Why not? Sweden is a great country on a lot of measures. Shouldn't quality of life count more? Or access to free, high quality health care for you and your family? Free education for your children? What if that kind of openness is in fact improving the society? Norway is very transparent as well.

It seems irrational to deny oneself and ones family the opportunity of moving to some of the best countries in the world (on a lot of measures) due to principle.

I guess the matter is trust. It is hard to become more trusting as adults, and yet, society works much better when the baseline of trust is higher.

It's not free healthcare/education, it's paid with taxes.

Why would the government publishing my personal information help me? Or is it that publishing my personal information would help other people more than it would harm me?

Sure, there are costs of course, but not for you as a patient or parent or student*, only as a tax payer. The discussion is also raised here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26440702

If making more information public increases trust, both between government and citizens and among citizens, then it's good for all. Of course, not all information should be public, but transparency is often useful.

And different stances in these kind of questions are probably adaptive in different societies. Publishing financial information is not adaptive if there is a high risk of being robbed as a result**. Having your address public is nice if all you get is flowers and post cards.

However, my main point was that "never move to Sweden" because more information about you is public, is quite unproportional as Sweden is one of the best countries to live in.

* There as some fees though, at least in Norway, but there is a limit of about $300 above which you don't need to pay for medical treatment. Some medicines have small costs, and there is also a fee for skipping your appointment without cancelling in advance. University costs about $80 per semester, but you're eligible for a public grant of ~$4 000 per semester.

** There is an ongoing case in Norway where a billionaire's wife has been kidnapped with a demanded ransom of €9 000 000. However, the police seems to believe that the motive is not merely financial https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B8renskog-forsvinningen

Thanks. I think "how much better is X country over Y country for me" depends on the circumstances of the person. E.g. for people who have health insurance in the USA (~90%), it's a different situation than for people who don't.

Well... for me, there's literally no reason my neighbors (or any other random person on the internet) needs to know all that information about me or my family...

It's funny how much energy there is behind things like GDPR preventing a company from transferring people's email address to a partner, when, by comparison, this is much more sensitive information.

I don't think that having free healthcare or college requires baring private financial and other information to any nosy busybody who wants it.

Thank you for the nuances; my main issue with the comment was dismissing Sweden as an option for good, which seemed quite unproportional. Sweden is a good country to live in, regardless of their policy on sharing this kind of information

Personally, I think openness about taxes, fortune etc. is good to check that everyone contributes as they should. But before it was protected by login, at least in Norway, there was a (minor) problem with maps showing which streets had the wealthiest inhabitants (the police didn't like it)