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In your opinion, what country in the world is the best-run right now?

Ether's Bane

future Singaporean
Pronoun
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Obviously, every country in the world has its problems, and no country is perfect, or even close to it.

However, it is clear that when it comes to dealing with these problems and contributing to a better life for all citizens in the country, some countries are doing a better job than others.

Which one do you believe is coming the closest to the ideal right now, and why?

(Note that I didn't say "which ones are close" - I said "which ones are closest", and that makes a world of difference.)
 
I actually went to the Nordic countries this summer during a trip my history teacher organized, and we had a bus tour where the tourgiver was a Venezuelan lady who had lived her adult life there (it was in Denmark, if I recall correctly). She gave a rundown of the education system and it was amazing. Things are run really efficiently over there, so that'd be my main reason.
 
I too have heard really positive things about Scandinavian countries and the way that they're run; also heard that they're meant to have relatively high levels of trust in their politicians and some of the overall highest happiness ratings for their citizens compared to the other countries of Europe. If I recall correctly, people in Denmark work fewer hours on average but tend to also be way more productive when working, or something?

Mildly random side-note: One way of schooling which I really dislike, and was employed by a school local to me, is banding children based on their academic performance and restricting those bands to particular subjects depending on how academically able the groups were. For someone like me, who was quite a 'late bloomer' in terms of education, that would have really shot me in the foot and they only seem to do it to force good statistics like high pass rates etc... I don't know how many countries do this but, I really dislike it.
 
Mildly random side-note: One way of schooling which I really dislike, and was employed by a school local to me, is banding children based on their academic performance and restricting those bands to particular subjects depending on how academically able the groups were. For someone like me, who was quite a 'late bloomer' in terms of education, that would have really shot me in the foot and they only seem to do it to force good statistics like high pass rates etc... I don't know how many countries do this but, I really dislike it.

Generally in Australian high schools, early high school classes are formed based on general academic ability. According to my housemate, who's a teacher, it's because when you get kids who aren't in the right classes (for example, someone's who's way ahead of the rest of the class) they get bored and tend to either not do anything or be disruptive. Kids are also generally able to move between classes if they get better grades (for example, I was moved from 8.2 english to 9.1 english based on my grades in year 8). But yeah, it's also to do with the class dynamics and things like that; apparently teenagers learn better when they're among peers instead of a mix of students! Again I know this anecdotally from my housemate, but she's taken a dip ed so I assume there's some kind of basis to it.

Then in upper school (years 10-12) you get to pick more of your classes, and your ATAR classes (exam classes; they were called TEE when i was in school). I don't remember people being restricted from taking particular classes, except there were prerequisites, like taking TEE Biology before taking TEE Human Biology, stuff like that. Though I can imagine teachers probably discouraging students who regularly did very poorly in math from wanting to take advanced calculus and trigonometry and stuff.


In terms of what country is 'run the best': I think you'd really have to define what that means to have a better discussion about it, and I'm not sure how to do that. For example, what I know of Sweden from MD is that he receives free education, dental, and healthcare, and also receives money to study. On the other hand, it's a bit concerning how prominent the local neo-nazi party (svp) is at the moment!

Australia has a fairly good free healthcare system, but we're also sending military to the middle-east despite there not being tons of support for it, our media is becoming increasingly more biased, and the only real neutral media outlet we have is government funded and has received serious budget cuts as a result. The level of education is good in Australia, but we have a serious problem with the disenfranchised indigenous peoples of Australia, who are rapidly losing their cultures, languages, and independence. the current Australian government is also being really awful about various human rights issues surrounding refugees from, like, all of Asia and the middle east.

I guess probably the best indication of how well Australia is run right now is that at the G20 summit, our prime minister was proudly proclaiming how global warming is a bunch of garbage and how he'd repealed australia's carbon tax; meanwhile, America and China just made a big deal with regards to global warming and carbon taxation.
 
Oh yeah, this system was literally like: "You are in Band C, therefore you can only take vocational subjects! Congratulations, a life of Motor Mechanics for you! :D", which is fine if you actually then want to go on to do motor mechanics but if you don't like or want to do any of the subjects you've been restricted to then, regardless of ability I would find myself getting bored and/or disruptive.

My class organisation was a little more like yours in the sense that I was able to take any subject which I wanted (provided that it could be timetabled) and people were grouped by academic ability and could move between these groups, but no-one was particularly 'banned' from taking 'hard' subjects because they're told that they're a little unintelligent, unlike that other school. |(

I don't really know if/why that's allowed, and I know that said school will actually reject children from entering the school if their academic performance is not high enough after taking their GCSEs when entering for A-levels. I mean, when I was opting for A-levels, it was entirely optional to continue schooling until 18 but it's now compulsory. As far as I know the 'entry requirements' are still the same (ie, pass all of your GCSEs) but said school will turn away children if they feel like they're going to be an 'academic liability' (ie they don't think that they'll score a B or above in A-levels or something like that). This then forces other schools to take the children which they've rejected due to A-levels now being compulsory, which just seems kind of dodgy/low to me and I think they just need to accept that some children are liable to performing worse than others but they should be interested in looking after the children rather than boosting their statistics on paper, perhaps?

But yeah, I think that our country perhaps needs to rethink how schools publish their statistics, and should focus on other elements to catch out the schools which are aiming to skew their statistics for the current pass/fail statistics which are published.

Otherwise, the UK has a very nice National Health Service which I constantly worry our current government are going to sell in order to 'curb the deficit', which we are now in more of since when they started. gj, David Cameron. They keep selling bits and bobs of public services in order to get money to pay off the deficit and it doesn't really seem to be working. They also promised a lot of things which they then went back on after getting into power. Britain's public trust its politicians much less than the majority of other European countries and you can kind of see why when ~everything they say is a lie~.
 
Personally, based on what I know, I'm leaning towards the Netherlands as my answer to my own question.

As for how my country stacks up:

Cons:
- trash educational system
- corruption, corruption, and more corruption
- homosexuality/abortion banned
- massive gender wage gap
- crap minimum wage
- remarkable amounts of racism
- forced conversions upon non-Muslims who wish to marry a Muslim (I'm not Islamophobic by any means, but these things shouldn't be forced on anyone)
- sky-high crime rate
- stupid-ass Sedition Act
- and many, many more

Pros:

+ uh... tropical climate, I guess

Yeah...
 
Australia has a fairly good free healthcare system, but we're also sending military to the middle-east despite there not being tons of support for it, our media is becoming increasingly more biased, and the only real neutral media outlet we have is government funded and has received serious budget cuts as a result. The level of education is good in Australia, but we have a serious problem with the disenfranchised indigenous peoples of Australia, who are rapidly losing their cultures, languages, and independence. the current Australian government is also being really awful about various human rights issues surrounding refugees from, like, all of Asia and the middle east.
From what I hear about Tony Abbott, I wouldn't trust the man with my wallet, let alone the government.

Anyway. It's hard to comment on how well a country is being run if you haven't seen it for yourself (and my country sure as hell isn't the best run; we're not even yet past the part where most of the political class understands the difference between 'ruling' and 'robbing', and the amount of specific issues I could name would make for a too run-on sentence)... But I hear Switzerland has been debating the possibility of living wages. I wouldn't say that this alone means the country is being well-run, but I definitely think it's a great thing. And of course, in general, small and rich countries like that and afaik Sweden are a lot easier to run well.
 
Ether's Bane. Ouch.. Malaysia, isn't it? Been there, but what Arab from the Gulf State haven't.

As for the best run country; look no further from Human Development Index, Corruption index, Education index and the International Peace Index. It's Bahrain.

EDIT: In my wildest dreams. It's probably New Zealand and Iceland.
 
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