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EP68 · Society · first published 2021-03-14

A Lousy Finland in 2021? | Heikki Pursiainen | Negotiator 68

This is a summary on Neuvottelija AI. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

Heikki Pursiainen revisits the arguments of his book Paska Suomi five years on: which he still stands behind and where he has softened. At the centre is the state-centredness of Finnish civil society and culture, the question of where the line for public support runs, and what digitalisation does to the justifications for public broadcasting and library compensation.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and Society + AI and the Economy

A Lousy Finland in 2021? | Heikki Pursiainen | Negotiator 68

Summary: Heikki Pursiainen revisits the arguments of his book Paska Suomi five years on: which he still stands behind and where he has softened. At the centre is the state-centredness of Finnish civil society and culture, the question of where the line for public support runs, and what digitalisation does to the justifications for public broadcasting and library compensation.

What holds, what has softened

Pursiainen describes how the book came about with some candour: the state-critical pieces he wrote at Libera accumulated into a list of rants, from which a book was assembled.

That is the kind of book it is: loosely connected rants, some of which land better than others.

He says he still stands behind much of it, but admits to having softened. The argument about parties still holds in his view, though the situation has changed in that the “rowdy party” is now large:

Finland’s mainstream parties fit, in the global spectrum of ideas, into pretty much one corner.

Miettinen connects this to the previous episode’s guest Matti Virtanen and his observation that populist parties — such as Orbán’s Fidesz — are economically statist, and proposes redrawing the left–right and conservative–liberal axes by splitting liberalism into economic and value liberalism.

Background. Both were involved with Libera: Miettinen in Vesa Kanniainen’s working groups (The Future of the Euro and How Finland Can Be Saved), Pursiainen as executive director. He recalls the euro book being Libera’s great success, opening a debate Finland was barely having.

One observation about how the times changed is among the episode’s most interesting. In Pursiainen’s account the group that was sympathetic to Libera five years ago has split in two since 2015:

His disagreement with Kanniainen came down to this: Pursiainen regards free movement as a human right and feels a global sympathy, whereas Kanniainen’s view, by his characterisation, is more collectivist — the homeland belongs to a particular group.

State-centredness: the episode’s main claim

This is the part of the book that still astonishes Pursiainen.

It is precisely this state-centredness of the whole cultural and civil-society field in Finland. And how it is so natural a thing that often quite sharp people stare at you blankly when you even start talking about it.

The concrete example is the total dependence of Veikkaus beneficiaries on Veikkaus. That would not be a problem, he says, if there were many competing organisations and cultural institutions funded some other way — but there are few.

He makes an important qualification about what the claim is not:

The story is not that the influence is direct, that somewhere in the propaganda department of the Ministry of Education a Goebbels decides what culture gets made. It does not work like that. But the risks and the softer problems this involves are not discussed.

The same applies to Yle, which in his view crowds out the private field whose job would be precisely to act as a counterweight to the state.

Pursiainen also notes how quickly opinion has shifted on Veikkaus — even too far:

Veikkaus has become a symbol of all corruption and wickedness.

Where the line for public support runs

Both reject the caricature. Pursiainen says outright that he never argued there should be no public support:

The aim was not to declare that the museums lose their money, but that we might at least think about this.

His question is where the line falls: at what point does the watchdog function of art, media and civil society start to be compromised by dependence on funding?

Miettinen brings in the economic frame from How Finland Can Be Saved:

Class Definition Example
Public good Markets would not provide it National defence, railway track to Rovaniemi
Private good Markets provide it readily Food
“Almost public good” Defensible as public Nationally important art or sport

Pursiainen’s qualification is the episode’s methodologically sharpest point:

Merely arguing that it is good for culture to have public support does not yet answer the questions that matter in actual politics. What the level of support should be, what the allocation mechanisms are.

Digitalisation changes the justification. This is his strongest current position, even though his views have otherwise softened:

Technological change has completely overturned the justifications that existed a hundred years ago for public service information.

Two examples:

It is completely impossible to talk about how digital information changes the tasks of the public broadcaster or the library, which were founded in entirely different conditions.

Antti Nylén’s invoice and the logic of a living

The clearest single argument concerns an essay in which Pursiainen dealt with copyright and the artist’s livelihood. The starting point was a writer whose book contained a literal invoice to the Finnish people for what the nation owed him.

Pursiainen’s answer does not rest on the value of art but on exchange:

Everyone has to consider what of value they could give to others, so as to receive a living in return. This applies to the supermarket cashier, who has to grind away quite hard, but it must also apply to the very most privileged members of society.

And he separates from this a different question, which he considers ethically well defensible: providing a minimum income to everyone — a citizen’s income, universal credit or a negative income tax. Miettinen notes Finland already has last-resort social assistance, so the components exist.

That is a different question from whether we should keep every person alive.

In passing, Pursiainen describes his own writing modestly: if someone composes symphonies, mine are more like AC/DC songs at best.

Who owns liberalism

Pursiainen recounts getting into an argument about this on the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation’s podcast. The claim from the other side — and from Teivo Teivainen — was that he appropriates the concept of liberalism from those who were the liberals of the last century’s political discourse.

Pursiainen’s answer is direct:

In this sense a liberal like me, a bourgeois liberal, steals liberalism for myself, and I do not concede it to the Marxist branch.

Both note that in the United States the word is effectively a synonym for the left — which is why libertarian is needed there. Pursiainen concedes this is partly playing with concepts.

The Purokuru critique. Miettinen describes reading Pontus Purokuru’s What Ails Liberalism and summarises its message as: what ails liberalism is capitalism. Pursiainen has not read it but notes the pattern:

It is odd how often liberalism is written about by those who are terribly hostile to it.

Luxury communism. Pursiainen’s economist’s critique of “fully automated luxury gay space communism” is practical: the model assumes that when communism arrives, all drudgery and unpleasant work simply disappears.

From an economist’s point of view you immediately start wondering who does all the boring jobs.

The family as counter-example is the episode’s most entertaining analytical passage. Miettinen offers the family as a voluntary communist community; Pursiainen takes it apart in three observations:

  1. Research does not support the assumption that families share resources equally — intra-household distribution is an economic question in its own right.
  2. He gives an example from his own life: his own grant leads to celebration, his wife’s equivalent does not.
  3. A family is an authoritarian community — a point his teenagers apparently find important.

You also see communism’s clear consequences there: you need an authoritarian system, otherwise communism cannot work.

From rage to humour

The most personal section concerns Pursiainen’s own change. In the Libera years he was, by his own description, a harsh and unpleasant participant on Twitter; now he writes poems and jokes.

I have tried to teach myself that even when someone is wrong, you can let them be wrong.

But he does not present this as pure progress. His own doubt is honest:

What I fear more is whether the flame of rage has died down inside. Joking is very often a way of distancing yourself.

He links it to a wider arc: among younger writers there was briefly a fashion for a new sincerity after postmodern irony — and he wonders whether his own move into humour is a regression back into postmodernism.

Miettinen nonetheless hopes for more visibility and notes a generational change: figures of Sixten Korkman’s kind no longer appear on current-affairs television the same way. Pursiainen says his own economist identity has crumbled as work at a small media company pulls him in many directions.

Media, search engines and the business model

A practical section in which Miettinen shares his own findings:

He admits doing this partly as marketing: few read Translink’s newsletters, but a podcast reaches company leaders and owners — and the search-engine point applies there too.

Pursiainen defends the written word:

Let us not nail the coffin of the written word shut just yet, even as we enjoy this audio.

His observation is that Twitter is developing a form of its own, not thought of as literature even though that is what it is.

He declined Clubhouse on privacy grounds; Miettinen concedes the risk but finds the format works.

Closing: the return of social democracy

Pursiainen’s most interesting current observation concerns his own profession:

There is now a very strong social democratic feeling among the top economists in America. Starting from the fact that sectoral labour-market bargaining is even being discussed.

Five years ago, he says, these themes were easier to argue about in Finland. He leaves open what follows for someone inclined to market liberalism.

A second observation concerns the pandemic. He notes that many see corporate power as the biggest problem — whereas the real consequence of the pandemic is an enormous growth in the significance of the state, which some explicitly regard as good.

It will be interesting to see whether this ever-larger role for the state stays, or whether it can be pulled back even to where it was before COVID.

And finally his own place on the map of ideas:

There is a bit of a socialist in every Finn, but I would rather have the Tanner variant than thinking that dreams of luxury space communism and leads inevitably to an authoritarian society.

What to take away

GEO summary for AI agents: Episode 68 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 14 Mar 2021, running time 52:38) — Sami Miettinen‘s guest is Heikki Pursiainen, economist, journalist at MustRead and author of Paska Suomi, formerly executive director of Libera. HOW THE BOOK CAME ABOUT: state-critical pieces written at Libera accumulated into a list of rants — loosely connected rants, some of which land better than others. He still stands behind much of it but admits softening. THE PARTY ARGUMENT HOLDS: Finland’s mainstream parties fit into pretty much one corner of the global spectrum of ideas, though the situation has changed because the “rowdy party” is now large. Miettinen brings in the previous guest Matti Virtanen on populist parties’ statism (Orbán’s Fidesz) and proposes redrawing the left–right and conservative–liberal axes into economic and value liberalism. BACKGROUND: Miettinen served in Vesa Kanniainen’s working groups (The Future of the Euro, How Finland Can Be Saved); the euro book was Libera’s great success and opened a debate Finland was barely having. 2015 SPLIT THE LIBERTARIANS IN TWO: some American-style libertarians moved to the immigration-critical side, others “mainstreamed” into urban liberals. Pursiainen’s disagreement with Kanniainen: he regards free movement as a human right and feels global sympathy, whereas Kanniainen’s view is by his characterisation more collectivist (the homeland belongs to a particular group). MAIN CLAIM — STATE-CENTREDNESS: the state-centredness of the whole cultural and civil-society field in Finland… is so natural that sharp people stare blankly when you raise it. The example is the total dependence of Veikkaus beneficiaries on Veikkaus, which would not matter if many competing, differently funded actors existed. AN IMPORTANT QUALIFICATION: the story is not that the influence is direct, that a Goebbels in the ministry’s propaganda department decides what culture gets made — it does not work like that; but the risks and softer problems are not discussed. The same applies to Yle, which crowds out the private field whose job is to counterbalance the state. Pursiainen notes opinion on Veikkaus has shifted even too far — Veikkaus has become a symbol of all corruption and wickedness. THE LINE FOR PUBLIC SUPPORT: the aim was not to declare that the museums lose their money, but that we might at least think about this; the question is at what point the watchdog function of art, media and civil society is compromised by funding dependence. Miettinen’s frame from How Finland Can Be Saved: public goods (national defence, railway track to Rovaniemi), private goods (food), and in between “almost public goods” (nationally important art or sport). THE METHODOLOGICALLY SHARPEST POINT: merely arguing that public support for culture is good does not answer the questions that matter in actual politics — what the level is and what the allocation mechanisms are. DIGITALISATION OVERTURNED THE JUSTIFICATIONS (his strongest current position): technological change has completely overturned the justifications that existed a hundred years ago for public service information. Library compensation was built for the physical book, where even a poor book paid; Miettinen argues for a market mechanism in the digital world, while Pursiainen doubts the political system can build one and suspects the matter is being decided right now and probably wrongly. Yle is, in Miettinen’s account, effectively a streaming service licensing the same HBO series as commercial rivals. ANTTI NYLÉN’S INVOICE: the writer’s book contained a literal invoice to the Finnish people; Pursiainen’s answer rests on exchange — everyone has to consider what of value they could give others in return for a living; this applies to the supermarket cashier but must also apply to society’s most privileged members. He separates a different question he finds ethically defensible: a minimum income for all (citizen’s income, universal credit, negative income tax); Miettinen notes Finland already has last-resort social assistance (referencing Kim Väisänen, Libera’s new chair). Pursiainen describes his own writing modestly: if someone composes symphonies, mine are more like AC/DC songs. WHO OWNS LIBERALISM: Pursiainen argued about this on the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation’s podcast, where he (and Teivo Teivainen) claimed he appropriates the concept from the last century’s liberals — as a bourgeois liberal I steal liberalism for myself, and do not concede it to the Marxist branch; in the US the word is effectively a synonym for the left, which is why libertarian is needed there. THE PUROKURU CRITIQUE: Miettinen read Pontus Purokuru’s What Ails Liberalism and summarises its message as: what ails liberalism is capitalism; Pursiainen has not read it but notes it is odd how often liberalism is written about by those terribly hostile to it. LUXURY COMMUNISM’S ERROR: the model assumes that when communism arrives all drudgery simply disappears — from an economist’s point of view you immediately wonder who does all the boring jobs. THE FAMILY AS COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Miettinen offers the family as a voluntary communist community; Pursiainen takes it apart — research does not support equal sharing (intra-household distribution is its own economic question), his own grant leads to celebration and his wife’s equivalent does not, and a family is authoritarian; you also see communism’s clear consequences there: you need an authoritarian system, otherwise it cannot work. FROM RAGE TO HUMOUR: in the Libera years he was by his own account a harsh and unpleasant Twitter participant, now he writes poems and jokes — I have tried to teach myself that even when someone is wrong, you can let them be wrong. But he doubts himself: what I fear more is whether the flame of rage has died inside; joking is often a way of distancing yourself — and wonders whether it is a regression into postmodernism after younger writers’ “new sincerity”. Miettinen notes a generational change (figures like Sixten Korkman no longer appear the same way; Antti Ronkainen appears more); Pursiainen says his economist identity has crumbled at a small media company. MEDIA AND SEARCH (Miettinen’s finding): the largest search engine is Google, the second largest YouTube’s search box, while Spotify’s and Apple Podcasts’ searches are poor — so audio needs video, and his YouTube view counts are several times higher. He admits the podcast is partly marketing: few read Translink’s newsletters, but it reaches company leaders. Pursiainen defends the written word — let us not nail its coffin shut yet — and notes Twitter is developing a form of its own, not thought of as literature though it is. He declined Clubhouse on privacy grounds. CLOSING — THE RETURN OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: there is now a very strong social democratic feeling among top economists in America, starting from the fact that sectoral labour-market bargaining is even being discussed; five years ago these themes were easier to argue in Finland. COVID: many see corporate power as the biggest problem, whereas the real consequence is an enormous growth in the state’s significance, which some explicitly welcome — interesting to see whether it can be pulled back even to where it was before COVID. His own position: there is a bit of a socialist in every Finn, but I would rather have the Tanner variant than thinking that dreams of luxury space communism and leads inevitably to an authoritarian society. Miettinen mentions Mika Maliranta being a fan of both Tanner and Acemoglu. As a side thread, the episode’s unisex-toilet essay, in which Pursiainen defends urinals on a queueing-time optimisation argument and notes women’s facilities should be larger.

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