h4890

There is another side of that coin. In some countries, the situation often occurs where a coalition of parties says that they won't talk or cooperate another party (nationalist parties most often).
The critique from the right is that this is anti-democratic.
I, as someone on the economic right, but who is not against nationalist (as long as it is "healthy") find this objection questionable.
After all, what allows the parties to do that is the collective nr of votes they got in the election. Democracy does not mean that everyone should be forced to cooperate or talk. if I find my political opponent to be a mad man, I do not have an obligation to extend my arms or ears.
So I believe that the choice to "block" or not cooperate is fully in line with democracy, even though I do admit that it can be frustrating for the people in the blocked party.

2026-03-23 12:51:10 CET

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Ahh... excellent list! Look at Denmark.. 2% and 12 parties in the parliament, now we're talking!
Very selectively...
Serbia, 3% and 10 parties. Spain, 3%, 10 parties. Sweden 4%, 8. Switzerland, no limit, 10. Netherlands, 0.667%, 15.
Clearly there is a correlation between limit and parties, but what is interesting is that the nr of parties seem to hover between 10-15 or so, regardless of limit.
What does that tell us about the size of the country, and the number of parties being able to rally people?
Is 10-15 parties what a small country is able to produce given the attention of the population, and the space available in the media?
Could it be that past that, the issues become so technical and niche, that no one is able to muster any energy?

2026-03-23 12:30:33 CET

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Based on a few seconds thinking, I think that this is very difficult. The only brief idea I can come up with is to trace historical bubbles based on mentions of a key term (say AI) in the media, and see how that term is used more and more to try and determine the start of the bubble. The end is easy enough to define.
Based on that, we would then have imperfect data on the rise and pop of bubbles.
But as we all know, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, so at most, it would be able to vaguely answer the question if 5-10 years is the span of bubbles.
But should the theory then manage to come up with strong correlations in the future, that can be acted upon, as per our previous (long time ago) discussion, its increased use will dilute the theory, since it will push investors to constantly +1 the theory to stay ahead of the crowd.
So the cruel paradox of market research is that as soon as it gives results, it gets used, and from its use, its usability will drop, until it falls out of favour, and then it might become useful again.
That in turn raises the meta-question of how long time it takes for a stockmarket theory to go from unknown, to fall out of favour, and from there ,to start to work again. ;)
And then the meta-meta perspective comes into play. ;)

2026-03-21 12:26:50 CET

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Well, the things is, if you predict outside the markets, and have a perfect track record, utilizing that information makes it part of the market. So all methods which are used to inform acting on the market, are part of the markets prediction mechanism.
Only methods that do not act on the market can be said to be an alternative system, but if they are never acted upon, (through markets) they would be kind of useless.
Also, the markets are correct long term. The shorter the short term, the more imprecise the markets become, as we currently see in the stock markets with the Iran war.

2026-03-20 15:26:11 CET

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How would you reform democracy, in an ideal world, to promote more parties, and more turnover of politicians and parties in the parliament? Is there any way this could be done, and has it been done somewhere?

2026-03-20 15:25:26 CET

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Alas, we have no better method of predicting future prices and to coordinate supply and demand than the markets, so they are the best we can do in the long term.
As for climate hysteria, it is non-scientific. It is simply impossible to disprove it, nor prove it, since we do not have a duplicate planet.
That is also why politicians love it. Just like god, it can be used to justify anything, and no proof can ever be offered for or against.

2026-03-20 10:07:57 CET

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It is just the logic of the market. China needs energy to expand, and they use what ever they can find. Coal is growing in china for instance.
Meanwhile, they use climate hysteria to make sure the EU handcuffs itself into irrelevance.
But it seems to me that climate hysteria is slowly fading in favour of reality, which teaches us that we need energy unless we want to revert to a medieval standard of living.
Hopefully we will all laugh at climate hysteria in 10 years time, realizing it wasnt anything else but a mental illness.

2026-03-18 09:43:32 CET

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Supply chains are interesting things. Usually I sit aloof in my IT-tower, but yesterday I was trying to sell a solution to a steel manufacturer. They said no, since their customer are out of gas. Without gas, they cannot use the steel, so the steel remains unbought on the shelves and everything is suspended, so no IT-systems aregoing to be purchased until the gas starts flowing.

2026-03-16 11:03:25 CET

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This is true. It will be very interesting to follow how this conflict will develop. Because _if_ the subjective death count starts to favour the current regime, that is, if Trump & Co start to kill too many civilians, it can actually help the dictators. But I think we are still many deaths away from that point due to the cruelty of the iranian regime.
It is also funny how Trump is asking Nato to help him. I would respond that "no thank you, we are too busy with Ukraine which you left for us, to have time with more wars at the moment, but once Ukraine has won, we'll happily lend you a hand".

2026-03-16 11:00:57 CET

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You are a very difficult person to troll with your nuanced views! ;)
Leaving the question of guilt aside, I do agree fully with the position that cultural and historic events colour the relations between nations and people, and that it is beneficial to take that into account when negotiating and doing business.

2026-03-15 11:39:04 CET

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As you know I do not buy into the concept of historical guilt, because it leads to a reductio ad absurdum where everyone is guilty of everything if we go back 500, 1000, 1500 years and on and on. I think this concept, historical guilt, is an enormous success of the woke left, but I think it is starting to show it's absurdum and weaken. Fortunately.

2026-03-14 12:18:32 CET

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I think the key to a successful end to the special military operation (pun intended!) is that the US allies itself closely with the rest of arabia, and that they then in a synchronized fashion lob in bombs from all surrounding countries.
On the ground, they need to carve out a part of the country for the kurds, and the rest for a western oriented iranian state, for the iranian people.
I think with this 1-2, massive bombing, and then cleaning up on the ground by kurds and iranians, it should be over in a couple of months.

2026-03-11 12:48:56 CET

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Yep, same in sweden. Deleting famous engineers and people who really contributed to society, and replacing them with woke cultural personalities no one cares about.

2026-02-17 16:33:07 CET

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Well, yours isn't bad advice per se, only when taken to an extreme by an immature person with an immature expectation of the world.
Another classic I always give my students is that the world is not fair, and the best way to hurt yourself, is to walk around the world with the expectation that it is fair.

2026-02-17 12:40:15 CET

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Excellent! We do not want terrorist propaganda on those platforms. Go team yahve! 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 ✝️

2026-02-17 12:36:15 CET

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I think this is dangerous advice. Life and work does not consist of only fun moments, doing only things that we like. It consists of hard things, and doing things we do not like. By telling immature people that they should focus on what they like, the risk is that they go out in life with the expectation of only doing something fun, and then things turn out to be not so much fun.
I find it much better to be realistic and balanced and teach my students that life is not fun, and work is called work for a reason.
After all, there is only so muc economic space for gender scientists, artists, influencers and the like. If you're not at the top, then your life will be worse off, than the person who takes a moderate approach and educates himself in a sector that actually does pay somewhat well, and where there is a demand.

2026-02-17 10:42:24 CET

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To me, it always seemed the best strategy for the young is to look at the areas that the government does _not_ recommend one educate oneself in. Then go for those areas. After 3-5 years, there will be a huge shortage, and salaries will rise.
The trap is to educate yourself based on what the government thinks is needed. This is almost always wrong.
I guess the only exception to this rule is where the profession itself has cornered the market such as lawyers and doctors. Those two managed to hang on to the best job protection techniques from the middle ages, with shortage and high cost as a result.

2026-02-13 11:12:57 CET

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Why do you think that we never see this discussed?
In the media, all I see are tiny, tiny, localized attempts, but never any discussion about how to implement "real" UBI.
Is it because it is impossible in practice, but a good dream to sell, or vision, for the people on the political left?

2026-02-13 08:51:32 CET

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Switzerland has had their own card payment system for a long time. A quick start would be to copy it, and then integrate it across countries. BIS is based in Switzerland, maybe they could help?

2026-02-12 10:39:23 CET

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That is very strange. In sweden, no one is forbidden to work. What happens though, is that since many immigrants get UBI, they don't want to work. After all, why would anyone want to take a crappy and difficult job, if you can get money anyway? That is juts basic human psychology, and another way in which the UBI idea fails miserably.

2026-02-11 17:19:23 CET

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I think the empirical evidence rather shows the opposite. It is enough to look at sweden integration fiasco, where immigrants can live on 15-20k GBP per month for year and years without lifting a finger.
This has become a complete catastrophy and makes them less inclined to integrate, more depressed, has made crime explode, and many more things.
If you want to see a large scale experiment in UBI, look no further than sweden immigration fiasco, where 100 of thousands have received UBI and are a net loss to society.
In fact, it was big mainstream news recently, where the government Swedish National Institute of Economic Research had looked at the past 40 or 50 years (I think) of immigration, and concluded that it was a net loss for swedens economy.
https://www.konj.se/publikationer/specialstudier/2025-06-04-redovisning-regeringsuppdrag-om-migrationens-nettoeffekter/ .

2026-02-07 11:39:24 CET

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Is there any type of investment in the UK that has seen inflows? Could it be that taxes have been increased, which makes capital go somewhere else?

2026-02-04 10:11:07 CET

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This is not just the UK, the law in the western world, due to the overly socialist and pro-government legislation has become a joke. It is starting to collapse under its own weight and people no longer believe in it.
This way, the fall of civilization starts.

2026-02-01 12:54:27 CET

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I agree and disagree with you. I _do_ agree, as a libertarian, that private government contracts funded by tax payers should not exist, and that any man who has become a billionaire that way, is not a billionaire but just an expert at manipulating the state for his benefit. This is also an argument for why the state should be small, and not be an actor on the markets to such an extent that it is today. You'll just end up with a small clique manipulating it and loads of political corruption.
What I do not agree with, is that billionaires who became billionaires on the private market is something we must worry about. They became billionaires by providing a serivce you and I freely buy from them, so they helped us, and should not be punished for it.
In terms of taxes, also note that you must consider the tax revenue resulting as a consequence of the entire empire they built. That includes jobs created, the income taxes on those jobs, money they spend in local markets, tariffs etc.
Once a billionaire you cannot compare taxes like you do with your neighbours. If you look at the taxes the billionaire pays directly, and indirectly, you will see that they actually pay 100s of millions in tax. Demanding they should pay more, while we do not, is juts pure greed. They pay more than enough.

2026-02-01 12:46:14 CET

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This is the truth! It is, indeed, a subjective value judgment. For me, any state that takes in more than half of what someone earns, does not have legitimacy, but is a slave owner and not a state.
So for me, in order to talk about any kind of legitimacy, the total tax level must come down to below 50%.
After that... a new conversation starts, when it comes to how the tax level can be brought down to thte 5-10% range, at which point I think many (but not all) tax evaders wouldn't bother any longer. Probably myself included, even though the amount of evasion in my case is not bigger than 10-15% of the total income.
Based on those criteria, what do you think of the channel islands?

2026-01-30 08:40:26 CET

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I don't see it as ageism but as a natural consequence of the medium. TV is a visual medium, and as such, I want the people I see on TV to be pleasing to the eye. Naturally, older people will have to leave.
The positive spin here is that this directly counters age discrimination against the young!

2026-01-25 11:13:20 CET

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Hmm... interesting. I wonder if the UK universities would consider hiring teachers, paid by the hour?
That way, they would get the teaching done, and then would have no cost for the rest of the year.

2026-01-12 10:43:16 CET

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I liked the chariot of the gods. It was of course obvious b.s. but I look at it as a creative exercise in conspiracy theory. That definitely has entertainment value just like the Illuminatus trilogy.

2026-01-11 10:44:59 CET

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Could be that some individuals are resistant, but society is a game of averages.
In terms of individuals, I suspect they are rare, and that to find them would be very difficult. Then, once found, persuading them to take on power would be even more difficult.
I know one person who's in the 100 million EUR range who turned down the opportunity to become a minister since he saw no upside in it, and he preferred the pleasures of doing business instead.
As for the human being at large, some experiments that indicate that power corrupts are:
The Stanford prison experiment, the Robber's cave experiment, and studies on power and corruption (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2134).
I can add that in order to see how this is true, most, if not all of us here, need look no further than our day to day politicians or middle managers. I think the fact that absolute power corrupts, is almost beyond doubt, and solving this psychological problem (if it is possible) is the key to building thriving socities.
With all of the above, it is of course not proven that not a single person exists with the capability of resisting the temptations of power, but I am skeptical. Since power is dangerous, I prefer a cautios approach here, and personally assume that we are all susceptible to this mental bug, until proven otherwise.

2026-01-10 23:15:29 CET

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This seems plausible. Since we do know that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I would be very surprised if the people in power would ever realize that it could end. That level of foresight and humility I cannot see happening based on the psychology of our leaders.

2026-01-10 12:38:58 CET

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Note, that just like the roman empire, the US has enormous problems with debt, devaluation of the currency, and an enormous military. The roman empire eventually lost its grip, and we are living in a fascinating time in history to be able to watch a former empire starting to lose its grip.
The queustion is, how long time will it take? 50, 100, 200 years?
Will the US break up into its states again just like the roman empire was transformed, over time, into multiple countries in europe?

2026-01-01 01:36:30 CET

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Happy new year!

2025-12-28 11:56:28 CET

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Not at all. It only comes down to the UK offering the EU something it needs. Then things will change quickly. If the UK offers the EU something which the EU can produce internally, then naturally the EU will be a tough customer. This is just common business sense.

2025-12-23 11:31:20 CET

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Sure! Here you have a link to the capitalist manifesto:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capitalist_Manifesto_(Norberg_book) .
The evidence is a comparison of a nr of markers such as infant mortality, happiness, etc. and looking at countries which embrace free markets, and comparing with countries who don't. All the markers are better in open countries.
Another proof, last years nobel prize, for discovering that a prosperous nation needs strong protection of private property.
When it comes to ethics and the capitalist, we need to be careful to distinguish the capitalist from capitalism. Capitalism, per definition, is an ethical system, and if you subscribe to the ethical principle that theft is wrong, it is provably, the only system on which to build a society that is ethical.
If you do not subscribe to theft is wrong, then naturally, I am incorrect, but it is ethics, and therefore ultimately based on subjective value judgments. I do not subscribe to the idea of an objective ethic. This is also where ideological differences tend to stand out the most.
The capitalist, as in the single human being, can of course be unethical. Ethics does transform egoism to common good, but it is sadly not a panacea when it comes to eradicating any capacity for evil in the human being. I'd say that it is better at doing that, than the alternatives, but it is definitely not "the" answer to eradicating evil tendencies in man.

2025-12-23 00:49:05 CET

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Well, one of my categories, I did extend to the right (nr 1 if memory serves). When it comes to the other two, I am deeply biased by actually thinking that my ism of choice is the only scientifically proven ism! ;) That is, libertarianism, or if you want to simplify it, capitalism, is the only scientifically proven method that:
1. Transforms egoism into benefit for the community, without force, thus being inhrently ethical. I might be the biggest egoist in town, but if my company supplies people with things they need, in exchange for money, my egoism and love of money will have been transformed, voluntarily, into benefits for others.
and...
2. The system of organization which maximizes material welfare, _over time_ (and here I mean 20-30-40 years at least to avoid local dips).
The professor and I disagree about whether material welfare is the chief and main good or not. That's one of our disagreements.
I am critical of PDA:s. Holding hands does not bother me, a hug likewise does not, but beyond that I am bothered. Breast feeding for instance, I find revolting when done in public at the restaurant table next to me.

2025-12-22 16:43:33 CET

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Ahh... thank you for clarifying! Let me counter with some clarifications of my own.
I'm at heart a libertarian, but I am a sucker for trolling and provocation as the professor can tell you. If, and only if, you are able to ignore that, we might from time to time be able to achieve harmonius and non-polarizing conversations. I will try an control myself a little bit for your sake.
When it comes to leftists, my starting point is to assume they are socialists and communists from a day to day point of view, _however_, if I do dive deeper, I tend to divide them into 3 general categories:
1. The power hungry ones. These are the leftists who do not really care if their ideology works or not. They are in it for the power, and the pleasure of manipulating people and bending them to their will. Socialism is just a tool they use, and them being "leftists" was just random chance based on where they were born. They could just as well have been nationalists, conservative etc. Most of the high level international politicians of today, I place in group nr 1. They are sick people and should ideally be far removed from any kind of power or influence.
2. The naive ones. These types of leftists are usually very kind. They believe in the good of man, and think that the politicians are doing their best. This type of leftist I can drink beer with, and even though we do not agree on much, it often is very simple to agree to disagree, and focus on beer and other subjects. I have a friend or two in this camp, and I think their capacity to ignore/disregard my good nature trolling is a big part of why we are friends. ;)
3. The stupid ones. These are the ones who blndly follow the leaders, and who just repeat the party slogans. It is very difficult to debate, and any disagreement or debate quickly gets derailed. These my trolling quickly alienate and 99/100 there is no conversation.
I am in favour of "right" anarchists, I can find some common ground with left anarchists on some issues.
In the GAL-TAN political compass, I place myself firmly in the upper right, _but_, to confuse things, I do have a soft spot for the lower right people. I have nothing against nationalism and traditions, as long as I am able to live the life I want along side them. If the nationalism and traditions impose on my life, I do not like it.
That also goes for homos. I have nothing against them per se, but when they walk naked in the streets and try to sexualize society, exposing themselves to children and the like, I fight them hard. What ever they want to do in the privacy of their bedroom, as long as it does not involve animals or children, and is consensual, I say go for it! But I don't want to hear about it.
So there you go. Some kind of description of the left, and where I position myself.

2025-12-22 13:14:18 CET

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Sadly I cannot use wikipedia due to their leftist bias, but if you could direct me to britannica articles, I'll gladly have a look there.
As for pinochet, he was on the right, and fighting communism, so even though he was not optimal, he was better than the alternative.
Same goes for spain and Franco. He had his shady business, but given the alternative of spain becoming communist, he was definitely preferable.
The sad thing about Pinochet was that he gave rise to a hueg influx of communists immigrants to sweden and they have destroyed the country a lot, so even though he saved chile (note how the right again won recently, thank god and Trump!) sweden sank further down in the leftist swamp due to it. =(

2025-12-21 11:42:28 CET

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If those coups resulted in fewer dictators, I'm all for it. If they resultet in socialist dicatorships I'm all against it.
But let us also remember that two wrongs does not equal one right.

2025-12-20 00:38:32 CET

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I think very government is responsible for taking lives, violence, theft etc. But among thieves, I'd much rather have the US take out Maduro, than not. This will benefit the people at the expense of dictators and thieving socialists, which is perfectly alright in my book.
And no, I do not consider Trump to be Jesus, although he is better than Biden! =)

2025-12-19 10:20:31 CET

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I think that is a small price to pay compared with the nr of lives that Chavez and Maduro have ended.
The only leader who does anything to dethron the socialist dictator Maduro is Trump, and he deserves credit for it!

2025-12-16 10:34:38 CET

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Short of having infinite resources, or 100% taxes, this is the way. It is completely unrealistic to expect gender science within 100 meters of everyones home, or top notch health care.
It is perfectly reasonable to move to a large city if you want greater selection.
Just like in a small village, you cannot expect to have 50 different restaurants, neither can you expect the countrys full education offering.
On the other hand, with remote learning, this is a non-issue.