Americans often laugh when they see how often Danes will patiently, obediently wait on the little red man to turn green before crossing an empty intersection, in the rain, even at night. Nobody is coming! Why don't you just cross?! It seems silly, but the underlying philosophy is anything but. It's load bearing for a civil society like Denmark.
Because doing the right thing every time can be put on autopilot, and when most people follow even the basic norms consistently, the second-order effects are profound. Like the fact that Copenhagen is one of the absolute safest major cities in the world.
But the Danes also know that norms fray if they're not enforced, so they vigorously pursue even small infractions. The Danish police regularly celebrating ticketing bicyclists making even minor mistakes (like driving instead of dragging their bike on the sidewalk). And the metro is constantly being patrolled for fare evaders and antisocial behavior.
It's broken windows theory on steroids. And it works.
When we were living in the city for three years following the pandemic, the most startling difference to major US cities was the prevalence of unattended children everywhere, at all hours. Our oldest was just nine years-old when he started taking the metro alone, even at night.
How many American parents would feel comfortable letting their nine-year old take the L in Chicago or the subway in Manhattan? I don't know any. And as a result, you just don't see any unattended children do this. But in Copenhagen it's completely common place.
This is the prize of having little tolerance for antisocial behavior in the public space. When you take away the freedom from crackheads and bums to smoke up on the train or sleep in the park, you grant the freedom to nine-year olds to roam the city and for families to enjoy the park at dusk.
This is the fundamental error of suicidal empathy. That tolerance of the deranged and dangerous few can be kept a separate discussion from the freedom and safety of the many. These are oppositional forces. The more antisocial behavior you excuse, the further families will retract into their protective shell. And suddenly there are no longer children around in the public city space or any appetite for public transit.
Maybe you have to become a parent to really understand this. I admit that I didn't give this nearly the same attention before coming a father of three. But the benefit isn't exclusively about the freedom and safety enjoyed by your own family, it's also about the ambient atmosphere of living in a city where children are everywhere. It's a special form of life-affirming luxury, and it's probably the thing I've missed most about Copenhagen since we went back to the US.
What's interesting is how much active effort it takes to maintain this state of affairs. The veneer of civil society is surprisingly thin. Norms fray quickly if left unguarded. And it's much harder to reestablish their purchase on society than to protect them from disappearing in the first place.
But I also get that it's hard to connect the dots from afar, though. Many liberals in America keep Denmark as some mythical place where all their policy dreams have come true, without ever wrestling much with what it takes to maintain the social trust that allows those policies to enjoy public support.
The progressive Nirvana of Denmark is built on a highly conservative set of norms and traditions. It's ying and yang. So if you're committed to those progressive outcomes in America, whether it's the paternity leave, the independent children, or the amazing public transit system, you ought to consider what conservative values it makes sense to accept as enablers rather than obstacles.
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