Good read:
"There is a long list of downsides to Scandinavian social democracy, the effects of which are perhaps most elaborately and eloquently framed in Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom". I suggest you read it, if you haven't. Britain's welfare state functions roughly like the Scandinavian system, so the comparison is unproblematic between countries in my opinion. I won't be able to give a very cohesive account of my thoughts on the matter, as that would require a book on my part. I'll just write a few paragraphs and look forward to the neg reps if anyone bothers with reading it.
Being that you don't like "hyperindividualism" which you tie into Austrian economics somehow, I doubt that we'll see eye to eye on very much. I favor something like a Charles Murray type of libertarianism. The market needs to be as free as possible, that is the absolutely most important thing, in my opinion. I too dislike exaggerated individualism, and if you're from the U.S. you cannot possibly understand how socially eroded our society is; in much the same way that I can't understand the miserable state of Detroit. I'll try to come back to this point somewhere.
About your point: do we have any place like Detroit in Sweden. No sir, we do not. We have very few murders if we look at absolute numbers (I believe the average is about ~90 per year). On the other hand the entire country is only ~9.5 million people, so comparing it to the states is...... yeah. However, we do have a looooooot of crime. Most people have gotten something stolen, because people are dishonest pieces of shit here. Some argue that exaggerated socialism creates a sense of entitlement that goes so far that you don't really think about someone else's stuff like it belongs to them. A bike belongs to "everyone", and therefore I will take it. Personally, I think people just take things because the consequences are borderline non-existent. The more crimes you commit the lesser the punishment ("mängdrabbat" in Swedish). When the right wing in the U.S. complains about how criminals aren't punished enough, they haven't had the possibility of laughing at Scandinavian justice. You're probably familiar with what happened to Breivik, which wasn't the least surprising to me, although it ruffled lots of feathers. We have a locally famous psychopath in Sweden that goes in and out of prison every few months and have done so for 40 years, but it's not like robbing banks, taking hostages and attempting murder are serious crimes, so we let him out and then he tries to rape someone. The guy has had a long streak of bad luck!
The U.S. has tried so called "diversity" and "multiculturalism" for centuries now. The rest of the developed world are amateurs when it comes to this kind of social experiment, but guess what, Detroit is what you get. "Integrating" people with too diverse backgrounds is likely not possible, because no one has succeeded in doing so yet (just as communism hasn't been working in practice, but some still hold the belief that it could). You bring your culture with you, or you develop a new one that is incommensurable with society at large, yielding a huge gap between group x and group y on variables q, z, d. There are very good reasons for this, but I won't elaborate on them here. Again Theodore Dalrymple is an excellent reference for explaining these strange phenomena.
One problem with Sweden is that we bring in 80-120k refugees per year (compared to lovely homogenous Finland who brings in around 1500 I believe). These people don't speak the language, and therefore can't get a job, many of them are analphabets, and yet we place them in the same classroom (learning Swedish) as immigrant doctors. Due to the left liberal agenda we don't believe that there is a distinction to be made between groups of people, or even individuals. "Anyone is capable of doing anything!" No. They're not. I won't be Michael Jordan in a 100 lifetimes and some immigrants won't be able to hold on to a job here in a 100 lifetimes, whereas others are able to do so almost immediately. We treat them all the same, though! Badly.
In some parts of Sweden we're approaching 50 percent immigrants, and in due time, say 30 years or so, they'll likely be a majority of the population (if you dare look at genetic origin that is, and if the current trends keep going). About 20% of the population consists of people born in another country, and the third largest city, Malmö is currently at 41.7%. This is of course problematic in many aspects, including economic. The state will inevitably try to help more and more people, and by help, I mean ruin their lives completely. The welfare state is growing, the result of which is easy to predict (see Detroit).
It may sound like I'm hateful towards immigrants/refugees, but I'm really not (I will admit to a strong distaste for Islam, though). They're getting placed in an absolutely awful situation, because they're being force-fed bullshit rhetoric and empty promises. I think there's a really serious question in here that no one has bothered to try to answer, because we're so full of ourselves: Is a Somali woman with 4 kids, living in a war infested shithole, worse off there than over here? We have the arrogance to a priori think that it's better over here, but how do we know? Over here you'll have to abandon your kids indefinitely, they may follow after some time, or they may not. You'll end up in the welfare state process, living in an apartment with strangers in a neighborhood you don't understand, in a culture you don't understand. The government places demands on you that the locals feel are too lenient (because "we're paying taxes!!!") while at the same time they may be excruciatingly difficult for you as an individual. So you're alienated before you even have the chance to get integrated. Is it better over here, because you're safe, and have material welfare? Or is it worse, because your life has just been stripped of all of its meaning?
I'll quickly get back to the social erosion part as well. Sweden is a cold-ish country, with very fast Internet, and a social structure (for instance religion is dead, which means that people don't meet their neighbors in church) that gives everyone every opportunity to stay at home and create their own microculture. By that, I mean that you "hang out" with people who thinks like you do, likes the same things that you do etc. But the hanging out part is mostly done online. The general Swedish person has an incredibly impoverished social life. This is a trend that has been discussed by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, as well as Charles Murray. However, the U.S. is, from what I gather, decades after us in terms of the level of isolation and misery possible. If you sit in a bus in Sweden, the native Swedes will likely be completely quiet, unless they're close friends. Talking to a stranger is complete madness, and by now it's almost offensive. Our level of asociality is approaching anti-sociality. When you travel somewhere else, the difference is almost comical, if it wasn't tragic. I recently visited the Netherlands, and standing around thinking about what bread to buy, a person approached me and started asking me questions. 10 minutes later this person walked away. This kind of thing happened numerous times, and it has never ever happened to me in Sweden, in my lifetime. Spending two weeks in another country, you have more exchanges with people than you have in a decade over here. Actually talking to people makes you like them a hell of a lot more than walking around with a frowny face all the time. Liking your fellow countrymen is a good thing! Surprise surprise. But how is that the fault of social democracy? Well, again it's because the state is expected to do everythimg. You don't need your neighbors or even friends to help you, ever, because there is some kind of process or state apparatus that will (fail to) take care of your problem."