One other possibility: The parents of these couples, born during the WWII baby boom, are all at retirement age, which means there are far more grandparent-hours available for child minding that the couples can tap into as they try to keep their careers on track. This might be a crucial incentive.

Three questions for the conventionally religious

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I am an atheist, though this does not mean that I am not interested in the idea of God (I am not an apatheist). Opportunities for debate, however, are lacking, as I lead an improbably shielded existence — improbable, because while for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population the idea of God is the foundation of their world view, almost all my friends are either atheist, agnostic or apatheistic, rather than conventionally religiousBy “conventionally religious” I mean those who see themselves as belonging to a particular religious denomination, such as Protestantism, Catholicism, Reform Judaism, Sunni or Shia Islam, and who subscribe to its dogma..

Recently, I’ve noticed from comments left on my blog that there are likely more conventionally religious people among readers than I can find among friends, so I’m going to take the opportunity to pose three questions concerning religious belief that I’ve pondered. They’re asked in good faith, as it were, and they’re there for the purpose of stimulating debate, if you’re so inclinedUnrelated side note: I’m on the lookout for a new apartment to rent starting September 1. If you know of something in Stockholm, up to 6,000 kr/month and with bredband, email me. It needn’t be large, though it should be furnished, as I live like I travel: light. Anything longer than three months will do.
Kungsholmen, here I come!.

1. Is it possible for an atheist to be a good person? Is a belief in God a prerequisite for goodness, or for the rewards of goodness? Are equivalent good acts more or less good depending on the beliefs of the doer? Should good people be denied (some or all) rewards in the afterlife if they don’t also first make a correct decision regarding their religious belief? If not, does it remain important to belong to the correct denomination, or even to believe in God tout court?

2. Those born in Ireland do not, in the main, grow up Shia. Those born in Iran do not grow up Catholic. It seems evident to me that for almost all conventionally religious people, the denomination of their religion is not a matter of choice but the product of environmental factors. If one’s religious belief is an accident of birth, what are the implications for those who, through no fault of their own, subscribe to the wrong denomination? What about those who belong to the correct denomination, though not by choice but accidentally, by birth?

3. If you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, you accept some religious texts in the Islamo-Judeo-Christian canon as being divinely inspired, but not others, just as you accept some of the historical accounts of miracles or divine acts as being literally true, but not others. How do you justify the varying levels of skepticism you hold towards the claims of respective religions? For example, Jews, Christians and atheists are all skeptical of claims that the Koran is the word of God, though Christians abandon such skepticism when it comes to similar claims about the New Testament, while Jews abandon it when it comes to the Old Testament. To an atheist, this seems inconsistent — shouldn’t you be equally skeptical towards all such religious claims, or else equally accepting (and become a Mormon)?

I think, Darfur I blog

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Just a quickie, I hope, before I head off for a final bout of summer travel (to Oxford for Charles’s and Pamela’s wedding!), on an article that will surely lead the Swedish blogosphere into a tizzy, now that Erik’s linked to it.

Mikael Pawlo, a writer at the Swedish IDG tech news website, faults Swedish (and, for that matter, all) bloggers for not blogging Darfur. While genocide looms, he writes, Swedish bloggers are discussing I, Robot and Buffy. A failure by the Swedish media and politicians to give Darfur the attention it deserves has not led to bloggers raising hell. So much for all that supposed grass-roots journalism, he concludes. So much for blogging.

Mikael, sorry. It’s my fault. I should have made it clearer to you and everyone else who visits this blog: I am against genocide. Slavery too. Famine, war, oppression — all bad. Lots of other things besides. Here I was, all this time thinking it was my obligation to engage readers with interesting posts about things I possibly know something about, about topics where there is disagreement and hence room for interesting debate, when it turns out all you want is a checklist of the world’s injustices, sorted by size, updated semi-weekly.

Of course, Mikael, you could always start your own blog. It’s not like I had to get a licence or something to run this here URL. If you had a blog, you could tell all comers what exactly annoys you with the process currently underway to alleviate this crisis. We might even find we disagree on some things (oh, look, something to blog about!). For example: I think Darfur is now getting the attention it deserves, at least in the media I follow. I think the UN is applying the lessons it learned in Rwanda. I think alarm bells were raised soon after the situation in Darfur escalated from mismatched ethnic conflict to incipient genocide; I think aid agencies are there in force, and well funded this time, on the border, while the thorny issue of military intervention in Sudan proper is discussed in the US, EU and UN. I think the specter of this intervention, and the certainty of sanctions, is spurring the Sudanese government to try to rein in the militias responsible (we’ll see). I think an outside military intervention does not automagically solve this crisis. What do you want — a rerun of Somalia? If not, got any bright ideas?

But I am not an expert in the details of combating incipient genocide, so I don’t know why you particularly want to know my opinion. (For that matter, I suspect you aren’t an expert either.) I do know that a lot of expertise exists, and that it is being applied en masse to the crisis. As far as this blog is concerned, I’m just trying to avoid sounding like those letters to the editor that get published in Time magazine. You know the ones: “I think it’s a real tragedy what is going on in [insert region here]. Why can’t people just get along? We can send people to the moon, so why can’t we stop this? Sincerely, Marge Smith, Tulsa Oklahoma.” Way to go, Marge.

Way to go, Mikael.

The winning ticket

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This is why we love blogging, and bloggers, so: I can unplug completely from Swedish media for the duration of the summer vacation, secure in the knowledge that should important investigative reporting surface, my favorite blogs will have it, prechewed into bite-sized morsels even.

And so it is with Gudmundson, who points us in the direction of a truly revelatory piece in Dagens Nyheter by Bernt Hermele about where the proceeds of Swedish lottery winnings go.

Sweden’s lotteries, like in the UK, are a government-controlled monopoly. In the UK, a neutral commission ensures that one selected operator, Camelot, complies with its license, and that all but the smallest profit margin funds “good causes.” Precisely which good causes are funded is a matter of careful public scrutiny. Some Brits I know even justify their buying of lottery tickets by saying they do it for a good cause.

That justification is, of course, mere self-deception. If it’s a good cause you’d like to fund, much better to give the entire amount, without middlemen to feed, and you’d get a tax deduction to boot. There is no way of getting around the fact that lotteries are a stupidity tax: You only play if you are completely incapable of grasping just how improbable winning is. The defence — that the ticket buyer is not calculating probabilities but paying to participate in a fantasy — turns lotteries into a state church of the here and now, requiring faith in rewards in this life. If anything, lotteries trump religion: they produce verifiable miracles like clockwork; somebody always winsCall me cynical, but what is religious belief other than placing high odds on there being a moral God and an afterlife?.

In the UK, precisely because the proceeds do go to transparently good causes, the lottery business is probably benign, with most likely a net positive utility for society (it’s hard to calculate, given opportunity costs and the rent-seeking activities of the lottery organizers)In comparison, it’s less certain that going to church is benign: Felix and Michelle and I had this argument in a church in Glasgow converted into an excellent restaurant. My argument went like this: While religious people are more likely than unbelievers to do charity work, thus increasing the utility of those in their immediate surroundings, there is still the problem that attending church is a vote for the dogma of the particular denomination one attends. Attend a Catholic church and you are voting with your presence for infallibly moronic positions on contraception, for example, and medieval attitudes to women, both of which lower society’s utility far more than can be counteracted by helping out in a Catholic soup kitchen.
 
It turns out that my reasoning is wrong, however: the current isssue of the Economist, in an article on philantropy, shows the atheist Dutch and Swedes actually contributing a far larger portion of their GDP — almost double — to doing good than do the markedly more religious Americans. That flies in the face of received wisdom, my own assumptions, and those who argue that high taxes are immoral because they stifle the incentive to behave charitably. The Economist got their data, below, from the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project.
 
CSF320.gif. In Sweden, however, it’s easier to reach a verdict: Only the state, horseracing organizations and “popular national movements” (folkrörelser) are allowed to run lotteries, according to DN. The two stated reasons: This monopoly limits “lottery abuse” (the same line of argument as the one justifying the existence of the state alcohol monopoly, Systembolaget); and it guarantees that lottery profits go to the “common good” or “public ends” (allmänna ändamål). “Common good” here is defined as, wait for it, the financing of a political party, specifically the ruling Social Democratic Party, SAP, and its youth wing, the SSU. In fact, 40% of their combined 2002 annnual revenues, 80 million kronor of 200 million, was from lottery proceeds. Neither the SAP nor the SSU is particularly keen to publicize this, obviously.

Other political parties have the right to run lotteries too if they want to (and the Center Party brings in a few million kroner this way, says DN). This doesn’t make it right, though. It is beyond me why political parties should have such a cushy funding option, especially when most Swedes buying lottery tickets seem to have no idea that many of these directly fund the ruling party machinery.

The solution: Abolish the monopoly; privatize lotteries, much like Sweden has already “privatized” the Church of Sweden. If you want to support the Social Democrats, by all means buy Social Democrat lottery tickets, as long as they are clearly labelled as such. Feel like supporting another party when you inevitably lose? Buy into their lottery offerings instead. Or buy Greenpeace lottery tickets. or Médecins Sans Frontières tickets. In any case, the internet is coming to the rescue, soon felling this particular Social Democratic money tree: There is nothing stopping Swedes from betting online with foreign companies.