You Can't Have Denmark Without Danes
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
As the article points out, we're struggling to absorb outsiders. Teaching a Romanian immigrant, or a refugee from the middle east that it's completely safe to trust others is extremely hard. Likewise when an outsider break that trust Danes become extremely upset and hostile.
We're also becoming increasingly distrusting of other Danes, as people seem to become increasingly self-centred. This was a debate in a radio show a few weeks ago, sadly the reason wasn't discussed, only the danger of losing trust. Trust is hard to build, and our government is increasingly looking towards control and surveillance to ensure safety instead. Stores are moving certain items up to the register, because thieve simply walk out with entire boxes of Nutella or instant coffee.
As a Dane this is extremely disheartening to watch. The feeling that the safe, stable, equal and embracing society, you grew up in, is slowly evaporating isn't a pleasant one.
The problem comes from the recent wave and semi-open borders within EU that make it easy for some mafias to move into the country to commit crime. It's a tought problem.
I met a group of young, liberal, well-educated Danes on a trip to Japan once and later, accepted their invitation to visit Denmark, where I stayed for about ten days.
Make no mistake - these were picture-perfect Copenhagen Danes with exactly the liberal and progressive bent that you would expect and they were quite well educated and relatively wealthy (one of them even had a car!).
These people did not beat around the bush: they can't stand "the turks", they don't understand why they are there or why they behave the way they do and they cannot believe that their society has been infiltrated in this way.
It wasn't hateful, or even racist per se ... just a very pragmatic rejection of events.
This was in 2004 - I can't imagine they feel any better now.
Of course, in his eyes he was not an immigrant, but an expatriate.
A little of effort trying to understand others can make wonders. Most immigrants behave, a few not. Of those, a few are just bad persons, but most are just poor an uneducated and probably they would prefer to be in their home countries.
If immigrants are so problematic, maybe we should be looking into what, in many cases, our governments are doing (or not doing) in their native countries.
Unfortunately we've had a series of governments with increasingly bad integration policies, leading to ghettoes and increased friction.
Both left and right leaning governments have failed to implement good integration policies. The parties on the left have been to naive and assume that things would naturally work them selves out: They trusted that the people coming into the country would want to learn the language, integrate and become Danes. On the right the opposite was assume, that the policies should be to not let people feel welcome, in the hope that they would leave.
Troublesome groups are let in, because Denmark is legally required to. But the evaporation of trust in others isn't purely an immigration issue, it happens between Dane as well, and that's worse because we're not entirely sure why it's happening.
Even if all the groups came from high trust countries, if combined they do not feel a sense of shared values, patriotism, they will have low trust between these groups.
I'm reminded of "The Evolution of Trust" [0], a fun and interesting online simulation of agent-based cooperation with iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas. Of course no society is perfectly uniformly cooperate/cooperate, but some have an equilibrium that is more in that direction than others. It's a property that can be eroded by the exploitation of group norms you describe, and the system has to adapt by assuming more malice on the part of others.
I wonder if anyone has written deeply on the trend toward externalizing and formalizing implicit/informal trust structures. Of course it's not a new thing (think of Renaissance-era credit systems that were arising that allowed for wide-ranging merchant trade in the absence of face-to-face individual trust), but the rise of the police state, cryptocurrencies, and even the new Amazon Go stores that outsource anti-theft trust to computer vision all seem to be an increasing trend toward assuming that informal trust is impossible in our new environment and that alternate formal systems are necessary.
Am Romanian, reading how the author was robbed on the bus because he had the invalid impression that because it was a Danish bus there would be no thieves in it almost made me start out laughing. One of the first reflexes I developed when I moved to Bucharest as a freshman student almost 20 years ago was to always check my back-pocket for my wallet (and later my front-left pocket for the phone). I still do that gesture up to the present day. I could also tell you how about 10-12 years ago a woman tried to convince me, my ex-wife and my ex-MIL that her son was badly injured in a Bucharest hospital, about to die, and that she needed some money in that very moment, she was crying out in the middle of the street just in front of us. My ex-wife would have given said lady money, but something seemed suspicious to both me and to my ex-MIL and we didn't. We returned to the same area about 15-20 minutes later and said women was still in the same place, this time not crying, calm, waiting for another "victim" to pick.
Not trusting people by default is not bad, it's an evolutionary trait that has helped us as a social species over the millennia. I'm just reading a wonderful book that it's based on not trusting people and which, nevertheless, has had an immense positive influence, I'm talking about the collection of articles called "The Federalist Papers" by Madison, Hamilton and Jay.
But later on I realized more deeply that Norway is a tiny fraction of the population of the USA as well as a very culturally (and let's face it, racially) homogeneous population.
Similar arguments can be made about Denmark, of course.
But, comparing Norway to the U.S.A. would be odd. From over here, the U.S.A. can be compared to the E.U., in which case the comparison should be between American states and European countries.
Specifically for Norway, it would be like a state in the middle of the U.S.A. that never actually became part of the union, but with really good ties with everyone regardless.
Less than 20% of Canada is a "visible minority." In the U.S., it's almost 40%. Toronto recently became a majority minority city. Washington, D.C. became a majority minority city sometime in the 1950s. In Chicago, it was sometime in the 1980s. Canada has no majority-minority provinces. Ontario is still 67% European (roughly on par with Connecticut). Our two largest states, California and Texas, are both majority-minority states.
Recency matters too. Much of Canada's diversity is very recent. American politics has in contrast been shaped by these conflicts for decades (really, from inception--we fought a whole civil war over race!).
People who look, worship (or not), work and have other things alike then to cluster together and have a sort of herd mentality.
In a place like the US, we have dramatically different groups of people all over the place. In Norway or Denmark, the differences are nonexistent to an American eye.
In Oslo, capital of Norway, 32% of the population are immigrants.
Also, when you say "chosen to defer the use of their wealth", you mean "invest at a rate of about 6% annually"? As long as they're otherwise meeting all of their commitments, I'm not seeing the problem.
To more directly answer your question: the fund is the sort of level-headed strategic genius that only a sane country like Norway could pull off. Compare Alaska.
They're also highly deregulatory. Denmark just got rid of its version of the FCC: http://reason.com/archives/2017/04/04/deregulate-the-fcc. Sweden's approach to building fiber in rural areas is a simple tax rebate of up to $600 for rural folks who choose to have a fiber line built. There's serious discussion in Sweden of things like water privatization.
So the challenge to implementing the "Scandinavian model" isn't just our "southern voters," who oppose more social spending, but also our "San Francisco voters," who insist on a narrow tax base bankrolling that broad social spending, more government intervention, etc.
And ultimately, it comes down to lack of trust. Americans don't trust each other, probably with good reason. Take abortion, for example. In Denmark, like most western European countries, abortion is only permitted up to 12 weeks absent special circumstances. And parental consent is required for minors. In Sweden it's 22 weeks, which is an outlier for Europe. In the U.S., 12 weeks with parental consent would probably be unconstitutional. Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, etc., match Sweden at 22 weeks, and most blue states are at 24-26 weeks.
But in Scandinavia, there is some level of consensus, and abortions are readily available to women under 12 weeks. Even in "blue states," while one side has managed to wrangle 51% of the votes and get a 24-week deadline, the other side has managed to erect roadblocks like restrictions on abortion clinics, which make it very difficult for women to actually get an abortion when they're legally permitted to do so. We're a fragmented and distrustful society that doesn't trust each other, and our stalemates often leave us with the "worst of both worlds."
That's not saying "people can not trust others of a different skin color", but it is saying that generally speaking, people in more ethnically diverse communities are less trusting of each other. Call that what you will :)
You can’t count a bunch of blonde German & French doctors and engineers as disrupting the fabric of society.
Denmark has less than 4% non-Western immigrants while the US has nearly 25%.
Now, that although that has changed, the article mentions the large immigrant population isn't well integrated in society in Denmark, well they aren't in Sweden either. It would be fair to say that there are multiple parallel societies. Political and business life is to a large extent dominated by ethnic Swedes.
[0] http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subjec...
I think what makes a comparison difficult with the US is the difference race and ethnicity make between countries (eg, Sweden and US). In the US there are many negative correlations with race and ethnicity that make diversity comparisons simple to make (although not necessarily accurate). So people can easily look for diversity by just checking race demographics. It’s also difficult because some people talking about race are racists who have incorrect beliefs, but it’s hard to tell who’s who at first.
When looking at Sweden it’s not straightforward to look at race and I couldn’t even find solid numbers that describe Sweden by race, although only spent a few minutes googling. But in the US, racial demographics are immediately available.
If you compare nation of birth != Sweden that’s not necessarily useful comparing to the US as it includes other culturally similar peoples (eg, Norwegians). It would be like saying New York is diverse because it includes lots of people born in Connecticut while not breaking out those born in Somalia.
The comparison that is relevant is what are the diverse cultures, specifically those from lower socioeconomic status. Unless you can check that mix, then it’s not very useful to compare and make claims.
Of course, the purpose of comparison isn’t to achieve some sort of purity goal, that’s insane. But to identify what interventions are most effective based on cultural composition. While theoretically a country would higher social cohesion by getting rid of all the different peoples (Denmark pretty much did this is WW2 with the help of the Nazis). This is short sighted (hurts World to help country) and immoral (genocide is bad).
I think this article gets something right, pointing out trust. Another word would be "solidarity" - believing you 'owe' your fellow countryman and that you are on the same team. What's good for you is good for me.
In Denmark, we pay something like 50% tax but we also get a lot of things covered by our state which other countries let the individuals get through expensive insurance.
This means that if my neighbour get rich, I'm happy since that means a better school for my (and his) children, help for my (and his) old parents, roads that gets fixed etc. (Edit: some of the money goes to the state and EU, while a healthy chunk stays in the municipality - this keeps the money close)
My point: it only works if people are indeed on the same team.
That is why big nations are a detriment to this model. If the taxes disappear into black holes, negligent waste and corruption the system crumbles quickly. And as we all know, it takes much longer time to build trust that to kill it. It is a constant battle (which right now, it feels like we're losing, but that doesn't matter for this post).
Can big nations like the U.S. copy this? Well, Denmark is about the size of your average state. So yeah, if each state made an effort to make the public sector make sense internally on state level, it could.
I don't think it will, though. The cultural gap is too wide and expecting people to always be looking out for number one isn't seen as a bad thing.
Just remember that Danes/Scandinavians aren't better people than others (except Swedes; we're ALL better than Swedes!). It is a matter of choice and goals.
I'm not sure I buy that. Say you're tasked with planning and building a whole new city in an isolated place. Do you want to bring along 10,000 randomly-selected Bangladeshis, or 10,000 randomly-selected Danes? As a Bangladeshi myself, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat. I think you can fairly blame circumstance for it, but at the end of the day, Bangladeshi culture has a higher tolerance for corruption, theocracy, opportunism, etc., than European cultures I have experienced. (But I'm biased--2/3 of Bangladeshis think I should be executed for apostasy. The odds are not in my favor!)
Also, in Denmark, the standard sentence for murder is like 12 years, while in America you can get 12 years for far less. We voted for that. Doesn't that make Danes better than Americans?
In my opinion, yes. That is my culture and I stand by it.
But my point is that Danes aren't inherently better. It isn't like Scandinavians are some kind of master race with genes of goodness and kind hearts.
It is about growing and maintaining a culture and system of warranted trust, and that isn't easy. But having said that, it is just work. Every nation can do it if they set their mind to it.
While it is indeed true that California is a net-tax-contributor to the United States, it's fairly new that this is a point of contention or a "gripe" from Californians.
A much more prevalent complaint, in my experience, is that Californians pay the same ~50% in taxes that Danish people do, but have much, much worse public policy and infrastructure outcomes.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-californi...
It's almost as if trying to centrally plan for dozens of drastically different types of societies and regions isn't efficient, or as effective as a smaller, actually representative government or something. Just ask the USSR.
Maybe we could break up the US into some sort of territories, so like-minded people could gather, and govern themselves based on local needs...
Again, this is just a few negative statements, there are lot of positive areas (Free hospitals and education comes to mind). If we could just be less complacent we would have a lot better future.
Is it so bad that people have "complacent" lives when there is enough resources? Maybe, people should aspire to a life of heroic struggled nevermind the circumstances?
How do you expect to lose those? If something, I would expect they increase and that allowing people to be even more 'complacent'.
I do have a negative mindset against I welfare system and its lack of work incentive, though. I feel like it should be handled differently, such as through not giving you money, but rather feeding you directly. A system that ensures health and survival, nothing more.
I still remember the voice of some people being interviewed when some welfare rates fell: "I have to sell my car now!", "Why does my living standard have to be reduced just because I don't have a job?", "I'm not going to accept a job at Netto, I'm too well educated for that"...
(For outsiders not understanding the "sell my car thing": Denmark is very bicycle oriented, and have very good public transportation. Cars are only a necessity if you live in the middle of nowhere.)
At least in the US people born into wealthier families make way more money than average, so there isn't anything inherently demotivating about welfare.
Why shouldn't unemployed people be allowed to live a comfortable life, not just the bare minimum of subsistence?
I know quite a few that have been on the unemployment safety net for years (which appears to be quite a normal duration), and while it seemed to care for them very well, a growing depression appears to be standard once you end up there, which kills motivation to get out. I would assume that this is due to one likely already being very vulnerable and at least halfway depressed when unemployment hits you.
I don't think providing a stable and independent, but unhealthy environment helps those people. We have tried to ensure progress by forcing people to go to a job center every day, but if they're not motivated for a job, they won't get any. It becomes a chore that just contributes to a pointless living.
The secondary reason is that it is expensive, and paid by the employed. Getting people employed fast means more money to support when there is need.
Instead of making the stick bigger and more scary, why don't we focus on making the carrot tastier instead?
Having a job is not a goal in itself, having a decent life is. A job is simply a tool to that end (and not the only one).
I don't think there is much of a way to make the goal "nicer" (we can't demand that the jobs get better, and there is already significant benefit: better living standard, better mental health), so the only solution I can think of is to ensure that the hell you're in isn't comfortable enough that you just might end up staying.
Yes, having a decent life is the goal, but in Denmark, the only practical means to that end in this country is through financial income (I'm ignoring the option of already being filthy rich). If you wish to live without finances, you would have to find a country where that is possible—even full self-sufficiency is not free in Denmark. Likewise, avoiding a job, and thereby consuming the fruits of our taxes without contributing, is frowned upon.
What we should be doing is giving them more help, better educational options, activation courses that actually benefit them, instead of wasting their time. Offer them actual training for another your of job, if the one they used have isn't viable anymore. And drop the stupid requirements to send so and so many applications every week, which is just pointless busywork.
Make a positive change, rather than a negative one.
I say let the couple hundred or so deliberately workshy persons be. You're never going to convince them to work, and if you force them, they'll do a shitty no-effort job of it, probably reducing other people's productivity in the process. Just let them be, let them be artists or whatever. It's the least costly option.
But it entirely misses the point: Those stuck are too depressed to help themselves. Depression is very difficult to work with.
Furthermore, the stand-by situation of being stuck in unemployment is just as good as a low-end job. In other words, nothing about the situation provides incentive to change it, especially not considering that those there have no motivation to help themselves.
The workshy is an entirely different case. Those can't be helped as long as the safety net is in place. They would probably help cure themselves if the safety net wasn't there, but removing it would harm others.
And that is exactly why we need to help them, instead of just beating them with a bigger stick by making their situations even more hopeless.
>The workshy is an entirely different case. Those can't be helped as long as the safety net is in place.
"Helped", as if not enjoying having to work is some kind of illness or disability. It's perfectly natural, some people just don't enjoy work or being bossed around, they have other impulses instead.
Why should they not be entitled to a comfortable life, simply because they don't prioritize work?
Work is universally shit and a massive burden on one's private life and spare time. Those claiming to enjoy their work are simply deluding themselves (or they're basic simpletons). I know, because I've been there myself until I realized what time-wasting grind it is. Since then I have only given exactly what's needed, there is no incentive to go above and beyond , it simply isn't valued anymore. The scales have tipped way too far, and these days loyalty only goes one way, the wrong way. Everyone would be happier if we all worked a bit less.
Look no further than the US' most successful companies: Bill Gates, Sergey Brin & Larry Page, and all the other success stories start from positions of relative wealth, and almost absolute economic safety. Bill Gates came from rich parents, and all these founders attended elite universities before starting their companies (Harvard and Stanford, respectively). They had what can only be described as a robust safety net to fall back on if their endeavours failed.
Another big problem is that great welfare and superb salaries (further enhanced by SKAT's scheme for foreign researchers) attract the wrong type of people to research institutions. I met countless foreigners that act like Milena Penkowa [1] (she's Danish, though). They abuse the system, misuse funds and do nothing valuable. Except perpetuating their position.
Me and my close peers hated this. I left to Oxbridge. Much worse quality of life, but a decent meritocracy.
We just don't like boastful overly prideful US-style "look at me!" self-aggrandizement and egotism.
You did well, without exploiting other people or breaking the law? Good for you, and good for society when you give back!
Just don't be a dick.
I’ve been on welfare in France for a few months to focus on a project. I’ve seen from the inside how the sytem disincentive attempt at working or learning. I’ll list some reason why.
- You cannot get the money if you have a job or are enrolled in a formation which encourage doing nothing
- Money is not huge if you have a rent, but it also come with reduction on phone, electricity, ... bills and transportation
- If you work, for every euro earned it will be substracted on what you gain during the next trimester
- There is almost no checking done. I didn’t have to justify my situation or choices to the social worker
- There is no nationality or language requirement which encourage (illegal) immigration. I’ve seen people angry against social workers because... the form was not in English
- There is long delay (in weeks or months) for everything so you want to avoid changing your situation too often
All in all this is not a way to reintegrate to society (by working) if you have a problem entering it or due to a lay off. It is a separate way of living with people specializing in it, a large part having no intention to work whatsoever. And I speak here about honest people, because I’ve talk to people who not only are on welfare but are working on the side without declaring it.
On the other hand, in the Nordic countries work is thankfully not the only way to be part of society, because there are so many subsidized community centres and free or very low-cost activities that even people on the dole can attend. Even if some portion of unemployed people will just laze or booze, there is always somewhere fun and wholesome for the others to spend their time even in smaller towns.
That is why I think basic income could work out well in the Nordic countries, but would be hard to implement in the USA where most of the country is generally against such intense subsidizing of locals arts, culture, libraries (even hackerspaces in some), etc. There people might get enough money to survive, but where would they go out? Who would they talk to? You imagine that people would just spend so much of their time online instead of having much of a local community life, and that might be unhealthy.
Also, the kind of cultural activities that are subsidized is not the ones that people on welfare attend. When you have the cultural background to know why going to the library is useful or important, you likely not end being on welfare. Similarly, if you lend there because you have no skills, the free time you have that could be used for self learning will not by used as such. So I see the whole system as a kind of trap, once you lend there it is game over because you’re basically provided money to shut up but have no real and effective support to improve your situation.
You would be surprised. I have met loads of people who frequent the Nordic arts scene who resorted to welfare after their local industry declined, or who are even the "professionally unemployed". Even welfare recipients can be very intellectual or cultured, and what holds them back from employment is something else. In any event, the library or high cultural spaces are not the sole community centres I refer to; in smaller communities you’ll find things like subsidized dances and hobby groups that will attract even the lowest educated and least ambitious members of a community.
I can also speak from personal experience: in my student days as a foreign student in a Nordic country, I spent a time worse than on the dole: I was outright homeless and virtually penniless for several months. I remember vividly how much that time sucked because it was a constant struggle to find a place to sleep or get a decent meal. And yet the whole time I was attending concerts, I read a huge amount from the excellent public libraries (much better than in my own country), and my command of the local language and much else improved thanks to the opportunity to freely participate in certain community groups dedicated to a common interest. I cannot imagine getting the same opportunities in the USA, as I mentioned.
for too many people right now it isn't worth it to work (Too little difference between working wage and welfare)
That is complete nonsense, peddled by the current government and their think tank lapdogs (including CEPOS). They've only ever been able to find a few persons here and there who even barely fit their bogeyman of a deliberately workshy person, while the vast majority of unemployed people would love to have a job.
CEPOS et al. also tend to include people with severely limited ability to work in their grouping of "lazy" workshy people.
You don't need to accept outside immigration. Japan and Korea are very nice countries that are almost completely ethnically homogenous. They're not good at integrating foreigners, but they don't accept them anyway so it's moot. But on the flip side, that probably dooms you to dying out as a civilization as your birth rate falls below replacement levels...
You need to accept immigration if you want your economy to grow and be sustainable. Japan is an example of what happens if you don't--just look at the Nikkei 225 after 1990.
* Campfire wood for sale next to the highway with an unlocked mailbox for your payment (everyone else's payment just sitting there...). * Car stuck in the snowbank? Every time it happened to me, the very first car to come along has stopped to help dig it out. * At least in rural areas: many people did not lock their doors. Why would they? No need to.
Definitely the best piece of writing I have seen in some time about one of the Scandinavian countries that American liberals (of which I count myself a member) always hold up as ideals. The model only works in the context of a society that doesn't _need_ as much assistance, regulation, or policing. The author makes a persuasive argument that high levels of trust are an important, or maybe the defining feature of this society.
As someone who lives in the US but does business, and travels, in Europe frequently, I would prefer that the immigrants come to the melting pot (the US) and that the European countries retain their distinctiveness.
Baffling.
If we let ourselves live in fear, we've lost.
>`Asabiyya or asabiyyah (Arabic: عصبيّة) refers to social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness and sense of shared purpose, and social cohesion,[1] originally in a context of "tribalism" and "clanism".
The 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun talked about it in a cyclical sense, related to rise and fall of civilizations, and had dire descriptions about when societies lost asabiyyah.
In general, it's a sort of group feeling or solidarity, a sense that you and those around you are on the same side and have each other's backs -- as opposed to a society where you don't know your neighbors and you just happen to live among a bunch of other people who have no aligned interests or goals. Even the so-called "rugged individualism" mythos of early pioneer/settler American colonists still was embedded in nested layers of communal structure, layers that can seem invisible when you're constantly immersed in it.
What I think makes this and the Denmark article interesting is that they're trying to point at a concept that is inherently fuzzy and qualitative (how do you measure units of social cohesion?), and yet seems to play an important role in how a social system works. Tweaking a policy knob here or adjusting a legislative knob there may have influences on this, but the possible effects are constrained and filtered through the ever-present culture. Everything is part of the system (think about the laws we have in which implicit expectation of selective enforcement is what makes it even functional, like speeding). People are both code (their DNA) and its expression in the environment (epigenetics). Programming teams are both the tools they use (IDEs, source control, Agile, etc) and the fuzzy culture that makes it work well in Company A and fail utterly when trying to apply it to Company B.
With all of that online interacting, global interpersonal trust may rise, but won't approach Danish levels in our lifetimes. We cannot base our social systems on trust. But we can base them on transparency, which, eventually, builds trust.