I went to Korea (the south) a few weeks ago. I had a great time. The food was wonderful and the people friendly. Quite a few Koreans thought I was Viggo Mortensen in the Lord of the Rings, which was a bonus.

The scary thing about Korea is the Koreans: they work harder than us, they are smarter than us, and they are paid less than we are. In the long run, I’m having a hard time identifying an industry where Swedes and the Swedish way will be able to compete (i.e be better than them).

People usually respond to this by saying “sure, but the Asians can’t really design stuff, they can only produce, so we’ll keep all the fun and lucrative work”, and so on. But they’re wrong – the Koreans, and the Chinese, and the Indians, they’re learning to design, and they’re learning fast, and then what will we do?

Thinking about this, my gut reaction was: “Close the borders! Lock the gates! If we can’t win, let’s not compete! Help!” But then I started to think a bit more, and maybe my gut is wrong this time. Maybe I shouldn’t think of the Koreans as a threat.

No matter how brilliant the Koreans are, they won’t be able to produce everything on their own. So if they have access to an open market, which they do, they will always be better off by specializing on certain things, and then trade their goods on the market (I guess this is what people refer to as comparative advantages). For us Swedes, this is good news as well – we can also specialize, and sell on the open market. As long as we’re not trying to produce sell the same exact things as the Koreans, we will be fine. If not, we’ll be screwed (as you might have noticed, SAAB / VOLVO / all the Swedish ship builders).

Since we’ll not be working as hard as they are, or have as good education, or own natural resources that will last forever, we will ultimately be poorer than the Koreans, no matter how much we trade between our borders. But that’s OK to me – I rather have my 6 weeks vacation and my weekends off.