Every great collapse begins with a crack

At first glance, a headline about the University of Mainz removing french fries from its cafeteria menu seems trivial. The sort of minor administrative decision that might belong on a local announcement board rather than commanding the attention of serious observers. Yet I would argue that this small story reveals something profound about the state of social cohesion in contemporary Europe, and perhaps even serves as a canary in the coal mine for the future of our civilisation.

Here are the facts: The Mainz University student services organisation (Studierenden Werk Mainz) had procured 500 cake plates and 1,590 serving dishes for French fries to supply the university cafeteria. Within four weeks, 450 of the cake plates had disappeared. Of the serving dishes, only 100 remained in use, meaning roughly 1,490 had vanished. Faced with this massive attrition, the cafeteria made a decision: remove French fries from the menu entirely.

On the surface, one might ask what this has to do with geopolitical upheaval, energy security, or the great challenges facing the West. With American interest in Greenland and turmoil in major American cities dominating headlines, who has time to concern themselves with missing crockery in a German university? Yet I would submit that it is precisely these small, daily manifestations of institutional decay that pose the greatest long-term threat to our societies—far greater, in fact, than the dramatic events that dominate cable news cycles.

The Invisible Infrastructure of Civilisation

To understand why, we must examine a concept that has become central to understanding how societies function: Social capital. This term, popularised by American sociologist Robert Putnam in the late 1980s and early 1990s, describes the advantages that arise from social networks, norms, and mutual trust. Think of it as an invisible web of social relationships that enables people to cooperate, share resources, and achieve common goals.

Social capital is fundamentally different from other forms of capital precisely because it is invisible and self-enforcing. When you lend a tool to a trusted neighbour, you do not need to hire a lawyer or draw up a contract. Trust between you and your neighbour is sufficient. But this simplicity masks something crucial: The entire transactional cost structure of a society depends on the density of this trust. Where trust exists, transaction costs plummet. Where it erodes, costs spiral, as formal enforcement mechanisms must replace informal understanding.

Consider a practical example. If you cannot trust your neighbour to return what you lend, you face a choice: Either forgo the transaction entirely, or incur the legal expenses of contracts and potential enforcement. Yet both outcomes impose costs—not merely financial, but in terms of forgone cooperation and mutual benefit. Your neighbour might have improved his garden with the borrowed equipment, benefiting both of you. But without trust, that mutual gain never occurs.

This seemingly minor dynamic plays out across entire economies. When social capital is high, businesses can operate with handshake agreements and unwritten understandings. Supply chains function efficiently because parties can rely on each other’s commitment to fair dealing. Innovation accelerates because cooperation becomes frictionless. When social capital declines, the state must substitute formal rules, surveillance, and enforcement for what once came naturally.

The Paradox of Declining Participation

Putnam’s most famous work, “Bowling Alone” (2000), documents a profound shift in American civic life. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans belonged to bowling leagues, service clubs, religious organisations, and civic associations at remarkable rates. These groups did more than organise leisure activities—they cultivated the social connections and shared norms that held society together. Yet over subsequent decades, participation in these institutions collapsed. Voting declined by 25 per cent. Attendance at public meetings fell by 40 to 50 per cent. Membership in civic organizations plummeted.

In Europe, we observe similar patterns. In rural areas, the situation has been slightly better—participation in volunteer fire brigades, local football clubs, and traditional organisations has remained more resilient. But in urban centres, particularly in Central and Western Europe, we see the same erosion of civic participation that Putnam documented in America. Fewer people attend church services. Union membership has declined. The dense networks of civic engagement that characterised the post war period are visibly fraying.

Putnam himself—no right-winger, and someone whose political sympathies generally align with the centre-left—made a sobering admission in a later essay titled “E Pluribus Unum.” He acknowledged that the increasing diversity of Western societies has contributed significantly to this decline in social capital. This is not to blame minorities or immigrants per se, but rather to observe that the transition from relatively homogeneous societies to genuinely plural ones has been accompanied by a breakdown in the implicit norms that previously held societies together. When communities consist of people with shared histories, similar reference points, and common expectations about how one behaves, the enforcement of social norms becomes largely self-sustaining. When that homogeneity fragments, however, the informal mechanisms that once bound society together begin to fray.

The Broken Windows Principle

Understanding the Mainz cafeteria story requires an examination of what criminologists call the “broken windows theory.” Introduced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982, the theory posits a simple but powerful observation: Visible signs of disorder and norm violation encourage further disorder and norm violation. A broken window that goes unrepaired signals that no one cares, and consequently, breaking more windows costs little—morally or socially. The disorder escalates.

The most compelling illustration of this principle comes from a 1969 experiment conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He placed two identical, unlocked automobiles on the streets of New York City—one in the Bronx, a poor and chaotic neighbourhood, and another in Palo Alto, California, a wealthy suburb. In the Bronx, residents demolished the car within ten minutes, stealing parts and destroying the interior. In Palo Alto, by contrast, the car sat untouched for two weeks.

But here is where the experiment became truly revealing. When Zimbardo approached the Palo Alto car and smashed a window with a sledgehammer, creating a visible sign of damage, the behaviour changed dramatically. Within two hours, residents of that affluent neighbourhood began systematically dismantling the vehicle. The broken window—the visible violation of norms—had signalled something crucial: That no one was maintaining order, and therefore anything was permitted.

This principle proved so influential that when Rudolph Giuliani became Mayor of New York City in the 1990s, he implemented what became known as “zero tolerance” policing, based explicitly on broken windows theory. Police aggressively pursued even minor infractions—graffiti, fare evasion, minor vandalism, and disorderly conduct. The results were striking. Murder rates declined from over 2,000 per year in 1990 to fewer than 1,000 by 1998—a reduction of roughly 50 percent.

The Mainz Disappearance as Symptom

Returning to the Mainz cafeteria, the broken windows principle illuminates what has transpired. A few students began taking dishes and serving ware. Perhaps initially this was exceptional behaviour, the kind of petty theft that occurs in any large institution. But as students observed that others were doing so with impunity—that no one was enforcing the norm—the behaviour cascaded. Within weeks, 90 per cent of one category of dish had vanished and 95 per cent of serving dishes were missing.

The critical insight is that this is not primarily a story about poverty or desperation. These are university students in a wealthy European country. What transpired was not driven by necessity but by the erosion of the implicit understanding that one does not take public property—that there exists a norm against such behaviour, and that norm is collectively enforced.

The consequences of this norm collapse are not trivial. The university now has no option but to remove French fries from the menu, thereby degrading the quality and variety of the cafeteria offering. This is a loss of institutional service that did not result from fiscal constraints or supply chain disruptions, but from the failure of social trust. Alternatively, the university must implement surveillance mechanisms—barcodes on dishes, restricted access, cameras—all of which impose costs that could have been directed toward educational purposes.

This dynamic replicates across Western societies. In some cities, newspapers once sat in honour boxes on the street, with readers expected to deposit coins. Many of these systems have been dismantled because they could no longer function without complete breakdown of the honour system. Farmers’ markets that operated on trust—where customers could take products and leave payment—have largely disappeared, replaced by conventional retail with checkout points and cashiers. In supermarkets, items once freely accessible are now locked behind security displays. Razor blades and other commonly stolen items must be retrieved by staff.

Diversity, Social Trust, and the State

None of this is to deny that demographic change has played a role. When a significant portion of a community consists of individuals who did not grow up within the cultural context in which certain norms developed, the implicit understanding erodes. More significantly, if institutional authorities fail to enforce norms against new groups when they violate them, the incentive structure shifts for the rest of the population. If one observes that certain people can steal with impunity while others are expected to follow rules, the logical conclusion is: “If they are exempt from these norms, why should I conform?”

This dynamic has been documented repeatedly across Europe. In some neighbourhoods, the failure of authorities to enforce basic behavioural norms against certain newcomer populations has led to a phenomenon where native residents gradually abandon their own internal enforcement of those norms. The implicit standard shifts from “this is how we behave” to “apparently, rules do not apply anymore, so I might as well behave accordingly”.

The long-term consequence is inexorable: As informal social control—the invisible mechanisms by which people police their own behaviour based on shared understandings—erodes, the formal apparatus of state enforcement must expand. Knife bans. Alcohol-free zones. Increased surveillance. Random searches. All of these represent state substitutes for what once came naturally through dense networks of social cohesion.

The Stakes

Here lies the great paradox of modern liberal democracy. Genuine freedom—not merely the legal right to do as one wishes, but the lived experience of living safely in a community where one need not fear predation—depends entirely on widespread norm-following that occurs without explicit state coercion. A society where everyone “technically has the right” to attack their neighbours but is prevented only by omnipresent surveillance and overwhelming police force is not free. It is a surveillance state masquerading as freedom.

The exceptional success of Western European and East Asian societies over the past 75 years has rested on a particular achievement: the construction of societies where most citizens, most of the time, voluntarily conform to behavioural norms without requiring constant oversight. This allowed the state to remain relatively unobtrusive. Citizens could walk streets safely. Institutions could operate efficiently. Economic life could flourish because transaction costs remained low.

This achievement rested on historical foundations. In Northern Italy and Central Europe, civic traditions extending back to medieval free cities created deep reservoirs of social capital. In Japan, a particular constellation of cultural factors produced similarly high levels of trust and norm-adherence. In Germany, the post-war reconstruction—which rebuilt civil society deliberately—reinforced civic participation and mutual obligation.

But these were not inevitable achievements. As Putnam’s research on Southern Italy demonstrates, even within the same nation, regions with different historical trajectories of civic engagement developed radically different capacities for functional governance. Regions with long traditions of civic republicanism developed efficient administrations and robust economic performance. Regions with histories of feudalism and centralised authority—where the state was understood as the instrument of rulers, not of citizens—developed clientelist networks and endemic corruption.

The Warning Sign

I am acutely aware that dwelling on missing cafeteria dishes may seem like a peculiar preoccupation when major geopolitical crises demand attention. The headlines do matter. Yet I would contend that historians looking back on the early 21st century Western decline will not point primarily to these dramatic events. Rather, they will point to the small moments—the everyday erosion of the unwritten rules that held society together. Each broken norm, each small theft met with indifference, each moment when citizens observe others violating accepted rules without consequence, represents a micro-fracture in the social infrastructure.

Every great collapse begins with a crack. The Mainz cafeteria story is a crack—not the collapse itself, but a warning that the invisible foundations are weakening. The question is whether Western societies can recognize this signal and respond, or whether we will continue our slow march toward societies where formal enforcement replaces informal trust, where surveillance replaces civic participation, and where the state—increasingly intrusive and increasingly necessary—comes to regulate behaviour that once regulated itself.

That outcome would represent not a triumph of order, but a profound loss of what once made liberal democracies worth defending.