Is Croatia the best country to live in?

[teo123]

Hi, @Red, you asked me to create a thread about this.
So, one of the most convincing arguments I've heard for Croatia being the best country in the world today is the fact that it feels like the safest country in Europe:

Croatia is far safer than the US, in fact, it is also much safer than the UK. Does that argument sound compelling to you?

[Red]

Teo, are you being serious right now? How rigorous do you think this sort of self-reported data is? "Safe" in Croatia can carry a different connotation as it does eslewhere. Croatia does appear to have lower crime rates compared to other European countries, but are crimes reported as much in Croatia as they are in other countries? Are they reported the same way?

Regardless of where you are in the world, even in most poor countries, if you follow some basic common sense, it is incredibly unlikely for you to be victim to a violent crime walking down the street at night. I live in New York City, and I assure you, walking down the street at night here is not dangerous at all if you aren't an idiot.

This is just one cherry-picked example that appears to be played up by Croatian propoganda tanks so they can cling to something, knowing they are well behind other developed countries in many other metrics.

Anyway, that's just one very specific and vague metric. Why don't you compare Croatia to other countries in terms of quality of life, democracy, press freedom, life expectancy, education, corruption, healthcare, inequality, human rights, civil rights, etc? If you actually take some time to look into all of those, you'll notice that generally, Croatia falls below-average compared to most Western Countries. Sure, Croatia is certainly better to live in than most undeveloped nations, but that's a pretty low bar. If this is one of the most convincing arguments you've heard, then I have no hope for the other ones you've heard.

The US certainly has its problems too, but there's been significant progress in these areas, and growing movements to address then. I'm not going to be like you and act blind to the problems we have and say how we're the best place to live on Earth because we rank highly in quality of life, income, economic freedom, wealth, and education (and yes, we rank higher than Croatia in these categories). It's great in many respects, but we have a lot of progress to make.

I'm thinking I should just cease arguing with you Teo,not because I'm losing patience with you, but because at this point it's like you're just baiting arguments because you're bored, not because you're interested in having an actual discussion. It isn't just this post, it seems to have been like this for the past two or so years now.

[teo123]

Well, I don't know, @Red. My English teacher does tell me that the UK, where she had been, feels far less safe than Croatia.

By the way, did you know Croatia has the highest consumption of fruits and vegetables per capita in Europe?

And the meat consumption is among the lowest in Europe.

[Red]

And what's your point? Croatia's staples still focus very largely on animal products. According to that same site you pulled those stats from, Croatia consumes about as much meat as most other European countries, perhaps a little more:
https://landgeist.com/2021/10/05/meat-c ... in-europe/

If you thought that more vegetable consumption meant more vegetarians, you'd be wrong; People like consuming vegetables on the side with their meat. Germany and the UK as far as I know have the largest Vegetarian and Vegan populations on the continent, along with the Nordic countries.

Dude, you're not going to convince me that Croatia is the best country ever, just stop. You're going to have to face facts, as far as developed countries are concerned, Croatia is at best average in the vast majority of metrics and very often below average. Maybe if you stop thinking Croatia is such a great country, then maybe you'll feel a bit of an incentive to do something about it to help improve your country's metrics.

And no, I don't give a shit about how "unsafe" your English teacher felt in the UK.

[teo123]

I think that Croatia, right now, has one of the best (if unintentional) systems of checks and balances against unnecessary government growth in the world. I think it essentially has a libertarian government. Think about that: the Croatian prime minister, Andrej Plenković, is a right-winger, whereas the Croatian president, Zoran Milanović, is a left-winger. And the way Croatian politics functions these days is that Andrej Plenković complains about some societal problem and proposes a solution, and then Zoran Milanović tweets that he will veto that solution. And nothing ever gets done.

[Red]

I think that Croatia, right now, has one of the best (if unintentional) systems of checks and balances against unnecessary government growth in the world. I think it essentially has a libertarian government. Think about that: the Croatian prime minister, Andrej Plenković, is a right-winger, whereas the Croatian president, Zoran Milanović, is a left-winger. And the way Croatian politics functions these days is that Andrej Plenković complains about some societal problem and proposes a solution, and then Zoran Milanović tweets that he will veto that solution. And nothing ever gets done.

Oh yeah cause no other government on Earth has that sort of system. Not a single one.

[teo123]

I think that Croatia, right now, has one of the best (if unintentional) systems of checks and balances against unnecessary government growth in the world. I think it essentially has a libertarian government. Think about that: the Croatian prime minister, Andrej Plenković, is a right-winger, whereas the Croatian president, Zoran Milanović, is a left-winger. And the way Croatian politics functions these days is that Andrej Plenković complains about some societal problem and proposes a solution, and then Zoran Milanović tweets that he will veto that solution. And nothing ever gets done.

Oh yeah cause no other government on Earth has that sort of system. Not a single one.

In most of the countries, the prime minister and the president belong to the same political party and are working hand-in-hand (usually it ends up being against the people).

[brimstoneSalad]

A do nothing government that is gridlocked doesn't equate to a good one. You have two opposing ideologues sabotaging each other.
Don't tell me there are no taxes they're collecting for all of that not doing anything. If you got what you paid for but paid nothing that might be something to consider. But the effective tax rate in Croatia is insane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _tax_rates
It's a high income tax plus a high sales tax (in the U.S. by common comparison, when you have one you usually don't have as much of the other).
Way to impoverish a population without offering meaningful services if that's true.

You want a government that can act, but based on evidence for public good rather than ideology so funding can be spent wisely. Which unfortunately usually means a one party system, or one where the parties are so similar that it's hard to discern meaningful policy differences (arguably the U.S. until the past couple years). Once identity is out of it, it's easier to act on evidence.

Now whether those actions are for the public good or not is another matter, and that comes down to corruption. Acting on evidence for self-enrichment is obviously not ideal either, which is what we see in most one party states which become corrupt without the checks and balances.

Croatia ranks very high on the corruption index, so it really has to be gridlocked until that changes because any social policies are probably insane ideological pandering for votes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruptio ... ions_Index
If what you say is true, then realistically the politicians don't want the policies they're advocating to pass either.
However, not all countries are that corrupt.

Once government becomes less corrupt, you get slightly better people in office who want to compromise with the opposition to enact positive change, and those compromises at least tend to follow the evidence a bit better (as a tool in the toolbox of political discourse).

Governments across Western Europe and North America have a lot of problems, but I doubt Croatia has the solutions.
The good news is that Croatia's corruption index is improving a lot, so there could be some hope in the next few years.

[brimstoneSalad]

Well, I don't know, @Red. My English teacher does tell me that the UK, where she had been, feels far less safe than Croatia.

Dense urban poverty (as opposed to rural poverty) leads to increased density of crime. Your teacher has probably been to some larger cities in the UK. Small towns are pretty safe, as they are pretty much everywhere (except tourist traps).

Roughly twice as many people live in towns in Croatia vs. cities. In the UK it's reversed and then some, with some four times or more the population in cities vs. smaller towns.

You seem to be drawing some pretty wild conclusions here without looking carefully at causes of crime to compare them more directly.

You can make a strong argument that there are some benefits to living in a small town regardless of where you're living, but that still remains an option in pretty much any country. The more important thing about country level selection is the country level factors.

By the way, did you know Croatia has the highest consumption of fruits and vegetables per capita in Europe?
And the meat consumption is among the lowest in Europe.

That's cool, but you can still elect to eat more fruits and vegetables regardless of where you're living.

You need to stop cherry picking things that you can easily change at the household level, and look at national factors like healthcare availability and affordability and economy generally (including taxation and services).
In selecting a country, you need to ask about the unavoidable things.

[teo123]

But the effective tax rate in Croatia is insane

What do you mean? As far as I know, it's the Nordic countries that have a high tax rate. That's why left-wingers are advocating a higher tax rate: to try to be more like Norway.

but based on evidence for public good rather than ideology so funding can be spent wisely

What makes you think politicians are capable of following the evidence? Chances are, if they try to follow the evidence, they will be misled by a bunch of gibberish studies.
I mean, take a look at, for example, gun control. The vast majority of papers written about gun control are the so-called "natural experiments". The vast majority of the studies about gun control compare homicide rates in some city before and after some gun control law in that city was passed, and they conclude based on that whether it was effective or counter-productive. While that intuitively sounds like a reasonable methodology, it is total rubbish. Think of it this way: the vast majority of gun control laws only affect the sales of new guns. And there are 400 million guns already in the US. So, gun control laws only affect around 1% of total guns in existence. And homicide rates vary by around 6% from one year to the next. The signal-to-noise ratio is therefore at most 1:6. It is extremely unlikely that any such gun control study can arrive at a statistically significant result.
And if you mean that politicians should follow the opinion of the experts... Look, when economists agree on something, it is nearly always what the government shouldn't do (tarrifs, immigration restrictions, agricultural subsidies, rent ceilings...), rather than what it should do.
That's not to say all regulations are bad. There are some common sense regulations that are almost certainly beneficial. Probably any regulation that reduces the amount of antibiotics used in the egg industry is a good regulation. So are regulations requiring the ISPs to set up their DNS servers properly (so that they can't be used to massively amplify denial-of-service attacks). But the vast majority of regulations are either counter-productive or ineffective.