I do think there is some notion of relatedness that ties in and leads to the system generally being supported. I'm not myself ethnically Danish, so I'm not sure

I do think there is some notion of relatedness that ties in and leads to the system generally being supported. I'm not myself ethnically Danish, so I'm not sure it's purely ethnicity, but it's... something (and ethnicity probably does play a role in encouraging cohesion, if not the sole one). Even in extreme cases, there's this general feeling of: yeah, so that person is an irresponsible alcoholic, but he's your irresponsible alcoholic, so you can't exactly let him die in the street. You've got to give him some basic shelter/food. I've run into that in other countries also, but only from closely related people: southern Europeans are very family-oriented, so if someone in their family is in danger of being a homeless alcoholic, they'll find a room for the person to sleep in, etc., since it's considered the family's responsibility to do something about them. Denmark doesn't emphasize family ties as much, though. Instead things tend to be done on a wider scale: it's sort of everyone's responsibility to take care of the proverbial crazy old uncle, rather than laying the responsibility on the handful of people who happen to be his nephews/nieces through accident of birth.