Still on vacation, and I’m currently in Denmark – in fact, just cycled from Copenhagen to Helsingor, aka Elsinore. Sad to say, I’m such a fearsome nerd that instead of thinking about Shakespeare, my thoughts have turned to … economics. For Denmark’s story is, I’d argue, of considerable interest to the rest of us.

To be clear, I am in no sense an expert on the Danish economy, now or in the past. I only know what I read and can pull out of readily available databases. So this is really about using Denmark as a mirror to hold up to the rest of the world. But it’s an interesting mirror (and much nicer to think about than the outrages at home.) There are, in particular, two lessons I think Denmark can teach us: a hopeful story about globalization, and another hopeful one about the possibilities of creating a decent society.

Blessed are the cheesemakers

OK, as a helpful bystander points out in Life of Brian, it’s a metaphor, not to be taken literally: the blessing extends to all manufacturers of dairy products. The blessing certainly worked in the case of Denmark.

During the creation of the first global economy, the one made possible by railroads, steamships, and telegraphs, the world seemed to bifurcate into industrial nations and the agricultural raw/material producers who catered to them. And the agricultural nations, even if they grew rich at first – e.g., Argentina – seemingly ended up getting much the worse of the deal, turning into banana republics crippled economically and politically by their role.