As a Norwegian who has spent a lot of time in Utah visiting distant relatives and having them visit Norway, I made a lot of thoughts about Utah in relation to the Scandinavian society model.

This article is a nice addition to my own experiences. I admit I felt at first somewhat envious and impressed by the community sense, they have in Utah. Family and neighbors seem quite close. People are very smiling and positive. As a diehard atheist, meeting mormons made me really have to contemplate the role of religion. It seemed to make many mormons happy and create a tight knight society. And despite being anti-religion and atheist I actually wanted to live there for some years just for the experience. I loved my time there despite it being so much at odds with values in many respect.

Mormons deserve a lot of praise for what they have accomplished. Yet after staying longer I think it became clear to me that there was a dark side to what looked like paradise at first glance.

Too me it is a bit funny to see Americans praise the Utah model, when it is a far more extreme case of homogeneity than any Scandinavian country typically dismissed as a viable model for America for just that reason. To me people in Utah live a complete bubble world, with little idea of what the real world is like or what other people think about stuff. They seemed very confused when speaking to a non-mormon or non-religious person like myself about particular subjects. And if you didn't fit the narrow path designated by the mormon church, you were pretty much screwed.

I honestly think the Scandinavian model scales a lot better when it comes to tackling societies problems than the Utah model. It allows for a lot more individualism and ethnic mix. It doesn't rely on the majority being strongly religious and doing huge amounts of volunteer work. In a way Utah is really just doing the same as Scandinavian welfare states are doing. Citizens are contributing a lot of resources towards helping the less fortunate. The difference is that in Utah it happens through volunteering through the church, and a strong social pressure to do so. In Scandinavia it happens through high taxes. I realize that in the US the Utah approach is more palatable as it is strictly speaking not required to contribute, while you can't skip taxes in Scandinavia. However in practice there is a a strong social pressure that means it isn't really an option not to.

It is interesting though that creating social mobility and reducing poverty follows very similar receipts in Utah and Scandinavia. E.g. avoiding that welfare becomes a way of life has a pretty strong tradition in Scandinavia as well. The Norwegian labour party's old slogan was "Do your duty and demand your right!" The welfare system has always been generous but also quite a lot more pushy on getting people back into work than what has been the case in many other countries. But the ability for the system to work has also rested on a lot of trust between people as in Utah. I believe in Norway 68% say you can trust your fellow man, while in the US in general would around 30%, while in e.g. Brazil it would be 2%. That is one of my strongest believes about society. One of the most important things for society to succeed is trust.