Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

For John, BLUF:  It probably goes back to the Vikings.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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You Can't Have Denmark Without Danes

Here is the sub-headline:

What a small, happy country can teach a huge and fractious one. And what it can't.

From Bloomberg, by Reporter Megan McArdle, 23 February 2018.

Here is a key paragraph:

Which came first?  A trustworthy Danish government or a trusting Danish society?  Did social cohesion produce the welfare state?  Or does the welfare state provide security against things that divide a society, like inequality, corruption and crime?  It’s a question interested Americans should answer before deciding which parts of the Danish system might be successfully imported.

So, Denmark works due to a high trust level amongst Danes.  That is something that has to develop over time.  In Elementary School I lived in a small town with low mobility (low home turnover).  There was high trust, so few families locked their doors.  Trust was earned.  One night my parents found they had purchased a bad dinner item from the local grocery and my Father called the grocer to express his unhappiness.  The Grocer promptly drove the two blocks to our house to deliver his family's meal, hot out of the oven.  Because he wanted to earn trust.

I have been to Cophenhagen, once, on a Cross-Country flight out of Bitburg Air Base, around 1968.  As a recall, we were a single ship and my front seater from Bob (Boom-Boom) Smith.

As Danny Kaye sang it:

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
'Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down
To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Salty old queen of the sea
Once I sailed away
But I'm home today
Singing Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful
Copenhagen for me
I sailed up the Skagerrak
And sailed down the Kattegat
Through the harbor and up to the quay
And there she stands waiting for me

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff
-1, Thur 3.05