Estonia is far ahead of most other places in terms of Internet technology and its use. Nobody will deny that. It is progressive in lots of other areas as well — what other country can you think of that’s got a head of government who’s in his 30s, for instance?

Estonia votes electronically, declares its taxes electronically, interacts with authorities electronically. Companies bill their customers electronically, and customers pay electronically.

In quite a few of these areas, other places have made headway as well. But none of them’s quite as far ahead as is Estonia. Superficially, all these things are impressive just as they’re described — but Estonia’s able to make them even more impressive in practice.

Take the bank link payment, for instance. Where back home in good old Switzerland people need to deal with payments separately, paying bills through their bank’s website at best, the Estonian standard is to click a bank icon on the site where you’re about to make the purchase. Enter your code, and you’re done.

No need to carry papers from one government office to the next either. All they need is your ID card, and they have it all at the ready — from your tax information to your medical history.

Can you hear the Swiss and the Brits scream? Neither of the two would want anything remotely comparable. Not for any comfort in the world. Not yet. Their paranoia is legendary when it comes to the security and safety of their personal data:

Here in Estonia, that’s not such a concern. In fact, in more than eight years in this country I’ve perhaps read two or three articles where somebody seriously questioned the established policies and procedures.

All the things the Internet doesn’t fix

There are issues right here in Futureland that would deserve to be mentioned perhaps a little more often —

Steadily rising prices, for instance. Rising prices that are choking off the economy but the state doesn’t even consider doing anything about, because it’s making plenty of money off the 20% VAT and would thus be acting against its own interests.

A habit of statistical cosmetics in many places, for example when the state advertises the effectiveness of its 20% flat-rate income tax abroad — and fails to mention that if you treat an employer’s expenses per single employee like other economies do it, the tax rate is actually almost twice as high.*

Feigning effectiveness and low cost by decoupling a large part of the state’s authorities and other organs and running them as companies also comes to mind.

The Estonian state is often thought of as a classically liberal construct. In truth, there is really very little to it that would fit such a classification.

The highs and lows aren’t limited to money. Evergreens in the category of all things up, but still rarely ever discussed, are domestic violence, alcoholism and the rate of HIV infection.

Things that are low must include a mention of tolerance against minorities such as homosexuals, immigrants, and people that aren’t white.

Plus there’s an ongoing gender debate, mainly circling around insufficient equality when it comes to getting paid. Another thing that’s carefully avoided whenever possible.

The infrastructure is an issue as well. As a particularly cynical friend of mine often says — he’s as Estonian as they come — “They haven’t come up with an app that fixes potholes yet.”

Debt is another point. Over just the past few years, we’ve had the chance to witness an evolution of credit services that’s been remarkable. First, there were private loans. They were followed by payday loans, then payday loans available by text message. After that came money in return for offering up a car as collateral, soon after that came additional mortgages. The latest thing now advertised are credit cards beyond the ones your local bank will give you.

Quite a development, and a good hint that we’re essentially all very badly out of money.

But consumption has to be kept going at any price — after all, the state famously only taxes moving capital, i.e. it only gets revenue when money changes hands, and VAT and excise duties are vital income.

Quite famously, if again only here, Ruta Arumäe, a former economic advisor to the Prime Minister recently bullied out of the club, has said that the economy of the country is run by “looking at spreadsheets” (Estonian article on Delfi).

So though Estonia may represent the future of the use of IT in government, you better hope it isn’t the future for everything else as well. But seeing as IT is the one thing the people at the top usually boast with, that’s probably all President Ilves was talking about anyway!