My double-think moment on the TV news: The voiceover explains, that Olaf Scholz and his coalition partners had to work overnight to get the budget deal done. Scholz's comment: "Sleep is overrated." A few minutes later, the other news: "Biden tells Democratic governors he needs more sleep and plans to stop scheduling events after 8 p.m.".
He can stop scheduling events anytime a clock either "ticks", OR "tocks", for all most of us care. He ain't running anything, anyway ....,. can't walk very well, either, for that matter.
A good advice would be, to dismiss all these useless eaters, send them out, confiscate their properties and fill the holes they made with their fortunes. There might be even something left to repair the damage from the climate nerds.
Confiscate everything from the Climate Cultists as well, and provide them with some nice farmland on a newly formed reservation, where they can live the energy-free life they want to impose on the rest of us. If they recant and show true repentance of their science heresy, they can be allowed to rejoin the modern world. 🤣
But now we have layer after layer of mental gymnastics shielding us from facts. For example, group IQ differences are now acknowledged but attributed to systemic racism, lack of opportunity, and so on
Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged uses trains as a central motif in the plot. Likely she chose rail transport because it was dominant in the mid-20th century. Rail is one of several industries at first efficiently managed by committed workers but later becomes mismanaged by government administrators.
One must excuse the more fanciful elements of her world, like science fiction marvels worthy of Star Trek, or the “fact” that all the good people are hard working and intelligent while the evil are the opposite. Just the same, it’s worth noting that Rand chooses two events as crucial choke points for the failure of the rail network. In the first, a power-mad administrator abuses a super-weapon that causes widespread death and destruction, including of critical railway bridges. The remaining crises are within the realm of the possible:
A second disaster occurs when government orders lead to a crash and explosion in a train tunnel. As the nation slides into anarchy, the rulers make desperate but irrational choices, ordering passenger trains to be filled with grain.
In less dramatic times (e.g. the real world), rail systems tend to fail less dramatically. Rail transit is neglected or phased out, as happened in the US after WW II, in favor of highways. Overall quality tends to deteriorate with the years, due to increasingly incompetent labor but also the natural tendency to forego needed maintenance and replacement. The end stage of the decline is when the infrastructure itself is either abandoned or physically removed, whether by government action or by the “free market” action of thieves who sell the rail and anything else they can cart away for its scrap value.
Sorry for the editorial. My point: “Train wreck” is an excellent metaphor. As the rail system deteriorates, naturally, literal train wrecks become more common. They are but one system of a systemic failure. Even in “civilized” nations, these can be disasters at least on a local scale, as witnessed by the East Palestine (Ohio) accident in early 2023.
I'll close with a final image from Atlas Shrugged: The passenger train is stopped way out in the countryside. No one knows if or when it'll ever re-start. Passengers eventually give up, debark and set off in groups to fend for themselves in a new dark age.
Very interesting remarks on train systems. Thank you very much! Do you know anything about the US postal system? David Graeber once wrote about it, that it was of high quality in the 19th century, copied from Prussia, but deteriorated over time, leading to the idiom "Going postal" for going crazy.
dont leave out the hate for those that create. A man makes special steel (Roirdan) should have to share it with the world, for free. The Elon Musk types should hated.
After the UK Labour Party took power in a landslide election victory in 1945 and proceeded to implement their long promised socialist policies which included buying out private coal mines and notably railway companies to create British Rail (BR)a phrase started to gain currency-"To Nationalise is to Paralyse". Now obviously Frances SNCF, as well as Germanys DFB up until the 90s have had quite a good record overall but the potential for government induced chaos to manifest itself should be acknowledged. Though in the UK the de nationalisation of the railways has ended up seeing firms owned by billionaires like Sir Richard Branson being bailed out by the government and the service being so unreliable has at times led to calls for a return to government ownership.It won't come as a surprise that the main issue now is overcrowding..
The now retired British Rail (BR)logo has been recognised as one of the most memorable and brilliantly simplistic.
A CBDC is a likely future, most likely with the goal of eliminating cash and most importantly, to maximize economic control. However, even if this succeeded, the fundamental temptations ("create money out of thin air") would still remain. In other words, the money unit would be no more reliable than what existed in the past. Indeed, the very power of fine-level government control would incentives people to look for alternatives (e.g. black market). To contrive an example, imagine the government has the power to freeze all your bank accounts, or perhaps just withdraw a large penalty, because you’re an “ultra-right wing racist.” Perhaps you made an unflattering comment on social media. In such a world, many people would look for assets that weren’t subject to confiscation at the whim of a bureaucrat with a keyboard. In the past century, any number of items fit the bill, whether precious metals, jewelry, even canned food and cigarettes. As Big Brother tightens his grip, parallel economies will crop up, barter arrangements and the like.
Britain accepts the challenge. Our new Labour Government will closely contest the German Government’s fiscal incontinence. When it comes to pissing money away, Labour has prior form turning Britain into the ‘sick man of Europe’ by the 1970s, so the German Government will find it a tough contest. Labour with its proposed State-run GB Energy to make the UK a green energy superpower, most likely will knock Germany off top spot for green energy idiocy too.
The whole West, apparently. By design? I think so. WEF 2030 Young Global Leaders, all of them schooled in "how to destroy a county in 10 easy steps". LOOK at them: Macron, Scholtz, Rishi (now replaced w/ the same), Trudeau, Biden (not YGL just demented-told what to do by YGB's)
I don't believe for a moment the current dingbats (David Lammy anyone?) are even remotely capable of setting up an energy whatever. It's like Boris Johnson promising 50 hospitals, the last verbal hooray of a party that is as dead as the Tories, only they don't know it yet. I always say that reality is King. Eventually each country will end up with their own version of Javier Milei.
The new German economics sounds worryingly similar to Gordon Brown's PFI (Private Finance Initiative) binge, and we know how that turned out. I christened him the Enron Chancellor, feel free to copy!
Writing from a (somewhat, in some respects) less insane EU country, what’s interesting that people are astonished to learn that while Germany was rich, Germans never were. E.g., less resident-owned real estate than Italy. Germany was just always amazingly good at mining value from its disturbingly patient herd.
The new thing is that all the riches extracted and more has just been pissed out the window. Germany is shortly to be as poor as the Germans.
yes is interesting. for reasons going back to the immediate post-war period, Germans tend to rent. in consequence they have very few savings, also because they lose a very large part of their salary to government taxation. the system has money, or at least it used to; Germans just draw on it. well, soon the system won't have money either.
It’s a system that can work well for its people if there’s a lot of republican virtue in both the elites and the populace – elites that husband the money faithfully to genuinely improve the country, voters who tolerate no deviation from that.
Not having much of your own is not painful if public space & life is comfortable and well-appointed. Why worry about sleeping in a rented bedsit when all your day is spent at meaningful work, cozy cafés, beautiful parks and cultural amenities, and travelling between them in frequent, punctual, clean, and safe public transit anyway? There’s not much freedom to be found in searching for a parking lot or sitting in a cheaply built pseudomansion without meaningful social life.
Paying unfathomable taxes on meagre salaries earned in endless precarious busywork just to walk home to a grey apartment block through rude-to-dangerous foreign impositions on streets that are Belgium-level grimy and litter-strewn – now that’s hell.
I don’t think the US was ever much to write home about as far as virtuous leadership goes. The mythos of the republic covers up that some brigands with propaganda cover from enlightenment scribes agitated their population to rebel, and once they had won they started pressing them harder than either parliament or crown ever did (cf. Shay’s and Whiskey rebellions).
What made America great was its huge expanse that both gave opportunity to and brutally winnowed an incredible population (and gave it space to let the metropoleis remain far away).
Since the frontier was closed it was one psychosis after another, and fairly bad regimes with them: progressives/Wilson, New Deal, Civil Rights (which had always been based on a mass of lies), the 60s/70s freakout, Reagan/Bush’s massive expansion of the security state and state activity in general – with its cost pushed into the future with massive debt, not very unlike the topic of this post – Clinton’s deindustrialization op towards China, Bush II continuing daddy’s project, the Obama “civil rights” woke “Race War II” entrenchment, and now the liberal Chernenko/Adropov years.
There’s a deal of ruin in a nation, particularly one as great as the Americans, but every well has a bottom.
As Sir John Glubb discussed in his work, every empire collapses eventually, often sooner than later...America made a fatal error when it decided to become an empire....
Interesting how relative it might be. In my several visits to Germany (last time in Berlin 1.5 years ago) it felt to me exactly as described in your second paragraph. Super convenient public transport (especially in Berlin, all of it), incredibly interesting cultural life, best bookstores that I have seen, much cheaper (and generally better) clothes and food in stores (than we have here just across the sea to the north-east), and so on. Berlin was the only time in my life when I didn't want to go back home, wanted to stay there for more time, because of all that. (And it's not bad at all in the place where I live.)
(With the funny twist that in many areas my wife (who usually does most of the talking when abroad) had to speak more Spanish than German.)
"Paying unfathomable taxes on meagre salaries earned in endless precarious busywork just to walk home to a grey apartment block through rude-to-dangerous foreign impositions on streets that are Belgium-level grimy and litter-strewn – now that’s hell."
Excellent points. Allow me to make it yet more pessimistic:
Worlldwide, “rude to dangerous” is the norm. Local government is inept and often operates like a criminal gang. Those who had wealth or skills have long since moved to safer places, if they could escape. Of those who remain, only a small minority enjoy work opportunity, living, eating, medical care, etc. on the level we Westerners are accustomed to.
They live in armed compounds guarded 24x7 by men with automatic weapons. It’s worth noting that these “rich” people I’ve just described would be considered middle- or even lower-middle income citizens in the First World.
Rarely do they venture outside their bubble of safety. Those who can afford it will have bodyguards or other private security to accompany them almost everywhere they travel. Persons who cannot afford that will carry a handgun, at the least. The vast majority of the populace lives at little better than subsistence level. Crime, lawlessness, violence, adversity are everyday realities. Roadblocks by criminals, kidnapping attempts, armed robbery and worse are ever-present risks.
Many parts of the globe have been substantially like I’ve outlined. I fear that as the situation deteriorates, your city in Belgium and many other lands too will decay into a similar state.
It was interesting to speak with German friends who had zero interest in saving to buy something, because rent was cheap, and the way to buy things was so onerous and expensive, it made no monetary sense. Until, now things have flipped and rents are going sky high (even with government measures and energy price caps).
Eugyppius, do you think that there is some cultural inertia at play? What I refer to is the stereotype of German competence and responsibility. Ie While being short-sighted, there is still some subconscious belief that there is more substance to the underlying institutions, and "the adults" will save them despite their tantrums?
My father (we’re not German, but ethnically so) is an almost touching example of this: During the GFC I told him that probably it would be nothing, but to maybe get some physical gold just as a hedge.
He literally told me that if the banking system was in trouble, surely the Obrigkeiten (elites, leadership – hard to translate in all its deep deference) would inform the citizenry and take good care of it.
I think I grasp what you intend by your "morbid comparison." I take the meaning as one method is slow, another quick, to accomplish a desired goal.
Historically, you might be interested to know that wrist slashing was a fairly popular method of suicide in ancient Rome. Preferably done in a warm bath, it was reportedly a relatively painless way to do oneself in
I am occasionally having a look at videos from a german YouTuber theoretical physicist, except the latest one is a completely unexpected and uncharacteristic rant about how Germany has a reputation of being well-functioning country of highly meticulous engineers, but in reality Germany is falling apart, the trains are cancelled or late, the country is falling behind technologically, policies are retarded etc.
It tells you something that when a German politician criticised my home country Irelands economic policies (which are based on high corporate tax intake due to US pharma and tech European HQs locating there)an Irish economist was able to casually say to him that you're just jealous...Now contrast and compare. Agricultural output Ireland ranks amongst the very best but the country of BAYER, BMW, Siemens, Mercedes Benz etc being downgraded by corporate tax haven Ireland....
The 20th century ideologies met very poetic deaths. Fascism, smothered in its cradle, communism starved to death. It would be only fitting if the last of the three, liberalism, died by promising too much while holding on to so very little
Interestingly, the most openly focused on military power (fascism and nazism) lost its wars, and communism died of inability to more rationally provide plenty.
It’s only fitting that liberal democracy dies of strangling freedoms to finance a potemkin democracy.
"At first nothing much happened, but over the past decade our rail system has become increasingly unreliable. It is now a national embarrassment that is punctual only 64% of the time. If your involves a single connection, in other words, you will be late more often than not."
While that is a serious decline in German tradition of trains running on time NYC just announced that LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) commuter trains into NYC have improved to almost 50% on time (which allows for six minute delay to be counted as on time) as if connecting to anything that adheres to a schedule accommodates connections that are six minutes late! Nothing improves performance like changing the measurements.
lol, DB also introduced a 5-minute rule; any delay under 5 minutes is punctual.
I know American rail has serious problems, but in Germany it's a much more central part of how everybody gets around, so the economic and social problems that arise from a lower level of dysfunctionality are vastly greater.
They copied this wheeze from British Rail I suspect. How sad. I remember the Swiss trains arriving on the platform exactly as the second hand on the platform clock flipped over to zero.
Just returned from a Swiss holiday that involved a lot of train travel. Every Swiss train was late, albeit by only a few minutes (worst case 10 minutes) so would have been 'on time' in many countries.
Sorry about that. The Swiss rail system these days is running an absolutely madly dense schedule and there's now extra strain on the system because the Gotthard Base tunnel is still blocked. Fittingly the blockage is due to damage caused by the derailment of a German cargo train.
I don't know much about the "on schedule" aspects of it, because every time I'm in Berlin, I'm frankly too astonished that it's possible to use public transportation to get around the city at all to pay attention to timing. I am admittedly always only on vacation there, and so timing is far less critical. It may well be the case that it would be unusable if one needed to reliably get to a job on time.
But compared to Albuquerque, it's a complete miracle.
Exactly.. and when the numbers are so bleak that tweaking will not fix the picture they paint simply stop data collection all together.. problem solved no more bad news!! It's what happened to EPA toxic release reporting when the Ground Zero air was declared safe but no evidence would support the claim.. post 9-11 reform closed EPA libraries too.. trust our pure air & water quality!
grrr Wayback is down for maintenance but UC Davis who hosted Scorecard pulled it offline in 2020 w note saying this project has ended.. dirtbag move.. but check Wayback in a few hours.. amazing public resource buried to protect toxic profiteers.
Boy, that escalated, quickly! It used to be just manipulating statistics on (un)employment. Then crime statistics manipulation. From now on in a debate: "Alright, what´s your definition of ..."
At least Germany has a debt ceiling…..that will go next. Our state, California, practices similar economic policy under Gavin Newsom, who is likely to become President this year replacing Biden or in the near future. Budgetary tricks as you describe are the foundations of our state budget. We do not have a dependable railway system to decay, or a Bundeswehr to neglect, but we are building a high speed railway from/to literally nowhere, and we solve the tax break situation for new workers by importing illegal aliens with no skills and giving them free health care, cellphones, and debit cards, subject to a new minimum wage untenable for business. The only difference in methods is that California cannot issue its own currency, but we’re working on that. See you at the bottom……..
I'm also a Californian but I've become pretty skeptical about the supposed coronation of Gavin either this year or in 2028.
First, as I'm sure you know, he is a creature of a one-party hothouse environment and he was born with more access to high-end donors and political-patronage networks than a Senator has after decades in DC—my point being that he's never had to appeal to voters outside the very, um, unique members of the Dem Party of Cali, meaning the left of the left, where he'd already been crowned by the media as the Golden Boy (wearing a halo of wealth, status and Hollywood looks) and he's never had to face a tough conservative opponent or appeal to working-class people who don't really know him. Can you imagine Gavin in a VFW hall in the Midwest trying to appeal to working-class people? Someone who never served in the military, never had a real job, yet reeks of wealth and arrogance?
And then of course there's the status of California and his performance as Gov: all the bum camps, all the billions spent on bum camps, all the crime and shoplifting that adds to the sense of social chaos; all the crazy boondoggles where billions disappear down the gullet of some patronage group (either unions or race representatives); our enormous budget and its deficit; and then our highest sales taxes, high income taxes, highest gas prices, highest heating-oil prices, highest housing costs, and our high levels of poverty, illiteracy and income inequality, much of it due to our open border and sanctuary state status.
Not that I think it's impossible for Gavin to shine on the national stage, but he has serious handicaps, and we never know how famous politicians from very Blue states (I'm thinking Cali and NY) will perform once they have to appeal to the rest of the country.
Neither of them have ever dealt w politics in the most simple or traditional sense: appealing to voters with ideas and a vision and winning them over the old-fashioned way.
Life in a one-party state (not to mention a very very wealthy one-party state) is very different: they both got hooked into powerful patronage networks (Gavin by birth, Kamala by skin color and pussy power) and rose through the ranks by being loyal to the party apparatus and by knowing who to get $$ from (donors) and who to legislate to give it to (patronage groups like unions, NGOs, the homeless-industrial complex).
Both of them will have a hard time relating to middle Americans and neither have dealt w any kind of real conservative challenge.
Newsom doesn’t have a chance on the national level. If ‘bubble boy’ ever gets serious about campaigning, he’ll soon find this out. There are only so many goodies that the Democrats can handout in buying votes. Their choo-choo 🚂 is coming off the tracks. There’s a goid solid core of the country that are buying into the giveaways. The Democrats are immoral in this regard.
You're right on all points, but the question is this: Will the state media allow all Americans to read the truth about Newsom and the cesspool he has made of California? I suspect not. They want to keep it on a highly superficial level and hope people won't notice the slime trail behind him. Sadly, there are a lot of highly uninformed voters (especially Democrat voters) who will excitedly perceive him as a young, new, perhaps handsome (yuk!) face that they can slip into the Presidency.
I'm no Newsom fan. Just the same, I would never say he couldn't become President. To support that premise, please allow me to list several recent Presidents in unflattering terms. You'll note that both parties make the list:
A senior citizen with likely advanced dementia.
A boorish real estate developer (at least he earned his money, a rarity in this office.)
A barely-American black Muslim of curious professional background;
The useless draft-dodging scion of an old Establishment family;
A charming but cunning man from a rural state;
A former intelligence officer;
A former B-movie actor.
…and that’s only going back 4 decades. It’s worth mentioning that several of those listed had known or likely longstanding involvement with intelligence or other “deep state” organs.
I came here to say that I think California has patented this monetary approach of bribing voters with goodies CA can ill afford lol. I see you got here with a great comment first!
spiraling, as are almost every single country on the planet. We are paying our taxes to influencers, solicitors and corporations that do not give a darn about people that are working just to live a decent life. How do these criminals sleep at night?
Are there any countries on this planet that are not throwing our hard earned money around?
We should have a world wide revolt and stop paying taxes
Argentina is trying to go on a different path, it's not easy but there are some actual changes being done, Milei has been able to balance the budget.
Though for us it took the country spiralling into 200% inflation and the economy being on the precipice of a complete collapse for someone different to get elected, so prepare for things getting much much worse before people wake up (if they even do
“Illiberal nationalism” is not fascism. Fascism is the fusion of political and business governance into one totalitarian system. This happened on a national level in Italy and Germany in the 1930s and it is happening on a global level now with “stakeholder capitalism” (Robert Malone has the best explanation of this that I have seen on his Substack - soon to be a new book). This confusion of nationalism with fascism is the cardinal error that is preventing otherwise astute analysts from understanding the current crisis - which is global, not national.
Everything that’s happening in Germany is happening in most/all other countries you would call “liberal democracies” but that are now, and have been for a while, part of the global techno-fascist system.
National politics are a distracting side show to keep us from seeing the big picture and from mounting a meaningful resistance.
For example: Everything German politicians and public health leaders did during Covid seems stupid, if you think they were acting on behalf of the public health and welfare of the German people. But it is not stupid at all if you see that they were acting on behalf of a global "stakeholder capitalist" system of corporations, NGOs, philanthrocapitalists and their military/IC enablers.
“fascism” is a word that has assumed a great many definitions, but it is most commonly identified with franco’s spain, mussolini’s italy and hitler’s germany. for various reasons (some of them laid out in my long piece on fascism from a few months ago), i think the three are better described as illiberal nationalist regimes, but i provide both terms to avoid confusion.
i know that ‘fusion of political and business governance’ is often offered as a definition of ‘fascism,’ but i think it’s retrospective, based in part on impressions of the 1940s-era German war economy (in this sense allied powers would’ve also been ‘fascist’, but that does not make sense) and not really how self-identified fascists would’ve described themselves. the National Socialists were economic opportunists who ran what you might call a ‘patronage economy’ that granted special privileges to collaborators, selectively nationalised industries as perceived to be advantageous, and so on.
OK let's not use the word fascism. Global totalitarianism works for me. The point is that the major forces acting on our societies right now are not national and are not political in a right/left, Nazi/Commie, this year's budget/next year's deficit kind of way. They are global and their apparent goal is totalized control.
Here's the link to Malone's article/book chapter. It's free. I think it explains the big picture better than anything I've read or heard. Curious to hear your take on it.
forgot to tell you i had lunch with an old professor (he's 90 now but still sharp as a tack). he told me to tell you that was the best explanation of fascism he's ever seen and he's been teaching on these types of subjects for nearly 60 years!
This second definition of fascism is very applicable to current trends is globalist-dominated countries, eg the US. The blind spot people have is equating it with superficial or unrelated cultural characteristics. Eg the joint regime here is very left-themed and gay, but still the same patronage and attack on dissent occurs.
I found many covid measures and happenings "Franco etc." fascistic. Beating the peaceful demonstrators. Muzzling people, even children, taking their air. Shutting down public life. Destroying businesses. Destroying children. Forced mass vaccination with an experimental unproven gene-therapy, as a sign of absolute submission under Fuehrer Olaf S. Oeffentliche Menschenopfer zu erbringen, zB in der Person von Josua Kimmich. It has all been enough to let the blood in my veins freeze. Additionally it has all shown that the government is highly unreliable, can"t be trusted a tiny bit.
The ex-google whistleblower Zach Vorhies calls this new thing the "global western alliance". He gave a good interview recently on Steve Kirsch's Thursday broadcast. Covid proved we are now inside the global totalitarian ballpark. Only short amount of space left to turn the ship around by nation after nation voting populists into office and demanding the removal of dedicated globalists from the reigns of power. This is going to be a great challenge.
Agreed. Thanks for pointing to that interview. Zach Vorhies has been so deeply buried by corporate media and the Google juggernaut that his massively consequential whistleblowing and his excellent book have been all but disappeared.
All modern ideologies/systems have "managerialism" (James Burnham) in common. The important institutions are run by the power group of managers, administrators, commissars, burocrats, technocrats. They have a different mindset than the aristocrats and the entrepreneurs of the past, because without ownership there is no effective responsibility. Nonetheless, they have power in there decision-making positions. They see themselves as experts with the authority to control the lives of the people, which they probably detest. Combine managerialism with global centralization and you really just need a few psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists at the top in order to destroy functioning societies and end up in totalitarianism (Political Ponerology, Andrew Lobaczewski).
I think that your sentence about distraction is spot on; but what precedes it is a good example of the distractions we are all bombarded with.
I would say Eugy is right in that Fascism is a form of illiberal nationalism, after all Fascism in both Germany and Italy was very nationalist (I can’t think of any Fascist state that wasn’t).
My point is that the definitions of Fascism, the Left / Right, Progressivism, Social Justice, Equity, etc., are so dynamic and subjective that we waste so much time parsing meanings and splitting hairs, rather than focusing on and taking action on real issues. For instance, the real issues about Biden is his senility, not his age . . and the real issue re the Democrat party is that it feels comfortable foisting a senile guy off on independent voters (because they think the press will help hide the fact he is senile).
We are being played by political distractions every day, day and night, while our money evaporates.
What we might term traditional Fascism, such as 1930s-40s Germany or Italy, certainly had very strong element of nationalism. Original Marxism, Communism, Socialism preached a strong international commitment but in practice "national" flavors emerged, e.g. Russian, Chinese and the smaller Eastern European nations. What these had in common was they operated very similar in practice, even though their official ideologies were quite different. The State was supreme and the individual citizen had minimal, if any, freedoms.
I prefer to think of the emergent WEF-style “one world” government: Yes, it’s probably closest to the traditional notion of Fascism, but worldwide, as opposed to a single nation. An idealist might say that’s good since (in theory!!!) that’d mean that “the people’s” – ALL people – needs would be put foremost. But how can that be, when the de-facto oligarchs are the super-rich, mostly of “capitalist” nations?
We armchair political scientists, amateurs among whom I admit being a member, love to argue about this-ism or that-ism, while seeming to ignore the actual results, not merely the label, of the various ideologies.
Fascism isn't *just* illiberal nationalism, but nevertheless illiberal nationalism is a part of fascism. Or, to put it another way, being illiberal and nationalistic isn't sufficient to count as fascist, but it is necessary.
I'm not sure I could provide a full and water-tight definition, but I'd say fascism incorporates the following beliefs:
- Life is a zero-sum struggle between different races, in which the superior races rightfully dominate the inferior.
- War is inherently good, as a way of purifying members of the stronger races and of subjugating the weaker.
- The national will is best expressed through a strong, totalitarian leader, and no contradiction or deviation from this will is permitted.
- Everything should be subordinated to the racial struggle. Anything that doesn't help with this is at best frivolous, at worst harmful, and should be done away with.
- An exaltation of strength above all other virtues.
Your definitions seem valid enough, but I feel obligated to point out the fundamental problem: what Hume called the “ought” vs. the “is.” I take this to mean the clash between human desires vs. what Reality dictates.
Allow me to quote, verbatim, several words from your definition: rightfully, good, will, virtues. Please note that, WITHOUT EXCEPTION !!! every single one of those terms is purely arbitrary. In this sense, “arbitrary” means they are Man’s definition based upon some standard he thought up, and not by any measure to be found in the physical universe.
Ultimately, all the examples you cite: struggle, zero-sum, and even “racial struggle” (if you allow expanding that encompass competition not just between rivals of a same species, but from any life forms at all.
All of Nature is competition of limited resources. Note that “limited” means, that at any given time, resources whether living room, food, water, etc. are limited, thus it is a zero sum game. In the never-ending conflict within a single species the superior race will win out over the inferior races or individuals. It’s not “rightful” it just IS. Nature couldn't care less about what Man (or any other species) wants. From the moment life began, natural selection and evolution have been constants. The approximately 3.5 million year history of life on earth is littered with countless organisms who died off, often because they lost a competition to a fitter entity. It may be disconcerting, but just consider that you and every other thing alive today is only here because countless ancestors won their bouts in the battle to survive.
Please note that I’m not anti-civilization. It’s brought us many benefits. At its best, it’s a tool to manage our natural world and optimize our place in it. At worst, it becomes a tool of supreme arrogance, thinking that we can dictate terms to Reality and it will meet any our wishes, like the fable of the genie in the lamp. One of civilization's worst failings is that good intentions often produce what seem that positive short-term results but produce a worse long-term result.
Sure, life is a struggle, and often involves trade-offs. But that doesn't mean it's zero-sum; mutually-beneficial co-operation can and does take place, at the national level as well as at the individual.
Also, looking at fascism's track record, the main fascist states (Germany, Italy, Japan) ended up declaring war on too many people and getting destroyed as a result, after only a few decades of fascist rule. Even from a purely amoral survival-of-the-fittest perspective, fascism just plain doesn't work.
While discussing German economic and political realities, you could have just as well been describing our situation in the U.S., and I suspect the rest of the western world also.
This is all completely unsustainable. I'm left wondering if anarchy is the next logical result.
This was all planned. The "West" had to be taken down (mass inflation, immigration, recession, etc). Burying culture and christianity is essential to transforming "the West" into a culture that is homoganised (sp), easily controlled. A population with an IQ of more than 100 can only be controlled by "dumbing it down" THINK about it. WEF 2030
Not importing hundreds of thousands of unemployables with their families each year might save some money?
I suspect the case is the same with Germany as with Sweden: migration costs, all included, come to a net cost of between 2 and 3 percent of annual GDP.
In Britain, a male immigrant comes with one wife/4 children. Given a five bedroom flat or house. He petitions to get family members from his country. He has 3 other wives w/ 4 children-they all get the same arrangement. The wives are on the dole, children on the dole. Every month the wives hand their checks to the husband. He's making big bucks, sending his wives to food banks to get food...for free. See how it works?
If those people, or their ancestors, had been refused entry or deported immediately, it would have prevented a whole host of present problems. And in the future, probably a whole host of even worse problems.
Would be a pretty great expose if someone could get the actual numbers for caring for the illegals in multiple countries and compare them to the GDP, and those pesky numbers of how much they actually add to the country GDP.
Almost ten years ago, the cost (monetary) of migration was a hot topic here in Sweden, and in desperation the regime dusted off two academics to defend it.
One was a researcher in economics, and one an MD, expert in public health and statistics (Ruist and Rosling, resp).
Problem was, both men put their scientific integrity before anything. Ruist did a summarised yet thorough run-down of costs/benefits and arrived at ca 2% of annual GDP as the lower-end figure, noting that he had been very moderate in his considerations.
I still remember him telling a state journalist this on air. She stuttered, fumbled with her papers, and couldn't really continue the interview since he had gone off-script. He has never been used as an expert or a source by regime/state media since, though he wrote rather sardonic (for a swedish academic at least) summary on his blog, about his experience as an item of interest for the media.
Professor Rosling was brought in to defuse the arguement that if the object of migration is to help refugees (the Grosse Lüge of pro-migrationists since the 1980s), the same amount of money could have helped hundreds, even thousands more had the money been allocated to help them in their home nations.
Professor Rosling then said straight out on live state TV, that yes, that is precisely right. Mass-migration hurts both nations involved, and the money had been better spent by (f.e.) buying goods and products from states in need of aid, to help them develop their economies. He was quickly unpersoned after that, and was even accused of being a racist and a nazi by our leftist media (leftist on our scale, meaning left of US Antifa).
Numbers can be gotten, is my point, but it would take at least a small team of professionals to do so, and that is assuming they get access to records. My favourite among many is this:
Sweden's office of corrections refuses to release numbers of how much pork they buy as part of their food budget for inmates, and if the amount of pork has increased with the increase in prison populations. Quite telling, no?
What will it take for Sweden to at least take the Denmark approach? My best friend lives there and I’m wondering how to get her to the US if things go pear shaped. My son is visiting Malmo in a couple of weeks for a conference and i’m already on edge.
The US is better off in many respects. Two I can think of are we have far more open land and most places you can have as many guns as you like. We seem to be overrun by undesirable aliens as badly as Europe is; it's just that we aren't as far down the path as you are.
All else equal, I’d welcome any white Europeans as immigrants here, but to immigrate legally is not easy and the deck has been stacked against Europeans since at least the mid 1960s.
We have ca 24 000 police, of which half are pure paper-pushers.
We have ca 25 000 soldiers, airmen and sailors, of which about half are admin staff, mechanics, and other non-combat positions.
We have ca 1 500 000 moslems out of a total population of 11 000 000 (including illegals).
We have ca 14 000 violent career criminals who go armed every day, estimated by SÄPO (think FBI), and another ca 60 000 criminals connected to organised crime.
In the words of Cyrus from "Warriors":
"Can you count, suckahs?!"
---
Unless your son is obviously jewish (wearing a star of David or a kippa in public) and stays in a group and forks out for a taxi to and from destinations, he should do fine.
Here, NYC paid a billion for illegals to live in hotels in just ONE year (and that’s just the new ones, think of housing credits for the millions of others)
NYC is on track to paying $5 Billion for Joe Biden’s open border policy. And if these sanctuary states think the federal government is going to bail them out they ought to think again.
Amsterdam University released a big study last year (can’t remember the title but I’m sure you can search for it) where they calculated the lifetime contribution/deficit per immigrant by country of origin. White immigrants from Europe/N America and northeast Asians were net contributors; Ukrainians and Russians were a bit above zero; then pretty much anyone from anywhere else in the world was a net negative. The worst were black Africans. Somalis had a net cost to the Dutch government on average 600k euros over a lifetime per person.
Canada is no different. Shortly after he was elected, Justin Trudeau proclaimed, "The budget will balance itself." Shortly afterward, this dimwit announced his admiration for communist China because, "it had the ability to turn on a dime."
Madness in Canadian politics is not limited to a decade ago. Just last week, Canada's Health minister expressed his dismay that, "Some Canadians are so desperate for dental care that they are drinking gasoline." Health Minister Mark Holland is clearly insane.
I suspect the above examples of political derangement are similar to those in Germany. The Hard Left is looking at complete political annihilation in the next election. Just a couple of weeks ago, a downtown Toronto riding filled with rich socialist voters elected a conservative in a by-election. Losing such a safe seat in Canada has driven the Hard Left in the Liberal Party into a frenzy of despair and speculation about the political future of the Prime Minister. Suddenly they have become aware of how deeply they are hated by most Canadian voters.
Did this Holland person explain why drinking gasoline would get you dental care?
To me it seems all you'd get is a trip to the ER and your stomach pumped (I've siphoned petrol once or twice in my life, never noticed any effect on my teeth).
Make no mistake, Holland is unhinged. He seriously contemplated suicide when he lost his riding of Ajax-Pickering in the 2011 national election. Politics is a tough game; if you can't stomach the notion of an election loss, you have no business being in politics.
He strikes me as a man who believes every word he says, when he says it.
That's not a compliment, and is also further confirmation that the plague of corrupt and venal and stupid officials is co-ordinated: how else could the administrations of all western nations in the same span of 10 years become riddled with them?
If one girl in a gang gets crabs, and then three weeks later all the other girls and guys in the gang has crabs, you don't call it a conspiracy, right?
The second in command of the U.S. Public Health service since 2021 is a man who wears a dress (at least sometimes, including in official photos.) Many of today's D.C. Police, such as those who patrol the U.S. Capitol, in appearance are indistinguishable from a Rasta who just landed on de flight from Kingston, mon. Decades ago, his counterpart was a middle-aged black man with a beer gut but neatly groomed. Standards have changed quite a bit since I was a little boy (the 1970s)
I don't know details for Canada. But if it's anything like the US system, the executive has little power over a budget, except perhaps to veto a bill. In the U.S. it's the legislature (Congress) that has complete control over spending. If this is true, then it's as illogical to blame the PM for spending choices as it'd be for a man to beat his wife because she can't spend ten times on groceries as what he brings home in wages. Trudeau may be a [insert unfavorable term of your choice] but likely he has little say in spending.
Sigh. One looks to other countries for some novel ideas to control spending, and yet finds none.
Here in the USA, the Federal government of course prints all the money it needs and spends whatever it wants for whatever it wants. However, most all of the 50 States have, as Germany, balanced budget provisions, so they must be creative in their profligacy. Our State for example during the last economic recession, began to sell their assets—such as government buildings—on a multi-year lease back provision. Thus obtaining quick cash and indebting future State governments. Never however does it seem we truly reduce the budget to meet anticipated revenues. We just kick the can down the road.
The people demand this, and in doing so become poorer and poorer. Our once great “middle class” which held this country together is now a hollow shell and we have a wealth disparage as great as those third world countries we like to belittle. Is there any wonder we are now involved in conflict around the world?
Wel, look a bit harder. Switzerland is a highly democratic country and doesn't have this problem. Cantons compete to keep taxes low, and they run balanced budgets.
As an example of the kind of "problems" you see there, Kanton Zürich recently announced it had - yet again - collected too much tax revenue and didn't spend it all. But it's run by the Swiss version of socialists, so their solution was of course to raise spending to consume it rather than give it back via tax reductions. Elsewhere in the country when this happens, the citizens get tax holidays.
Good example. I get the impression that the Swiss are appropriately conservative about retaining the government structure that has served them for 400 (?) years.
Probably not a coincidence that Switzerland is also restrictive about immigration.
Switzerland is conservative / patriotic about a lot of things, yes. Or rather, it changes slowly and they adopt foreign ideas slowly. It may be that it eventually goes the same way as Germany, but for now at least it hasn't, which should raise questions about how general claims made about democracy and budgets actually are.
To be fair, Switzerland is the only exception I can think of, at least in the western world (I'm not sure how, say, South Korea manages its finances). A generalisation that applies to every case but one is still pretty valid. Though perhaps, instead of talking about "democracy and budgets", we should talk about "representative democracy and budgets", since Switzerland is pretty unusual in terms of how much direct input the citizens get on how things are run.
The data comes from 2017 but in that year many countries had surpluses. Sort by budget surplus and you can see that the top countries were Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland. South Korea comes in at position 7 with a surplus. Other democratic western countries with a surplus include Austria, Sweden and Norway.
Norway is of course far in the lead thanks to very responsible management of its oil wealth. This is a common pattern in governments that run a surplus: they are often successful investors. Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are there with a surplus as per usual. There are also many with tiny deficits, indicating they're pretty much hitting the target (the ideal is of course neither surplus nor deficit).
The proclivities and capabilities of different cultures are often not honestly discussed. Some are arguably more functional, more robust, more sustaining, more human, or just better.
And you cannot just drop humans into a foreign culture and expect them to uniformly absorb the duties and traditions.
I feel with these amounts of money printed, borrowed and otherwise created by miraculous accounting, the usual parameters (growth, unemployment, etc) used to discuss the state of the economy have become basically useless. It´s like we live in a constant state of economic exception based on ever more fake money and probably also fake jobs. I can´t help but think that at some point, this Wile E Coyote style walking in the air will meet with actual reality again, though I have no idea how and when that will happen.
I often get this same sense of unease. I remember when QE was something weird and dangerous that only the Japanese did, now it's accepted as normal everywhere. And I'm not that old. There are many more examples like this. My feeling is that the nations that are caught in this madness are trapped, none can break ranks or it would be crushed. Just continue to run towards the abyss together.
It's darkly amusing watching politicians campaign on "growth", celebrating a few positive percentage points or lamenting a few negatives. Pretending everything is normal....
The truth is even sadder. Governance always collapses no matter what the system. The myths of all peoples always include the grand catastrophes of princes contending against their father the king and often against each other, and it never really matters whether the monarch is good or bad or just enfeebled by age.
I read the excellent American constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley every day, and I was pretty shocked (being a long time out from HS now and who knows how deeply we looked into it then) to learn how the noble vision of the Founders was being fouled by the time of the term of our second President who had been one of those noble Founders and nevertheless didn't seem to be very admiring of our foundational principles. In fact John Adams was as angry about a free press as our governments are today. Even the smartest guys fall into primitive vengeful acts as soon as they ever can.
And it's not even the size of a society, which I was just going to blame until I realized in time that even in tiny villages opposing factions try to tear each other to shreds. We just have to hope in every generation that there are three or four guys with brains and will enough to struggle towards the right thing.
'Governance always collapses no matter what the system.'
My personal pet theory is that this is because of the inevitable fraction of the population that is opportunistic or psychopathic to some degree, or both, who will game the system and manipulate the gullible for their own ends. Humanity has apparently never been able to devise a system that is psychopath-proof.
It's not out of whack. The problem is that when Nature decides that corrective measures must be taken, which they inevitably will, the "whack" will be much harder.
We are pack animals and wired for hierarchy--and to compete for it. Part of that awful pubertal process is starting to feel one's own power and challenging that of one's parents. Have you ever observed what happens to some fathers as their little boys enter the stage of approaching manhood?
And really. Do you accept being told what to do by others if you trust your own instincts and judgment more? Sure, you might be any degree of wrong there. But do you submit easily?
Or could it simply be an instance of one of the essential traits of life, that it is a constant competition for resources, survival of the fittest, and so on?
Perhaps it's got something to do with complexity. When a problem arises, the natural response is generally to pass a new law, create a new regulatory agency, or similar, which increases the complexity of the government. Over time, things get more and more complex until the system becomes too intricate and unwieldy to cope, and falls apart.
<i>And it's not even the size of a society, which I was just going to blame until I realized in time that even in tiny villages opposing factions try to tear each other to shreds.</i>
To be fair, tiny villages generally manage to keep miniminally functioning, even if they're full of cliques and backbiting. Total collapse tends to be more of a big empire thing.
That's because governments always become jobs programs. See: ancient Egypt. That was some bureaucracy them guys set up for themselves. Join the civil service, never get fired, retire youngish after a lifetime of mediocre performance and breathtaking waste of resources.
You nailed the elected politicians' universal motive: "Politicians win elections by promising to give voters fun things. They are focused entirely on their careers and their term of office. Accepting pain in the moment for a better future is unthinkable..." As Jean Claude Juncker once said, “We all know what to do. We just don’t know how to get re-elected after we do it.”
Frightening how similar are your posts to those about the USofA.
I suppose all train wrecks follow a comparable path..............
My double-think moment on the TV news: The voiceover explains, that Olaf Scholz and his coalition partners had to work overnight to get the budget deal done. Scholz's comment: "Sleep is overrated." A few minutes later, the other news: "Biden tells Democratic governors he needs more sleep and plans to stop scheduling events after 8 p.m.".
He can stop scheduling events anytime a clock either "ticks", OR "tocks", for all most of us care. He ain't running anything, anyway ....,. can't walk very well, either, for that matter.
Can't hear, as well. Joe, it´s rest in peace, not rest in power.
Young black girls, to quote from Biden's July 4 speech, should have more sleep...
No sleep-deprived left behind.
Oh, my…
🤣😅🤣😭🤣😅😱
LOLOL
all directed by the same masters.
A good advice would be, to dismiss all these useless eaters, send them out, confiscate their properties and fill the holes they made with their fortunes. There might be even something left to repair the damage from the climate nerds.
Confiscate everything from the Climate Cultists as well, and provide them with some nice farmland on a newly formed reservation, where they can live the energy-free life they want to impose on the rest of us. If they recant and show true repentance of their science heresy, they can be allowed to rejoin the modern world. 🤣
Can we send them to North Korea instead? i’m sure they’ll do just fine…
now that is something ! you need to advize the govt !
AGREE
As Primo Levi wrote Sooner or later we are confronted by facts, and facts are pitiless and obstinate judges
But now we have layer after layer of mental gymnastics shielding us from facts. For example, group IQ differences are now acknowledged but attributed to systemic racism, lack of opportunity, and so on
'fingers crossed' for sooner....
I suppose all train wrecks contribute to the low 64% punctuality.
Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged uses trains as a central motif in the plot. Likely she chose rail transport because it was dominant in the mid-20th century. Rail is one of several industries at first efficiently managed by committed workers but later becomes mismanaged by government administrators.
One must excuse the more fanciful elements of her world, like science fiction marvels worthy of Star Trek, or the “fact” that all the good people are hard working and intelligent while the evil are the opposite. Just the same, it’s worth noting that Rand chooses two events as crucial choke points for the failure of the rail network. In the first, a power-mad administrator abuses a super-weapon that causes widespread death and destruction, including of critical railway bridges. The remaining crises are within the realm of the possible:
A second disaster occurs when government orders lead to a crash and explosion in a train tunnel. As the nation slides into anarchy, the rulers make desperate but irrational choices, ordering passenger trains to be filled with grain.
In less dramatic times (e.g. the real world), rail systems tend to fail less dramatically. Rail transit is neglected or phased out, as happened in the US after WW II, in favor of highways. Overall quality tends to deteriorate with the years, due to increasingly incompetent labor but also the natural tendency to forego needed maintenance and replacement. The end stage of the decline is when the infrastructure itself is either abandoned or physically removed, whether by government action or by the “free market” action of thieves who sell the rail and anything else they can cart away for its scrap value.
Sorry for the editorial. My point: “Train wreck” is an excellent metaphor. As the rail system deteriorates, naturally, literal train wrecks become more common. They are but one system of a systemic failure. Even in “civilized” nations, these can be disasters at least on a local scale, as witnessed by the East Palestine (Ohio) accident in early 2023.
I'll close with a final image from Atlas Shrugged: The passenger train is stopped way out in the countryside. No one knows if or when it'll ever re-start. Passengers eventually give up, debark and set off in groups to fend for themselves in a new dark age.
Very interesting remarks on train systems. Thank you very much! Do you know anything about the US postal system? David Graeber once wrote about it, that it was of high quality in the 19th century, copied from Prussia, but deteriorated over time, leading to the idiom "Going postal" for going crazy.
dont leave out the hate for those that create. A man makes special steel (Roirdan) should have to share it with the world, for free. The Elon Musk types should hated.
After the UK Labour Party took power in a landslide election victory in 1945 and proceeded to implement their long promised socialist policies which included buying out private coal mines and notably railway companies to create British Rail (BR)a phrase started to gain currency-"To Nationalise is to Paralyse". Now obviously Frances SNCF, as well as Germanys DFB up until the 90s have had quite a good record overall but the potential for government induced chaos to manifest itself should be acknowledged. Though in the UK the de nationalisation of the railways has ended up seeing firms owned by billionaires like Sir Richard Branson being bailed out by the government and the service being so unreliable has at times led to calls for a return to government ownership.It won't come as a surprise that the main issue now is overcrowding..
The now retired British Rail (BR)logo has been recognised as one of the most memorable and brilliantly simplistic.
I am sure this is quite on purpose in order to bring in a global digital dollar.
A CBDC is a likely future, most likely with the goal of eliminating cash and most importantly, to maximize economic control. However, even if this succeeded, the fundamental temptations ("create money out of thin air") would still remain. In other words, the money unit would be no more reliable than what existed in the past. Indeed, the very power of fine-level government control would incentives people to look for alternatives (e.g. black market). To contrive an example, imagine the government has the power to freeze all your bank accounts, or perhaps just withdraw a large penalty, because you’re an “ultra-right wing racist.” Perhaps you made an unflattering comment on social media. In such a world, many people would look for assets that weren’t subject to confiscation at the whim of a bureaucrat with a keyboard. In the past century, any number of items fit the bill, whether precious metals, jewelry, even canned food and cigarettes. As Big Brother tightens his grip, parallel economies will crop up, barter arrangements and the like.
Exactly.
And the UK.
South Korea is borrowing from it's central bank. Printing money. Not good:
https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2024/07/08/GY5PHJEJGRARTBGG33U3ZKWVEI/
Britain accepts the challenge. Our new Labour Government will closely contest the German Government’s fiscal incontinence. When it comes to pissing money away, Labour has prior form turning Britain into the ‘sick man of Europe’ by the 1970s, so the German Government will find it a tough contest. Labour with its proposed State-run GB Energy to make the UK a green energy superpower, most likely will knock Germany off top spot for green energy idiocy too.
It's a race to the bottom...may the better spender win! Default is only a matter of time...
The whole West, apparently. By design? I think so. WEF 2030 Young Global Leaders, all of them schooled in "how to destroy a county in 10 easy steps". LOOK at them: Macron, Scholtz, Rishi (now replaced w/ the same), Trudeau, Biden (not YGL just demented-told what to do by YGB's)
We have to admit, they learned well....
And Ardern in little New Zealand: a thoroughly evil person.
And off she went to a highly paid globalist post.
I don't believe for a moment the current dingbats (David Lammy anyone?) are even remotely capable of setting up an energy whatever. It's like Boris Johnson promising 50 hospitals, the last verbal hooray of a party that is as dead as the Tories, only they don't know it yet. I always say that reality is King. Eventually each country will end up with their own version of Javier Milei.
"Off with their heads" said the Red Queen.
Doing the chainsaw tango?
The new German economics sounds worryingly similar to Gordon Brown's PFI (Private Finance Initiative) binge, and we know how that turned out. I christened him the Enron Chancellor, feel free to copy!
See also: Canada.
Lol.
Writing from a (somewhat, in some respects) less insane EU country, what’s interesting that people are astonished to learn that while Germany was rich, Germans never were. E.g., less resident-owned real estate than Italy. Germany was just always amazingly good at mining value from its disturbingly patient herd.
The new thing is that all the riches extracted and more has just been pissed out the window. Germany is shortly to be as poor as the Germans.
yes is interesting. for reasons going back to the immediate post-war period, Germans tend to rent. in consequence they have very few savings, also because they lose a very large part of their salary to government taxation. the system has money, or at least it used to; Germans just draw on it. well, soon the system won't have money either.
It’s a system that can work well for its people if there’s a lot of republican virtue in both the elites and the populace – elites that husband the money faithfully to genuinely improve the country, voters who tolerate no deviation from that.
Not having much of your own is not painful if public space & life is comfortable and well-appointed. Why worry about sleeping in a rented bedsit when all your day is spent at meaningful work, cozy cafés, beautiful parks and cultural amenities, and travelling between them in frequent, punctual, clean, and safe public transit anyway? There’s not much freedom to be found in searching for a parking lot or sitting in a cheaply built pseudomansion without meaningful social life.
Paying unfathomable taxes on meagre salaries earned in endless precarious busywork just to walk home to a grey apartment block through rude-to-dangerous foreign impositions on streets that are Belgium-level grimy and litter-strewn – now that’s hell.
The last time the US had virtuous elites was 200 years ago, and I doubt it's much better in Europe...
I don’t think the US was ever much to write home about as far as virtuous leadership goes. The mythos of the republic covers up that some brigands with propaganda cover from enlightenment scribes agitated their population to rebel, and once they had won they started pressing them harder than either parliament or crown ever did (cf. Shay’s and Whiskey rebellions).
What made America great was its huge expanse that both gave opportunity to and brutally winnowed an incredible population (and gave it space to let the metropoleis remain far away).
Since the frontier was closed it was one psychosis after another, and fairly bad regimes with them: progressives/Wilson, New Deal, Civil Rights (which had always been based on a mass of lies), the 60s/70s freakout, Reagan/Bush’s massive expansion of the security state and state activity in general – with its cost pushed into the future with massive debt, not very unlike the topic of this post – Clinton’s deindustrialization op towards China, Bush II continuing daddy’s project, the Obama “civil rights” woke “Race War II” entrenchment, and now the liberal Chernenko/Adropov years.
There’s a deal of ruin in a nation, particularly one as great as the Americans, but every well has a bottom.
As Sir John Glubb discussed in his work, every empire collapses eventually, often sooner than later...America made a fatal error when it decided to become an empire....
Great comment.
Interesting how relative it might be. In my several visits to Germany (last time in Berlin 1.5 years ago) it felt to me exactly as described in your second paragraph. Super convenient public transport (especially in Berlin, all of it), incredibly interesting cultural life, best bookstores that I have seen, much cheaper (and generally better) clothes and food in stores (than we have here just across the sea to the north-east), and so on. Berlin was the only time in my life when I didn't want to go back home, wanted to stay there for more time, because of all that. (And it's not bad at all in the place where I live.)
(With the funny twist that in many areas my wife (who usually does most of the talking when abroad) had to speak more Spanish than German.)
Never forget what a crazy resource sink Berlin is – that level of subsidy papers over a lot of dysfunction.
Straight from the Baphomet’s mouth: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/only-one-european-country-would-be-better-off-without-its-capital-city/
They still have a crazy (mostly organized/ethnic, drug, leftism) crime problem which of course varies by area in such a huge metropolis.
"Paying unfathomable taxes on meagre salaries earned in endless precarious busywork just to walk home to a grey apartment block through rude-to-dangerous foreign impositions on streets that are Belgium-level grimy and litter-strewn – now that’s hell."
That sounds like life in the old Soviet bloc.
Excellent points. Allow me to make it yet more pessimistic:
Worlldwide, “rude to dangerous” is the norm. Local government is inept and often operates like a criminal gang. Those who had wealth or skills have long since moved to safer places, if they could escape. Of those who remain, only a small minority enjoy work opportunity, living, eating, medical care, etc. on the level we Westerners are accustomed to.
They live in armed compounds guarded 24x7 by men with automatic weapons. It’s worth noting that these “rich” people I’ve just described would be considered middle- or even lower-middle income citizens in the First World.
Rarely do they venture outside their bubble of safety. Those who can afford it will have bodyguards or other private security to accompany them almost everywhere they travel. Persons who cannot afford that will carry a handgun, at the least. The vast majority of the populace lives at little better than subsistence level. Crime, lawlessness, violence, adversity are everyday realities. Roadblocks by criminals, kidnapping attempts, armed robbery and worse are ever-present risks.
Many parts of the globe have been substantially like I’ve outlined. I fear that as the situation deteriorates, your city in Belgium and many other lands too will decay into a similar state.
But it's the EU remember..
It was interesting to speak with German friends who had zero interest in saving to buy something, because rent was cheap, and the way to buy things was so onerous and expensive, it made no monetary sense. Until, now things have flipped and rents are going sky high (even with government measures and energy price caps).
German families were the 2d poorest in Europe, last time I looked...and they still keep voting these clowns in....
Are you sure y’all don’t have the dominion voting system in Germany?
There's no way that's true; there still do exist the PIGS in Europe as well as Bulgaria and Romania. Where did you get that figure?
Indeed, it was true, and based on household wealth...Indeed, the average wealth of German adults is the lowest in Europe...https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072951/wealth-per-adult-europe-by-country/
maybe as a metric based on properties families actually own, e.g. a house or a flat
Bulgaria has the lowest personal taxes. Destination Sofia..
Aahhh human psychology... It's very downfall no doubt...
Eugyppius, do you think that there is some cultural inertia at play? What I refer to is the stereotype of German competence and responsibility. Ie While being short-sighted, there is still some subconscious belief that there is more substance to the underlying institutions, and "the adults" will save them despite their tantrums?
Yes.
My father (we’re not German, but ethnically so) is an almost touching example of this: During the GFC I told him that probably it would be nothing, but to maybe get some physical gold just as a hedge.
He literally told me that if the banking system was in trouble, surely the Obrigkeiten (elites, leadership – hard to translate in all its deep deference) would inform the citizenry and take good care of it.
That’s a German mindset if there ever was one.
There's another angle to the "high competence/efficiency"-trait:
If you're doing something beneficial, the trait results in magnitudes greater returns on your invested resources.
But if you're doing something detrimental, that same trait makes you magnitudes more effective in wreaking havoc.
A somewhat morbid comparison:
An ineffective suicide slashes accross the wrists with an ordinary knife.
An effective suicide slashes their throat with a straight-razor.
I think I grasp what you intend by your "morbid comparison." I take the meaning as one method is slow, another quick, to accomplish a desired goal.
Historically, you might be interested to know that wrist slashing was a fairly popular method of suicide in ancient Rome. Preferably done in a warm bath, it was reportedly a relatively painless way to do oneself in
I am occasionally having a look at videos from a german YouTuber theoretical physicist, except the latest one is a completely unexpected and uncharacteristic rant about how Germany has a reputation of being well-functioning country of highly meticulous engineers, but in reality Germany is falling apart, the trains are cancelled or late, the country is falling behind technologically, policies are retarded etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZZ-Yni8Fg
Yes, Sabine Hossenfelder's commentary was sad. I do love to listen to her very astute insightful videos.
It tells you something that when a German politician criticised my home country Irelands economic policies (which are based on high corporate tax intake due to US pharma and tech European HQs locating there)an Irish economist was able to casually say to him that you're just jealous...Now contrast and compare. Agricultural output Ireland ranks amongst the very best but the country of BAYER, BMW, Siemens, Mercedes Benz etc being downgraded by corporate tax haven Ireland....
'good at mining value from its disturbingly patient herd'
That's a very effective visual.
agree
Despite the prevalence of building societies, this was emphasized in culture class at the Language Training Mission.
The 20th century ideologies met very poetic deaths. Fascism, smothered in its cradle, communism starved to death. It would be only fitting if the last of the three, liberalism, died by promising too much while holding on to so very little
Interestingly, the most openly focused on military power (fascism and nazism) lost its wars, and communism died of inability to more rationally provide plenty.
It’s only fitting that liberal democracy dies of strangling freedoms to finance a potemkin democracy.
At first I read pokemon democracy.
I'm not sure that would be an incorrect characterization...
"Scholzitard, I choose you!"
"Scholzitard used Even More Fucking Debt! It was super-ineffective!"
I suspect that the world Banks have more to do with what's happening than any 'ism'...
Very good points.
Fascism just change its name - Social democracy, now on the Centre-Right. And isn’t Communism now Climate Change/Net Zero?
Liberalism will not die, it will stop breathing (Habek) and enter trans-life.
"At first nothing much happened, but over the past decade our rail system has become increasingly unreliable. It is now a national embarrassment that is punctual only 64% of the time. If your involves a single connection, in other words, you will be late more often than not."
While that is a serious decline in German tradition of trains running on time NYC just announced that LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) commuter trains into NYC have improved to almost 50% on time (which allows for six minute delay to be counted as on time) as if connecting to anything that adheres to a schedule accommodates connections that are six minutes late! Nothing improves performance like changing the measurements.
lol, DB also introduced a 5-minute rule; any delay under 5 minutes is punctual.
I know American rail has serious problems, but in Germany it's a much more central part of how everybody gets around, so the economic and social problems that arise from a lower level of dysfunctionality are vastly greater.
They copied this wheeze from British Rail I suspect. How sad. I remember the Swiss trains arriving on the platform exactly as the second hand on the platform clock flipped over to zero.
Just returned from a Swiss holiday that involved a lot of train travel. Every Swiss train was late, albeit by only a few minutes (worst case 10 minutes) so would have been 'on time' in many countries.
Sorry about that. The Swiss rail system these days is running an absolutely madly dense schedule and there's now extra strain on the system because the Gotthard Base tunnel is still blocked. Fittingly the blockage is due to damage caused by the derailment of a German cargo train.
It's the same tactic as redefining "vaccine".
Succinctly correct. ALL western flipped the meaning at the exact same time. Coincidence, I'm sure
Indeed!!
I don't know much about the "on schedule" aspects of it, because every time I'm in Berlin, I'm frankly too astonished that it's possible to use public transportation to get around the city at all to pay attention to timing. I am admittedly always only on vacation there, and so timing is far less critical. It may well be the case that it would be unusable if one needed to reliably get to a job on time.
But compared to Albuquerque, it's a complete miracle.
local transit and even large parts of the regional rail network are still minimally acceptable, the real problem is with the intercity trains.
Ah. I have significantly less experience with those.
Sounds like the 3-second rule: Drop food on the floor, but pick it up within 3 seconds to pretend it never happend.
Make that 5 seconds. Some of us don't move so quickly anymore.
Moving goal posts, changing definitions, or measurements - the govt KNOWS how to tailor to their needs ( read: "narrative" ).
Exactly.. and when the numbers are so bleak that tweaking will not fix the picture they paint simply stop data collection all together.. problem solved no more bad news!! It's what happened to EPA toxic release reporting when the Ground Zero air was declared safe but no evidence would support the claim.. post 9-11 reform closed EPA libraries too.. trust our pure air & water quality!
grrr Wayback is down for maintenance but UC Davis who hosted Scorecard pulled it offline in 2020 w note saying this project has ended.. dirtbag move.. but check Wayback in a few hours.. amazing public resource buried to protect toxic profiteers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120213000438/http://scorecard.goodguide.com/env-releases/us-map.tcl
YEP, LA, Chicago, San Fran, etc stopped reporting crime figuresto the FBI, Oh, look-Crime went DOWN in the entire country. Amazing ain't it?
Boy, that escalated, quickly! It used to be just manipulating statistics on (un)employment. Then crime statistics manipulation. From now on in a debate: "Alright, what´s your definition of ..."
At least Germany has a debt ceiling…..that will go next. Our state, California, practices similar economic policy under Gavin Newsom, who is likely to become President this year replacing Biden or in the near future. Budgetary tricks as you describe are the foundations of our state budget. We do not have a dependable railway system to decay, or a Bundeswehr to neglect, but we are building a high speed railway from/to literally nowhere, and we solve the tax break situation for new workers by importing illegal aliens with no skills and giving them free health care, cellphones, and debit cards, subject to a new minimum wage untenable for business. The only difference in methods is that California cannot issue its own currency, but we’re working on that. See you at the bottom……..
I'm also a Californian but I've become pretty skeptical about the supposed coronation of Gavin either this year or in 2028.
First, as I'm sure you know, he is a creature of a one-party hothouse environment and he was born with more access to high-end donors and political-patronage networks than a Senator has after decades in DC—my point being that he's never had to appeal to voters outside the very, um, unique members of the Dem Party of Cali, meaning the left of the left, where he'd already been crowned by the media as the Golden Boy (wearing a halo of wealth, status and Hollywood looks) and he's never had to face a tough conservative opponent or appeal to working-class people who don't really know him. Can you imagine Gavin in a VFW hall in the Midwest trying to appeal to working-class people? Someone who never served in the military, never had a real job, yet reeks of wealth and arrogance?
And then of course there's the status of California and his performance as Gov: all the bum camps, all the billions spent on bum camps, all the crime and shoplifting that adds to the sense of social chaos; all the crazy boondoggles where billions disappear down the gullet of some patronage group (either unions or race representatives); our enormous budget and its deficit; and then our highest sales taxes, high income taxes, highest gas prices, highest heating-oil prices, highest housing costs, and our high levels of poverty, illiteracy and income inequality, much of it due to our open border and sanctuary state status.
Not that I think it's impossible for Gavin to shine on the national stage, but he has serious handicaps, and we never know how famous politicians from very Blue states (I'm thinking Cali and NY) will perform once they have to appeal to the rest of the country.
How about that Kamala Harris? She came from a similar Cali background, but of course didn’t suffer from Newsom’s melanin and X chromosome deficiency
Neither of them have ever dealt w politics in the most simple or traditional sense: appealing to voters with ideas and a vision and winning them over the old-fashioned way.
Life in a one-party state (not to mention a very very wealthy one-party state) is very different: they both got hooked into powerful patronage networks (Gavin by birth, Kamala by skin color and pussy power) and rose through the ranks by being loyal to the party apparatus and by knowing who to get $$ from (donors) and who to legislate to give it to (patronage groups like unions, NGOs, the homeless-industrial complex).
Both of them will have a hard time relating to middle Americans and neither have dealt w any kind of real conservative challenge.
We shall see what the future holds...
Well put.
thanks!
Newsom doesn’t have a chance on the national level. If ‘bubble boy’ ever gets serious about campaigning, he’ll soon find this out. There are only so many goodies that the Democrats can handout in buying votes. Their choo-choo 🚂 is coming off the tracks. There’s a goid solid core of the country that are buying into the giveaways. The Democrats are immoral in this regard.
You're right on all points, but the question is this: Will the state media allow all Americans to read the truth about Newsom and the cesspool he has made of California? I suspect not. They want to keep it on a highly superficial level and hope people won't notice the slime trail behind him. Sadly, there are a lot of highly uninformed voters (especially Democrat voters) who will excitedly perceive him as a young, new, perhaps handsome (yuk!) face that they can slip into the Presidency.
I'm no Newsom fan. Just the same, I would never say he couldn't become President. To support that premise, please allow me to list several recent Presidents in unflattering terms. You'll note that both parties make the list:
A senior citizen with likely advanced dementia.
A boorish real estate developer (at least he earned his money, a rarity in this office.)
A barely-American black Muslim of curious professional background;
The useless draft-dodging scion of an old Establishment family;
A charming but cunning man from a rural state;
A former intelligence officer;
A former B-movie actor.
…and that’s only going back 4 decades. It’s worth mentioning that several of those listed had known or likely longstanding involvement with intelligence or other “deep state” organs.
I came here to say that I think California has patented this monetary approach of bribing voters with goodies CA can ill afford lol. I see you got here with a great comment first!
California über alles. More accurate now than in the 80's.
If Gavin 'Noisome' ever becomes POTUS then the USA is truly lost.
spiraling, as are almost every single country on the planet. We are paying our taxes to influencers, solicitors and corporations that do not give a darn about people that are working just to live a decent life. How do these criminals sleep at night?
Are there any countries on this planet that are not throwing our hard earned money around?
We should have a world wide revolt and stop paying taxes
Argentina is trying to go on a different path, it's not easy but there are some actual changes being done, Milei has been able to balance the budget.
Though for us it took the country spiralling into 200% inflation and the economy being on the precipice of a complete collapse for someone different to get elected, so prepare for things getting much much worse before people wake up (if they even do
LIKE
“Illiberal nationalism” is not fascism. Fascism is the fusion of political and business governance into one totalitarian system. This happened on a national level in Italy and Germany in the 1930s and it is happening on a global level now with “stakeholder capitalism” (Robert Malone has the best explanation of this that I have seen on his Substack - soon to be a new book). This confusion of nationalism with fascism is the cardinal error that is preventing otherwise astute analysts from understanding the current crisis - which is global, not national.
Everything that’s happening in Germany is happening in most/all other countries you would call “liberal democracies” but that are now, and have been for a while, part of the global techno-fascist system.
National politics are a distracting side show to keep us from seeing the big picture and from mounting a meaningful resistance.
For example: Everything German politicians and public health leaders did during Covid seems stupid, if you think they were acting on behalf of the public health and welfare of the German people. But it is not stupid at all if you see that they were acting on behalf of a global "stakeholder capitalist" system of corporations, NGOs, philanthrocapitalists and their military/IC enablers.
“fascism” is a word that has assumed a great many definitions, but it is most commonly identified with franco’s spain, mussolini’s italy and hitler’s germany. for various reasons (some of them laid out in my long piece on fascism from a few months ago), i think the three are better described as illiberal nationalist regimes, but i provide both terms to avoid confusion.
i know that ‘fusion of political and business governance’ is often offered as a definition of ‘fascism,’ but i think it’s retrospective, based in part on impressions of the 1940s-era German war economy (in this sense allied powers would’ve also been ‘fascist’, but that does not make sense) and not really how self-identified fascists would’ve described themselves. the National Socialists were economic opportunists who ran what you might call a ‘patronage economy’ that granted special privileges to collaborators, selectively nationalised industries as perceived to be advantageous, and so on.
OK let's not use the word fascism. Global totalitarianism works for me. The point is that the major forces acting on our societies right now are not national and are not political in a right/left, Nazi/Commie, this year's budget/next year's deficit kind of way. They are global and their apparent goal is totalized control.
Here's the link to Malone's article/book chapter. It's free. I think it explains the big picture better than anything I've read or heard. Curious to hear your take on it.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-146018759
forgot to tell you i had lunch with an old professor (he's 90 now but still sharp as a tack). he told me to tell you that was the best explanation of fascism he's ever seen and he's been teaching on these types of subjects for nearly 60 years!
anyway he told me to tell you kudo's!
That was nice of him. KUDOs to him!
This second definition of fascism is very applicable to current trends is globalist-dominated countries, eg the US. The blind spot people have is equating it with superficial or unrelated cultural characteristics. Eg the joint regime here is very left-themed and gay, but still the same patronage and attack on dissent occurs.
Well coined Sir. Much of the world seems to have adopted that "patronage economy".
Which, of course, inevitably leads to economic and social collapse.
I found many covid measures and happenings "Franco etc." fascistic. Beating the peaceful demonstrators. Muzzling people, even children, taking their air. Shutting down public life. Destroying businesses. Destroying children. Forced mass vaccination with an experimental unproven gene-therapy, as a sign of absolute submission under Fuehrer Olaf S. Oeffentliche Menschenopfer zu erbringen, zB in der Person von Josua Kimmich. It has all been enough to let the blood in my veins freeze. Additionally it has all shown that the government is highly unreliable, can"t be trusted a tiny bit.
The ex-google whistleblower Zach Vorhies calls this new thing the "global western alliance". He gave a good interview recently on Steve Kirsch's Thursday broadcast. Covid proved we are now inside the global totalitarian ballpark. Only short amount of space left to turn the ship around by nation after nation voting populists into office and demanding the removal of dedicated globalists from the reigns of power. This is going to be a great challenge.
Agreed. Thanks for pointing to that interview. Zach Vorhies has been so deeply buried by corporate media and the Google juggernaut that his massively consequential whistleblowing and his excellent book have been all but disappeared.
AGREE, 2025-2026 is going to be crucial to WORLD liberty and rights.
All modern ideologies/systems have "managerialism" (James Burnham) in common. The important institutions are run by the power group of managers, administrators, commissars, burocrats, technocrats. They have a different mindset than the aristocrats and the entrepreneurs of the past, because without ownership there is no effective responsibility. Nonetheless, they have power in there decision-making positions. They see themselves as experts with the authority to control the lives of the people, which they probably detest. Combine managerialism with global centralization and you really just need a few psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists at the top in order to destroy functioning societies and end up in totalitarianism (Political Ponerology, Andrew Lobaczewski).
I think that your sentence about distraction is spot on; but what precedes it is a good example of the distractions we are all bombarded with.
I would say Eugy is right in that Fascism is a form of illiberal nationalism, after all Fascism in both Germany and Italy was very nationalist (I can’t think of any Fascist state that wasn’t).
My point is that the definitions of Fascism, the Left / Right, Progressivism, Social Justice, Equity, etc., are so dynamic and subjective that we waste so much time parsing meanings and splitting hairs, rather than focusing on and taking action on real issues. For instance, the real issues about Biden is his senility, not his age . . and the real issue re the Democrat party is that it feels comfortable foisting a senile guy off on independent voters (because they think the press will help hide the fact he is senile).
We are being played by political distractions every day, day and night, while our money evaporates.
What we might term traditional Fascism, such as 1930s-40s Germany or Italy, certainly had very strong element of nationalism. Original Marxism, Communism, Socialism preached a strong international commitment but in practice "national" flavors emerged, e.g. Russian, Chinese and the smaller Eastern European nations. What these had in common was they operated very similar in practice, even though their official ideologies were quite different. The State was supreme and the individual citizen had minimal, if any, freedoms.
I prefer to think of the emergent WEF-style “one world” government: Yes, it’s probably closest to the traditional notion of Fascism, but worldwide, as opposed to a single nation. An idealist might say that’s good since (in theory!!!) that’d mean that “the people’s” – ALL people – needs would be put foremost. But how can that be, when the de-facto oligarchs are the super-rich, mostly of “capitalist” nations?
We armchair political scientists, amateurs among whom I admit being a member, love to argue about this-ism or that-ism, while seeming to ignore the actual results, not merely the label, of the various ideologies.
Thanks - well said.
Very good summary, I agree, this is Global in its design!!
Fascism isn't *just* illiberal nationalism, but nevertheless illiberal nationalism is a part of fascism. Or, to put it another way, being illiberal and nationalistic isn't sufficient to count as fascist, but it is necessary.
So how would you define Fascism?
I'm not sure I could provide a full and water-tight definition, but I'd say fascism incorporates the following beliefs:
- Life is a zero-sum struggle between different races, in which the superior races rightfully dominate the inferior.
- War is inherently good, as a way of purifying members of the stronger races and of subjugating the weaker.
- The national will is best expressed through a strong, totalitarian leader, and no contradiction or deviation from this will is permitted.
- Everything should be subordinated to the racial struggle. Anything that doesn't help with this is at best frivolous, at worst harmful, and should be done away with.
- An exaltation of strength above all other virtues.
Your definitions seem valid enough, but I feel obligated to point out the fundamental problem: what Hume called the “ought” vs. the “is.” I take this to mean the clash between human desires vs. what Reality dictates.
Allow me to quote, verbatim, several words from your definition: rightfully, good, will, virtues. Please note that, WITHOUT EXCEPTION !!! every single one of those terms is purely arbitrary. In this sense, “arbitrary” means they are Man’s definition based upon some standard he thought up, and not by any measure to be found in the physical universe.
Ultimately, all the examples you cite: struggle, zero-sum, and even “racial struggle” (if you allow expanding that encompass competition not just between rivals of a same species, but from any life forms at all.
All of Nature is competition of limited resources. Note that “limited” means, that at any given time, resources whether living room, food, water, etc. are limited, thus it is a zero sum game. In the never-ending conflict within a single species the superior race will win out over the inferior races or individuals. It’s not “rightful” it just IS. Nature couldn't care less about what Man (or any other species) wants. From the moment life began, natural selection and evolution have been constants. The approximately 3.5 million year history of life on earth is littered with countless organisms who died off, often because they lost a competition to a fitter entity. It may be disconcerting, but just consider that you and every other thing alive today is only here because countless ancestors won their bouts in the battle to survive.
Please note that I’m not anti-civilization. It’s brought us many benefits. At its best, it’s a tool to manage our natural world and optimize our place in it. At worst, it becomes a tool of supreme arrogance, thinking that we can dictate terms to Reality and it will meet any our wishes, like the fable of the genie in the lamp. One of civilization's worst failings is that good intentions often produce what seem that positive short-term results but produce a worse long-term result.
Sure, life is a struggle, and often involves trade-offs. But that doesn't mean it's zero-sum; mutually-beneficial co-operation can and does take place, at the national level as well as at the individual.
Also, looking at fascism's track record, the main fascist states (Germany, Italy, Japan) ended up declaring war on too many people and getting destroyed as a result, after only a few decades of fascist rule. Even from a purely amoral survival-of-the-fittest perspective, fascism just plain doesn't work.
While discussing German economic and political realities, you could have just as well been describing our situation in the U.S., and I suspect the rest of the western world also.
This is all completely unsustainable. I'm left wondering if anarchy is the next logical result.
This was all planned. The "West" had to be taken down (mass inflation, immigration, recession, etc). Burying culture and christianity is essential to transforming "the West" into a culture that is homoganised (sp), easily controlled. A population with an IQ of more than 100 can only be controlled by "dumbing it down" THINK about it. WEF 2030
They want to achieve a really dumbed down underclass....everywhere.
The Petrodollar works wonders, my friend.
For as long as that lasts. BRIX and others looking at alternatives.
You’re damn right they are!
The next logical result is slavery to prevent anarchy.
Eugyppius:
"The German government have no money and they can't stop spending it."
Handsome Pristine Patriot:
"HOLD MY BEER"
Not importing hundreds of thousands of unemployables with their families each year might save some money?
I suspect the case is the same with Germany as with Sweden: migration costs, all included, come to a net cost of between 2 and 3 percent of annual GDP.
it's got to be something like that. an entire defence budget blown on spending millions of foreigners to sit around and do very little.
In Britain, a male immigrant comes with one wife/4 children. Given a five bedroom flat or house. He petitions to get family members from his country. He has 3 other wives w/ 4 children-they all get the same arrangement. The wives are on the dole, children on the dole. Every month the wives hand their checks to the husband. He's making big bucks, sending his wives to food banks to get food...for free. See how it works?
If those people, or their ancestors, had been refused entry or deported immediately, it would have prevented a whole host of present problems. And in the future, probably a whole host of even worse problems.
Would be a pretty great expose if someone could get the actual numbers for caring for the illegals in multiple countries and compare them to the GDP, and those pesky numbers of how much they actually add to the country GDP.
Almost ten years ago, the cost (monetary) of migration was a hot topic here in Sweden, and in desperation the regime dusted off two academics to defend it.
One was a researcher in economics, and one an MD, expert in public health and statistics (Ruist and Rosling, resp).
Problem was, both men put their scientific integrity before anything. Ruist did a summarised yet thorough run-down of costs/benefits and arrived at ca 2% of annual GDP as the lower-end figure, noting that he had been very moderate in his considerations.
I still remember him telling a state journalist this on air. She stuttered, fumbled with her papers, and couldn't really continue the interview since he had gone off-script. He has never been used as an expert or a source by regime/state media since, though he wrote rather sardonic (for a swedish academic at least) summary on his blog, about his experience as an item of interest for the media.
Professor Rosling was brought in to defuse the arguement that if the object of migration is to help refugees (the Grosse Lüge of pro-migrationists since the 1980s), the same amount of money could have helped hundreds, even thousands more had the money been allocated to help them in their home nations.
Professor Rosling then said straight out on live state TV, that yes, that is precisely right. Mass-migration hurts both nations involved, and the money had been better spent by (f.e.) buying goods and products from states in need of aid, to help them develop their economies. He was quickly unpersoned after that, and was even accused of being a racist and a nazi by our leftist media (leftist on our scale, meaning left of US Antifa).
Numbers can be gotten, is my point, but it would take at least a small team of professionals to do so, and that is assuming they get access to records. My favourite among many is this:
Sweden's office of corrections refuses to release numbers of how much pork they buy as part of their food budget for inmates, and if the amount of pork has increased with the increase in prison populations. Quite telling, no?
What will it take for Sweden to at least take the Denmark approach? My best friend lives there and I’m wondering how to get her to the US if things go pear shaped. My son is visiting Malmo in a couple of weeks for a conference and i’m already on edge.
The US is better off in many respects. Two I can think of are we have far more open land and most places you can have as many guns as you like. We seem to be overrun by undesirable aliens as badly as Europe is; it's just that we aren't as far down the path as you are.
All else equal, I’d welcome any white Europeans as immigrants here, but to immigrate legally is not easy and the deck has been stacked against Europeans since at least the mid 1960s.
It won't happen. Not just for political reasons.
We have ca 24 000 police, of which half are pure paper-pushers.
We have ca 25 000 soldiers, airmen and sailors, of which about half are admin staff, mechanics, and other non-combat positions.
We have ca 1 500 000 moslems out of a total population of 11 000 000 (including illegals).
We have ca 14 000 violent career criminals who go armed every day, estimated by SÄPO (think FBI), and another ca 60 000 criminals connected to organised crime.
In the words of Cyrus from "Warriors":
"Can you count, suckahs?!"
---
Unless your son is obviously jewish (wearing a star of David or a kippa in public) and stays in a group and forks out for a taxi to and from destinations, he should do fine.
Here, NYC paid a billion for illegals to live in hotels in just ONE year (and that’s just the new ones, think of housing credits for the millions of others)
https://x.com/nypost/status/1809894102550397391
NYC is on track to paying $5 Billion for Joe Biden’s open border policy. And if these sanctuary states think the federal government is going to bail them out they ought to think again.
Governor Hochul sure thinks they will be bailing her out lol
Amsterdam University released a big study last year (can’t remember the title but I’m sure you can search for it) where they calculated the lifetime contribution/deficit per immigrant by country of origin. White immigrants from Europe/N America and northeast Asians were net contributors; Ukrainians and Russians were a bit above zero; then pretty much anyone from anywhere else in the world was a net negative. The worst were black Africans. Somalis had a net cost to the Dutch government on average 600k euros over a lifetime per person.
Canada is no different. Shortly after he was elected, Justin Trudeau proclaimed, "The budget will balance itself." Shortly afterward, this dimwit announced his admiration for communist China because, "it had the ability to turn on a dime."
Madness in Canadian politics is not limited to a decade ago. Just last week, Canada's Health minister expressed his dismay that, "Some Canadians are so desperate for dental care that they are drinking gasoline." Health Minister Mark Holland is clearly insane.
I suspect the above examples of political derangement are similar to those in Germany. The Hard Left is looking at complete political annihilation in the next election. Just a couple of weeks ago, a downtown Toronto riding filled with rich socialist voters elected a conservative in a by-election. Losing such a safe seat in Canada has driven the Hard Left in the Liberal Party into a frenzy of despair and speculation about the political future of the Prime Minister. Suddenly they have become aware of how deeply they are hated by most Canadian voters.
I hate to ask but I just have to:
Did this Holland person explain why drinking gasoline would get you dental care?
To me it seems all you'd get is a trip to the ER and your stomach pumped (I've siphoned petrol once or twice in my life, never noticed any effect on my teeth).
I was wondering the same thing, looking for tips because I can't afford the dentist.
You are borth correct. Here's the clip; go to 8:05 on it to hear the statement.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6433948
Make no mistake, Holland is unhinged. He seriously contemplated suicide when he lost his riding of Ajax-Pickering in the 2011 national election. Politics is a tough game; if you can't stomach the notion of an election loss, you have no business being in politics.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mark-holland-discusses-personal-trauma-193526943.html
This is Canada's Minister of Health.
He strikes me as a man who believes every word he says, when he says it.
That's not a compliment, and is also further confirmation that the plague of corrupt and venal and stupid officials is co-ordinated: how else could the administrations of all western nations in the same span of 10 years become riddled with them?
If one girl in a gang gets crabs, and then three weeks later all the other girls and guys in the gang has crabs, you don't call it a conspiracy, right?
Edit: thanks for digging up the clip.
Here's another one of this unhinged man. In this one, he justifies not reducing the carbon tax to give Canadians a summer time driving break:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1bKRQhG5L0
This man has some serious mental health issues.
The second in command of the U.S. Public Health service since 2021 is a man who wears a dress (at least sometimes, including in official photos.) Many of today's D.C. Police, such as those who patrol the U.S. Capitol, in appearance are indistinguishable from a Rasta who just landed on de flight from Kingston, mon. Decades ago, his counterpart was a middle-aged black man with a beer gut but neatly groomed. Standards have changed quite a bit since I was a little boy (the 1970s)
OMG
Actually, I believe Trudeau said "the budget will fix itself" during his campaign...
Still waiting for that to happen, but it won't.
Budgets have never fixed themselves...
Just look at our debt since Justin took over.
I don't know details for Canada. But if it's anything like the US system, the executive has little power over a budget, except perhaps to veto a bill. In the U.S. it's the legislature (Congress) that has complete control over spending. If this is true, then it's as illogical to blame the PM for spending choices as it'd be for a man to beat his wife because she can't spend ten times on groceries as what he brings home in wages. Trudeau may be a [insert unfavorable term of your choice] but likely he has little say in spending.
See, it's not like the US.
We have a
Parliamentary system.
As long as the NDP support Trudeau, the dope can push any spending.
Sigh. One looks to other countries for some novel ideas to control spending, and yet finds none.
Here in the USA, the Federal government of course prints all the money it needs and spends whatever it wants for whatever it wants. However, most all of the 50 States have, as Germany, balanced budget provisions, so they must be creative in their profligacy. Our State for example during the last economic recession, began to sell their assets—such as government buildings—on a multi-year lease back provision. Thus obtaining quick cash and indebting future State governments. Never however does it seem we truly reduce the budget to meet anticipated revenues. We just kick the can down the road.
The people demand this, and in doing so become poorer and poorer. Our once great “middle class” which held this country together is now a hollow shell and we have a wealth disparage as great as those third world countries we like to belittle. Is there any wonder we are now involved in conflict around the world?
Wel, look a bit harder. Switzerland is a highly democratic country and doesn't have this problem. Cantons compete to keep taxes low, and they run balanced budgets.
As an example of the kind of "problems" you see there, Kanton Zürich recently announced it had - yet again - collected too much tax revenue and didn't spend it all. But it's run by the Swiss version of socialists, so their solution was of course to raise spending to consume it rather than give it back via tax reductions. Elsewhere in the country when this happens, the citizens get tax holidays.
Good example. I get the impression that the Swiss are appropriately conservative about retaining the government structure that has served them for 400 (?) years.
Probably not a coincidence that Switzerland is also restrictive about immigration.
Switzerland is conservative / patriotic about a lot of things, yes. Or rather, it changes slowly and they adopt foreign ideas slowly. It may be that it eventually goes the same way as Germany, but for now at least it hasn't, which should raise questions about how general claims made about democracy and budgets actually are.
To be fair, Switzerland is the only exception I can think of, at least in the western world (I'm not sure how, say, South Korea manages its finances). A generalisation that applies to every case but one is still pretty valid. Though perhaps, instead of talking about "democracy and budgets", we should talk about "representative democracy and budgets", since Switzerland is pretty unusual in terms of how much direct input the citizens get on how things are run.
It's not unique to Switzerland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget
The data comes from 2017 but in that year many countries had surpluses. Sort by budget surplus and you can see that the top countries were Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland. South Korea comes in at position 7 with a surplus. Other democratic western countries with a surplus include Austria, Sweden and Norway.
For a more recent look, check out:
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/general-government-deficit.html
Norway is of course far in the lead thanks to very responsible management of its oil wealth. This is a common pattern in governments that run a surplus: they are often successful investors. Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are there with a surplus as per usual. There are also many with tiny deficits, indicating they're pretty much hitting the target (the ideal is of course neither surplus nor deficit).
The proclivities and capabilities of different cultures are often not honestly discussed. Some are arguably more functional, more robust, more sustaining, more human, or just better.
And you cannot just drop humans into a foreign culture and expect them to uniformly absorb the duties and traditions.
I feel with these amounts of money printed, borrowed and otherwise created by miraculous accounting, the usual parameters (growth, unemployment, etc) used to discuss the state of the economy have become basically useless. It´s like we live in a constant state of economic exception based on ever more fake money and probably also fake jobs. I can´t help but think that at some point, this Wile E Coyote style walking in the air will meet with actual reality again, though I have no idea how and when that will happen.
I often get this same sense of unease. I remember when QE was something weird and dangerous that only the Japanese did, now it's accepted as normal everywhere. And I'm not that old. There are many more examples like this. My feeling is that the nations that are caught in this madness are trapped, none can break ranks or it would be crushed. Just continue to run towards the abyss together.
It's darkly amusing watching politicians campaign on "growth", celebrating a few positive percentage points or lamenting a few negatives. Pretending everything is normal....
The truth is even sadder. Governance always collapses no matter what the system. The myths of all peoples always include the grand catastrophes of princes contending against their father the king and often against each other, and it never really matters whether the monarch is good or bad or just enfeebled by age.
I read the excellent American constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley every day, and I was pretty shocked (being a long time out from HS now and who knows how deeply we looked into it then) to learn how the noble vision of the Founders was being fouled by the time of the term of our second President who had been one of those noble Founders and nevertheless didn't seem to be very admiring of our foundational principles. In fact John Adams was as angry about a free press as our governments are today. Even the smartest guys fall into primitive vengeful acts as soon as they ever can.
And it's not even the size of a society, which I was just going to blame until I realized in time that even in tiny villages opposing factions try to tear each other to shreds. We just have to hope in every generation that there are three or four guys with brains and will enough to struggle towards the right thing.
'Governance always collapses no matter what the system.'
My personal pet theory is that this is because of the inevitable fraction of the population that is opportunistic or psychopathic to some degree, or both, who will game the system and manipulate the gullible for their own ends. Humanity has apparently never been able to devise a system that is psychopath-proof.
Tragedy of the commons, is probably the eaisest way to understand it.
A very easy slide, and a very hard climb to avoid.
Usually, existential disaster and cyclical threats to life helps alleviate this, but with our technology we have put that out of whack.
It's not out of whack. The problem is that when Nature decides that corrective measures must be taken, which they inevitably will, the "whack" will be much harder.
We are pack animals and wired for hierarchy--and to compete for it. Part of that awful pubertal process is starting to feel one's own power and challenging that of one's parents. Have you ever observed what happens to some fathers as their little boys enter the stage of approaching manhood?
And really. Do you accept being told what to do by others if you trust your own instincts and judgment more? Sure, you might be any degree of wrong there. But do you submit easily?
Or could it simply be an instance of one of the essential traits of life, that it is a constant competition for resources, survival of the fittest, and so on?
We didn't even make it past the first President, depending how one looks at the events surrounding the Whiskey Rebellion.
Perhaps it's got something to do with complexity. When a problem arises, the natural response is generally to pass a new law, create a new regulatory agency, or similar, which increases the complexity of the government. Over time, things get more and more complex until the system becomes too intricate and unwieldy to cope, and falls apart.
<i>And it's not even the size of a society, which I was just going to blame until I realized in time that even in tiny villages opposing factions try to tear each other to shreds.</i>
To be fair, tiny villages generally manage to keep miniminally functioning, even if they're full of cliques and backbiting. Total collapse tends to be more of a big empire thing.
That's because governments always become jobs programs. See: ancient Egypt. That was some bureaucracy them guys set up for themselves. Join the civil service, never get fired, retire youngish after a lifetime of mediocre performance and breathtaking waste of resources.
Minimally functioning is low praise indeed.
Low praise, perhaps, but still infinitely better than a completely non-functioning society.
"...even in tiny villages opposing factions try to tear each other to shreds."
Yup. But the consequences are at least smaller.
Yes. Until the tiny villages start conglomerating...
You nailed the elected politicians' universal motive: "Politicians win elections by promising to give voters fun things. They are focused entirely on their careers and their term of office. Accepting pain in the moment for a better future is unthinkable..." As Jean Claude Juncker once said, “We all know what to do. We just don’t know how to get re-elected after we do it.”
Jean Claude Juncker, 1-D chess master.
lol