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> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of

• TrueGeek 6y ago
  > Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services I’ve heard many US Libertarians say that they want the US Fire services completely privatized. We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for. The competition would drive down prices as there would be a free market of many such providers. This is not what Denmark is doing. Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government. It’s almost entirely a single company and that company is almost entirely owned by a non-profit organization.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    > We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for I don't think this would work very well, because I do want my neighbors to pay for fire-fighting services in case their house is set on fire. Moreover, to a proportionally lesser extent, I want their neighbors to pay for the same thing, and so on. There are a whole lot of cross-externalities that can't be dealt with easily via private contracting, so we need the government to step in and provide a sensible "default" that's not simply "no one gets any fire-fighting protection unless they pay for a private service".
    • simonh 6y ago
      It does sound horribly risky. I suppose in theory you could mandate basic levels of insurance, a bit like mandatory car insurance, but you'd probably end up with a costly, patchy mess like the US health system.
      • burger_moon 6y ago
        How many people drive around without insurance right now though and even people who don't have driver's license. It just isn't practical to think people will do it, especially when times get tough. If I'm choosing which bill to pay, I'll take the water bill over the insurance bill
      • zozbot234 6y ago
        Mandatory car insurance is usually liability insurance, that is comparatively easy to regulate while leaving other things like pricing to the market. Liability for a car accident also sounds somewhat more manageable than liability for a fire on your house spreading to your neighbors' - I think you're right that requiring insurance for that would be overly messy.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Why? If you have fire service and you neighbors house starts on fire they go ask if your neighbor wants the fire out now at much greater cost. If not they watch it burn until it shows signs of spreading to your house at which point they put it out and sue for much more because they failed to contain their fire.
  • awesome_dude 6y ago
    This is a new concept to me (governments paying for fire departments). Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, a long time ago there were competing departments, owned by competing insurers. Problem was if your house had the wrong insurance plaque attached, the competing fire service would just stand and watch your home burn down. In order to remedy this, the insurance companies formed a collective fire department that we all pay for via a fire service levy that is part of our house insurance.
    • TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      > Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, Where? Is this the majority normal situation globally?
  • _0ffh 6y ago
    >Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government I think that putting it like this is a bit misleading. So, in about two thirds of Danish municipalities fire fighting as well as rescue services are outsourced to a private company which is commissioned by the municipal governments. But that is certainly not the classical state-run structure that I suppose most people would be thinking of when they read "traditional fire departments". (Yes, this is arguably traditional in Denmark by now, but I think it is actually more of an exception in the bigger picture of traditional fire fighting.) Where I come from, for example, professional fire fighting services actually are honest-to-god state-run entities. Our overall fire-fighting structures are actually extremely good value for the money. But this really is only possible because a significant part of the actual work is done by voluntary fire fighters, as we have managed to preserve that part of our culture, so far at least. And that is really traditional fire fighting (even in Denmark, if you disregard the last 100 years or so).
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Denmark has no minimum wage because it has a very strong union sector. So collective bargaining ensures there's an effective minimum wage equivalent. Which is why Denmark is also much less free market than the US. Businesses operate under strong social constraints, and power structures aren't one-sidedly pro-business/pro-corporate.
  • lixtra 6y ago
    > very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market
    • Barrin92 6y ago
      for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. The Nordic countries aren't "free market" by any American definition of the term. They're corporatist/tripartite economies. This has just become a fashionable talking point among the mentioned 'liberaltarians', like the Niskanen Center, who invented the term to my knowledge. I think it's mostly a PR campaign because if you frame social democracy as being free-market it just sounds nicer to the center of the American political spectrum. A lot of of labour protection that you don't find in the US nonetheless exists, like 1 year+ of paid maternity leave, usually at least 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, ~35-40 hour work weeks and so on. When people talk about free market aspects they usually mention school vouchers and such and selectively pick a few things where the government is more hands off. As the article mentions Uber/ridesharing as a yardstick, take note that Uber withdrew from the Danish market in 2017 after facing regulation, in Norway only Uber Lux is still active after facing fines, and the same happened in Finland. In Sweden Uber still operates in three cities but all drivers require taxi licenses.
      • claudeganon 6y ago
        > for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. To me, this sound like a guarantee of greater worker freedom than anything else. Somehow economic “freedom” in the US seems to equate to corporate structures where CEOs and other managers have immense power over the lives of hundreds or thousands of workers (including their ability to get healthcare), with almost no counterbalancing force. Implementing this kind of rule seems a pretty sane check on that level of authoritarianism, no? Beyond a certain level, the workers actually have to be given a say themselves?
• nabla9 6y ago
  > That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Not really. We still believe in market regulation like any sane approach to market does. Well functioning markets are made, they don't just emerge if you remove regulation (except when conditions are just right by accident). Liberaltarian approach is ideological approach to markets that ignores all research into markets.
  • TomMarius 6y ago
    Not to say yes or no, could you link that research? I'd love to deep dive into it.
    • gvd 6y ago
      Markets are reactionary and thus too slow.
      • bumby 6y ago
        I think many would argue regulations are also reactionary (I.e., there were no laws to prohibit an action because it wasn’t anticipated until after it happened). Example: there were no laws preventing diluting stock during a hostile takeover until after Vanderbilt tried buying out the Erie Railroad and diluting stock was a way to swindle him [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_War#Watered-down_stocks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_War#Watered-down_stocks
        • dwaltrip 6y ago
          You get this, but it is worth stating explicitly. They react to different types things. Both types are important, which is why we need markets as well as some amount of regulation.
    • DebtDeflation 6y ago
      Just grab a freshman level microeconomics textbook. The conditions under which a market is efficient have been well known for decades - lack of externalities, no transaction costs, symmetrical information, enough buyers and sellers that everyone is a price taker, etc. My undergrad was in Econ and it drives me nuts how frequently this debate turns into a "free markets are always best vs die capitalism!" false dichotomy.
• DavidVoid 6y ago
  Here's another relevant comparison between Nordic countries and the U.S. Country | Labor union density Sweden | 66.1% Norway | 52.5% Denmark | 67.2% Finland | 66.4% Iceland | 90.4% U.S.A. | 10.3% Legally mandated minimum wages are needed in the U.S. due to the lack of strong unions.
• paganel 6y ago
  Scaling what Denmark is doing for its population of ~5 million to the 300+ million people of the US is way harder than it looks at a first sight. To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.
  • DavidVoid 6y ago
    I don't think it's really a problem of scale, it's more of a problem of a lack of worker's rights and strong labor unions.
  • take_a_breath 6y ago
    ==To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.== It actually sounds like there is something you want to say about human capital diversity. Why not say it?
    • paganel 6y ago
      Say what? That the US still has to handle the slavery thing that it got herself into since its very inception while Denmark doesn’t have that problem? I thought that was common knowledge. We (Romania) have the same problem with our Roma population that we “de-slaved” in the 1860s (so pretty much at the same time as slavery was abolished in the States) and during all this time we have had problems similar to the US (even though color-blindness is more pronounced in here, there aren’t that many people calling my brother and mother “gipsy” because of their brownish skin-color, because we all live a “Romanian” life). After we entered the EU that Roma population mostly emigrated to wealthier countries out West, including Denmark, which wealthier countries were as bad as us at integrating them (including the beloved Denmark or Norway). All this to say that seeing many Americans in here daydreaming about life in countries like Denmark or Sweden is very ubermensch-y. Yes, when you have a small, privileged and mostly white population things are easy, only when it gets mixed up things start becoming complicated.
      • take_a_breath 6y ago
        ==That the US still has to handle the slavery thing that it got herself into since its very inception while Denmark doesn’t have that problem? I thought that was common knowledge.== The Danish West India Company? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_West_India_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_West_India_Company ==Yes, when you have a small, privileged and mostly white population things are easy, only when it gets mixed up things start becoming complicated.== Not sure where you are going, but you seem to equate “culture” to “laws”. People aren’t pining for the culture of Norway and Denmark, they want the economic policies and Norway and Denmark. We could pass distributionary legislation regardless of how many “white” people we have. It sounds like a cop-out.
• cosmodisk 6y ago
  Nordic model is interesting but one has to look at it through the perspective of the local culture and mentality. Something that has been working in Sweden for 20 years,may never work in the US and so on. Also, the education system played a huge role in shaping those countries. I remember going to the underground in Helsinki and to my surprise seeing no barriers: people were still paying and I saw very very few who weren't doing it(there were very few ticket inspectors). There are quite a few countries in Europe alone where such a system would collapse within a month.
  • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    There are more ticket inspectors on the Helsinki metro than you'd think. Anyone trying to freeload is bound to get caught within a few days, the fine is large, and it goes on your credit report so it can really affect your life. Also note that the Helsinki metro model is very similar to that in Vienna, so not a distinctly Nordic high-trust thing.
    • cosmodisk 6y ago
      I lived in Helsinki for a year about 12 years ago. Taking a ride without paying was doable.Tried to do the same in Copenhagen- had to change the train like 5 times for the sake of going 3 stops further,as there were so many inspectors. Stockholm,on the other hand, had barriers but I used to see people jumping them all the time, especially in the evening,at night.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    That is considered best practices in the transport world. Most people pay, so assume everyone did, remove the slow checks that ensure everyone paid and randomly check to ensure people do. Gates focr people to pay, but they slow the whole system down and you want your transportation system to feel as good as or better than driving.
• thomasahle 6y ago
  > Letting the markets be relatively free to generate money, capturing it via efficient flat taxes (first and foremost, a consumption tax) Danish income tax is certainly progressive rather than flat [1]. That's important for keeping inequality low, which again promotes social mobility and trust--crucial for an efficient free market. [1]: https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244281 https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244281