In all fairness, the english way has it's pros. For one thing, one of the most common mistakes in swedish writing is inserting spaces into words that should be written as one ("särskrivning"). This kind of error looks very bad to those of us who know how to write in swedish, and unfortunately, it seems as though the others (those who apparently can't write in swedish), have started to infiltrate a lot of the smaller PR firms, companies etc. In english, this problem can not exist.
My supporting evidence can be found in any basic textbook in public economics. Obviously Microsoft is not a pure monopoly, since we have Linux, OS X, Unix etc, but it's pretty close. The main reason why Microsoft is not, and can not be, a pure monopoly is because all OS'es are not exactly the same, and thus people will not choose their OS on price alone. If that was the case, Microsoft could set their price lower than any competitor (because of increasing returns to scale in software production), and thus push all competitors out of the market. They would then be able to overprice their product. And sure, Microsoft cannot bar competitors from entering the market, but the market itself can, since the OS market has pretty a high entrance cost (writing an OS is not cheap).
As i said, the argument is not perfectly applicable to the software market, but i think the Microsoft near-monopoly shows that it is not entirely flawed either.
As for "socially optimal amount", that is the amount that maximizes the utility of society, in other words, the amount where the marginal benefit to society equals the marginal cost to society.
As for the more general discussion on whether government monopolies are ever optimal, how do you suggest we should pay for city streets and squares? Privately owned? Then who pays? Should you have to pay a toll to go to the shopping street in your city? How would that effect the business of the shops? What about the police, or the legal system? Could these be better operated by private firms?
Government monopolies are optimal in some areas, the main area being the production of public goods. A public good is non-rivalrous (my consumption doesn't effect your consumption of the same good) and non-excludable (you can't exclude people from comsuming the good). This type of good can't be produced privately, because there is no possibility for profit. Still, it might be good for society to produce a certain amount of the good. Thus, the government does it.
Now, software is certainly non-rivalrous, and to some extent is becoming more and more non-excludable.
More importantly, though, is that software production exhibits increasing returns to scale (the more you produce, the less the average cost per unit is). This generally leads to monopolies, (see Microsoft). A private monopoly will overprice and underproduce the good, while a government monopoly can produce the socially optimal amount by just covering its costs, either by setting price equal to cost or by tax financing.
So there are actually a few arguments for having the government produce software. Of course, since all software isn't identical, it wouldn't even be a monopoly.
Comparing taxes as percentages of GDP between countries is not very useful because of different welfare systems and other factors. For example, in Sweden subsidies are taxed, unlike some other countries, which means that Sweden will appear to have much higher taxes compared to some other countries.
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In all fairness, the english way has it's pros. For one thing, one of the most common mistakes in swedish writing is inserting spaces into words that should be written as one ("särskrivning"). This kind of error looks very bad to those of us who know how to write in swedish, and unfortunately, it seems as though the others (those who apparently can't write in swedish), have started to infiltrate a lot of the smaller PR firms, companies etc. In english, this problem can not exist.
My supporting evidence can be found in any basic textbook in public economics. Obviously Microsoft is not a pure monopoly, since we have Linux, OS X, Unix etc, but it's pretty close. The main reason why Microsoft is not, and can not be, a pure monopoly is because all OS'es are not exactly the same, and thus people will not choose their OS on price alone. If that was the case, Microsoft could set their price lower than any competitor (because of increasing returns to scale in software production), and thus push all competitors out of the market. They would then be able to overprice their product. And sure, Microsoft cannot bar competitors from entering the market, but the market itself can, since the OS market has pretty a high entrance cost (writing an OS is not cheap). As i said, the argument is not perfectly applicable to the software market, but i think the Microsoft near-monopoly shows that it is not entirely flawed either. As for "socially optimal amount", that is the amount that maximizes the utility of society, in other words, the amount where the marginal benefit to society equals the marginal cost to society. As for the more general discussion on whether government monopolies are ever optimal, how do you suggest we should pay for city streets and squares? Privately owned? Then who pays? Should you have to pay a toll to go to the shopping street in your city? How would that effect the business of the shops? What about the police, or the legal system? Could these be better operated by private firms?
Government monopolies are optimal in some areas, the main area being the production of public goods. A public good is non-rivalrous (my consumption doesn't effect your consumption of the same good) and non-excludable (you can't exclude people from comsuming the good). This type of good can't be produced privately, because there is no possibility for profit. Still, it might be good for society to produce a certain amount of the good. Thus, the government does it. Now, software is certainly non-rivalrous, and to some extent is becoming more and more non-excludable. More importantly, though, is that software production exhibits increasing returns to scale (the more you produce, the less the average cost per unit is). This generally leads to monopolies, (see Microsoft). A private monopoly will overprice and underproduce the good, while a government monopoly can produce the socially optimal amount by just covering its costs, either by setting price equal to cost or by tax financing. So there are actually a few arguments for having the government produce software. Of course, since all software isn't identical, it wouldn't even be a monopoly.
Comparing taxes as percentages of GDP between countries is not very useful because of different welfare systems and other factors. For example, in Sweden subsidies are taxed, unlike some other countries, which means that Sweden will appear to have much higher taxes compared to some other countries.