That’s just one of countless examples from a two seconds of googling. It’s the height of intellectual dishonesty to try and frame it as an isolated incident.
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.
To say the US democratic model or the Middle Eastern monarchy model are predicated on imperialism would be far more accurate.
Scandinavians are part of the US empire, and Scandinavian companies are directly involved in exploitation happening in developing countries. US does provide the military might to back this exploitation to be sure, but the resource and labour extraction is done by all western countries.
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.
Except that it does since Scandinavia is not a closed economy. This the whole point here, much of the labor needed to make Scandinavia run happens in the countries the empire subjugates. You have to look at this in a holistic fashion accounting for all the labor needed to make these economies operate as opposed to just the labor that happens domestically.
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.
Sure, the positive aspects of Scandinavian economies aren’t exclusive to Scandinavia, and Cuba is indeed a far more principled example of socialist policies in action.
While the system does select for psychopathic behaviors, it’s not a meritocracy because you don’t need to be exceptional at being ruthless, greedy, selfish, egotistical, ignorant, arrogant, immoral, unethical and wicked to become enormously wealthy. There are plenty of deplorable people who never make it big under capitalism. It’s mostly just a birth lottery. People who are lucky enough to be born into money, who end up having family connections, and are plugged into the oligarchy are the ones who statistically make it.
And there are actual studies showing that luck is the major factor
You’re right, ultimately both sects are fundamentally rooted in liberal ideology. I just wanted to clarify that I was talking about the blue liberals specifically in my reply.