How Denmark invented Social Democracy

Comments · 3.9K

• AS

  @AsprosOfAzeroth · 4 years ago

  Denmark: &quot;We did politics right! Do you guys want help?&quot;<br>Netherlands: * <b>eats prime-minister</b> *

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• AL

  @AlternateHistoryHub · 4 years ago

  Great video Kraut. I like what you said about us not being prisoners of history. Still, I really can&apos;t imagine anything Denmark does being successfully emulated on the federal level of the US. I could always imagine social democracy might work on a state level, at least in New England.

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• NI

  @nielsjensen4185 · 4 years ago (edited)

  The history of the Danish revolution that created the parliament is adorable and probably the only completely bloodless, democratic revolution. The TLDR version is that basically the commoners contacted the king and said, &quot;we&apos;re going to have parliament or we&apos;ll reenact the French Revolution.&quot; and since the king liked his head attached to his neck and decided that having a reduction in power and still have some influence in the parliament was vastly more preferable to getting beheaded. So he said, &quot;we now have a parliament and this is how it&apos;ll be - I&apos;ve decided.&quot;

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• KI

  @kioshi-4588 · 4 years ago

  As a Filipino, the description of the Filipino institutions and society are spot on.

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• HI

  @HippopotamusPencil · 4 years ago

  I never stopped finding it hilarious to see Denmark on screen while Kraut was talking about the mountains of Scandinavia. Great video, as always.

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• BU

  @buihelgason · 4 years ago

  I feel its weird, because we essentially learn this in school. But when i looked at the Wikipedia for social democracy, Denmark was just a footnote.<br>Here in Denmark, we do learn thay social democracy was created here, but i cannot find any nok danish sources for this. Thank you for this vid!

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• IS

  @isaacasimov3846 · 4 years ago

  As a Dane i would like to add a few things that was either forgotten or something Kraut did not understood its important <br>First of the Grundvig schools today (last 50+ years) is no longer a school in opposition to our public schools. (ofc not. We are all forced to join the public/private schools. And they are all run under the same law). The Grundvig schools now is not about grades. They are now purely about learning. Learning about what the school focus on: Sport, music, history, religion etc etc. But in all these schools there is classes in how the society/democracy works in Denmark. When you finish you get a diploma, that you have taken part. You are not getting &quot;judged&quot; by exams. The teachers will though, write something about your time on the school. So what can you use this shit for? Well other then specialising for up to 1 year in something ofc. For your own benefit. But if you dont have the grades from highschools to get in to university, then spending time on a Grundvig schools can help you get in. In other words Danish universities like to get people in, who has spend time on something that interests them, and have had studies in the society/democracy. Even though you have failed in the &quot;normal&quot; classes in our public schools. I think this is a sign on what our education is also about and how we like to shape our population. Oh yeah ofc. The government give subsidies &nbsp;to these kind of schools<br>Another important thing that i think can be taken right back to the power our king gave the people early on, is the way Denmark decide what the pay and the benefits should be for the working people. As some of you might know, EU is right now trying to force a minimum payment to all EU citizens. I think the only country (maybe Sweden as well) that is fighting to avoid this is Denmark. In Denmark we do not have a minimum wage decided by the government. The minimum wage is decided between the unions of the workers and the unions of the companies that offer work. The representatives sit down once a year and find out the minimum wage, the benefits and the demands. Then the unions go back to there members and let them vote for the offer. Up until now the government has stayed out of it. In case the both members vote yes, then all is cool. In case 1 of the unions members vote no, then a whole new process starts. Super complicated, but still without the government do anything. In the end it might end in a symbolic strike and if everything go sour, then a real strike. And then in the end the government can intervene and force something on both unions. So does this work? Maybe once every 5-7 years we have a strike. And funny enough 90% of those strikes is when a union is negotiating with the minister that represent the hospitals, schools etc. When ever it is a private union it always go fine. I think it is more then 30 years ago we had a strike amongst those workers<br>Does history matter, Kraut. Yes it does. If you introduced the Danish society to Americans they would scream and riot. They have been molded for hundreds of years in a different way then Scandinavians have. To get a Social democracy in to an American society you have to start now, and slowly &quot;teach&quot; the citizens. Then maybe in 50-100 years they will have integrated a Social Democracy system. We did try to &quot;give&quot; democracy away for the last 20 years that did not ask for it. Not enough of the citizens accepted it, for it to work fully. But they got a taste for it, and maybe in another 30 years Afghanistan and Iraq will have democracy or what ever system they prefer

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• FA

  @Fangs1978 · 4 years ago

  Scandinavians had another reason for not taking part in the colonial empire building. We were too preoccupied with fighting each other. Between 1563 and 1814 Denmark-Norway fought 11 wars with Sweden resulting in 5 wins for Denmark-Norway, 5 wins for Sweden and 1 draw. Though in terms of territory lost Denmark was the clear looser and finally after the loss of Schleswig and Holstein to Germany Denmark finally realized that we just plain suck at war and the dictum: What is lost outside must be rebuilt inside became the phrase of the day. A big part of the agriculture reform mentioned in the video included the draining of vast marsh areas to replace all the lost farmland in the lost provinces. It was a great communal undertaking unlike any before it. Also, before the great land reform farmers would live close together in villages, they would plant the fields around the village and when harvest came they would harvest the closest fields until they had enough to pay their taxes and feed themselves through the winter. The outer fields were only planted in case of a lean yield, which meant that often many fields went unharvested which by many was considered a huge waste, but few farmers fancied spending half the day traveling to and from a field to do half a days work that did very little to benefit them. So the act of dividing land up between individual families was both a way of giving individual incentives and a logistical move, both to maximize efficiency.

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• KR

  @KRAGH5 · 4 years ago

  As a dane i love the fact that loosing an abundance of wars made us successful

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• LE

  @LexRudera · 4 years ago

  Gotta remember why Denmark sided with Napoleon. We were initially neutral, but the brits were afraid that napoleon nipped in and took our substantial fleet to fight britain, so the brits went in, bombarded Copenhagen and took our fleet. No shit we joined in with Napoleon after that. It coined the term Copenhagenization, apparently.

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• LA

  @LadyRoux_x · 4 years ago (edited)

  Congratulations to everyone who worked on this project. Knowing the issues faced &amp; all the hard work put in, it’s great to see the end result being of high quality yet again.

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• RO

  @Roflmaolinde · 4 years ago

  As a Swede, I find it very funny comparing how outside countries sees us scandis to how inter-Scandinavian relationships usually are. About 11 years ago a Swedish radio comedy show had a competition where the listeners could vote for “the worst country in the EU”. Denmark, not very surprisingly, won by a landslide.

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