The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

Economic productivity—a life performed in normative, regulated time—is still the unquestioned and overwhelmingly dominant metric for human worth. This means-and-ends matter is a central question for all of us: What future goods should we hope for, for ourselves and the children in our lives, and what are the mechanisms that will foster those goods?

To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, a slogan like the American Dream (the United States came way down on the LSE’s social mobility scale, incidentally).

The narrative of Free America remained as inflexible as any ideology: tax cuts and deregulation = freedom and prosperity. Decade after decade you encountered its mantra, like the rituals of a cargo cult, on the website of the Cato Institute, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, broadcasts of The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the platform of the