Jack, you are not talking to a school kid. You remind me of Americans who would ask would say stuff like "What is it like to be ruled by a king. In America we have this thing called Democracy. In Democracy all the citizens..." well you get the drift.

I know very well how America works. In fact I think I know it better than most Americans because I got plenty of places to compare with.

That was one of the big things I learned from living in the US: I learn as much about my own country Norway as I learned about America. To know yourself, and to know your own country, you need to be able to see it as part of a bigger picture. If you are only looking at it from the inside, you miss the big picture.

Americans dont' really understand different political systems, because they have only really tried one system, and they know precious little about the rest of the world. As exampliefied by people who would ask me what it is like to be ruled by a king, or wonder if I have ever eaten fast food before, or heard modern rock music. I don't know you, so that is not a comment on you in partuclar. It is more a comment on your tone that implies that a foreigner would be clueless about what America is like.

America is like this interrogation room with tinted windows. The rest of the world can see in, but you cannot see out. We see you on the internet, through your movies, news, TV series, books, twitter, youtube, newpapers etc. But what you see back is precious little. I have lived in the US, so I know how insulated the world of the average American is.

Americans don't grasp that Europe today is also a diverse place. I noticed that when studying in the US with my Vietnamese-Norwegian friend. Americans could not fathom that there was non-white Norwegians. American idea of Europe seems like a an 1800s costume drame it seems.

At my childrens pre-school and elementary there are about 18 different nationalities represented. My neighbours are all from different parts of the world. In a daily life I deal with several different languages.

Over 16% of the Norwegian population are foreign born compared to 15% in the US. In fact lots of European countries have larger foreign born populations than the US. Sweden and Austria has 20%.

Even Iceland which I assume you thought was interirely homogenous. My own kids are mixed race. So are the kids of my brother. This isn't a novelty to us.

You think America is so generous.... maybe you should look at the actual statistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors

Norway gives 1% of GDP in aid. The US gives 0.16%. Quite a lot less. It is easy to brag if you are a large country. A large population inflates you total numbers. If that was the only thing that mattered then China can probably soon regard themselves as the most generous, even if they only gave say 0.1% of their GDP.

I am not sure why American alway need to make this kind of discussion into a sort of country competition. When I mentioned Norway it was not really to suggest we compete on who was best. It was to offer an example of an alternative way to organize society. To show it doesn't have to be how America currently does it. I could have picked any country. It could have been Japan. So feel free to make a competition with Japan if you will. Maybe you can try to argue how much better XBOX is than Playstation.

You miss your mark completely in your criticism. I have never argued against people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. That is just a cheap rethorical device you are using because you are incapable of addressing the actual issue I raised.

You speak as if only counties following free-wheeling American capitalism have successful industrial leaders and innovators. What arrogance.

Why is it that whenever American libertarians are faced with criticism of their ideal system, they immediately assume their opponent is advocating something akin to the USSR? Is it because their system can only look good in comparison to a strawman?

Norway like most countries in Europe have a mixed economy. Primarily a capitalist economy with significant state involvement. There are many ways of doing that but it has had success in numerous countries from Germany, Nordics, to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and China.

You speak as if we would be living in the stone age if not for the splendor of American cut-throat capitalism. Get off your high hourse.

And even if that was true, how do you know it has anything to do with American free-wheeling capitalism and not American diversity and culture?

Do you know how the US government is in large part responsible for creating Silicon Valley? Or the role government played in creating the internet?

How about the web itself, that you now enjoy. A creation of CERN in Switzerland not an industry titan.

Or how about the fact that internet itself began as an idea in the Soviet Union which American spies reported on causing the US military to begin making a competing version. Ironically most people don't know about this, because the Russians failed to implement theirs.

Ironic to have this discussion as I have just had a discussion with a Chinese scientists extolling the virtues of Chinese dictatorship. Sure China has had lots of success. But would you accept that dictatorship has the honor for all the success?

I would not, but we tend to have a bias towards assuming that success must have happened due to a particular system and not in spite of it.