I would rather ask: Which country of the following list do you consider to be ruled best:
I have adequate knowledge about how well Finland is ruled, some minor knowledge about how the USA is ruled, and basically no useful knowledge about how well any of those other countries are ruled (besides the fact that none of them is a third world hellhole, so none of them is probably ruled terribly badly). So I couldn’t answer this question, and I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody on this site was familiar enough with the governance of all those nations to be able to give a meaningful answer.
Belgium “had no government” for 535 days. Lots of people use the same words to describe the situation in Belgium.
The odd thing about this period of no government was that Belgium’s government was very busy. For example, the non-government nationalized one of the country’s largest banks. Less importantly, your humble blogger had numerous meetings that were attended by representatives of Belgium’s non-government.
How is this possible?
The answer, of course, is that Belgium’s government functions fine – fine enough to bail out a huge bank! – without significant input from elected officials. If elected officials are around to validate the decisions of the permanent government, that’s great. If not, the government gets on just fine.
I agree, but I think that this exposes our ignorance on the matter; choosing a political label would suffer from the same lack of knowledge, but it wouldn’t be as obvious.
I have adequate knowledge about how well Finland is ruled, some minor knowledge about how the USA is ruled, and basically no useful knowledge about how well any of those other countries are ruled (besides the fact that none of them is a third world hellhole, so none of them is probably ruled terribly badly). So I couldn’t answer this question, and I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody on this site was familiar enough with the governance of all those nations to be able to give a meaningful answer.
Or just that ruling an already-developed country isn’t terribly demanding. I mean, Belgium didn’t become a third-world hellhole despite this.
Related to your example: The Art of Governing without Government
Moldbuggian models of politics FTW.
-- Jack Nicholson, as President Dale in Mars Attacks
I agree, but I think that this exposes our ignorance on the matter; choosing a political label would suffer from the same lack of knowledge, but it wouldn’t be as obvious.
I think it takes much more knowledge to confidently meaningfully answer the best-ruled-country question than the political-label question.