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What if America Became a Nordic Social Democracy?

In this imaginary Hollywood blockbuster Americans don’t wake up to a Alien Invasion but a transformation to a Nordic country?

Erik Engheim
13 min readJul 20, 2021

How on Earth did this transformation happen? We don’t really know, but I am sure Hollywood could figure out a way this would happen, with their deep expertise in unrealistic superhero backstories.

Here our protagonists Joe and Kaitlyn are not waking up with new cool superhero names and powers. Instead they are waking up as Bjørn and Siri, in this odd new Nordic reality.

How will our American heroes cope with this new Nordic reality? What has changed?

Dude, Where is My Car!?

Joe cannot find his car. The garage, driveway and everything are gone! Even the road outside the house is gone.

It is all a mess outside. Instead of a wide straight road with houses neatly lined up, there are houses just scattered about with all these narrow footpaths running between them and various public spaces. Little parks, woods, playgrounds, soccer fields...

But what about the garage? Don’t these crazy Nordics drive cars? They do, but rugged American individualism has now been replaced by Nordic collectivism. The garages have been clustered 10–15 units together connecting to the main road. Why? Now we have to walk further to get to the car? How inconvenient!

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Erik Engheim
Erik Engheim

Written by Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.

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