A number of years ago around 2006 I read a story of a man in his 60s that went into a bank, handed a teller a note to not be scared, put some cash in a bag, and that he won't hurt her. She complied, and he sat on the floor and waited for police to arrive. He wanted to go to prison and was committing a felony because he couldn't find a job, social security wasn't enough, he couldn't qualify for disability, he couldn't afford healthcare, and he had run out of options for housing now that the bank had foreclosed on his house.

Something is wrong when people are finding the idea of an institution meant to punish people a better life than living in our "free" society that people keep insisting is the best country in the history of the world.

> If this turns out to be a serious problem then perhaps your society has other issues it should be dealing with?

Of course! Which makes the whole thing even more difficult, because now instead of dealing with issues in isolation, you have to untangle the complex web of interdependencies.

The "easiest" fix to this issue would be fixing education. If it's generally easy/inexpensive to get a good education for every citizen (e.g. via a taxation based social contract) that particular incentive goes away. Different societies have different positions on this. I'm generally very much in the "less government please" camp but for certain areas where there's a potential for multiplier effects or where more equality of opportunity is very likely to have a positive effect on society as a whole (education, health, justice, possibly defense etc.) I don't mind tax-based measures to provide more equality.

Nor does it mean that their ideas aren't worth considering. Sweden for instance has a much larger population, much larger land area, more natural resources (except the oil of course) and more industry. Yet they have a bigger problem with crime and concentrations of poorly integrated immigrants.

Both are Scandinavian counties with a lot of shared history and are both commonly regarded as 'monocultures' yet they have noticeably different social problems. It seems plausible that some of the differences could be traced to different government policies.

And, anyway, no one believes that you can just transplant policies, but even when you cannot just copy you can still learn.

Lastly, we don't end up being fine whatever we do; the stability of Norwegian society has a lot to do with the state of mind that led to the establishment of the oil fund that ensures that the money from the oil is not squandered (like it was in the UK). The general population is broadly supportive of this and the ideas of self reliance, individual and collective responsibility, and assistance for those in need permeate the culture here. No I don't believe it is perfect here, we still have a long way to go, and we must stay vigilant to ensure that the good that we have is preserved and the bad continually rooted out.