* Denmark demonstrates that socialism in the form of a strong welfare state actually works pretty well for a well educated homogeneous population. A Danish professor said a few years ago something to the effect of “we all contribute our share because we are all in the same boat. Immigrants are perceived as a disruptive element who create a threat to the Danish welfare state.”
Denmark’s success is an inconvenient fact both for liberals and libertarians.
The problem for Europe is that Denmark’s success is not easily replicable in other European countries because they are not as ethnically and culturally homogeneous as Europeans seem to think. Germany for example has always been riven by squabbles between the different “tribes”. The economic and military sucess of the Wilhelmine Reich, and then the shared suffering in WWI created an illusion of national unity that Hitler was able to play off, but that has quickly dissipated back into the traditional pattern of everyone being jealous of Bavarians, mistrusting Swabians, despising Saxons and laughing at Saarlanders.
The problem in France and the UK is that both societies are so class driven. The elites feel very little, if any, ethnic solidarity with the working and rural classes, and never have. Like the US, it is easy for political parties to use immigrants as wedges against other native groups you don’t like. The countries with the best chance of replicating the Danish model are places like the Czech Republic or Slovenia.
* Democracy works well only in the city-state. As the city-state grows toward empire, it ruins its ability to have meaningful democracy.
As for the country bumpkins despised and taken advantage of by the urban Elites – Yep. Now think of the antithesis: ancient Athens. Even the time of Socrates, as Athenian democracy was degenerating thanks to imperialism, Athenians still regularly maintained their ties to their agricultural/pastoral roots. Athenian democracy became meaningless as wealthy Athenians lost their ties to the land and thus their respect for those who live and work on the land every day.
* Key social disincentives of socialism:
-Creates complacency in the populace and absolute trust in the state to provide. That discourages spiritual growth and looking to the traditional base of Western spirituality, Christianity for comfort and strength. If Daddy state will always provide for everything, why fuss about few foreigners or that silly thing called the church? Socialism means you never have to grow up in certain ways.
-Socialism makes the traditional Christian work of missionaries (how Christians helped foreigners without mussing up the nest) and providing for the poor merely hobby work. It has little to no meaning in socialized countries, further undermining traditional Christianity
-Women, instead of looking to husbands as providers, look to the state. It is no coincidence that once women gain suffrage that socialism appears. It does appear in places without women’s suffrage, but if socialism didn’t exist before and women get the vote, as sure as the sun rises in the East, it will appear within a few decades.
-What stable, married couples do form find child rearing expensive and pointless. If the state will provide for you in your old age, why not live it up now? Child rearing also becomes “a hobby”. It’s one that people will pressure you not to do a lot of because they’re looking at their tax bill and they don’t want you to be “extravagant” in using the social system. Kids end up s bills not to just their parents, but everyone, rather than the asset we saw them as for most of time.
-The wrong kind of foreigners are attracted to moths like a flame to your generous social system, built primarily for insecure white women fretting about their mid to old age. In some ways, they are less fussy than the women who wanted the system in the first place. Whatever you give them they’ll be okay with living because it’s easier than work, but they will be resentful for it. Remarkably, the white women themselves find the standard of living too low on welfare system..it’s just there for their nightmare scenarios they’ve got running in their heads.
