The Danes are the world’s most trusting people. Historians and researchers believe that the Danes' nature of trusting other people goes back to the time of the Vikings. The Vikings' domestic economy was simply built on trust: If you live in a time with no police or courts, and you entrust some animal furs to a trader, you need to be able to trust that trader to pay you your money once he returns - often months or years later - from his trade trip.
Trust is very important for the economy to function. According to some researchers, a "10 percent negative change in the level of trust in a population will cause a half percent negative change in economic growth." Both Vikings and anybody who has ever borrowed or lent money knows that trust is important when it comes to finances. Without trust, there will be either no deal or a lot of resources will need to be invested in insurance, lawyers and bureaucracy.
Trust is also believed to be a prerequisite for happiness (Trust Hormone Associated With Happiness, Happiness flows from trust - etc.). Trust increases the feeling of security, and feeling secure is - unless you are looking for certain types of excitement - a necessity for feeling happy. No wonder the most trusting people are also the happiest.
Trust and sharing values
It is easier to trust people if you feel that you know them. This is why businessmen take the effort to travel to meet their clients personally. If you know that the other party shares the same basic values, you already know a lot about that person - because you know yourself. Sharing values means knowing each other, and knowing each other increases trust. This is why criminal gangs - which are built on a high level of trust - are mostly monocultural.
So what happens when people with very different cultural backgrounds and religious values live together? The level of trust naturally goes down. In order to preserve trust and the many benefits coming from this important feeling and experience, the different groups tend to live together in enclaves separated from the other groups. It is important for people to feel "at home" - but what makes that feeling of being at home? It’s the feeling of being surrounded by a recognisable environment and culture where one does not have to communicate excessively to reach mutual understanding and thereby trust.
A decrease in trust leads to a decrease in the feeling of safety and happiness as well. As psychologist Abraham Maslow showed us in his hierarchy of needs, and as all who have been able to learn from life's ups and downs know, not having our basic needs fulfilled leads human beings to focus more on their own basic needs before focusing their efforts on benefiting those around them. Thus a decrease in trust means an increase in egotism.
Proponents of multiculturalism may think that they are working for more confluent societies with more tolerant citizens by waging lawfare against our national borders and thereby forcing us to live with people from cultures that we basically do not know and understand. But their efforts are clearly counterproductive, as the result is cultural segregation and individuals focusing more on themselves. The multiculti segment clearly lacks knowledge of human nature, and their ivory tower theories completely overlook normal real life experience, established psychological theories and well known facts.
Multiculture destroys trust
It is understandable when people from countries, where you need to be more egoistic to survive, have less reason to trust others to the same degree, and tend to exploit the good will and trust from others. The same goes for people from religions that tell them that adherents of other faiths are unworthy of the same respect.
A recent sample conducted by the Danish tax authorities among Somali immigrants showed that 92 percent of Somali immigrants evade taxes. On average they cheat Denmark of 8,300 USD yearly. This is possible because of the Danish system Tast-Selv ("type in yourself") that allows taxpayers to type in their income to the IRS themselves. It is a system built on the state's trust in the taxpayers and is meant to save a lot of time and money. We are also seeing an alarming increase of so-called trick thefts committed by foreigners and immigrants. Here the thieves, often disguised as police or nursing assistants, deceive the home owner into letting them into the house. This type of crime is another example of exploitation of the typical trusting Danish/Western nature. The alarmingly high degree of tax evasion and social fraud among non-Western immigrants, especially Muslims, is well known but politically incorrect to speak about. A large investigation in Høje-Taastrup, Denmark, showed that 75 percent of all social fraud is committed by immigrants - other countries have similar problems.
Trust makes people happy and countries rich, but letting people from less trust-based cultures into our fellowship turns this strength into our most dangerous weakness. Multiculturalism corrodes trust, a cornerstone for happiness, economic well-being and social cohesion - and thereby eats away at our whole way of life.
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