"Gender equal" snow plowing in Sweden

So how were people supposed to get to those places where the sidewalks and pathways were cleared?

Here's an idea: Arteries, then feeders, then locals, and order them by volume. Sidewalks are definitely local, except right downtown where people live and public transport terminates.

I cannot believe that in a place like Sweden, that has no shortage of either snow or smart people, nobody told the Emperor he was naked before the first snowflake fell. Not only did somebody think this was a good idea, nobody anywhere down the chain of command, where the work actually gets done, was brave enough to bell the cat.

That says way too much about their society, IMO.

I agree with Christine - I assumed they mandated that equal numbers of men and women had to plough. And then the women couldn't plough as much. Wow I must be very sexist! 😃

Also, I SO agree with Don about this pro-Europe stuff. There's no excuse for being a fan of fiscal and governmental policies that aren't working. But as has been mentioned, can't let the facts mess with the narrative.

I guess if roads were always cleared first, and men used roads more than women, then it was an inadvertently unequal outcome by gender. Obviously some women would be using roads, too, and some men would be using sidewalks, but overall, it was disproportional. (Sidewalk discrimination?)

Very curious as to why women use sidewalks as opposed to cars more than men do.

Let's talk about that bolded part first. Obviously, Daddy drives the car, and Mommy walks Junior from the car to the Day Care. Everybody who grew up in the 50s understands that's just the way the world works.

When you look at it from that perspective, it looks like this new policy was actually the sexist one, whereas a policy that concentrated on the most-likely areas to congest first, is the logical one.

And this is the right's problem with "PC" in a nutshell, from what I can see. Doing stupid stuff that makes no sense unless viewed through a "politically correct" lens. Nobody could have seen that solution as a good one unless they were wearing some sort of double-plus-ungood "super equality glasses."

Now let's talk economics and the knowledge problem.

One of the central themes of the Austrian school of economics is that knowledge is dispersed throughout society, and those closest to the "front lines," as it were, have the fullest knowledge of how particular resources might best be used to fulfill important needs. As knowledge moves away from the "front lines," it gets summarized, regurgitated, and, in a political economy, politicized on its way up the command chain.

That poor information is then acted upon by someone unlikely to give it the full attention it deserves (remember they're making a lot of decisions for a lot of people, and trying to satisfy a diverse constituency with each decision, so the decision will tend toward the popular one, rather than the logical one anyway).

The most likely result will be bad decision-making leading to misallocation of resources, making society overall poorer as a result. This little tale of gendered snow-plowing is a textbook example of precisely that thesis.

Apparently the same process also makes society stupider.

Does that mean women who don't use sidewalks are categorized as street walkers?

Lowbrow jokes should not be sufficient for the ultimate penalty..................I'd have to think about puns if I were Rob.