Just in time: a design for equality

George Lakey writes about the background to his new book

When political and economic change whirls around us, I like to remember that the Religious Society of Friends began in such a moment. Then, as now, accepted arrangements were passionately challenged and division was everywhere. Actually, Friends were doing some of the dividing and challenging – Mary Fisher even walked to Rome to convert the pope!

Division and challenge are as natural as rainstorms. God’s creation itself is a story of disruption – and also of deeper unities that Friends seek a glimpse of in quiet worship. Then we proclaimed in the market square, as well as to each other, our faith that out of disruption comes design, anticipating theoretical physics by a few centuries. It’s not surprising that early Friends were science-friendly or, for that matter, came to enjoy the practical application of design called ‘engineering’. William Penn went so far as to invent a Holy Experiment for the woodland his king gave him.

When it comes to the vision of equality, Quakers may have been stronger in aspiration and small-scale application than in bigger picture design. We’ve been right to rejoice in steps forward and also to pay attention to analyses that show the suffering a nation of inequality endures. How many British Friends have recommended that I read The Spirit Level! At this moment, however, lifting up a larger-scale, holistic design for the nation may be exactly what the disruption is calling for.

The good news

The good news is that a large-scale design for equality has been invented in the last hundred years – what economists call ‘the Nordic model’. It even comes to us with a pragmatic record of high, although not perfect, achievement. The bad news is that the design is often misperceived as simply a list of good and useful practices: such as free higher education, a long paid parental leave and affordable housing for all. Most observers miss the synergies in the model and fail to see that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

During seven years of researching Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, I discovered the coherence in the design. I also found the obvious: that it has a track record, over half a century, of producing a remarkable degree of equality and is a qualitative leap beyond other nation-level designs.

News of the Nordic model has been getting around. Norway has more start-ups per capita than the US, and Sweden outpaces the US economy’s innovativeness. Denmark is racing ahead to achieve carbon neutrality and already generates enough wind power to sell its surplus to Germany. Iceland’s low crime rate is the envy of Europe and has increased its already-high economic equality while rejecting austerity and rebounding since its 2008 crash.

All four have virtually abolished poverty, even though only Norway struck it rich in oil and gas. (By ‘poverty’ I mean the US definition of absolute poverty – lacking the necessities of life – rather than the international measure of ‘relative’ poverty.) To varying degrees they adopted Denmark’s version of ‘flexicurity’, which means that society guarantees everyone who can work the right to a job, or training to get one along with support. Most important for our equality concern, the Nordics dramatically reduced their wide income gap of a century ago and are in the top tier of international ratings that measure equality.

Handling immigration

On one of my research trips for my new book Viking Economics I made friends with a young man named Michael, who came to Norway from Burundi a few years before. I later learned that his story is typical for immigrants who get to settle down in Norway. He met with the immigration authorities and was made an offer something like this: ‘We pay you a living wage for a year while you spend it learning the Norwegian language and culture full-time and taking job training to prepare you for a job for which there is a need here in Norway. We will locate you in a town or village, probably far from Oslo. You may be one of a very few Africans around, or even the only one. We will find a family that will put you up until you find your own place in the town.

‘If you miss your language lessons or other responsibilities we will dock your pay for the missing time. If your teacher believes you need more time to master the language an extension is possible, while still being paid your wage. When your time is up, we will help you find a job that will use your new skills. After a certain time has elapsed you will be free to relocate, even to live in Oslo if you like.

‘Norway has a great interest in your becoming a productive, tax-paying citizen. This is the contract we offer: take it or leave it (and leave the country).’

Racism

Michael told me that he was sent to a rural village among the western fjords. The sole African in the vicinity, he experienced the loneliest time of his life. He found the cultural differences enormous, and sometimes interpreted them as racist. Gradually, he told me, he realized that ethnic Norwegians’ reserve wasn’t just in his presence: they were that way with each other. As his Norwegian improved he came to appreciate the life around him and began to make friends. When free to do so, he moved to Oslo to enjoy a greater mix of cultural backgrounds. He feels he can now handle himself anywhere in the country and is pleased with that achievement.

Michael is currently active in a church in Oslo that includes ethnic Norwegians. He is proud of his fluent Norwegian and counts himself lucky to live in a country with so much freedom.

My book goes into detail about racism, dramatised by the mass murder committed by Anders Behring Breivik in 2011 against the Norwegian Labour Party. While the challenge is very real – in every settlement of white people I know of we find racism – the Nordic model so far seems the best-equipped to meet it. Michael’s story illustrates the win/win nature of the system – including its high ratings in worker productivity – while at the same time it shows how much the design supports individual freedom and the common good.

A model, not a blueprint

A craftsperson may examine someone else’s work in a very detailed way to learn from the principles of its design. In the US I invite Friends to become that curious craftsperson in order to make equality more real for us. I also remind them that we, too, have made bold, qualitative leaps forward in our history: we are not fated to incrementalist reforms and certainly not to the alarming increase in inequality of the past few decades.

Few contemporary Nordics offer to tell you about the mass struggles in their history. I had to dig to learn about the 1920s and ’30s, when first Swedes and then Norwegians nonviolently overthrew the dominance of their economic elites to open the political space to invent their design. Again, it is a story of disruption. It’s a good thing for us that George Fox knew a thing or two about struggle.

Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians got it right and how we can, too by George Lakey. Melville House Books. ISBN:9781612195360, £19.99

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