Sorry I didn’t know which other community to post this on😅. So let me take example of my country, Well so what most people don’t know, is that India is a socialist democracy by the constitution, and I must admit before I start that yes, there’s plenty of problems with this country, but I was surprised by how deep socialist roots go in this country, so I thought a few of India’s policies would make an excellent case study.
Firstly, a subtle one, existence of MRP, maximum retail price, on everything you buy. Packet of lays, coke, medicine, everything has an MRP, over which you cannot sell the product for. Enforcement had been weak historically, but even then you would only see people selling above MRP in amusement parks or movie theatres, for everyday shopping, you are almost always likely to pay the MRP price. I was surprised to know that such law doesn’t exist in the west, though feel free to correct me.
Second, India’s medicine patent laws. India has strict ‘non evergreening’ laws, which means a patent of a medicine cannot be extended unless you made the medicine better. Also government can give orders to bypass medicine patents if deemed necessary.
Third the farming in India. A nice rabbithole to dig in, but I am picking one example, Amul, the most popular brand of milk in India, is less like a company and more like a co-operative society, where they co-operate with regional dairy farms. Most of the money made by selling the milk actually goes back to the farmers.
Plenty of examples, but just these few I could think of. Infact MRP does not even exist in China, so in that policy, India is literally more left than China.
Yeah again, Indian laws in practice are riddled with corruption, but I think the template they work in are interesting, and I think west would tackle those problems a lot better.
Any more examples of socialist democracies?
Based on friends Ive met at university, who were from India, it sounds like your school systems are better designed as well.
Also every Indian I’ve met (at university) has really high math skills compared to an average American college student.
I even was trying to do this optics calculation for a project and couldn’t find any professor that was familiar with it but my friend from India who had a background in medical device engineering and psychology was like “oh yeah I’ve done those types of calculations” and she knew right away what I was trying to do.
She told me that math is incorporated into multiple subjects even at a young grade level. It’s not studied isolated like it is in Western schools.
She had learned the optics formula in biology class ! (Calculating depth of field of a human lens , btw).
She also told me that, at least in her school, spoken english was common so pretty much everyone knew how to speak it fluently.
I can’t recall what part of India she is from specifically. And I also admit that graduate students like her, often come from more affluent families so maybe her experience isn’t average. But she implied that it was.
We talked about a lot of culture things. Some things better over there. Some things not. Or just different.
But the school thing stuck out for me. Reminded me of the German approach when it comes to specializing. Even in high school the school determines what you are best suited for and you start your education then towards that career. Not how it works in the u.s. we have some flexibility of coursework but the school does not choose it for you. And the preparation courses are very limited. They are still mostly general education courses.
A wealthy part would be my guess!
Not wealthy as per se, but she definitely must have gone to a decent private school. Upper middle class most likely