I was remarking on how in Norway money has gone to public transport, great schools, childcare and even humane prisons. These things cost money but are not things you see when you visit a country. A tourist will not see when they enter Norway that the average pre-school has a very high quality or that prisoners are in humane prisons.

I thought it was particularly pertinent to highlight in a time when Donald Trump cuts health care for the most vulnerable in America, US aid to the poorest children in the world all while the decorates the inside of the white house with tacky gold ornamentation and erects Gold statues of himself all over the country.

The sentiment certainly connected with a lot of Americans who responded positively and wanted priorities more in that direction for America. And I think you get that with Mayors like e.g. Zohran Mamdani.

On occasion there are of course always some US right-wingers who will take a dump as such message. But this response from a fellow left-winger Dan Fox made me think:

When we as a people shovel our treasure into a war and a nation that has healthcare for all, heavily subsidized higher education for all, when we foot the bulk of the bill to keep expansionist kleptocracies at bay in Europe while our own people sleep under bridges, eat from garbage cans, and are lacking for basic needs, when it is clear we traded basic humanity for the comfort of the wealthy, then it is also abundantly clear we should follow Norway’s lead, and tax our billionaires back into nine figures.

We should demand our European friends foot the bill for their common defense against threats from the east. We should use our might to demand our wealthy allies to sacrifice their people’s treasure in kind. We should. We just don't. We used to be the the good guys.

— Dan Fox

I was surprised to find someone who had no love of Trump at all buy into the typical US right-wing rhetoric that the US somehow cannot take care of its own because it is busy paying for the defense of Europe.

What is going on here? I think what is going on is that both US left-wing and right-wing media has an interest in perpetuating this myth. For the US right it is about pushing the narrative about how the US is the most awesome country in the world and us Europeans are just ungrateful leeches.

For the US left however, I think it is about trying to sell a positive message: The US is helping its allies. The US military is good. No voter on the left would respond well to “let us keep bases all over the world to retain American power and dominance.” It sounds much better if instead on says “let us build bases around the world to protect our allies.”

And at some level that is of course true. The US obviously benefits its allies. The problem with the narrative is that US media never talk about what the US actually gets back. Thus it comes across as if the US is running some big charity project in Europe.

America is not merely helping allies. It is also maintaining an Empire. Of course that would not sound great to voters, so it is rephrased entirely as a if it was charity. But there is no deny it is also part of maintaining a global US Empire.

Take US bases in Europe. Those are not charity towards Europe. We cover a lot of expenses that means US military expenses to keep that large force is reduced.

Those bases are massive stockpiles or ammo, spare parts, fuel etc which is what allows the US to conduct missions in the Middle East. None of many US invasions in the Middle East would have been possible without those European bases. Shipping fuel, ammo etc all the way from the US during such an operation would be too costly and take too long time.

And Europe has no interest in invading the middle East. It doesn’t serve us. So in this regard our bases when it comes to actual usage has primarily served US interests.

Proof that this is not about our interest is that we have strongly opposed US bases in Norway for decades. Yet, the US has kept pushing and pushing for it.

If these bases were truly for our benefit and some kind of charity, then why on Earth would the US have to keep pressuring us to get them? That makes no sense. We would have been begging to get those bases. We never did. It was the US that pushed it.

But do Americans ever get told such perspectives in their media? Of course not. Americans get the glossy postcard version.

Here is another example that undercuts the idea that the US served us. Finland and Norway have spend roughly the same on defense over the years. Finland has been outside of NATO and always built their defense on the assumption that they would stand alone in war. Because that is what happened during the Winter war.

Norway has a been a NATO member. If the US truly subsidized our defense, then our spending should have been significantly less than Finland. It wasn’t.

And here is the kicker: Finland has a much larger and stronger defense than us. How can that be, if we spent about the same?

Because they have spend mainly on their actual defense while Norway has spent far more resources on being able to joint US led NATO mission abroad. Basically our spending has been on weapons that allow us to assist the US in their missions. That has pulled substantial resources away from our home defense.

We rationalized that on the ground that we thought that was a smart investment: Help the US, and then get help back when we need it. It turns out that has been a total waste, because Trump is stabbing us in the back.

We have sacrificed our own defense for the US and now we are kind of screwed. We bought the far more expensive F-35 planes than Swedish Gripen, despite Gripen being much better suited for our needs. And that process that led to F-35 involved massive US pressure from behind closed door. It was never a fair competition.

Now we sit with massively expensive planes, extremely reliant on the US.

So contrary to what Americans seem to believe, as we in Europe are trying to build more independence from the US in our defense that is not going to save you any money. Quite the contrary, it is going to cost you money. Because now we will shift spending to European military equipment.

And spending on equipment to be able to join US missions abroad will likely get down prioritized as we increasingly see the US as an unreliable ally. Instead we will focus on domestic defense needs.

We should have government designed consumer goods. Let me explain why and first dispel the first negative reactions:

I am not talking about having ONLY government consumer goods. Private consumer goods would still exist.

But why? Isn’t the government bad at everything? The idea that government is bad at running things is just myth. We have countless examples of well run government companies. Swiss railway is probably the best railways in the world. Government run. Norwegian oil company Equinor is state run. I don’t think anyone can claim Norwegian oil industry is badly run. We have a big success story there. I could go on about other companies but that would derail a post I want to keep short.

The Problem with Private Sector Designed Products

But isn’t the private sector doing well enough? Who needs government? The point is not a full replacement but a health alternative. Today products are made in a for profit market. That created perverse incentives.

Private companies are not seeking to make the best products for you. They are seeking to make the most profits.

If they made a perfect product that never broke down or could easily be fixed and upgraded, then their sales for tank. That is not in their interest. They want as high sales as possible and they want lock-in. They don’t want you to use other vendors.

Thus they make products that cannot be fixed or cost a fortune to fix. They make printers that seem cheap until you try to buy ink. They make clothing fashion that changes every few months to make you constantly buy clothes.

This is bad for the environment and it is bad for you. What if there was an alternative? That cannot come from the private sector, because anyone making durable and repairable products will get low profits and get outcompeted.

In other words we need companies designing, making and selling products that is not rated and evaluated on their profits and maximizing sales but rather on customer satisfaction and environmental impact.

The Advantage of Government Designed Products

This idea was inspired by the Norwegian liquor monopoly because they by law are not allowed to target maximized sales. So what does a CEO do then to rate his success? He uses customer satisfaction as the metric. The result was that a state monopoly gained the highest customer satisfaction of any company in Norway. Think about that. That shows the potential for government run enterprises that do not have maximum sales and profits as their goal but maximum customer satisfaction.

In other words the focus will not be on how to trick customers into buying your products but how to make sure that once they bought your product they are really happy with it.

Government should be able to run ads, but those should have clear restrictions:

1. Emotionally manipulating consumers into buying something they don’t need should not be allowed.

2. No overpromising and under-delivery.

Instead ads should be required for focus on facts. What the product is good for and what it is bad for. Government ads should be required to be honest and list not just benefits but also disadvantages so that customers are not tricked into buying something. Customers should have a clear idea what they are getting.

Regular customer satisfaction surveys should be run, with occasional in depth interviews with customers to figure out what they like and don’t like. That should influence product development. Not sales charts.

No Me Too Products

If the private sector already sells a high quality durable product, which are environmentally friendly and which everyone is happy with then the government should not waste resources getting into that sector. Focus should be in areas where there is a high cycling rate of products. A lot of waste. Short lifespan and customer dissatisfaction.

Interoperability

Government designed products should avoid lock-in as far as possible. Remember the goal is not maximized sales but reduced overall consumption combined with great customer satisfaction and small environmental impact. Thus it should be easy for the private sector to make compatible products. In fact government designed products should ideally be open source. Much of the specifications open so private companies can create compatible alternatives if they wish to. Or simply ad-on products.

To give some examples. A government designed printer should allow for ink cartridges from competitors. Killing the competition is not the goal.

Any repair shop should be allowed to fix government made products. No special vendor lock-in repair shops.

A government phone should not use proprietary cables, but stick to well established universal standards.

Main Challenge with Government Made Products

Because profits and sales will not be the primary goal, government consumer goods corporations will not be able to demonstrate high profits and income. That means they will be susceptible to attacks by capitalists who will argue they are badly run, because they are not demonstrating high profits and sales.

The point here is that we are trying to escape capitalist logic that equates profits with value. The value of these government designed products would be a smaller environmental impact and happier customers.

It is also about creating better mental health where we stop focusing on consuming ever more as a way of getting happy but instead simply have the product we truly need and start focusing on the rest of our lives.

There may not be profits in that, but there is very clear value in that. Citizens are going to be willing to pay for that benefit but that benefit cannot be captured at the point of sale.

This is similar to my argument about the benefits of a subway. They will never be very profitable because most of the people who benefit economically from a subway are not paying the tickets. Wait, how can people not riding the subway benefit from it?

Let me clarify. Subways move a huge number of people in relatively small space. Every load of people moved with a subway is cars off the highway. That means people driving on the roads get less congestion. In other words subways are a big benefit to drives, but drivers never pay a ticket. They never reward the subway company for the benefit they bring drivers.

Likewise subways remove the need for massive amount of land allocated to parking. That means countless restaurants, shops, and housing will exist in prime location thanks to subways. But none of them paid the subway company for that advantage.

Hopefully you start to get the point I am trying to convey. It is that so much value is created in ways which cannot be captured directly through point sales. Value can often be very indirect. So how do we pay for these advantages? The simplest solution is taxes. Alternatively there is a small tax on motorists, property, parking etc that is transferred to subway, tram and bus companies. My point is not to sell you on one specific compensation method but rather acknowledge that corporations should not have to demonstrate direct profit from sales to prove that they are a value to society.

And if they are a value to society we should find ways of compensating them outside the market. One way is taxes, but whatever works.

Financing Ideas for Government Manufacturing

Let us just brainstorm some ideas which could allow for government run companies to get funded in a way that is fair with respect to the value they contribute to society.

We could run statistics on say citizens having a government printer and compare with people buying commercial capitalist printers. Look at how much money those buying non-government printers spend over say 5 years. Spare parts, ink, repairs that screw over people will add up. That excess cost relative to government sold printers should represent cost savings that the government corporations should be financially rewarded for.

We could look at the same for say clothes. If people buy 5 commercial jackets over the course of 5 years but only need 1 government designed jacket then that is 4 jackets that never had to be bought. The cost of those jackets got saved.

So let us think a bit hypothetical. If citizens safe $500 per year due to government designed products relative to buying commercial products then paying say $100 in taxes to go to funding government design and manufacturing of public goods would make economic sense. Citizens are still better off economically.

You can already see why the economic calculations are more complex. We are basically trying to figure out the value of sales not made. Traditional capitalist thinking is implying that higher consumption equal more benefit or happiness.

Benefits to the Private Market for Consumers

Government products can benefit people who are not buying government products, because they can provide a benchmark for what is possible. Consumers will start holding private companies accountable asking them why their products cannot be repaired or are not durable. It will be hard for private companies to make excuses because consumer can point to actual government designed products which lasts and is repairable.

What would be Good Government Design?

I don’t think something like Soviet style products should be the goal as those were often overall gray and functional. Ignoring human psychology entirely. Good looking products may seem frivolous but mattes. Human welfare is affected by being surrounded by products and designs that are pleasing to us.

In other words government design should not merely seek to be functional but also look pleasing to the consumer. But the focus should be on making the owner pleased not in terms of tricking people into buying it or overly manipulate the emotional need for something they don’t need just because it looks pretty.

This is perfectly possible. In Norway we have government run TV channel NRK. They make a lot of nice things. It is easy to think Soviets represents what government do, but we forget that was a poor country and a dictatorship. In a democracy that cares to serve its citizens it is absolutely possible for government to create quality products that serve its citizens needs.

How to Manufacture Government Consumer Goods

What is important to understand about this whole idea is that it is primarily about government led design. It is about creating products fit for long usage and satisfaction for customers. It is not a particular requirement for government manufacturing.

In other words this could in theory be done just as how Apple makes iPhones. The government does the design and R&D but a factory in China actually produces it.

And we could have many interesting combinations here. E.g. the bulk of the production could be in China or a similar low cost country while a strategic lower volume of the same product is made locally in case foreign imports is hurt due to war or crisis.

Obstacles to this Change

The biggest obstacle is probably that people are so brainwashed into thinking government cannot do anything well. The second obstacle is to dominant Neoliberal ideology which makes it hard to establish production and product design based on anything but capitalist competition without hitting free trade rule violations.

Free trade rules have often tied our hands and feet to a Neoliberal capitalist economic and social model whether we want to or not.

My take is to try to get people to challenge that idea. To challenge the whole neoliberal project.

The US cannot simply pull out of the war unilaterally, because Iran is not stopping its attacks until it gets what it wants. If the US withdraws, the Strait of Hormuz would remain under tight control, and the Gulf states could still be targeted.

This means the Gulf states could be forced to attack Iran to end the hostilities against them. Personally, however, I think Iran would scale back its attacks in such a scenario, since forcing the US to pull back unilaterally would already be a victory.

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Iran does not want to end the war without a solid deal, because it does not want to end up in a situation where it is attacked again. It has already experienced this. It agreed to a ceasefire and entered negotiations, yet was attacked during those negotiations, even when it was prepared to make significant concessions.

What does that tell Iran? That making deals with the US is worthless. That diplomacy is meaningless. That it will be attacked anyway whenever the US decides to. As a result, Iran does not want a “peace” that simply allows the US and Israel to regroup and strike again with greater force.

This is the problem with having a leader perceived as unreliable and without credibility running US policy. The previous Iran deal, which Iran had adhered to, was scrapped. Then Iran was bombed while negotiations for a new deal were ongoing. In other words, this has reinforced the perception that there is little value in making agreements with the US. It echoes historical patterns seen elsewhere, where agreements were made only to be broken when convenient.

Thus, for Iran to stop hostilities, it would need a deal it believes the US cannot easily back out of. That will be difficult to achieve.

Meanwhile, the Gulf states did not want these attacks in the first place. But now that they are happening—and now that they see how vulnerable they are to Iranian missile strikes—they are likely to insist that Iran be fully disarmed. They want peace, but not a peace in which Iran remains a constant threat. They believed they were protected by American radar systems and Patriot defenses. Now they know they are not. Even if the war ends, Iran could still threaten them at any time in the future.

Then there is the US, which also has no easy exit. If it withdraws now, it leaves behind a region where Iran effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting the free flow of oil tankers. Iran’s nuclear capabilities would remain, and the incentives to pursue nuclear weapons would likely increase. From Iran’s perspective, nuclear weapons may appear to be the only reliable deterrent against future US or Israeli attacks.

Secondly, the US would lose face. It would signal to the world that a relatively weaker power can push back against it. That would reduce the deterrent effect of US military power and weaken the credibility of future threats.

Opponents of the US would also gain a blueprint: use drones and target the global economy. Countries like Russia could benefit from this shift, as others might seek their support in such strategies, including intelligence and targeting assistance.

All of this means the US sees no easy way out. A withdrawal could be viewed as a major humiliation for US military power.

So where does that leave us?

I am concerned this could lead to a ground invasion. If air campaigns fail to achieve results and reopening the Strait becomes urgent, the US may feel compelled to escalate.

But a rushed and poorly planned ground invasion would likely fail. Would that lead to withdrawal? Probably not. Instead, it could increase pressure to stay, because leaving after failure would make the US appear weak. That could lead to further escalations, possibly even discussions of a draft.

At that point, political dynamics become crucial. A change in congressional control could limit funding and force a withdrawal. However, if a new administration inherits an ongoing war, it may also face pressure to continue, in order to avoid being seen as presiding over defeat.

Why would this war be so difficult to win?

It is true that Iran’s military capabilities could be significantly degraded. But Gulf state defenses could also be worn down, and within a month the US could face shortages of the precision munitions needed to counter drone attacks. So while Iran may struggle to prevent being bombed, the Gulf states could become increasingly vulnerable.

The US has no quick solution to this, since advanced weapons systems take time to produce. This is what could push it toward deploying ground forces.

In other words, this is a situation with no easy resolution.

Most people know Gordon Ramsay as the volcanic chef who screams insults across a kitchen. If you’ve watched Hell’s Kitchen or the American version of Kitchen Nightmares (U.S.), he seems permanently on the edge of explosion—throwing food, swearing creatively, and terrifying contestants.

But if you watch his British shows, the character changes noticeably.

In Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares in the UK, Ramsay still gets angry when a kitchen is filthy or someone lies to him. But most of the time he behaves very differently: he teaches, mentors, encourages struggling restaurant owners, and often shows genuine empathy for people whose businesses are collapsing. The overall tone feels closer to a documentary about fixing restaurants than a gladiatorial contest.

This isn’t just a matter of personality. Ramsay himself has acknowledged that the difference comes from how television is made for different audiences.

American reality TV tends to amplify conflict. Scenes are cut faster, dramatic music is added, reaction shots are repeated, and the most explosive moments are replayed before and after commercial breaks. A single outburst can appear multiple times in an episode, creating the impression that someone is shouting constantly. British shows traditionally rely more on observational storytelling, where the camera simply lets events unfold.

The result is that Ramsay ends up performing two slightly different versions of the same persona. On American shows he leans into the role of the terrifying drill sergeant. On British programs he’s closer to a blunt but supportive mentor.

You can see how much of this is format rather than personality by watching MasterChef Junior. Put Ramsay in a room with children and the yelling disappears entirely; he becomes encouraging, patient, and almost fatherly.

The same man. Completely different television.

It’s a small example, but it says something interesting about culture. American entertainment often turns up the volume—more drama, more confrontation, more spectacle. Even when the underlying situation is the same, the storytelling pushes it toward intensity.

Sometimes the difference between cultures isn’t what happens.

It’s how loudly it’s presented.

Right-wing commentators often argue that universities are a bad influence on students. They claim universities push liberal ideas onto young people and that the state should intervene to restore ideological balance.

But some historical context is useful here.

Universities did not originally begin as corporations offering courses or as institutions owned by the state. Rather, they began as corporations or guilds of students and teachers. In this sense, their origins resemble the guild structures of medieval Europe more than modern corporations.

The first universities in Europe emerged in Italian city-states such as Bologna in the late 11th and 12th centuries. Students who wanted to study subjects such as Roman law traveled there from across Europe to learn from famous teachers.

Because these students were foreigners in a medieval city, they were vulnerable to exploitation by landlords, merchants, and even teachers. To protect themselves they formed guild-like associations, much like the guilds of carpenters, smiths, or merchants that existed in medieval towns.

These associations were called universitates. In medieval Latin the word did not mean a building or campus. It meant simply a corporate body or association of people.

At Bologna these student guilds elected a leader called the rector. The rector and the student organization negotiated contracts with professors, set lecture schedules, and could even fine teachers who failed to meet their obligations.

In other words, the university was originally a community of students that collectively organized teaching rather than an institution that hired students as customers. In other words something more similar to a socialist style organization of shared interests of people rather than a capitalist organization selling services to customers.

Students joined and left over time, but the corporate body persisted. The University of Bologna, traditionally dated to 1088, traces its origins to these medieval student associations and remains the oldest continuously operating university in Europe.

For centuries universities did not even have dedicated buildings. Lectures were held in rented rooms, churches, or the homes of professors. The university was not a place so much as a legal community of scholars and students spread across a city.

Over time this arrangement gradually changed. Medieval cities realized that universities were powerful economic engines. Thousands of foreign students meant demand for housing, food, books, clothing, and entertainment.

Municipal governments therefore began to support universities by granting privileges, paying some professors’ salaries, and eventually providing lecture halls. As cities and later states became more involved in financing universities, they naturally gained greater influence over curriculum and governance.

By the Renaissance period, especially from the 15th and 16th centuries onward, universities were increasingly integrated into civic and state structures. Permanent university buildings began to appear, and professors increasingly became salaried officials rather than contractors hired by students.

Nevertheless, traces of the older tradition survived. In many continental European systems—including France, Germany, Italy, and the Nordic countries—students today still have formal representation in university governing bodies. Universities are seen not merely as service providers but as communities composed of multiple stakeholders: students, teachers, and the public.

The Anglo-American model developed somewhat differently. Universities in England such as Oxford and Cambridge grew out of church and scholarly institutions in which teachers organized themselves as a corporate body. Governance therefore developed around colleges, professors, and later boards of trustees rather than student corporations.

Student unions certainly exist in the UK and the United States, but they are typically separate organizations representing student interests, rather than integral parts of university governance.

Seen in this light, the famous student protests of 1968 take on a different meaning. They can be understood not simply as rebellion, but partly as an attempt by students to expand their voice within institutions that historically once included students more directly in their governance.

There is also a simpler explanation for why universities tend to broaden people’s perspectives. Studies of political attitudes suggest that universities do not necessarily make students more liberal because professors indoctrinate them. Rather, students are exposed to a wider range of people, cultures, and ideas.

This dynamic existed from the very beginning. Medieval universities brought together young people from across Europe who would live and study together in foreign cities. Students from France, Germany, Italy, England, and Scandinavia encountered one another’s customs, traditions, and ways of thinking.

It is hardly surprising that such environments tend to broaden people’s horizons.

In that sense, the intellectual and cultural transformation associated with university education is as old as the universities themselves. It is not the result of a modern conspiracy or ideological project, but a natural consequence of bringing diverse people together to study, debate, and learn from one another.

Parallels with Establishment of Kibbutzim in Israel

There are interesting modern parallels to this pattern of people organizing themselves collectively when faced with difficult conditions.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish settlers began migrating to Ottoman Palestine in what are known as the early Zionist aliyot. Many of the first settlers initially tried to establish privately owned farms modeled on European agriculture. These early settlements often struggled. Farming conditions were harsh, capital was scarce, and many settlers lacked agricultural experience.

Over time, some pioneers began experimenting with new forms of collective organization. One of the most famous of these was the kibbutz—a communal settlement in which property, labor, and resources were shared collectively among members. The first kibbutz, Degania Alef, was founded in 1910.

In the kibbutz system, members lived, worked, and governed the community together. Decisions were made democratically, and income from farming and industry was shared. Like the medieval student guilds that formed the earliest universities, these communities were not created by states or corporations but by groups of people organizing themselves to solve practical problems.

These examples remind us that throughout history, people have repeatedly created collective institutions—guilds, cooperatives, unions, communes, and associations—when market structures alone did not meet their needs. Universities themselves began as such associations: communities of students and teachers organizing education together.

Seen from this perspective, universities were never simply businesses selling a product to customers. They were—and in many ways still are—social institutions created by communities of people pursuing shared intellectual goals.

Few things have corrupted society as much in latter years as tech billionaire visions of technology Utopia. When I wrote the original version of this article back in 2021, the world did not look quite as bleak. At the time I opened this article with these lines:

I am a fan of Elon Musk, but I also think he is a person with some deep flaws. This is not unusual. I also admired Steve Jobs, but also recognize that he sometimes treated friends, family and employees terribly. And I don’t prescribe to this idea that some people have, which is that being an asshole was somehow the secret to Steve Jobs’ success. To the contrary, I think he had success despite these bad traits.

In other words I was not blind to the problems with Elon Musk then. But I had never imagined he would evolve into such a supervillain. A man the cackles with glee while he cut crucial aid to millions of poor people. That has had disastrous effects in the poor world. Summarized on congressman Brad Sherman’s page:

As a result, some 600,000 people have died in the past year after being cut off of lifesaving health and food aid provided by USAID – about two thirds of them children

It is painful to see a man you once looked up to turn into such an absolutely evil man. I watched how the fired and terrorized thousands of federal workers as if it was the most fun activity ever. People’s livelihood and future just turned into a joke for the amusement of a spoiled billionaire. To clarify, I am not opposed to the need to at times for firing people. But that can be done with dignity. You should express some empathy with those you have to let go. Not act like it is the biggest party of the year.

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But leaving aside the moral dimension. The topic I addressed back in 2021 is just as relevant today. It is the question of whether the good life is created from more technology and gadgets or from something else entirely?

To many of you who have never been technology utopians this question may sound utterly absurd. You may ask how I could even ask such a silly question, but many people still believe the great society will be created through technological marvels.

This article is a confronting my own past beliefs as well as those of the billionaire tech elites trying to sell us visions of Utopia built on their technology.

My original article began with this musing about the different visions of a technology driven future.

Technology Utopia vs Techno-Utopia

Steve Jobs pushed a technology utopia while Elon Musk is pushing a techno-utopia. What is the difference? Jobs was all about the personal aspect of technology. What you can hold in your hand or sit in front of. What makes your imagination flow. A world of marvelous gadgets enriching your life.

Musk is promising something very different. The Musk vision is about using technology to solve the big problems of our society: How do we power society without leading to global warming. How do we transport people and things without polluting or increasing CO2 emissions? And finally, how do we make human life multi-planetary. This is big scale stuff, not what you hold in your hand.

The Limits of Technology

As a life-long technology enthusiast, it is hard to not get ensnared by these visions. However, as I have gotten older, I have begun to see the darker side of this approach to humanity and society. It began with my own children. I remember imagining the iPad would be a revolution for children. It would allow them to learn and explore so many things in ways I never had a chance to do as a child.

But the experience of introducing my children to the iPad made me deeply skeptical of technology as some kind revolution for child development. Not just my own experience but what I have observed from other parents and children that are not my own.

Instead of fostering imagination and spurring curiosity, in many ways it kills it. The iPad is akin to heroin. It is so addictive, especially to young children, that it seems to inhibit the ability to really learn anything. I am not saying we have not found useful programs. But all too often I have found that when the kids were younger they would simply smash buttons and click on anything rather than actually learn the system.

Let me clarify with some examples. I thought I could teach my children drawing with an iPad. Drawing programs had lots of tools you could use and experiment with. Instead they got lost in all the gadgetry. Real skill in drawing was instead made with old-school pens, pencils, brushes and paper.

Similarly, with topics such as reading and writing, I find that comics, books, magazines, etc., are far more effective. When you sit down with a comic or book, there is not much else to do besides reading, so that is what you do. With an iPad, there are too many possible distractions. Kids don’t just stay in one app. They jump around like crazy, doing everything and nothing.

In terms of development, I find that regular watercolor paints, wooden blocks, pencils, comics, Lego and books have worked best. These things have a proven record. Generations of kids have been raised with these kinds of toys and yet in our technology utopia we seem to have to rediscover these truths.

This experience has only been amplified in this COVID19 period (I wrote first version of this article during COVID). Previously, my kids spent more time playing with other kids outside, building Lego together or playing board games with other kids. I found them far more balanced at that time. Now we have ended up with more computer game usage, and again I see the addictive and corrosive nature of computer games. We also know companies are deliberately investing in ways to make their content addictive. It is much harder to make a book or comic addictive in such a corrosive manner.

But now the cat is out of the bag. I remember we spent quite some time before our oldest son got to taste ice cream, chocolate and other candy. That saved us a lot of trouble. But once he discovered it, you cannot go back. Technology is the same. It is hard to undo exposure to an iPad or gaming console.

Some years ago, I remember seeing the movie Captain Fantastic with Viggo Mortensen. It is about a father who basically did the opposite of me and raised his children out in the wild away from technology. While his way in the movie was kind of dangerous and crazy, I could not held but feel a certain longing for such a world. I could never have done anything like that and this would also be going to another extreme. But the movie certainly made me reflect upon the choices I have made and we as a society have made.

I love my Mac and technology. Programming and computers have been my life for almost as long as I can remember. But when I see everybody sitting on the subway in the morning (pre-COVID19; nowadays, I am no longer on the subway) and staring at their iPhone screens, I cannot help but think we have really gone awry. I spend more time on my phone and social media than I think is healthy. Sometimes I dream about saying good bye to it all and move to some remote pacific island. But then you remind yourself that there is is probably no decent health care system there. Making a living, cooking food, etc., is probably a lot of work. So we are stuck with our technology utopia. There is no going back. But maybe we should reflect a bit more before going to the next level. Maybe the next revolutionary gadget will not be as good as you think.

What Does All This Have to Do With Elon Musk and His Vision?

I homed in on our personal life. What we do at the home, with our family, children, etc. But there is also a discussion of how we solve the big problems at the scale of nations — such as where do we get energy and how to we transport goods and services.

Elon Musk has given us no less than five complementary visions for transportation:

• Electric vehicles like Tesla replacing the gasoline car, ridding us of the need of producing CO2 to move from A to B.

• Robot taxis. Self-driving automated cars reducing the need to have a car in the first place. With automated cars, renting a car becomes much cheaper.

• Networks of tunnels carrying cars removing congestion in cities.

• Hyper-loop connecting cities.

• Rockets transporting people to anywhere on the planet within 20 minutes.

While a lot of this makes sense to me (I live, after all, in a Tesla-obsessed country, where I see 3–4 Teslas as soon as I step out the door), I still think these visions are heavily influenced by the fact that it comes from a guy who has spent most of his life in the Silicon Valley technobubble and driving in cities like LA. It is the experience of the American hyper-individualistic approach to life.

Now, of course Elon Musk spent his youth in South Africa, but that seems similarity car-focused as America.

Having lived in societies with quite different approaches to this has made me reluctant to embrace this techno-optimism. I remember living in an American city of only 50 000 inhabitants and was astonished by how many roads and much traffic such a relatively small town had. Places like LA are, of course, a whole other level of crazy.

Living in the Netherlands exposed me to a diametrically opposite approach to handling city life. Dutch towns of much higher population often have far lower traffic density. Why is that? It is all about city planning. American cities produce huge amounts of traffic because they are spread out and strongly zoned, meaning different types of activities is both spread out and clustered. You have your big box stores one place and the mega movie theatre in another place. In a Dutch town, there is a lot more mixed zoning. You have restaurants, doctors offices, shops, etc., all locally available. You can walk or bike to them quickly. Less-frequently used stores and activities are concentrated in the city center rather than in the outskirts like a strip mall. That means they are easy to access by public transportation or biking.

None of this really has anything to do with technology. This is all about city planning and political choices. How you zone and lay out your city is a political choice. In the Musk vision of the future, politics and collective choices don’t exist at all. A heavily zoned car-centric city is taken for granted. What could have been fixed with better policies is instead fixed by technology.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do think we need electric cars and robot taxis. However, I am far more skeptical of the idea of building layers of tunnels under the cities. There is nothing natural about the road nightmare in LA.

Is this the kind of society we want?

Living in the Netherlands, I saw a vision of a society that was greatly inspiring. I had one of the best times of my life living there. Biking in the Netherlands was pure joy. And when you did not bike you could get almost anywhere with trains. An elaborate network of trains connected all sorts of Dutch cities, where you would get straight into the center of the city, where often you found the main offices stores, hotels, etc.

I would rather live in this world than in a world of 4 layers of tunnels or 12 lane highways.

If you think about it, how much is the Musk vision of transportation actually improving your life? Do you want to spend hours of your life in dark tunnels going between work, your home and shops? I guess at this point somebody could pop in and suggest that it will be fine because you can use your iPad while doing it. No time wasted!

I remember biking along canals in historical quarters of Dutch cities as pure joy. Feeling the morning breeze, watching the sun come up. Ducks in the canal. People out and about their business. Maybe somebody sitting by a table having their morning coffee. You felt like you were part of something. Part of a society. Part of some organic life. Okay, before I get carried away waxing eloquent about this bliss, I will drag myself back down to planet Earth. There were also some shitty and and rainy days biking through some rather dreary places.

But as a whole I felt better off. All that biking put me in better shape and gave me more energy.

This Will Never Work in America!

I know what some people will say. Countries are different. My native Norway is certainly not the Netherlands. I seldom bike here. Hills, mountains, fjordsand more extreme weather are part of the problem. Cities are also more spread out. An American will also argue that American cities are not dense like Dutch ones and America is large and spread out. All true.

I am not suggesting some carbon copy of the Netherlands but rather using it as an inspiration for how the world can be driven forward by other things than just gadgets and technology fixes. What few people today outside the Netherlands seem to be aware of is that the Netherlands was not always a biking utopia. People think it was just born that way. It wasn’t. In the 1970s it was getting choked by car traffic. A broad and almost militant grass roots movement rose up to fight the car. Gradually, the Netherlands began a radical transformation away from a car-oriented society to a bike- and public transport-oriented society.

Everybody can do this. I see the same in the city where I live: Oslo, Norway. Sure, we have disadvantages with out terrain, climate and lack of density, but the number of bike lanes has really risen. More people are biking than ever. Cars are being pushed out of the downtown area. Change is possible.

And before we get too hung up on size of country and population density, think about this. The LA metropolitan area covers 12 562 km2 and contains a population of 12 million people. The Dutch Randstad area, which covers the major Dutch cities, is 8 287 km2 and has a population of 8 million people.

In other words, these areas are not all that different in terms of population and area covered. Yet living and traveling in these areas are profoundly different. LA is almost exclusively connected by massive highway networks. The Randstad is heavily connected by railroad at the large scale and zoomed in you see trams, bikes, buses, etc.

An Alternative Vision of the Future

We can use technology to move us from A to B in large, sprawling cities. But has it occurred to you that in many ways this Musk vision of the future with robot taxis and tunnels is kind of old fashioned? It assumes a world where we drive to a faraway office every day. Where we take a car to for a spin each time we need to buy something.

As horrible as COVID19 is, it has already given us a glimpse of another possible future. One where many of us do most of our work at home. I haven’t been tothe office in about a year now. I have used public transportation and a cab a handful of times. A lot of what I buy —be it books, computer hardware or food — has gotten delivered at the door.

Of course, I would love to travel back to the city and eat out at my favorite taco place with the family. But that is beside the point. Why I am trying to say is that we have options in how we organize society. A lot is possible. Our need to travel long distance is not fixed.

There is a sort of joke among us software developers that the most robust and bug-free code is the one never written. Likewise, there is no road as congestion-free as the one you never had to use. What if we instead reimagined cities so they did not need to have all these roads in the first place? So you don’t need all these tunnels?

Dutch cities and our COVID19 nightmare give a glimpse of this possible solution:

• Have more mixed zoning. More services available locally. For example, you can spread a lot of small stores out over a larger area than if you have a few megastores.

• For more specialized things, cluster at public transportation hotspots. Thus you can travel to a central location and then branch out from there by walking or biking.

• Reduce the need to travel to offices by using more video conferencing. Perhaps establish more shared offices spaces. Why not have shared office areas in the neighborhood?

What if instead of fixed offices we go to various rented office spaces locally? At less frequent intervals, all workers could meet up in a more distant centralized location. If offices are flexible rentals, you could imagine that one could grow or shrink office space through the week. It would be a bit like a hotel. You don’t need to own all the space, because you don’t need to use all of it through the whole week.

I don’t imagine this as THE solution. It is just an example of how we can think differently about how we organize ourselves. Why assume that we commute and work using the same pattern as the 1950s and the only thing that changes is that the cars become computerized EVs that travel underground? It is about as innovative as a science fiction movie which is just the Wild West with robots and laser guns.

Other Stories about Space Exploration and Elon Musk

You might be interested in some of my other related stories:

• Is Elon Musk Just a Sales Guy? — How involved is Elon Musk in engineering decisions and how much does he know about physics and engineering?

• Why is the Cybertruck so Cheap? — The engineering decisions why allowed the Cybertruck to be cheap to manufacture, high performance, spacious and strong.

• Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Utopia — The limits of the Elon Musk solutions to the problems our planet faces.

• Elon Musk’s Updated Mars Plans — A discussion of common misconceptions about Elon Musk’s Mars colonization plans.

• The Crab People and Space Exploration — Is space exploration a waste of money? Should we focus on poverty, global warming an other problems? Putting space exploration into perspective.

Laptops and smart phones gave us ever cheaper and better Lithium-ion batteries. Mass production of Laptop batteries caught the eye of Tesla’s first CEO Martin Eberhard. While looking to build an electric sports car, Eberhard approached AC Propulsion to upgrade their “tzero” prototype. He suggested replacing its heavy lead-acid batteries with thousands of 18650 lithium-ion cells, which were commonly used in laptop computers.

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This caused a massive boom in Lithium ion battery usage and rapid improvement in power densities and lower prices.

This is actually what led to the development of the modern consumer drones which were the predecessors to the drones dominating the skies in Ukraine today.

Before the lithium-ion boom, drones relied on heavier chemistries like Ni-Cd that offered only minutes of flight. The EV industry’s push for higher energy density (increasing by roughly 5-8% annually) allowed drones to transition from 5-10 minute toys to professional tools capable of 30-45 minutes of sustained flight.

Do you see the dominos? How one development triggers another, which triggers yet another?

The war in Ukraine is causing new dominos, because the extreme conditions of warfare creates pressures for entirely new types of development. Russia and Ukraine today are in a fierce competition, which is basically turning modern warfare into a battle between robots.

The scale of production has shifted from thousands to millions of units annually:

• Ukraine Output: Produced approximately 2.2 million drones in 2024, with targets exceeding 4.5 million for 2025.

• Russia Output: Reportedly matching this pace, with production targets estimated between 3 to 4 million for 2025.

• Cost Disparity: A $400–$500 FPV drone can disable or destroy a $3 million to $4 million main battle tank. This asymmetry has led to drones causing an estimated 60% to 80% of all equipment losses on the battlefield.

The unique environment of the modern drone heavy battlefield is pushing development of robotics and AI in whole new directions that would not have happened in civilian life.

For instance it might be nice with small wheeled robot driving to the store and picking up groceries for you. But this isn’t happening because such a system would likely work badly at first and be expensive. Few would use it because it is just much easier to walk to the store yourself.

But on the Ukrainian battlefield they don’t have that luxury. Yes driving a truck to the battlefield or walking with supplies in a backpack may be easier than using a clunky first generation belted or wheeled land based drone. But that also exposes you to drone attacks. Hence “easier” and “cheaper” doesn’t win. In this environment clunky solutions will win by virtue of surviving drone attacks or avoiding them altogether.

Thus the battlefield creates a unique pressure to develop specialized technology. That technology will later benefit us in civilian life.

But this is not a new phenomenon. In fact it is how technology has actually progressed since the dawn of time. Let me use this opportunity to tell you how technology actually develops. I dedicated a separate story to this history:

The takeaway I want you to have from this story is that technology is not something we create by just deciding “let us research this cool thing” and put money into a research lab. Out pops innovation. If you zoom in that is perhaps how it looks. But real serious innovation requires repeated discoveries and feedback. A laboratory can create a transport robot. But if nobody buys and uses this robot, then the design will not evolve. Manufacturing will not get refined and cheaper. Technology cannot truly shine without getting used. You need multiple iterations.

The importance of iterations and constant feedback to evolve something is something is home in one of my earlier articles:

Erik Explores

Wehrmacht, Elon Musk and Unix Software Development

A topic which has fascinated me for a long time is how different organizations can achieve vastly different outcomes and success despite having similar amount of resources at their disposal. For instance, how could Tesla outcompete huge automakers in making long range electric cars? How could a startup like SpaceX design a rocket such as Falcon 9 outcompeting far more experienced competitors such as Boeing and ULA, Roscosmos and Arianespace with much more experience and deeper pockets…

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3 years ago · 2 likes · Erik Engheim

This is where the significance of the Ukraine war comes in with respect to robot development. It creates an environment where there is a strong push and need for robots that doesn’t typically exist in our everyday life.

Some things I believe will change in civilian life:

1. Transportation of important supplies such as medication to remote areas will increasingly be done by flying drones.

2. Small wheeled robots or robot dogs will increasingly get used for package deliveries. A van might drive around and release robot dogs with packages that move up to your front door, rather than a person walking there.

3. Transportation of good within factories or companies will likely become more robot based.

But perhaps more importantly Ukraine shows the way for warfare in general. For instance I am skeptical of investments in complex fighter jets with massive costs. Ukraine has shown that super weapons made to survive anything often ends up costing far more than they are worth.

I suspect much cheaper flying platforms that are AI and remote controlled will take over. Without a pilot they become more expendable. We saw this in WW2. Germans had excellent tanks that could take out say 3 American tanks before they would get destroyed. Only problem is Americans would have built 4-6 new tanks before the Germans were up with a replacement.

In other words something like F-35 might be a dead end if it costs too much to build and takes too long time. A simpler remote and AI controlled plane could simply be expended. The question is if one F-35 could take out 3-4 cheaper and simpler planes.

In Ukraine many expensive Western made drones have failed because they cost too much and take too long time to make. Often we end up in situations where say anti-aircraft missiles cost way more than the weapons used in attack. That is unsustainable. Western military has not had to think much about cost before. They have just focused on performance.

Cost, speed of production, ease of use will become far more important in the future.

Sources

While I use AI in my work to look up info, I try to verify numbers and details with sources. Here are some of the sources for this article.

• 4.5 Million Drones Is A Lot Of Drones. It’s Ukraine’s New Production Target For 2025.

• I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck — Interesting counter on some of the problems with drones and how they are used.

• Drone production in Ukraine has surged: The Ministry of Defense plans to purchase 4.5 million UAVs this year.

I have played computer games for many years. Not so much anymore, but the last game I played was Civilization with my older son. It is a game where you evolve a civilization from the Stone Age to the modern era, complete with nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and killer robots.

I began playing the game as a teenager in the 1990s, and ever since then I’ve reflected on what makes civilizations develop. What makes a civilization invent things?

As with many computer games, innovation is presented as something you simply invest in. A classic representation of research in games is that you build research labs and allocate money and scientists. Out pop technologies.

Since Civilization operates across many historical eras, it tries to generalize this process: in earlier eras you enhance discovery by building libraries, and later universities.

But this creates a deeply flawed understanding of how technology and science actually evolve. It isn’t about simply pumping money and research into an idea until, at some magical point, that idea gets discovered.

I want to invite you to think about what our future with AI and robotics might look like by taking you on a journey through human scientific and technological development—showing how it actually happened.

The Curious Case of Bronze and Iron Working

In Civilization, you develop bronze working first and then iron working. In your mind, this may work something like this: humans only know how to make bronze tools. Then some genius figures out how to make tools and weapons with iron. It’s a eureka moment. The “Iron Working” technology is developed. Boom. Now everyone uses iron and ditches bronze.

Here is something that might blow your mind: bronze and iron were both known the whole time. There was never a eureka moment where iron replaced bronze.

Instead, iron working evolved in parallel with bronze working. Bronze dominated because it was much easier to work with. With bronze, whole swords, armor, and tools could be cast. This made it possible to mass-produce weapons, tools, and armor at the forge.

Iron, by contrast, is time-consuming. The smith has to hammer iron repeatedly to shape it. You cannot pour iron into a mold to create a sword. Instead, a sword is made through a slow process of repeated heating and hammering.

Not only were iron tools and weapons slow and difficult to make—they were also of poor quality. Bronze swords were sharper and generally superior. This was because, until humans mastered controlling the carbon content of iron and removing impurities, iron objects tended to be brittle and unreliable.

In other words, iron tools existed, but they were worse in quality and more expensive. Therefore, they were not desirable.

But then something happened.

Bronze Age civilizations collapsed. Centralized governments fell apart. A world of chaos and violence followed. Trade networks collapsed as well. This mattered enormously for bronze production, because bronze is an alloy of tin and copper. Tin is difficult to obtain and depends on complex, long-distance trade networks.

Note

Technically what we tend to call iron isn’t iron but an alloy of iron and carbon. The amount of carbon determines the unique properties of that iron. Cast iron has high carbon content and case be used to cast objects, but is quite brittle. Wrought iron in contrast cannot be cast but can more easily be shaped. Steel is simple a form of optimal combination of carbon and iron.

Without tin, people were forced to make iron weapons and tools, even if they found them inferior. Thus, iron working as a craft began to develop. Through use and experimentation, people gradually got better at working with iron. The quality of iron tools and weapons started to improve.

Iron benefited from being easily accessible locally. Iron working was not a technology that relied on complex trade networks or large centralized states. Iron thrived in a chaotic world.

Once well-organized states and trade networks re-emerged, it was game over for bronze. Iron working had improved so much that bronze became far less competitive. Iron tools were sharper and sturdier, and while they required more labor hours to produce, they did not rely on scarce resources.

How Scarcity and Substitution Lead to Innovation

Scarcity is the primary driver here. Iron was a substitute for a material that had become scarce. This kind of substitution—replacing something rare with something more abundant—has happened throughout human history.

There was a time when an entire chemical industry existed around whale oil. Whale oil was used to make perfume, soap, machine oil, cosmetics, lamp oil, and many other products.

But when humans hunted whales almost to extinction, we were forced to explore mineral oil instead. That is how we started drilling into the ground. We needed a substitute for whale oil. Mineral oil was the iron. Whale oil was the bronze.

This was not the first time humans had to find substitutes because we had killed too many animals.

Agriculture, for instance, did not emerge because someone had a eureka moment. It was not an invention in that sense. Humans had long understood the idea of growing and harvesting plants. But hunting and gathering required far less effort than early farming.

Farming took off, like iron working, because humans ran out of alternatives. We hunted too many animals, pushing them close to extinction and destroying our own livelihood. Farming became the substitute. But, like iron, it was initially a much worse option. And as with iron working, we gradually got better at it because we were forced to practice it over long periods of time.

A similar process occurred with coal. Charcoal was much better suited for smelting metals than mineral coal. But as forests were exhausted, people were forced to experiment with coal instead. Because of impurities, coal initially produced worse results than charcoal. Yet with no alternatives, humans were forced to keep experimenting and improving it. This is how we eventually mastered the use of coal for metal smelting, helping to trigger the Industrial Revolution.

Coal existed in vastly greater quantities than wood, and a coal miner can extract three to six times more energy per day worked than someone gathering wood for fuel. However, this requires high up-front investments to create mines. Wood gathering, by contrast, has a very low barrier to entry.

In other words, it made little sense to pursue coal until a society experienced wood scarcity. My native Norway is a good example. Wood-burning stoves remained dominant here, and we have little history of using coal for heating. Britain, meanwhile, shifted almost entirely to coal because it had become largely deforested. Norway, by contrast, is sparsely populated and rich in forests, giving easy access to lumber.

Technological progress, then, tends to happen because environments shift in ways that create pressure to use new resources or to operate differently. Sometimes this pressure comes from war or collapse, such as the Bronze Age collapse around the Mediterranean.

However, this transition happened elsewhere as well. In China, there was no comparable collapse, and access to tin remained good. As a result, the Bronze Age lasted longer there.

So why did China eventually enter an Iron Age? Because as the population grew and the use of metal tools and weapons expanded, the supply of tin and copper was no longer sufficient to sustain bronze production.

Thus, the transition to iron in China occurred under a strong, centralized government, while in Europe it happened in collapsed, decentralized societies.

This had interesting consequences for how iron technology evolved in China and Europe. Europe came to excel at small-scale iron working, such as forging iron by hand, while China excelled at large-scale iron production through casting.

The Chinese mass-produced agricultural implements such as shovels, hoes, ploughshares, sickles, harrows, and fittings using casting techniques. In other words, they built iron tools much like they had previously built bronze tools: by pouring molten metal into molds.

In Europe, by contrast, tools and weapons were hammered out and shaped by blacksmiths in forges. As you can imagine, this led to very different shapes, sizes, thicknesses, and geometries, since the iron being used had different properties. Cast iron, for instance, is strong but brittle. This is why cast-iron swords perform poorly.

Japan faced conditions similar to Europe. Due to its complex terrain, it was long divided into separate political entities. Japan also lacked high-quality iron ore. This lack of uniform ore quality required far more individual attention in the production of tools and weapons. This is why Japan became famous for legendary swordsmiths—craftsmen who paid close attention to every detail in order to turn iron of varying quality into high-quality blades.

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Pig iron, wrought iron, sponge iron, cast iron, steel, slag, bloomery furnace, bloom, blast furnace… yeah, it is pretty confusing isn’t it?

When it comes to iron making there are a lot of different concepts and jargon which make make your head spin, and places like Wikipedia don’t do a great of giving you a sensible overview.

Types of Iron

To better get a handle of how everything about iron making is tied together, let us look at a simple overview of all the different types of iron and how they are related and their usage.

A little digression about the diagram. You will see Norwegian names for each type of iron in parenthesis here. Part of the reason for that is that I found Wikipedia is pretty bad at covering this material, while Store Norske Leksikon, a Norwegian free online encyclopedia, is very good. Hence I needed the Norwegian terms to cross reference.

Common Confusions Regarding Iron and Steel

A lot of explanations of the difference between iron and steel will typically confuse people more than enlighten them.

Iron is usually explained as a pure element, a metal in the periodic table with symbol Fe. Steel is explained as an alloy of iron and carbon.

While this is technically correct, it doesn’t make people less confused. Why? Because most stuff with iron in its name isn’t pure iron, but alloys of iron and carbon just like steel.

So get this straight: pig iron, cast iron, wrought iron and sponge iron are all iron-carbon alloys, just like steel. So when people talk about the Iron Age, it didn’t mean people used pure iron tools. Nobody ever used pure iron tools. It has always been iron alloys.

Wasn’t Steel Invented in the mid-1800s?

There is another common misconception, namely that steel was somehow invented in the the mid-1800s with the Bessemer process, patented in 1856. This is simply not true. We have used steel for a long time. Swords and armor are usually made of steel.

What changed was the ability to mass produce steel cheaply. The ability to make cheap steel in large quantities is what gave us monuments such as the Eiffel tower.

So think about it this way: We have always been using some kind of iron-carbon alloy with different names such as pig iron, cast iron, wrought iron and steel. However, each of these alloys have had different cost associated with them. Pig iron, for example, is very cheap. But also kind of useless, other than to be processed further to make cast iron, wrought iron or steel.

Steel has traditionally been hard to make because it hits a sweet spot in terms of carbon content: Not too much and not too little. Iron making has through most of human history been more of an art than a science.

It is not like you could just follow a simple recipe and boom! out pops steel. Rather, the blacksmith would rely on his experience to work iron in just the right way to get steel.

This would be a time consuming process where maybe only parts of the sword he made would be steel. Other parts would be made of other iron-carbon alloys.

The Bessemer process allowed the artisanship and craft of an experienced blacksmith to be replaced by a standardized industrial process.

Pros and Cons of Different Iron-Carbon Alloys

Depending on what sort of product you wanted to make, you would use different types of iron alloys. Wrought iron, which has low carbon content, is very easy to shape and bend, especially when heated.

Cast iron and wrought iron could be thought of a bit as the difference between glass and clay. Glass is strong up to a point at which it fractures. It doesn’t easily bend. Clay in contrast doesn’t retain shape as easily as glass. On the other hand it never fractures.

Thus you want wrought iron for things like chains, bolts, nuts, boiler tubes, swords, armor etc. Cast iron can be used for anything that doesn’t take sudden heavy shocks: lamp posts, water pipes, building columns or any machine part that doesn’t need to deal with sudden shocks.

The properties of steel is a bit in between, which is perhaps not surprising, given that its carbon content is also in-between.

There are at times some uses that seem inconsistent. While both cannons and muskets shoot projectiles, they aren’t made in the same way at all. Cannons are cast using cast iron, while muskets and other early handheld guns were welded and hammered into shape using wrought iron.

Cast iron being brittle is a bit of a problem. Cast iron cannons did at times explode and fracture. It was one of the reasons that bronze cannons got used at times. However bronze is way more expensive, which explains the limited use.

Part of the reason why steel and iron have almost mythical stories about iron smiths making exceptional swords is because working iron alloys is such an art form. Getting the right carbon content and remove impurities made such a big difference in how strong and flexible the sword would be.

This contrasts with bronze, which did not require that same level of artisanship. Bronze swords could actually be cast. Casting an iron alloy sword is unthinkable as cast iron is too brittle for use in a sword.

Ways of Making Iron-Carbon Alloys

I want to put the different ways of creating iron alloys into historical context, so you can see how the different iron making techniques relate to each other and what drove their development. I will focus primarily on historical iron making. So this story is cut short when the age of steel begins with the Bessemer process.

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Comedian Trevor Noah explained how billionaires such as Elon Musk avoids paying taxes in this clip. But this story made me want to explain the bigger story of how billionaires steals from everyone else.

What people don’t get about today’s billionaire class is that they generally didn’t make their billions at all. They extracted them from the rest of us. Trevor Noah explains part of this, but not the full picture.

Take Elon Musk. He didn’t become one of the richest people on Earth by selling a huge number of Tesla cars at a huge profit. His wealth did not come from accumulated profits. In fact, his fortune exploded during years when Tesla barely made money or was outright losing it.

So how did he get so rich?

Tesla is worth around 1.36 trillion dollars because a large number of people bought Tesla stock while implicitly saying: “This is what I imagine a company that barely makes money is worth.” That number exists mostly in people’s heads.

Now, you might think this means that 1.36 trillion dollars of real cash flowed into Tesla. But that is not how stock markets work.

To make this intuitive, imagine an exaggerated and unrealistic scenario. Suppose Tesla has one trillion shares. Almost all of them are bought very cheaply. Then, finally, one single remaining share is bought for one dollar. If everyone agrees that this one dollar reflects the “true” value of a share, then—on paper—Tesla is now worth one trillion dollars.

What just happened? We put in almost no real money, and yet created a trillion-dollar valuation through belief alone. Nothing new was produced. No factories appeared. No cars were built. No additional goods or services entered the world.

So here is the key question:

If Elon Musk can now command vastly more real goods, labor, housing, and influence than before—where did that come from?

It didn’t come from production. And it didn’t come from thin air.

To see the underlying logic, imagine a deliberately simplified thought experiment—like a physicist imagining a frictionless surface.

Imagine Musk borrows tens of billions of dollars against his Tesla shares and demands it all in cash. If the bank doesn’t have that much cash, it must obtain it. At the limit, only the central bank can supply cash at that scale. Conceptually, the system is forced to turn a speculative valuation into real purchasing power.

Now—this is where I have to admit something.

This exact sequence never happens in real life. Elon Musk does not show up with a wheelbarrow demanding pallets of banknotes. Central banks do not literally fire up printing presses because a billionaire asks nicely.

Reality is more complex and more discreet.

What actually happens is that banks create new money when they lend. Borrowing against inflated share prices allows banks to create enormous new deposits. Those deposits can already buy houses, companies, political access, and scarce services. Central banks quietly accommodate this system in the background to keep it functioning.

The illusion is that no one sees money being printed. But the effect is the same: more purchasing power is created without more real production.

When that purchasing power competes for limited real goods—especially housing and land—prices rise. People who live on wages and salaries do not receive this new money, but they face the higher prices it produces.

That is the transfer.

So when people say, “He’s a self-made billionaire. He earned it through his own labor,” that is simply false.

He didn’t make trillions by producing trillions. He mastered a hype-driven financial system that converts imagination into purchasing power. The cost of that conversion is spread across society in the form of rising prices and declining purchasing power.

You didn’t see the bill.

But you’re the one paying it.

The hype machine

A crucial part of modern billionaire wealth creation is not production, but performance.

When Elon Musk talks about robot taxis, full self-driving cars, humanoid home robots, or colonizing Mars, Tesla’s share price often balloons — even though these things are not delivered, not close to delivery, or quietly redefined years later. The wealth effect happens at the moment of belief, not at the moment of achievement.

Nothing concrete has to be built. No results are required. The valuation reacts to the story.

This is why modern capitalism increasingly resembles a stage show. The CEO is not primarily an engineer or an operator, but a narrator. Like an illusionist, he distracts the audience, gestures confidently, promises wonder — and as long as the audience believes, the trick works.

As long as people believe the story, the share price rises.

As long as the share price rises, real purchasing power is created.

And as long as that purchasing power is accepted by banks and markets, the performer becomes richer — regardless of delivery.

In this sense, billionaire status is no longer tightly coupled to actual performance. It is coupled to credibility and persuasion. Or, more bluntly: to how convincingly someone can sell a fantasy.

“Fantasy” sounds generous. A less charitable word would be deception.

The system does not distinguish clearly between optimistic projection and outright fiction. It rewards whoever can stretch the future far enough, fast enough, to inflate today’s valuation. Missed deadlines, broken promises, and quietly abandoned projects rarely unwind the wealth that was already created.

This is not a personal moral failure. It is a structural one.

Modern financial markets have evolved to reward CEOs who can sell the most compelling story, not the ones who most reliably deliver real value. Truth becomes optional. Hype becomes capital. And reality is something to be dealt with later — if at all.

That is the heart of the problem.

What do we do?

The world did not always work like this.

For much of the twentieth century, investing in companies was primarily about dividends. Firms made profits, and part of those profits were paid out to shareholders. Share prices were therefore anchored to something tangible: what a company actually earned by selling real goods and services.

That system had a built-in discipline. If a company did not perform, it could not pay dividends, and its shares were not very attractive.

Over time, that discipline eroded.

Dividends are taxed as income. Capital gains are taxed later, often less, and sometimes not at all. This made stock buybacks more attractive than dividend payouts. Instead of sharing profits, companies began using profits to push up their own share prices. Owners became richer without triggering taxes.

As Trevor Noah has pointed out, rising share prices can then be used as collateral. Borrowed money is not taxed. This allows enormous spending power without ever realizing taxable income.

Once that logic takes hold, actual profitability matters less than valuation. Hype becomes more valuable than delivery.

This is why modern corporate leadership increasingly resembles performance art. CEOs are rewarded not for what they produce, but for how convincingly they can sell a vision of the future. Elon Musk is an extreme but illustrative case. Tesla has repeatedly been valued on promises of fully autonomous cars, robot taxis, and household robots—technologies announced as “next year” for nearly a decade. When one promise fails to materialize, a new one replaces it.

The wealth is created at the moment of belief, not at the moment of delivery.

This shift did not happen by accident. It followed the deregulation of banking and finance in the 1980s across much of the West.

In postwar Norway, for example, stock markets played a minor role. Companies were primarily financed through banks. Credit was scarce, regulated, and politically steered. The state did not own most factories, but it controlled finance. Through industrial policy and multi-year planning, it decided which sectors would receive easier access to loans and which would not.

This was not Soviet-style command economics. Markets still existed. Prices still mattered. But capital was treated as something that needed discipline, not something that should flow freely wherever hype pointed it.

A similar logic operates today in China, albeit under a very different political system. China tightly controls capital flows and uses state-directed banking to pursue industrial goals. That model has its own serious costs and risks, but it demonstrates something important: there are alternatives to hype-driven finance.

Money and credit are not infinite. When too much purchasing power chases the same limited real resources—housing, land, labor—prices rise. That is inflation. Credit therefore has to be allocated somehow. The question is how.

Is it better for investment decisions to be driven by speculative storytelling and stock market momentum? Or by deliberate, democratic choices about what kinds of production society actually needs?

My argument is not to abolish markets or private ownership. Capitalists existed in postwar Norway. They exist in China today. The argument is to end neoliberalism: the doctrine that capital must be free to move without restraint across companies and borders, regardless of social consequences.

That doctrine has produced a system where wealth grows faster than wages, where taxes are optional for the richest, and where democratic governments are constrained by financial markets rather than the other way around.

There is no free lunch. Reintroducing capital controls, credit regulation, and industrial industrial policy would reduce some forms of financial freedom—especially for the wealthy. It would also restore democratic freedom: the ability of a society to choose how its economy is structured.

We have lived under different models before. Some worked better than what we have now. The current system has gone too far. It is destabilizing democracies, widening inequality, and rewarding illusion over work.

That is not inevitable.

It is a choice.

When we learn about Fascism and Nazism in school the focus is on all the horrible things they did. We learn about the persecution of Jews, the Holocaust, starting wars, dictatorship.

In other words the focus is on all the ways fascism is bad. The belief is that whenever we see anything similar bad emerging, we will identify it and reject it.

But there a big problem with this thinking. It assumes Fascism rises in a vacuum. It assumes everything around us is sane, sensible, moderate and recognizable. But reality is that Fascism always rises in situation that are extreme. Situations where people must pick between several undesirable choices.

Norway’s traitor Vidkun Quisling for instance became a Fascist because was in Soviet Russia and saw the immense hunger and hardship. This convinced him that communism was an existential threat that had to dedicate himself into fighting.

That is also why many Western leaders tolerated Hitler even if he seemed crazy to them. They saw him as a bulwark against communism in the East.

This gives important context to understand how Fascists gain power. My simplified analysis is this:

• Only 1/4 of the people will likely ever be truly Fascists. Not enough to outright cease power. If you look at MAGA and the populist right in Europe it seems rarely to be above this number.

• Another 1/4 are moderate and more sensible right-wingers. They would normally reject fascists.

• The left is made up of 1/4 radicals and 1/4 more moderates.

To gain power the fascists don’t convince the 1/4 moderate right-wingers that they are in fact sane and sensible people. No instead they convince the moderate right that the 1/4th of the left who are more radical is batshit crazy, dangerous and an existential threat to capitalism, liberty and democracy itself.

That is how the moderate-right hold their nose and give Fascists power. They are convince that Fascists are somehow the lesser of two evils. They tell themselves deluded stories about how they can control these fascists. The grown up in the room will make sure the crazies stay within the lines and behave.

That is the story conservative German Franz von Papen told himself. He thought Hitler could be contained and managed while the traditional conservative ran the show. He was utterly wrong. He did not understand Hitler’s brutality. How he simply murdered Papen’s allies in the night of the long knives.

Establishment Republicans indulged in the same delusion as they opened the door to Trump. Step by step they say their position and power ripped away and replaced by MAGA extremists. Those who did not comply got threatened into compliance by Trump bullies. It was simply an upgraded modern version of how the Nazis in the 1930s operated. They didn’t kill opponents. They didn’t have to.

We live in a world where information travels more freely. It is far easier today to threaten someone’s life than it was back in Hitler’s day. You don’t have to kill people to silence them. We have emails, messages and countless other means to deliver threats. Delivering death threats in the past would have been more difficult. You would need to write it out. That could live finger prints on the paper. If you used a type writer it could have special traits and types of ink that that police could compare with later.

But the basic principles remain the same: Moderates fail to grasp the effectiveness of brutality. It is easy to underestimate people like Trump because they are not particularly smart. Intelligent people falsely assume they can keep men like Trump under control because they are smarter. But this is like a superior chess player playing agains a bully that simply punch you in the face and declare victory. And then you accept his victory because you are afraid of getting hit again.

The thug doesn’t win the chess game because he plays better chess than you. He wins because he is more brutal and doesn’t care about the rules, which you think are the ones that will decide outcomes exclusively.

Too many intelligent men, don’t understand the power of brutality and ruthlessness.

Identifying the Wrong Danger

What schools fail to teach us is identify the right danger in a democracy. We are taught about the dangers of communism by pointing to the Soviets, Mao’s China, Cambodia etc. The problem with this narrative is that these were poor countries with oppressive dictatorships and high levels of inequality. The common people revolted against oppression. And here communism typically won favor because Western capitalist powers all too often sided with the oppressors.

For instance Ho Chi Min, the famous communist leader of Vietnam was not originally a communist. He was fighting for Vietnamese independence from Japan. Americans even supported him and they celebrated together kicking out the Japanese. But when France came back as colonial power to reclaim Vietnam, the US sided with France. Ho Chi Min had no strong allies. Nobody in the West was willing to support his freedom fight. The only ones willing to help was the Soviets. This same pattern happened in Cuba. Castro was also not originally a communist. But the Soviets were the only ones supporting his freedom fight.

This is really the story of how communist revolutions happened all over in the third world. It was because Western colonial powers wanted to keep their puppets in place.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not support communist dictatorships. All I want is for you to understand that the choice for people was not between liberal Western style democracy and free market economics. Rather it was between further Imperialist oppression or a communist revolution.

Trying to take these events happening in poor countries and transplant them to the West is a profound mistake. Socialism has two branches: Democratic Socialism (historically referred to as social democrats) and Communists. The former seeks socialism through step by step reforms within a democratic system. The latter seek it through a violent revolution where those in power are overthrown by the use of guns.

Communism only gained ground where democratic socialism was impossible to pursue. Vietnam, Cuba etc had no democracy that allowed elections of democratic socialists. Hence communism was the branch of socialism that won.

But that has not been the case of Western Democracies. Here the vast majority of socialists have been democratic socialists AKA social democrats. They have won elections all over Europe from Sweden to France. In later years Spain and Portugal also have had socialist governments. None of these victories produced oppressive dictatorships.

In fact they never have. There is no case of democratic socialists winning elections and creating dictatorships. The only exception would be Venezuela, but I would argue they are such a crazy outlier that they should be ignored. They have had something like 20 coups or coup attempts. And these have primarily been right-wing. The left are the ones who have typically restored democracy.

So even in Venezuela the left has a stronger democracy record than the right.

Why is this so important to understand? Because the way fascism gains power is by convincing moderate right-wingers that radical left-wingers such as socialists will destroy democracy. Or it is simply about greed. You saw when tech billionaires sided with Trump, it was not so much about fear that Kamal Harris would create a dictatorship. Rather they were upset about higher taxes and regulations. They were upset about being vilified rather than worshipped as titans of industry and of job creators.

What we had is the billionaire class severely exaggerating the threats of the left and downplaying the dangers of the radical right.

Hitler used fear mongering about communism to drive capitalists into his arms. The capitalists may not have feared dictatorship as such from the left, but they didn’t want a world where workers had more power and they had to pay more taxes. They were willing to assume Fascism was a safer bet. Boy did they get that wrong.

Trump and MAGA managed to scare many moderates about the left with hysterical stories around wokeism and trans people. Somehow they portrayed it as if all women were in danger of sexual assault by transwomen. In this absurd frenzy supposedly about protecting women they elected a rapist and felon. A man that was known by his own admission to walk into the dressing rooms of underaged girls.

Yet, somehow this was all about protecting women’s bathrooms from transwomen. They managed to make a very marginal issue and turn it into an existential crisis of epic proportions. When we deal with the Episten list and thousands of girls abused. Suddenly protecting women wasn’t that important anymore.

When reports flooded in of women and children sexually abused by ICE agents in detention facilities women’s safety wasn’t that important anymore. No investigations.

You saw pregnant women slammed in the ground by ICE agents. Some gettin ICE agents kneeling on their stomachs. There are several cases of pregnant women loosing their children. Here is one example: ICE Arrested a Pregnant Tennessee Woman — While in Detention in Louisiana, She had a Stillbirth

I could go on, but what is the point? MAGA does not care about women or children and their safety. But they successfully managed to make that into an issue to help them win votes.

I remember prior to Trump’s win I debate several liberal feminists who were voting on Trump, because they had gotten into their heads that the trans issue was the biggest threat to women. In retrospect that is a rather absurd belief.

What Schools Must Teach

This gets me to my core point: Schools must teach what not to fear. Socialism, wokeism, trans-people etc are not going to be a danger to democracy. School children need to learn and understand better how different progressive issues can be weaponized and turned into fear mongering to help fascists win.

I know countless people that I have debated who have acknowledged that Trump is a bad guy but they still voted on him. The reason is that they bought into the fantasy that the left was far more dangerous to America. The exact same trick that Hitler pulled on German conservatives.

School needs to start teaching that democratic socialism has never been a danger to any Western democracy. Socialists have help power countless times without endangering democracy or liberty.

Likewise democracy has never ended because we gave too much consideration to a marginalized group such as immigrants, trans people, gays, women, the disabled, non-whites etc.

But what we do know is that whenever democracy has ended in the West it has always been a right-wing populist government. Fascists have ended democracy numerous times in the West. The populist left simply has never done that.

Schools don’t properly teach that. They create a sense of false equivalence, where radicals and the left and right are treated as equals. But they are not.

The European East block communist governments were not elected by the people. They got installed as puppets by Stalin.

This is the lesson we must hammer in: Fascism can only ever rise to power by making you more afraid of someone opposing them. They will use every trick in the book. Every lie to convince you that someone on the left is very dangerous and will destroy your whole way of life. They will call their opponents wokeists, cultural-marxists, communists, socialists or whatever they can think of to scare you into holding your nose and supporting them.

Trump never had to work to get you to love him or respect him. That is not the game he played. He played a race to the bottom. His gave was to convince you that no matter how repulsive you found him, he would make sure you found his opponents even more repulsive.

It is a mud slinging contest. To win Trump only had to produce lies and distortions about his opponents at a higher rate than he was accused to genuine bad actions.

When Trump faced charges of sexual assault and rape, he didn’t need to pass himself off as a great guy. No, he just had to rely on his allies spreading absurd conspiracies such as Pizza Gate, so that his political opponents always seemed more depraved than him.

The irony of all of this is that something even worse than Pizza Gate turned out to be true: The Whole Epstein network. Except it implicated primarily Trump and much less democrats.

The Lies per Hour Optimization Machine

That is where we are at today. It isn’t about who tells the truth, but about how can spread the most lies affectively per hour. Whomever lies in the highest volume wins.

My take is that we got to actually start punishing liars, or there will be no democracy left. I am not talking about punishing people for every little lie. I am talking about fining large media organizations which spread gross lies at scale.

We can retain great lenience toward what individual may say without consequences but letting corporations face consequences if they lie at scale. By lying I mean: Deliberately telling something that is untrue, while you knowing it is untrue.

Fuck, I got to stop watching what ICE do. They are just cruel and evil people. I am a very non-violent person. A typical Scandinavian believing in soft punishment, talking about problems, rehabilitation. But I must admit when it comes to my thoughts on ICE I kind of start feeling like some Wild West cowboy.

When they keep being evil. No remorse It is hard to not feel a desire for them to get hurt too. For them to experience the fury of the people they hurt.

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Perhaps also bad watching because I loose so much faith in America. America was a country I dreamed of and looked up to since such an early time in my life. I remember as a kid how much I loved classic American cars with tail fins. How Americans dared go more crazy than anyone else.

Visiting New York in 1995 for the first time was my best vacation ever until then. I love all the bustle and energy. The whole American sky is the limit.

I have kept coming back and loving American enthusiasm and boldness. But I have also come to see the darker sides over the years. When George W. Bush sanctioned torture of terror suspects and CIA operated black sites. Gitmo. All that was a low point.

Obama help restore some of my hope and belief in America. But Trump has torn it all down. What he has unleashed of pure cruelty. He didn’t make these people cruel. They were already cruel. He just gave them permission, and half the American voters have basically said “We are cool with that.”

That honestly makes it very hard to love America the way I did. I just wished I didn’t feel so repulsed by it. Because I so want America to be good. MAGA always seem to think it is a competition. That my goal is for Nordics or something to be better. That we sort of win some imagined competition.

In their endless selfishness they just don’t get it. I want America to be good because America is a huge influence and inspiration for people all over the planet in a way we in the Nordics will never be. We are tiny rather insignificant nations. America is different. It is a superpower with immense cultural reach.

If America was a good and kind nation then that would have ripple effects all over the world. It would help push the whole world forward. Set a new positive standard.

Instead America is disappointing me like… like I have no words for how disappointed I am in America and its people.

I do not want America to be something I despise. I want to it to be what it was for me in the past when I was younger and more naive. I want it to be that dream country where anything is possible. Nothing is too bold or crazy. People are fun, entertaining. Always got that joke, laugh or teasing going. Ready to talk to anyone.

Instead my feelings start to get ever more like how I know from childhood of how many Norwegians felt about Germans because of the war and the occupation. It is a bad thing I can tell you when the first thing you have about a person is all negative connotations. Just because of their nationality. I made a point out of never judging Germans like that.

And you know I have reflected on that at times later. Especially after I read an article about de-Nazification of Germany. It said it didn’t really work. As in Germany because a modern liberal democracy primarily because a new generation grew up that rejected the ideology of their parents. But the old Nazis never really changed. They just gradually died out.

And that made me think of some incidents with Germans over the years. I realized there was a huge generational gap. The generation of Germans born after WWII really were a nicer type of Germans. The old guard was often quite of the dominating type.

I think about this with respect to America today. Most MAGA may never change. America in effect has a whole generation of fascists that will remain fascists through their lives. People that will for a long time to come tarnish the reputation of Americans everywhere.

So there is a bad and good message there. Germany managed to change. It really did. Germany in my mind is a beautiful example of a vibrant democracy and tolerant society that managed to overcome its dark past. But it too massive efforts and a lot of time to do that. America will not just “fix” this problem with a new election.

In the meantime I try to remind myself that the world has more democracies than ever. The world as a whole is moving forward. Just not America.

So I pondered putting in the title “child rapist kidnaps leader of Venezuela,” but decided against it. Partially because too much fuzz would have bee made about that title. But I wanted to write it for several reasons:

1. There has long been warnings Trump would start a war to distract from the Epstein files and his implications in them.

2. A vulgar and provocative title would be a way to remind people of how we react so strongly against such language written, while we somehow tolerate the far more grave crimes the Trump regime is doing against people and numerous accusations now against Trump of raping different children.

The last case I was reading that was uncovered by the Epstein files was of a 14 year old raped by Trump in a brutal manner, and which years later got her head blown out, two weeks after she reported Trump to the police. I will not go into more details of that case here as that is not what this article is about.

It is just one of so many cases and accusations against Trump I don’t see covered much in mainstream media but which points to an absolutely horrendous man. And no doubt he wants to hinder the truth about how man vile horrendous crimes he has committed. What is better than starting another war?

With that in mind, why am I suggesting in the title that this is all a “good” thing? Ask yourself this: Why did general Franco of Spain remain a Fascist dictator until his death while Hitler and Mussolini both died? Because he didn’t rock the boat. He stuck to oppressing and abusing his own people. That gave the international community fewer reasons to act against him.

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What Trump did in Venezuela, going in with a strong military in full force kidnapping a foreign leader, Maduro, breaks all international law. There was no UN sanction to do this. He didn’t even have permission from US congress.

The US just did what Putin tried to do to Zelenskyy in Ukraine and failed to do. Both are countries of similar size and economies. Although Venezuela in last years have fallen significantly behind Ukraine.

If what Putin tried to do was highly illegal then certainly what Trump did is highly illegal. One differentiating factor is of course that Zelenskyy is a democratically elected leader who won by a landslide. Over 70 percent of voters picked him in what was by external observers regard a fair election.

Nicolás Maduro in contrast is a dictator, who has kept rigging elections and suppressing the opposition, much like Putin. In other words the world is not really at loss for him being gone.

Then again back when George W. Bush invaded Iraq, I remember thinking both that this was highly illegal, and there was no proof of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was right on those accounts. But I also thought back then that the end result would likely be good as Saddam Hussein was basically a horrendous guy. Little did I know that America would cause Iraq to descent into a nightmare of violence.

In my defense, I was not paid to analyze Iraq. I did for instance not know of the fragile tribal structures in Iraq. Nor could I have known that the US would be so profoundly bad at governing Iraq. They fired almost everyone from the old regime. Something they didn’t do when taking over power in Japan and Germany after WW2. They understood that if you get rid of everyone you create chaos.

The result was that people from the old regime squeezed out then represented years of organizational skills and connections that could easily setup an insurgency. The result was a bloody civil war and chaos leaving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead.

Afghanistan was handled with equal ineptitude causing years of violence and chaos.

The danger is that Trump will cause similar events to unfold in Venezuela. Let us be real, it is not like Trump is much a guy to analyze and reflect on anything. So the takeover and running of Venezuela is unlikely to be much planned at all.

But here is why I believe there is reason to have some hope.

Why Venezuela is Not Iraq

Venezuela is a messed up country for sure, and while it has a long history of military coups and chaos, it also has over those years kind of sort of established a tradition for democracy albeit a flawed one. There is an opposition. People in Venezuela at least have an idea of what democracy is and how it should work.

All these things were largely lacking in Iraq. It had not real opposition to speak of. Hence when the US rolled in there wasn’t really anyone to take over and run things that could have some support and credibility with the population.

Another profound complicating factor in the Middle East is the role of Islam which is rarely democratic. We have seen time and again that democratic liberal movements in the Arab world have been squeezed aside by Islamists when authoritarian regimes are toppled. We saw that first in Iran. It was originally people who fought for democracy joining forces with Islamists. In the end the democratic forces got thrown under the bus.

The other problem in Iraq is the division between Shia and Sunni muslims. Without being an expert on Venezuela I don’t know of any similar kinds of divisions. For these reasons I believe the prospect of civil war is smaller in Venezuela.

Why this could be Good

As I pointed out with Franco, he kept power because he didn’t rock the boat much. Trump is now making so many outrageous decisions both domestically and internationally that it is ever hard to defend his presidency.

The MAGA movement have thus far managed to push the delusion that Trump is some kind of man of the people brining down the corrupt Washington insiders. Always an inside idea given that Trump is a billionaire who was part of that system in that he regularly bribed politicians for favors. Even by his own admission.

He was also sold as a peace president that would end forever wars. Again given Trump’s own rhetoric that was never believable.

From Aljazeera: How many countries has Trump bombed in 2025?

In 2025 alone Trump has attacked seven different countries. And with this massive attack on Venezuela the mental gymnastics needed to paint Trump as a peace president is going to break a lot of MAGA cult members.

For my own sake I hope it wakes up politicians in my home country Norway, and the rest of Europe. We need to start realizing that Trump is a villain and stop treating the US as a long and valued ally. They have long seized to be that.

The US under Trump has become rouge state which does whatever it pleases. It uses the same logic as Putin: Might is right. The strong can do to the weak as they please.

For those believing in a world of rules, that cannot stand. And Europe cannot keep papering over that reality and sugarcoating it. As we desperately cling to our alliance with the US, we are doing nothing but further enabling this bully on the world stage.

It should be clear to Denmark now watching how the US with little warning and no attempt to garner international support or support in Congress unilaterally invades another country. No warning. That could be Greenland next.

It shows Trump is capable of anything. Months from now in the middle of the night American forces could simply march into Greenland and declare they have taken over control. I mean why would they not?

We have in Europe demonstrated we are utterly spineless and not ready to stand up to this bully. Every infraction is a test of our resolve. We have seen this script before. Hitler played these games in Europe.

We kept making warnings. Kept telling him to stop, but he broke every agreement and promise made.

I must admit I never fully understood why appeasement was such a bad thing until I read an analysis of how France and the UK pressured Czechoslovakia to give Sudetenland to Germany. It reminded me of how Trump pressures Ukraine to give strategic areas to Russia. What I didn’t know was that Sudetenland was heavily defended and with significant heavy industry. In other words attacking it would have given the Czech a real chance to defend themselves. But without it they were defenseless. And sure enough after Hitler got Sudetenland he launched an attack on the rest of Czechoslovakia who tend lacked structures to protect themselves making the conquest easy.

Once Czechoslovakia was taken Hitler had significantly enhanced his access to military material and soldiers. Czechoslovakia was a major industrial nation. And it opened the borders to Poland which was now left far more vulnerable. In other words appeasement meant Hitler could take one country at a time easily.

Had they resisted from the start, then Czechoslovakia together with Poland, France and the UK would have represented a powerful opposition. German would very likely have lost as their total force would have been significantly smaller. But since Germany never had to fight Europeans unified but only one by one they could take all of Europe.

Okay, so this all sounds very bad. Why am I talking about Trump actions as good then? Because we need a wakeup as soon as possible to who Trump is and the need for coordinated action and an end to appeasement.

I don’t talk hot war, but e.g. in trade policy we let the US shot us down one by one, just as Hitler did in Europe. What we need as a unified front where many countries go together in opposition to his economic warfare. Where we negotiate in a unified front.

Secondly we must demonstrate to Trump that his actions have consequences. Threats to annex Canada and Greenland should be met with real world sanctions and not nervous laughter. If you let a bully openly talk about taking part of your sovereign territory, then you are just demonstrating that you are a pushover. A bully will keep pushing to see how far he can push you.

Eventually you normalize giving in. You normalize what is outrageous rhetoric. This is like a teacher in a class room that has to demand a certain level of respect. A way to be addressed and talked to or you will never have control over your classroom.

The actions in Venezuela at the start of 2026, hopefully wakes up European leaders and make them realize that now we need to get real serious about containing the US. And frankly we need to get serious about working with US opposition to get Trump out of office. He is openly doing that towards us in Europe should it should be fair game for us to announce that we seek deliberately to end his presidency using the same means he seems to want to employ against Europe to undermine our governments.

We are in a shitty situation because we need the US due to the war in Ukraine. Hence European arms industry has to ramp up like crazy. Start borrowing money and get the war factories going, because there is no other alternative. The war in Ukraine must be one and soon. Otherwise, we will keep getting bullied from both Putin and Trump.

Trump doesn’t care about friendship or allies, so we will have to find threats that we can reliably use to keep the most needed things flowing from the US via Europe to Ukraine. This is a Bismarck world of realpolitik we live in now. And we must be willing to play dirty to win that war. In my opinion that means having deals with China and use them as leverage against the US. We know how much the Trump regime fears the rise of China. We should use that as leverage. Threaten to make deals with China over the US. Trump gets money and power.

Appealing to our friendship and long relationship with the US means squat. It has to be based on fear of US industry losing money, and China making gains. Trump lives in a zero sum world. It is a Machiavellian world here love and shared values means nothing. Only power and fear.

Why this could be very Bad

Of course I was very wrong about Iraq. It turned into a disaster, and I can be very wrong about Venezuela. In realistic terms here is how I think that could unravel: Trump talks of the US actually running the Venezuela.

That could work if the Venezuelan opposition negotiates some kind of deal to do that. Some way in which they are kept in the loop. But this far Trump has rejected working with opposition leader and Novel prize winner Maria Corina Machado. That is a grave mistake which could turn these events really ugly.

If Venezuelans start seeing this as modern day colonization by the US to take their oil as opposed to liberation from an authoritarian dictator, then they will likely unify against an American rule.

Remember Trump asked his generals to shoot at peaceful demonstrators in the US. The general opposed. In other words Trump is a violent tyrant at heart and only long democratic traditions have prevented the full extend of Trump’s cruelty to be put on display.

Thus as soon as we see regular Venezuelans go out to protest in the streets against an American rule this can easily escalate into violence, where demonstrators get beaten up or shot.

That would turn more people against Trump and possibly escalate violence. And Trump isn’t exactly a man admitting mistakes. He may very well double down calling opposition terrorists or communist as a way to rationalize and excuse further violent crackdowns. We already saw how that played out in Vietnam.

If Trump works with the opposition to establish a free and democratic Venezuela this highly illegal action could work out for him and Venezuelans in the end. But if he insists on some kind of colonial project where US oil companies are to move in and grab their oil then this could turn really ugly.

My opinion is that should that happen we need to sanction and boycott these US oil companies. We cannot have any dealings with companies engaged in some kind of modern day colonialism.

Final Remarks

Just because this crazy endeavor might work out and improve the lives of Venezuelans doesn’t make it right or acceptable for the simple reason that it sets a terrible precedence. It says it is okay for country to invade another if it is strong enough, and engage in regime change.

You could argue that this should be allowed when the regime is very bad. Okay, then who makes that decision? I think the Trump regime is very bad. Should we now sneak in and kidnap Trump and bring him to the Hague?

Should we do that with Netanyahu in Israel?

It is not that I am completely against such actions but they must be rooted in some kind legal process. It has to be a UN vote on some kind that sanctions it. And if not the UN, at least you must get a large number of democratic nations to sign off on it. If not, that is a total no-go.

World order will not be restored if we let the US get away with this unpunished. But I have no doubt that European leaders will do next to nothing apart from “strongly worded statements.”

But I can always hope that the leaders of my continent actually grows a spine this time and take action.

After my first experience with the neat manicured but desolate American suburbs, I moved to one of the densest most urban places on the planet, the Netherlands.

A lot can be said about the beautiful historical downtown areas of Dutch cities. That is what the tourists see and what is shown online. However, I want to convey a different side. Whether you are tourist in America or the Netherlands, you will not spend any time in the suburbs. Here I want to take you to the suburbs to give some sense of the life in the suburbs.

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Mind you, this is not an attempt at giving a balanced portrayal. This is partly a criticism of how American suburbs have been planned. American suburbs offer a lot of benefits that I think people are quite familiar with such a large houses and yards, surprisingly often with swimming pools. There is certainly an affluence seen few other places in the world. Yet the American suburb suffers from being built with a very individualistic mindset and without much consideration to public spaces or life without a car.

For those who have grown up in such a world, it may be hard to imagine something different. Thus I thought looking at how Dutch neighborhoods are built and organized would be interesting.

Dense Neighborhoods, But with Plenty of Green Areas

In the Netherlands, there are 423 people per square kilometer. In the US in contrast there are only 34 people per km. Thus there is no space in the Netherlands for the large urban sprawl found in America. But does that mean the Netherlands is some dystopian urban jungle? Far from it. The picture below shows a typical Dutch suburb. The front yards are tiny by American standards but the Dutch make the most of them by having a lot of flowers, hedges, bushes, etc.

As you can see from the satellite photo of the same area below, the backyards are taller. These typically have tall fences, so people utilize the full space. The Dutch are quite creative with these. Sadly I have no pictures to show from inside Dutch backyards but you can find anything from fishponds to little hedge labyrinths.

What I want to call attention to, however, are the green public spaces. You can see several playgrounds and there are long green paths you can walk or bike next to the canal.

Below you can see what the area along the canal looks like. Everywhere I have lived in the Netherlands there has been a lot of areas easily accessible like this where you can take a pleasant Sunday walk or bike trip.

I want to contrast this a bit with a more typical American suburb. This is from Grand Forks, where I lived for about a year. It is very different with very wide roads. Every house has a large front yard.

If we look at the same suburb from an aerial photo, you can see a significant contrast from an Dutch suburb. I deliberately picked a large area here to show how large an area can be in the US with just the same kind of housing repeated over and over again. Despite all this space, there is in fact no public space, such as playgrounds or little parks. Yes, there is plenty of green here, but it is all private.

Let me clarify. There are of course parks in American cities. And they are often large. My point is that they are often distant. It is very common for neighborhoods to not have a public green area or playground nearby.

Biking

Despite all this space, these American neighborhoods are in fact not that great for e.g. biking. We can contrast with the main roads going through an Dutch neighborhood. Despite much less space, the Dutch have made room for clearly marked red bike lanes on either side of the street.

In fact, I could go on for ages showing pictures of how well thought out the bike lane system is in the Netherlands. Here is from a denser area with more traffic. A shopping street. Here they shield bikers from car traffic by doing car parking in such a way as to shield the bike lane from car traffic.

It is hard to convey just through pictures how this is experienced or works. In the Netherlands the biking infrastructure is not just extensive, but also made to make you as a biker feel really safe biking. This cannot be stressed enough. In the Netherlands there is a high number of young children and elderly who are biking around in the neighborhoods and in the city itself.

Many other countries may brag about biking, but most of the time you really only see young sporty guys utilizing the bike infrastructure. The system has not really been made for a broad section of the population. It has really been made for the sporty and healthy ones. In the Netherlands it is for everyone.

It is hard to really convey this in writing unless you actually go visit and see it for yourself.

Health and Autonomy

This elaborate biking infrastructure has many profound consequences. One is to give young people great autonomy. Dutch teenagers can, from an early age, go around town with their friends. They can bike to the movie theatre, meet up at parks, bike to a soccer field to play, or just go somewhere to eat.

The second important effect is health. Dutch people are not sports idiots like Norwegians and Americans. If you walk around Oslo you might be forgiven for thinking the national outfit is sporting gear. The Dutch bike casually on city bikes. Norwegian tend to use racer bikes or go off-road with mountain bikes.

Americans also have a fair share of people crazy about sports or the gym. Yet the average Dutch person is in much better health and slimmer. It is very rare to see fat people in the Netherlands. Especially you can notice older people in the Netherlands staying in shape longer. The reason is pretty obvious. They bike a lot.

Frankly, I think I was in my best shape ever while living in the Netherlands. Sure, I went to the gym and went jogging regularly. But perhaps more importantly I was biking for at least 1 hour every single day. It would be biking to my classes. Biking to the store to do shopping. Bike to a friend’s house, to the movies, a restaurant or just about anything. Because it is so easy to bike in the Netherlands and the cities are dense, it is simply a lot of fun to bike there. You go around so effortlessly and you never have to bike for too long to get where you want to be.

I didn’t bike 1 hours straight ever. That was simply an accumulation of multiple shorter bike trips.

The Countryside

While the Netherlands is highly urban, flat and with little wild nature, it still have a very accessible countryside. When I lived in Utrecht, Netherlands I could easily go on walks along the canals in the countryside like the area shown below called the Kromme Rijn.

There are certainly nice green areas in many American towns outside of towns but they often have no clear destination. When you walk or bike in the Dutch countryside there is always a tea house, pancake house or something similar you can stop buy to enjoy a drink, hot chocolate, pancakes or whatever with your hiking friend. For instance, I would often walk out in the countryside to this place called Theehuis Rhijnauwen.

There were swans on the water, and you could borrow these little paddle boats or canoes. Or you could sit outside in the sun with an iced tea. Families would bike with their children there in the weekends. It had a very nice playground with some really steep slides.

When I talk to Americans about this kind of stuff I often get replies similar to the one I quoted in an earlier story:

Oklahoma City has many excellent museums, amusement parks, an excellent riverfront and hiking area, but we are also only just an hours drive from several lakes where we enjoy boating, hiking, or just to set and look at the (small) mountains. Or if we wanted larger mountains, a few more hours and we could visit the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and hike through ancient Anasazi ruins.

And this is profoundly missing the point I am trying to make in stories like this. “Only an hours drive away” does not make something accessible. I am talking about stuff here which does not require access to a car at all. I never had a car in the Netherlands. I was just a student and I could do anything with a bike.

The problem I had when trying to access the American countryside was that I met a landscape that looked pretty much like this most of the time:

That is not particularly attractive. There is nowhere to really go to. It is just a desolate landscape stretching out forever. There is no nice walkable path to follow. No pancake house at the end. Nor is there an old windmill. The Netherlands is a country where people have lived for thousands of years and with a rich history, so there is something historical left behind all over the landscape. When you bike around in the outskirts of the city, you will always find random things of interest such as this windmill.

There are of course incredibly beautiful areas in the US, but the problem is that a lot of the outskirts of the cities are not easily accessible. One thing is that cities are so spread out that it takes a long time to get there. The next problem is that these areas tend to not really be all that walkable. You have to put on your hiking boots and bring food. It is more like a big day out.

I spent a lot of time in Utah and hiked in areas looking like what you see below. But that wasn’t something you did on a whim. We planned it. Got up early. Had backpacks with food, and went driving for quite some time to get there.

It is very different from the Dutch countryside experience, where you need no planning. Just walk on a whim. When you get hungry there is a pancake house or something similar around the bend.

You Are Cherry Picking!

When trying to tell a story like this, there is no way to present the full nuance. It does not make sense to pick images or places at random. When I picked pictures for this story, they were partially random but I also deliberately looked for things which could convey the experience I had living in these different places.

For example, I picked a desolate area outside of Grand Forks, while I could have picked a nicer green area around the river. Likewise, there are plenty of places in the Netherlands that are far from picturesque but which I did not pick.

However, the picks were made to convey what is a generalization of an experience. I remember on several occasions trying to just walk until I got to the outskirts of Grand Fork. Every time, I was met with desolate landscape like the one I showed you. Am I generalizing all of America based on one city?

No, I don’t think so. I traveled extensively across the US, I even sat on a train looking out over the landscapes for days. And I could clearly see a clear distinction between European and American landscapes. America has a lot of beautiful wild nature, but also a tremendous amount of dead boring flat and featureless farming areas. Common to both, however, is that there is almost no trace of civilization. Americans live in large sprawling urban areas, but as soon as you exit this area, the transition to complete wilderness of vast farming areas is quite abrupt.

Europe is very different in this regard, especially in a small country like the Netherlands. When you go into the countryside, you will find the legacy of a country that has been there a long time. You will pass old manors, windmills, taverns, canals, and even old fortresses. You seldom have to travel far before you reach some smaller town or village.

In the US, various towns tend to melt in with a larger urban area. There is not much countryside between a towns. You drive down a road and suddenly you cross a magical line and you are in another town. This difference is not by accident.

Dutch city planners are not, for example, allowed to place new developments in such a way that they make towns and cities melt together. That is important in such a densely populated area as the Netherlands. If you are not careful, you will get stuck in an enormous metropolis which seems to stretch on forever. By having some countryside between every town, you create that feeling that nature or the countryside is always close by and accessible. Yet you never fully leave civilization. You don’t need to pack your survival gear.

The idea that systemic racism exists is so heavily disputed that I think it is useful to compile a list of various studies that collectively help prove systemic racism.

Before examining the stories and the data we could also try to understand what is driving this systemic racism. A lot of this is down to attitudes towards blacks (1990 study)

For example, 56 percent of white persons believe that black persons prefer to live off welfare, 51 percent believe that black persons are prone to violence, 29 percent view black persons as unintelligent, and 44 percent view them as lazy

White Lawyer Getting Himself Arrested

Here is an interesting story from the Atlantic: I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System.

Now this is not data or statistics per say, but it is a useful starting point to see how systemic racism works in practice. To help understand what the experience behind the statistics looks like. Let me pick some salient points:

But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed — shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings

Ask yourself. How do you measure this kind of systemic discrimination? It is not easy, because you need some kind of recording of every infraction done by both blacks and whites which leads to and doesn’t lead to police investigation and prosecution. But if there is a difference in how willing people are to report blacks and white teens and how willing police are to take this serious, then this cannot get reflected in police statistics.

However, as we will see with some later examples, there are cases where researchers have found ways to get past this problem. But lets continue with our lawyer story. This lawyer deliberately started doing graffiti to get himself arrested for the same things he saw black clients get arrested for. Essentially her performed an experiment to test the existence of systemic racism.

I walked up to the east entrance of City Hall and tagged the words “N.Y.P.D. Get Your Hands Off Me” on a gatepost in red paint. The surveillance video shows me doing this, 20 feet from the police officer manning the gate. I moved closer, within 10 feet of him, and tagged it again. I could see him inside watching video monitors that corresponded to the different cameras.

You would think he would get arrested being caught red handed. But no:

…As I waited for him to jump out, grab me, or Tase me, he sped away and hung a left, leaving me standing there alone. I’ve watched the video a dozen times and it’s still hard to believe.

At another point while he was spraying a wall a black man came to warn him, that the police would arrest him. Yet when the police arrived, they did not arrest the white lawyer holding the spraycan and stencil. Instead they ran after the black guy who had done nothing.

I stood quietly, wondering whether they would arrest me or write a summons. The officers grumbled a few choice curse words and then ran down the stairs in pursuit of the young man. Though I was the one clearly breaking a law, they went after him.

When the lawyer finally did get arrested, he noticed how different he was treated from the black people who got arrested:

Over the next 24 hours, I watched as men and women came and went, many with cuts, bruises, and welts. I asked several of them how they’d been injured, and they described fierce struggles with the police. One young man cradled what he reported was a broken wrist. Another pulled up his shirt and revealed three Taser burns. Yet another removed his fitted cap and pointed to a swollen knot on his head.

Since I read that article I have seen dozens and dozens of videos of US police arrests and I keep being surprised how unnecessarily violent they are. People are slammed to the ground or beaten when there is no reason to do so. They are shot by tasers when police already have full control. So what this lawyer experience in real life, is also reflected perfectly in videos we have access to online of US police arrests.

However the question is how can we prove this kind of stuff happens without being dismissed as: This is just anecdotical evidence? Fortunately one can perform controlled experiments and sometimes there are natural experiments happening which exposes the problems:

Drug Charges Against Non-Whites Study

The Economist reported on a study done at the University of Maryland by Cody Tuttle: Smoking-gun evidence emerges for racial bias in American courts.

This is part of what Economists calls natural experiments, where some law changes in ways which allows us to study a social phenomena which is otherwise hard to study.

I compare cases sentenced before and after the Fair Sentencing Act, a 2010 law that changed the 10-year mandatory minimum threshold for crack-cocaine from 50g to 280g.

The graphic below illustrates the problem. You can see after the change in legislation you see a dramatic surge in black and hispanics getting arrested for having 280–290g of crack-cocaine. For whites the change is far more modest.

Code Tuttle concludes the following:

I find the following: (1) after 2010, there is a sharp increase in the fraction of cases at 280g, the amount that now triggers the 10-year mandatory minimum; (2) this increase is disproportionately large for black and Hispanic offenders; (3) this increase is driven by prosecutors; (4) the fraction of cases at 280g falls once evidentiary standards become stricter; and (5) the racial disparity in the increase cannot be explained by differences in education, sex, age, criminal history, seized drug amount, or other elements of the crime, but it can be almost entirely explained by a measure of state-level racial animus.

Blacks more likely to be shot than whites even when holding harmless objects

When police are more likely to shoot unarmed black men then whites, how do you determine this in an objective fashion? Police are the ones making the recordings of the scene and what happened, which can influence the statistics.

A way around this is to create a controlled experiment which is what was done at the University of Washington: Blacks more likely to be shot than whites even when holding harmless objects.

the research used a virtual reality simulation and was prompted by a number of mistaken shootings of unarmed blacks by police officers in recent years. It was directed by Anthony Greenwald, a University of Washington psychologist who examines the unconscious roots and levels of prejudice.

While the study did not involve police officers it was trying to find implicit bias in the population at large. It is not unreasonable to assume that Police officers hold similar biases to the population at large. In fact it would be odd if Police had a more favorable view of minorities given the nature of their work.

Data from the two experiments indicated that the subjects had greater difficulty distinguishing weapons from harmless objects in the hands of blacks than whites. They also were more likely to shoot when the target person was black, regardless of knowing what was in the person’s hand. In the two experiments, whites were wrongly “shot” 26 percent of the time while blacks were wrongly “shot” 35 percent of the time, which is statistically significant.

Experiments like this made me look at statistics that supposedly showed that blacks were shot no more frequently by police than whites. As I started reviewing cases I noticed they were not similar at all. Whites far more often brandished different kinds of weapons or acted in threatening manners than black people did. That is simply my assessment from scanning through several cases. Again this is probably a an area that would require extensive analysis and research to get to the bottom of how comparable the statistics are.

The bottom line is that it is hard to use statistics reliably when the one recording the data that gets into the statistics have a clear bias. We must stop assuming statistics is somehow objective truth.

I am not saying we should ignore statistics, because it is valuable data, but we need to find ways to do quality assurance of that data. We need to analyze and reflect on what kind of statistics is more trustworthy than others.

Here are some examples. Rape statistics is notoriously worthless to compare between countries because what counts as rape and whether women even report it varies widely. That is why when trying to compare crime between countries it is better to look at homicides as it is much harder cover a homicide.

But even homicides can be covered up by declaring them suicide. But we can discover such issues by e.g. verifying whether a suspicious drop in homicides also coincided with a suspicious increase in suicides.

Racial Profiling of Drivers

Here we have another natural experiment: Black drivers are less likely to be stopped by police after sunset.

After dark police officers cannot tell whether drivers are white or black. This significantly changes outcomes for black drivers.

The analysis left no doubt that the darker it got, the less likely it became that a black driver would be stopped. The reverse was true when the sky was lighter.

This was based on a massive study comparing traffic stops in many different states over the year. And it was not the time of the day which determined with blacks got stopped less often but how soon it got dark in that state for that part of the year. Thus if cops could clearly see that the driver was black, he or she would be more likely to get stopped.

Hit Rates When Searching Black Drivers

Studies have been conducted of whether black drivers are searching based on a lower threshold than whites. What do we mean by that? When police stops a car, they may look at different factors that make the driver look suspicious.

How can we determined if black people get discriminated against? Looking at number of stops alone doesn’t tell the full story as there might simply be more black drivers with contraband.

The way researchers solve this is by grouping drivers into different groups and look at the hit rate for contraband (illegal items such as unregistered guns or drugs). Thus we can compare both black and white drivers who have objective and clear reasons to be searched with those which are searched without any good reason. A simple way of looking at this might be that there are some people who stick out more as obvious criminals. While others are more typical law abiding citizens.

Nature has an article doing just this kind of study: A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States.

…the threshold test indicates that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers is generally lower than that for searching white drivers across the municipal police departments and states we consider. In aggregate across cities, the inferred threshold for white drivers is 10.0% compared to 5.0 and 4.6% for black and Hispanic drivers, respectively.

Stop and Frisk in Black and White Neighborhoods

Even stronger discrepancies between blacks and white are seen in neighborhood stop and frisk practices. Villanova University conducted a study of stop and frisk by professor Lance Hannon, resported by the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I also looked at how the crime rate of an area differently matters in predicting the likelihood of a frisk based on the racial composition of the area. I found that the association between violent crime and the likelihood that an officer will frisk someone is contingent on the degree to which African Americans are present in the neighborhood. So in predominantly black neighborhoods, the association between the violent crime rate and the frisk rate is very weak. In areas that are not predominantly African American, the association is moderately strong and in the direction you would expect: higher violent crime rates mean higher frisk rates.

Bias is showed by the fact that black people are stopped more frequently that their predisposition towards carrying contraband:

My study provided support for two findings in previous research. First, African Americans are more likely to experience a frisk when stopped. Second, African Americans are more likely to experience unproductive frisks — in which the frisk does not uncover any contraband or lead to an arrest.

Systemic Dehumanization of Black Children

American Psychology association has a study about: Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent Than Whites, Research Finds

Researchers reviewed police officers’ personnel records to determine use of force while on duty and found that those who dehumanized blacks were more likely to have used force against a black child in custody than officers who did not dehumanize blacks. The study described use of force as takedown or wrist lock; kicking or punching; striking with a blunt object; using a police dog, restraints or hobbling; or using tear gas, electric shock or killing. Only dehumanization and not police officers’ prejudice against blacks — conscious or not — was linked to violent encounters with black children in custody, according to the study.

They go onto do various measures of attitudes towards black children in general, in the rest of the population:

The students overestimated the age of blacks by an average of 4.5 years and found them more culpable than whites or Latinos, particularly when the boys were matched with serious crimes

The point here is being able to connect attitudes and behavior. Racism and prejudice isn’t merely about words. In this cases we see how prejudice leads to abuse and violence against suspects. Often against the most vulnerable citizens such as children.

Crack Cocaine Sentencing

79% of Crack Cocaine offenders are black while only 28% of Powder Cocaine offenders are are Black. Until Obama changed sentencing rules with the Fair Sentencing Act, you would get 100x stricter punishment for crack compared to powder cocaine despite the fact that studies show the effects are more or less the same. Hence a person caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine would get the same sentence as some caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Hence the drug preferred by blacks because of being significantly cheaper, carried a much higher penality.

Combined with a 115-month average imprisonment for crack offenses, compared with an average of 87 months for cocaine offenses, the sentencing disparity results in more African-Americans spending more time in the prison system.

Hence the War on Drugs no doubt hit African-Americans harder, and put them away in prison for much longer time.

Jury Selection

Why are African-Americans so heavily overrepresented on incarceration in the US. Rules on drug sentencing such as Crack Cocaine as well as more African-American living in poverty certainly plays a role. However the Jury selection process also plays a significant role.

Berkley Law has published a study of Jury discrimination in Calefornia. Blacks tends to get removed from juries.

Prosecutors used their strikes to remove African-American jurors in nearly 75 percent of these cases, Latinx jurors in about 28 percent, and white jurors in only three cases (0.4 percent).

This has negative consequences for Blacks as the white middle class who tends to hold jury positions like to hand out harsher punishment:

“These studies consistently show that whites are more punitive than African Americans, believing that the criminal legal system operates in a race-neutral and generally fair manner,” she says.

And the rules for kicking out Jury members seems specifically designed to allow targeting of Blacks while pretending to be “race-neutral”:

Reasons for jury strikes included having dreadlocks, wearing a short skirt or large earrings, distrust of law enforcement, having family members who are incarcerated, and expressing a belief that the criminal legal system treats people differently based on their race.

Thus if you have hairstyles which is natural for black people you get kicked out. Due to the exceptionally high incarceration rate of African Americans, you also get a high likelihood of having family members who are incarcerated. Something which will exclude you from Jury duty.

Or what about the deep iron of the last part:

expressing a belief that the criminal legal system treats people differently based on their race.

Hence discrimination against blacks, is rationalized on the grounds that black people see themselves as discriminated. It is hard to make in unjust system more fair if believing the system to be unfair is not allowed.

As reported by Legal Defense Fund, we find these kinds of discriminations repeated all over.

In one of the most egregious and infamous examples of this kind of systemic discrimination, former Mississippi District Attorney Doug Evans struck Black jurors 4.4 times more frequently than white jurors over the course of his nearly 30-year career. Under Evans’ authority, defendant Curtis Flowers, who is Black, faced six trials for the same charge, each resulting in a hung jury or a reversed conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct. During those six trials, Evans removed 41 of 42 potential Black jurors and struck them 20 times more frequently than white jurors.

Health Care for Black People

There is a large number of studies showing how black people in the US get worse health care treatment in almost every regard. Part of this is done to stubborn stereotypes about black people not rooted in any scientific fact. E.g. UVA reports: Black Americans are Systematically Under-Treated for Pain. Why?

Racial disparities are particularly striking in pain treatment, Trawalter said, with studies showing that Black patients are significantly less likely to be prescribed pain medication and that they generally receive lower doses of it when they are. One possible reason for this, supported by existing studies, is that white people believe Black people experience less pain. Trawalter is attempting to uncover the root causes of this belief.

White Convicts As Likely to Be Hired As Blacks Without Criminal Records

A Princeton and Harvard study titled Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment, by Devah Pager and Bruce Western found that former white convicts had the same chance of getting hired as a black person without a criminal record. From DMI Blog post about study:

However, the study revealed that our society’s racism extends even deeper: black applicants with no criminal record were no more likely to get a job than white applicants with criminal records just released from prison! In other words, while whites with criminal records received low rates of positive responses, such response rates were equally low for blacks without a criminal background. Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study’s finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records.

Far more African Americans Are Arrested for Drug Crimes

Human Rights Watch details problems with how African Americans are arrested at a stunningly high level despite not corresponding higher level of drug usage.

The marked racial disparities in drug arrests did not reflect racial differences in violations of drug laws prohibiting possession and sale of illicit drugs. Statistical as well as anecdotal evidence indicate drug possession and drug selling cut across all racial, socio-economic and geographic lines. Yet because drug law enforcement resources have been concentrated in low-income, predominantly minority urban areas, drug offending whites have been disproportionately free from arrest compared to blacks.

I remember reading an article years ago about this where a police officer was asking why they never went into white neighborhoods to arrest people for drug usage. The depressing response he got was that in those neighborhoods they had too many connections. Resourceful white people who knew lawyers, judges, politicians and other influential individuals which could cause serious problems for the police if they went in there and arrested people. Black people in contrast was easy to arrest. Nobody blinks an eye, because they have no connections and they are already pre-judged.

Blacks Get Longer Sentences for the same Crimes

That blacks and latinos get longer sentences than whites is covered in a lot of studies. But here I will cover a paper by Tushar Kansal: Racial Disparity in Sentencing.

I am just picking some of his findings here:

• Young black and Latino males tend to be sentenced more severely than comparably-situated white males;

• Whites receive a larger reduction in sentence time than blacks and Latinos for providing “substantial assistance” to the prosecution;

• Black defendants who victimize whites tend to receive more severe sentences than both blacks who victimize other blacks (especially acquaintances), and whites who victimize whites.

Final Remarks

Writing this article is something I could do for weeks. There is so many studies and so much data that points to systemic racism, that it is really just a question of how long one needs to make this article to convince people.

I think that if this article cannot convince people, then it really isn’t any point for me to keep adding data and studies. It will not change their mind anyway.

I have found debating many American of the MAGA type conservatives that they are not fact oriented. They have a dogmatic view and will only accept facts or evidence confirming that view. Anything else will be dismissed with whatever excuses fly. If they cannot directly discredit what is written here they will get into “what about” mode and start talking about how whites might get discriminated or something bad Democrats did, Biden or Obama. Anything to avoid accepting the conclusion found here.

In the American far-right MAGA mind the West is drowning in wokeism, socialism, liberalism, atheism and muslim immigration.

And so in their deluded minds they have embraced the fairy tale that Russia is somehow their beacon of hope. The fact that homophobia and racism is rampant in Russia is not a negative to the American far-right. Nope, those are profoundly positive things.

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They love the brutal macho culture in Russia, and are horrified by the softer Western culture. I remember how American far-right was horrified over ads for the American military that featured a recruit with two moms.

Meanwhile the Russian military had video ads appealing to macho ideals. You can see one of these ads here:

And in the comment section plenty of men praise the Russian recruitment ad. It is interesting how diametrically opposite the American and Russian ads are. The Russian ad is with men with chiseled jawline , big biceps pumping iron looking into the camera with steely eyes.

Now, I am a far-left Norwegian. I come from a country that already embrace a society that is softer and more caring. Yet, even to me the American ad is a bit silly. I don’t like either ads. But unlike the typical right-wing American keyboard warrior I interact with online I actually served in the infantry, so at least I have real world experience from what it is like serving and what it takes.

And that helps when analyzing and looking at how Russian, Western and Ukrainian military actually succeed or fail in the battlefield. I would argue the American video is far more useful than the Russian one.

But first let me show you some Norwegian military ads. Notice there are no Rambo style men in here showing big muscles. But the videos are also not American style woke. There is no talk about gays, lesbians, trans people or racial minorities. Not because we do not care in Norway or they are not welcome in the Norwegian military but because that isn’t the core of what military service is about. Also Norway doesn’t have a culture war where it is important to constantly remind marginalized groups that they are welcome.

What you see in the Norwegian military videos is what I would say is very close to how I experienced the military myself. It is full of pretty ordinary looking people. Soldiers are not all Rambo lookalikes.

And unlike the Russian and American videos they are not really very focused on the soldiers themselves and who they are but about the mission, the education, skills and challenges you deal with. First and foremost the military is a skills job. You actually need to know stuff. It isn’t about having as big muscles as possible or having the most steel cold look and granite jaw.

I saw enough macho boys in the military who failed. Frankly I was a bit surprised. Of course there are plenty of tough looking guys who also are tough. My point is that there are people with the imagery of toughness who don’t actually hack it. And often intelligence, skills and preparation will beat toughness.

A classic case was Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) failed attack on Antonov Airport (Hostomel) near Kiev. These were supposed to be the best of the best in Russia. Badasses.

To quote wikipedia on Battle of Antonov Airport :

As a result, the airport only held a small garrison of 200–300 National Guard troops belonging to the 4th Rapid Reaction Brigade, as the remainder had been moved to the frontline in eastern Ukraine. These troops were mostly conscripts, though there were a "handful" of professional contract soldiers

So you had just 200-300 regular Ukrainian soldiers again 700 elite Russian soldiers coming in with 20-34 helicopters in the first wave and 200 helicopters in the second wave. The guys below is the image Russia is giving us of their VDV: Big strong macho guys.

Yet ordinary Ukrainian conscript soldiers without massive biceps kicked their asses. That was all down to better organization, strategy and thinking.

What I remember from my own days in the army is just all the details you drill on. What should go in every pocket of your uniform and making you know instinctively where everything is. If you need medical supplies, you can reach for the right pocket instantly. And if you treat a wounded soldier you know in which pocket he has what because he packed exactly the same way as you. It is standardized.

We learned exact optimal sequence of hand movements to just change a magazine quickly and secure the old spent magazine so we could use it later. We learned how to disassemble a gun that had jammed real quickly in the field in darkness without loosing a piece.

We learned exactly what kind of clothing to use when, to keep warm or cool. We learn the exact sequence of actions to take when busting in a door and clearing a room. And we repeatedly practiced that so a team could move in as if on autopilot.

This talk about the military is however detour from what this story is really about. I think a reason for why I thought it was good to elaborate on is because I see time and again how the typical far-right guys obsess about appearances over substance. They want an army that looks like their fetish of a badass army.

And that is a perfect analogy to their perception of Russia. Russia is a macho white Christian bastion in terms of imagery. While Europe with its more open multicultural society where minorities get a place and exposure is seen as their ultimate woke hell.

But in the end it is facts on the ground that matters. Germany often portrayed as being overrun by muslims have about 6.6 percent muslim population. That is similar to the UK with 6.7 percent muslims. In my native Norway it is 3.7 percent.

Right-wing pundit Tucker-Carlson allegedly recently said people are anti Russia because it is the last bastion of a white Christian nation. If anyone can find the quote I’d be grateful. Regardless of what he specifically said that certainly matches what I have noticed Carlson express over the years.

This claim matches poorly with the fact that Russia has around 15 percent muslim population that is growing rapidly. White Russians have rapidly declining birth rates. Russia has a fertility rate of 1.41.

Current projections suggest the Muslim population in Russia would reach 33 percent by 2050. That is very far away from the white Christian utopia American right-wingers like Tucker Carlson imagines.

And Russia is only Christian in the same sense as my native Norway is Christian. It is a cultural thing, which I noticed many right-wing Americans don’t get. And to be fair I didn’t in reverse realize that religion was a real thing in the US until I went there and realized people actually go to church regularly. Not everyone but in far greater numbers than people in Scandinavia.

I am an atheist but also a member of the Lutheran church. So you can look at church membership online and it looks like Norway is a very religious country but church membership means nothing. It is a cultural belonging. Not a belief system.

RE: Russia did a poll of religiosity in Russia:

The proportion of Russians who consider themselves religious has been declining in recent years despite the authorities' best efforts to strengthen ‘traditional values,’ according to polls. Around 60% of those surveyed in April 2023 claim that religion does not play a significant role in their lives. In terms of religiosity, Russia ranks in the bottom third of the 90 countries surveyed. The level of participation in routine church practices has dropped to very low levels: only 12% of respondents attend services at least once a month, a figure which puts Russia in 70th place on the list. However, 72% of respondents identify themselves as Orthodox, but this declarative Orthodoxy is limited to adherence to certain festive social rituals such as Easter meals and baptisms.

This is completely different from what people like Tucker Carlson imagines. He is an actual Christian, not just a cultural one, but he doesn’t get that religion is mostly cultural in Europe.

Russia is one of the more ethnically divers countries. It is a multinational state and home to over 190 ethnic groups countrywide.

Read more: Ethnic Groups in Russia

The top ten largest nations besides Russians included in descending order: Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, Ukrainians, Dargins and Kazakhs.

From wikipedia:

In 2010, rough population projections from Ivan Beloborodov projecting to 2030 estimated that the percentage of Russians within the population would decrease to around 70 to 60% of the total population.

In other words the American right idea of Russia is completely and utterly wrong. But I am not surprised. They have similar warped views of my ancestors, the Vikings. They also see Vikings as embodiment of their Christian Nationalist ideals. Never mind that Vikings were not Christians. That same mistake is repeated when the vex about the glory of Rome. Again another civilization that was not Christian. I remember one right-wing American I debated who talked both about the evils of abortion while also praising the Roman Empire as the most successful human civilization ever. Never mind that Romans practiced infanticide: Literally killing children after birth.

Ultimately it comes down to “Mount Stupid.” What American right-wing has turned into under Trump and previous movements like the tea-party is a movement that has no respect for knowledge or education. That is why they end up as in the cartoon stripe below:

I guess one could ask oneself is a movement the prides itself in rejecting mainstream science on major issues like: climate change and vaccines cannot be expected to have a clear perception of what other cultures and countries are like. Many of these people are also creationists rejecting evolution outright.

From Pew Research in 2014:

Think about that. As late as 2013 more Republicans believed in creationism than Evolution. Nearly half of all Republicans. We are talking about a belief that the Earth and humans got all made less than 10,000 years ago.

That is complete nuts.

A core assumption about capitalism is that each and every human has a unique set of needs and preferences. Benevolent capitalists in the market will spring into action to fulfill those needs.

In this rose tinted version of capitalism, all our needs satisfied at a reasonable price and we live happily ever after.

Except that is not how capitalism actually works in the real world. Capitalists are not passively listening to us and working tirelessly for our benefit. Sometimes they do, but that is far from the only mode they operate under. Unfortunately, it is frequently far more profitable to make stuff we absolutely don’t need.

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Here is a challenge for you that I want you to reflect on: Do you always know what is the best choice for yourself to buy?

I am sure most of us think we are smart and rationale. And capitalism is of course built on this assumption: That each and every one of us make the most optimal and best purchasing decision for ourselves.

In the next section I want to challenge that assumption.

The Stupidity of the Individual and the Wisdom of the Crowd

Think about this: If everyone is making the most optimal choice for themselves then why are there drug addicts, alcoholics, morbidly obese, people who gambled away all their money? Why do chain smokers dying of lung cancer exist?

The big lie is that companies operating in the market are passive bystanders responding to our needs and demands, rather they are actively manipulating us to desire and buy things we often don’t need.

Okay, that statement came across as overly conspiratorial, but consider this: Most advertisement is not focused on giving us clear information about products. They are not designed to encourage a sensible buying decision based on actual needs. Instead ads are almost entirely focused on emotions. The whole field of marketing is focused on learning new ways of emotionally manipulating consumers into desiring the products they sell. Not what you actually need.

This isn’t an evil conspiracy to drown us in debt and destroy us. Instead it is a natural outcome of the capitalist system. Say a company only sells what people need and stay 100% honest about its products, what would happen?

This honest company would get outcompeted swiftly by any company which maximizes sales and profits through manufacturing a need and desire for their products. Sure, there are limits to this, as a company can develop a horrible reputation which kills their sales. So selling genuinely horrible products through deceit is not a viable long term strategy. You could however sell decent quality stuff, which nobody needs. People seldom complain publicly about a company selling them things they didn’t need.

We are not helpless against this manipulation. While individuals are easily manipulated, there is wisdom in the crowd:

In other words we are not making the government having detailed specifications for what you should buy. It is not about having the government taking over your weekly grocery shopping but rather to changed incentives in the market so that choices we can all agree are sensible are easier and more natural for the individual to make in the heat of the moment.

Planned Obsolescence

A related but different problem is that products, while actually needed, are made to last an artificially short time. This trend is attributed to General Motors in the early 1900s. Eventually Ford and GM managed to provide all American families with cars which made demand plummet. A core problem was that they made sturdy cars which lasted. The head of General Motors came up with the concept of Planned Obsolescence as a solution. It meant they would create cars with new styling every year and make their cars last for shorter time. This way they would get consumers to frequently change or upgrade their cars, thus creating a perpetual demand. It is how General Motors beat Ford, which focused primarily on making good and affordable cars.

Of course the idea has been around for a long time. I would claim clothing fashion is much the same idea. The idea of fashion goes back several hundred years. We purchase and consume a lot more clothes than we need.

This trend is just accelerating. It is hard to not notice how the quality and durability of many consumer products keep declining. The zippers on my coats are ruined much quicker than before.

Perhaps more pronounced is how increasingly difficult it is to repair products. Repair require ever more complicated tools and the spare parts are usually very expensive. In fact this has become part of the business model. I was told by a worker in a computer store e.g. that their margins on sale was so thin that they hardly made any money on it. It was selling small frivolous ad-ons and computer repairs which they really made their money on. This isn’t that different from how printer manufacturers make money on selling you printer cartridges.

When they are selling you the printer, they compete in a big fierce market. Once you got the printer, they got vendor locking and monopoly. Same with computer repair. This market logic creates a strong incentive to not make durable products. You just want to make sure you are not so much worse than the rest that you get known for it.

Final Remarks

This series is part of an effort to foster a healthy skepticism towards many of the claims made about the wonders of capitalism. I don’t believe everything in capitalism is bad. Quite the contrary. There are made positive sides to capitalism. But it is important to understand that markets are often imperfect in quite profound ways, and that is why regulation is often needed to deal with these issues.

Government mandated minimum warranties e.g. can help push companies to make products that last longer.

It is also worth reflecting on whether allowing as much advertisement as possible all over society is really a good thing. Advertisement serves a purpose but we must also be aware of that more advertisement does not make society a better place. Your life does not magically become better by higher consumption.

But one must also understand that you as an individual consumer has next to no power over this. By individual choice you cannot make companies manufacture durable practical items. That goes against their financial incentive. Only through regulation can you have any kind of hope of changing this.

On paper no country in the world is as strong as the US. It outspends the whole world in military gear. On the battlefield nobody could challenge the US. It has aircraft carries, destroyers, nukes, the most advanced fighter jets and tanks. In pretty much every imaginable category of weapons the US excels. Not only do they have better weapons but often far more of them as well.

So you would think defeating the US is very hard. But see here is the problem. Americans are obsessed with the idea that protecting freedom is something you do with military weapons. Hence the obsession with the second amendment. Americans think to be free is just about piling on as many weapons as possible.

And so the US didn’t see it when their old arch enemy Russia came in for the kill. Russia didn’t send over armies, or launch nukes. No, they just invited a vain narcissistic billionaire to Moscow and praised him relentlessly. Gave him nice deals. Stroked his ego. Lended him money. Told him he should run for president some day. That man was Trump, and this was the 1980s. Russia played the long game. They may seem like geniuses picking out Trump specifically from the haystack and cultivating him.

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But no, this was just normal Russian quantity over quality. They cultivated large number of men like Trump. It is a game of statistics. They know by running this game on enough people they will eventually get a payoff.

Read more in the Guardian about this: ‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

It wasn’t just about cultivating assets of course but also utilizing propaganda. Social media gave a way for Russia to spread propaganda in the West like they never could before.

The founder of the modern Russian state, Vladimir Lenin said:

“Capitalists will sell you the rope to hang him with.”

As usual however beloved quotes from historical characters are all too often not true. Rather this quote is a simplification of this writing by Lenin:

” They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”

According to the book “They Never Said It” on page 64.

But regardless of origin of this quote, I think it is a very fitting description of what has been the downfall of the US. Right-wing bloggers eagerly took money from Russia to continue spreading their favored version of reality.

Social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter didn’t do much of anything to stop fake news and troll farms from Russia. Quite the contrary all the right-wing outrage production generated engagement and money they wanted. They were selling out their own nation for profits.

Not that different from IBM supplying Nazi Germany with calculation devices to help locate and hunt down Jews.

Read more: IBM: The Final Solutions Company

German industrialists supported the Nazi party with huge amounts of cash to help Hitler get elected. As a reward the Nazis privatized in the 1930s more than any other nation. They handed over desired peaces of the public sector to private enterprise for them to enrich themselves. Jews and political prisoners were handed over to corporations as cheap slave labour. IG Farben famously utilized concentration camp labour.

This is at its heart the problem at the heart of America: A worship of capitalism, but capitalism has no loyalty to anyone. Individual corporations will see what profits them, not what benefits citizens or the nations. Economist Adam Smith argued famously with his invisible hand that selfishness could be harness for common good. Quote from the Wealth of Nations:

…every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

Adam Smith of course never suggested a whole society should be run on selfishness. He was simply trying to point out that selfishness can under the right circumstances be harnessed for common good.

American society never seems to have grasped that nuance. Instead there is this belief that government must be as small and weak as possible and if corporations are allowed to do whatever they want Americans will benefit the most.

Now to be fair I know many Americans are deeply skeptical or large corporations. But they are often even more skeptical of government. Instead they have this naive idea that somehow people acting individually in the market can counter corporate power. Of course that has never worked and it never will work. Any society that has reigned in the abuses of corporations and promoted the common good of the people have relied on government doing just that.

The cure for a bad corrupt government is not to create a weaker and more inept but equally corrupt government. The cure is to create a better and less corrupt government. You will never win in the market by playing the rules of the capitalist.

But because capitalism has no real ideological anchoring, it can easily be exploited and manipulated. A whole state such as Russia with government controlling vast amounts of resources can employ such resources to manipulate a capitalist system in their favor.

It is in principle not that hard to counter if you are willing to regulate markets. We can insist on more transparency on how media is funded. We could have more non-profit or public run media that is not beholden to a constant chase for profits but which can have as a charter to promote enlightenment.

We could have laws to punish media platforms spreading lies and disinformation. In short there are many ways to promote a more balanced media. The US used to have the fairness doctrine before Ronald Reagan removed it.

The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.

Alas, the US has nothing like this anymore, which made the US ripe for exploitation in the age of social media. Putin could infect the US with his ideas without real opposition. But it is not like Putin tried to make Americans believe all the same things as him. They are flexible. They look at the political discourse that already existed in the US. Russia understood that the American right could be exploited.

It is not like Russia is particular pro capitalism, or pro gun rights. But they didn’t need to. All they had to do was exploit the American culture war. Russia is fine promoting racism, misogyny and homophobia as long as it serves Russian interests.

Russia realized that they could weaponize the American propensity for conspiracy thinking, the corruption of American politics, and utter lack of moral standards in American media. They could push in their message because too much of America placed profits above truth. American politics was already a mud slinging game of gross exaggerations where truth was an afterthought.

This map gives some hints about the American problem. America is a land of conspiracy theories.

Perhaps this illustrates better than anything else why the pen is mightier than the sword. All the weapons in the world are worthless against someone who can make you believe anything. You cannot use the 2nd amendment to overthrow a dictator who has convinced you he is your savior.

When your media is broken and corrupt and the people poorly educated then the enemy can take over your country without firing a shot, because the citizens will lack the ability to understand what is happening. I said capitalism is the core problem in America but I think it is actually the combination of high levels of religiosity and capitalism which is the toxic combination.

Religion teach you to believe without any facts or reasons. A people trained to accept things as true without evidence is exposed to manipulation. Capitalism becomes a useful tool for the wicked because it is all too eager to help out deceiving the people as long as it gets paid. It has not higher ideal it is trying to honor besides profit.

A country is never stronger than its government and institutions. To illustrate that with an example. Historically the US grabbed power and resources in foreign nations by exploiting the corruption on its government. Greedy easily corrupted politicians make a nation weak.

When Norway struck oil in the late 1960s, America tried its usual games to steal Norwegian oil wealth. You can read about how America played these games in the Middle East and in South America to effectively take control of national resources.

Except these games didn’t work in Norway, because we were blessed with strong institutions and low corruptions. We had socialist leaders who didn’t care about personal wealth. Einar Gerhardsen, our longest serving prime minister, was 17 years in office and lived in a regular working class apartment in a working-class neighborhood all his life. He was not looking for personal wealth and fortune. Such men cannot easily be corrupted and manipulated. And so the opposite happened in Norway. Norwegian government was able to exploit American capitalist greed to play American oil companies out against each other.

We pioneered the system China is known for now where foreign companies must partner with national ones to gain access to markets or resources. Specifically foreign companies wanting to operate in the Norwegian North Sea had to partner with Norwegian state oil company Equinor and engage in knowledge transfer. Sure they might not like doing that but if they didn’t their competitor would. Hence Norway could exploit their greed to gain a lot of technical expertise on how to do offshore oil drilling and production.

That system is no longer in place anymore because Norway eventually learned all they could from foreigners and they went past them. Now Norway is a leading offshore oil technology nation. China used a similar tactic to rapidly learn and advance their industries.

What does that tell you? If you are driven by greed, then you are weak. If you are corrupt, then you are weak.

And the US has deliberately fostered a system where politicians are bought. They went along with this because they wanted to serve corporate interests and the interests of the rich. It makes sense to people who want the system to serve the capitalists. But it invariably means you serve anyone with money, including foreign nationals.

America has thus deliberately made itself weak. This is how both Russia and Israel could influence US politics extensively. The Epstein case is perhaps the most grotesque example of this. Epstein gained considerable economic and political power by using underaged girls as currency in his scheme.

Thus immorality and greed becomes a weakness that can be exploited by foreign powers. It is how they believe Russians in part control Trump. They knew he was not merely greedy and vain but also had a a deeply unhealthy desire for women. Exploiting such behavior is old had for KGB. They have done that for decades.

What are the conclusion from this? How do you build strength? You cannot have leaders obsessed with earthly possessions. You cannot have vain and corrupt greedy leaders. Electing a greedy billionaire gameshow host types with incredible vanity was perhaps the most perfect way of making yourself weak.

America cannot be strong without kicking money out of politics, and creating a media which is dedicated to honest reporting over making a quick buck. That will not happen by itself. You need regulation and politics for that. The market does not incentivize honest media. You need to actually create such incentives by law.

A note on Spelling and Grammar

This article surely has plenty of errors, but it is entirely human written. I think enough of you are tired of overly polished AI slop. AI texts which tries to come with an earth shattering punchline every paragraph. I am just trying to tell my thoughts without fanfare. And that is probably getting ever more attractive these days as one article after the other starts looking ever more the same.

I am writing this with the hope of reaching young men who are blinded by the lifestyle of men like Andrew Tateand Wes Watson who go around with bulging muscles, fast sport cars, and model looking girls on their arms. Flush with money. Another one of these Redpill “Alpha Males” is Myron Gaines. Redpill could be in most simple terms described as a male supremacy ideology growing rapidly online. It preaches the superiority of men and inferiority of women. Describing women as weak, manipulative and needy.

Here is the irony of these supposed high value men: None of them have managed to actually get into a serious relationship with an accomplished woman. By that I mean an intelligent woman, well educated and without mental problems, coming from poverty or similar.

Look at Andrew Tate. He went to Romania and went after vulnerable women. He deliberately followed a strategy to isolate them from friends and family to make them dependent on him. What does that tell you? He cannot keep a girl if she actually has options.

Wes Watson meanwhile was exposed as having essentially rented a girlfriend. It was part of an exposure that his luxury cars, and luxury house was all rented. It became even more hilarious when viewers discovered that is so-called girlfriend was an escort.

Myron Gaines at the age of 35 had never had a girlfriend. Imagine that. You pass yourself off as the alpha male and give relationship advice to young men and you haven’t actually had a relationship. So he did get a girlfriend eventually named Angie from Venezuela. But that didn’t last long. Nobody is surprised.

The Alpha Male Bullshit Hurts Men

I have seen this pattern over and over again. I have encountered men online playing the whole alpha male role and who claims women are fine with it. Now, I never intended to be in the business of giving advice on relationships because I am a guy with a history of writing about technology, history, society and politics.

But it is hard to not noice how many young men are now hurting their relationships. I have told guys that they are going to ruin their own relationship. Particularly comical was a man who was doing the whole “alpha male” posturing about how women like a strong man. Yet two weeks later the girlfriend had left and he was crying and out of his mind.

Now this conversations was entirely anonymous. I don’t know who he actually is or his girlfriend so I was okay looking at some of his conversations with her. It would be no way for me to identify either of them from it. They both lived in an entirely different country from me as well. It was very clear to me why she left. Interestingly I had to walk him through the whole conversation like a child why she had left him.

That is the tragedy. Many of these guys actually have no understanding of how to relate to women because all they have listened to is alpha male bullshit that has little to nothing to do with the real world.

“Alpha Males” Fail to Get Women best Suited for Long Term Relationships

I have been married for about twenty years. And it is nothing exceptional about that. That applies to many ordinary guys in my age bracket. We don’t feature in flash photos online with supermodels. We are not rich. We don’t drive Bugatti’s but we pulled off what these Alpha Male bros are incapable of achieving: A long lasting relationships with an educated, intelligent woman and raised kids successfully.

And I believe this also explains a lot of the deep misogyny of many of these “Alpha Males.” Normal educated and intelligent women run away from these guys. They have no chance with good women. The result is that they are always around low educated, poor and desperate women who have often not had the best opportunities in life.

And thus that is what shapes their perspective on women. Andrew Tate always talk about how stupid and emotional women are. Well he isn’t around the brightest women because the smart ones run away from an obvious terrible guy like him.

These guys are going to try to tell you that you don’t want or need intelligent women. Of course they will because they cannot actually win over such women. So rather than admit they lack the skill or attraction then try to reframe it as if there is something inherently wrong with a college educated or career woman.

But here is why that is wrong. Studies show that marriages with intelligent partners last longer. And in fact marriages to a career woman with solid income is actually more likely to last than a marriage to some pretty waitress. This runs counter to Redpill ideology that sells you on the idea that if a woman is not in need to man economically she will leave. That is why they try to paint women who are financially independent as suspicious and bad.

Read more: Career Women and the Durability of Marriage

The other fact is that it tends to be much easier to find common ground and understanding with an intelligent person, because it is easier to reason with them. That is why such relationships last. And let us not forget that if you actually intend to raise children, why would you want them to have an ignorant or stupid mother?

Children’s development is very affected by things such as educational level of parents. Highly educated parents tend to raise children that do better in school, and later get better careers.

The other important aspect that these Redpill guys try to devalue but which is very important is that your wife is not only your romantic partner but also your best friend and advisor. We all go through rough patches in life. For many of us it is precisely our significant other who tends to play the biggest role in getting us through that.

Helping someone facing challenges requires someone with some level of intelligence. I take a walk with my wife every day where we talk about everything possible. She is someone I can discuss ideas with. Who can come with valuable input. People like Wes Watson, Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines have nobody like that in their lives. They spend their whole day yapping online. Because these guy so thoroughly devalue women, they really have nothing to offer when they spend time with them. So instead they are with their bros or doing their podcasts or YouTube videos.

The Profound Misconception about What an Alpha Male is

I also want to challenge some of the misconceptions of what an alpha male is. It has been misconstrued into some testosterone supercharged gorilla who can beat up everyone. But alpha male refers to the leader in a flock. That leader is actually not the biggest and strongest but typically the ones with the best skills in forming alliances and leading. It is not about raw muscle power and intimidation.

And that is not my personal opinion, that is straight from Primatologist Frans de Waal who coined the term alpha male.

Muscle guys like Wes Watson screaming into the camera are more likely in prison than leading large companies or organizations. The people who actually successfully built large successful organization are people like Bill Gates, Barrack Obama, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of these guys are ironically quite geeky. The people with an image most likely to be called Beta males. However, strictly from the definition of what an Alpha male is, these are the actual alpha males.

Many of these got where they are because of understanding of products and technology. But outside of that space you see how people like Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton got far because of superior social skills and an ability to understand and build alliances rather than flexing the most muscle. The same can be said for many Republican leaders. Ronald Reagan got far because of charms and social skills.

The men who style themselves as alpha males tend to simply be dysfunctional psychopaths or narcissists who look for pseudo scientific excuses for their toxic masculinity and anti-social behaviors. These kinds of people do not really have friends. That is the irony. You see people with dark triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) such as Stalin, Hitler, Trump, Andrew Tate etc can achieve massive following and worship but not actually have any close friends.

They want to tell you they are successful, but showing you all their status symbols. But it is all empty. They don’t have women in their lives who actually love them. You can just look at Melania and Trump. The relationship is completely cold.

What is the Good Life?

If you want to live the good life as a man, you don’t have to listen to people who specifically styles themselves as guys selling male lifestyles. Most of human history has had thinkers who gave advice on how a good life is lived who really was giving advice to men, because let us be frank, society didn’t care much about women for a long time.

The key to the good life, are not new, because human nature has not fundamentally changed since Homo sapiens first evolved. That is why you can find wisdom about how to live your life among Greek philosophers who living thousands of years ago. And that wisdom is not limited to them. It is all over. There are writing from native Americans for instance who also had significant insights into life.

I mention this because there was an interesting observation I made there while reading anthropologist David Graeber. He found that both native Americans and white Europeans who had both lived among native Americans and European style society in America preferred Native American society.

How could that be? Native Americans were much poorer and technologically less developed. Yet the relationships between people and lifestyles made a difference. They had communities operating on principles we would call socialism today: community oriented with extensive amounts of sharing and looking after each other rather than me, me, me and my stuff.

Don’t get me wrong I like nice stuff. I am not really a spiritual kind of guy looking for the most ascetic life possible. I am not advocating some kind of noble poverty but rather for the joys and values of the average job. Most people cannot be famous and rich. There are not resources enough in society for that. Chasing that as your dream means you will most likely fail.

The Redpill Lie Deceiving Men

You have a much higher probability of achieving the average middle class life. The point is to realize that this could be a good life. Even a better life than one in richness and fame. People like Andrew Tate and the Redpill try to lie to you and say you need to look like a body builder and be rich to have any woman want you.

Reality is that actual nice women don’t want guys like that. If their advice worked they would be married to a pretty and accomplished college educated woman. But none of them are. So what they try to sell you on is that such women are just bad and make you miserable. Yet statistics tells a different story. All they are trying to do make it look as if their failure is a success.

They got the poor uneducated waitress in bed by waving their millions and want to convince you that means they are badass alpha males to emulate. Their fortunate is built on fooling you into thinking they are living the dream and they are men of success. Well Wes Watson could not even get a waitress girlfriend he had to actually pay a escort lady so he is even more pathetic.

If you want advice, then listen to more normal people. Friends, your own parents, uncles. There are many men who could give better advice to you than the likes of Andrew Tate.

Most of you do not have the inflated ego of Andrew Tate, so why listen to people like him. You are not like him and so trying to emulate someone like him is pointless.

Life Advice to Young Men

I will try to give some simple advice, to young men who struggle with finding their way in relationships. I am Norwegian so we have no culture of walking up to random girls and asking them out. Yet most of us Norwegian men have still managed to find a girlfriend and get married. Hence the idea that walking up to random women on the street and asking them out is a necessary skill to get a girlfriend is just rubbish.

Also I just don’t think it is very polite. It would be bad manners to do so here in Norway. Instead we join social contexts where it would be more natural to do so. Join clubs or activities. Go to parties arranged by friends or social interactions. Don’t have friends with parties? Well then start making friends and join their social get togethers.

As an introvert who is quite happy in my own company, I cannot stress this enough: Finding a girlfriend is fundamentally about being social. For me that changed when I made a promise to myself to join any social gathering I was asked to join even if it was inconvenient. Sometimes you have to force yourself to be social. Like turn it into a job of meeting up with people and making friends. Maybe you just want to be home, play a game, watch TV, read a book or whatever but that is poor investment in time if you are single. Make sure you get to know a lot of people, because that creates the social situations where you will eventually meet someone you connect with.

My super social years was while living in the Netherlands. I would join local trips to walk through Amsterdam with a group. I would bike from one town to another with a group. I would join dinners where people made food from their culture for sharing. I would go on picnics or BBQs. It could be birthday parties or just about anything. I would live in housing sharing kitchen living room etc with other young people. You meet a lot of people that way as well. I met people while staying at hostels in shared rooms.

Basically there are lots of ways for young people to meet and connect. Drop social media and computer games and go out in the world. Meet people face to face. A word of warning about thinking you will hit the jackpot by using dating apps. Here is the problem with dates: Too much is on the line, and you will not relax and be yourself. It becomes a performance.

How I met my wife might be illustrative of this. We were not meeting on dates at all. I simply met her to teach her Norwegian as she had interest in Viking history. So it was not a dating situation, and I was just myself as I wasn’t trying to prove anything. The reason we met was not because I was specifically looking for a girlfriend but because I was following my general principle of socializing as much as possible that year. I was simply trying to make new friends.

Start Focusing on Friendships over Dating

I should point this out about guys who say it does not work to make friends with girls. That is because too many of you aren’t actually looking for friends. You are looking for a girlfriend, so you are picking female friends based on your attraction to them. You are always holding out of the friendship to turn into a relationship. Your actual girlfriend could end up being a friend of a woman you make friends with. Or your female friend might give you valuable advice that helps you get a girlfriend. And sometimes it is not about what women tell you but what they tell you indirectly through their behavior.

I am always puzzled by how people like Andrew Tate insists men should not have female friends. Well how will you then develop the social skills to actually charm a woman to become your girlfriend? To be good at interacting with women, you need to actually be around them. This should be self-evident, but somehow the Redpill complicates all of this. I guess because in many ways they are invested in your failure. They need you to keep clicking on their content. If you find a happy relationship you will not be doing that.

Many right-wing Americans I have debated are authoritarians. They do not genuinely believe in democracy. Whenever I talk about how bad Trump is as a leader, they insist that this is democracy and that is the person the American people wanted. If I do not respect that choice then I am opposed to democracy.

Onto itself that is an absurd circular type of argument. If whomever the voters select is always the right choice, then there is no need to ever have a political debate. But politics relies on criticizing current leaders in order to move opinion towards whatever leaders or vision you and others believe in.

Just because we respect the democratic process does not mean we have to respect the elected leader. Respecting the democratic process simply means we are not going to overthrow the elected leader. We give that leader a chance to prove himself or herself. It doesn’t mean we have to support that leader or celebrate that leader in any way.

What many right-wingers will try to goad you into is to either express an elitist attitude towards “the dumb voters who made the wrong choice” or convince you that democracy is wrong to begin with. Alternatively they want to push an elitist society where only the most educated can vote. This is the old “democracies” of the West. It tended to be a land owning rich upperclass who were the only ones who could vote.

Many technocrats such as Peter Thiel want a form of enlightened absolute rule of technocrats. And Thiel is part of the rich cabal that has supported Trump. It is quite ironic isn’t it that they want the election of the guy they pushed to be used as evidence that the common people should not be allowed to participate in the democratic process.

Should Stupid Voters Vote?

Stupid voters is absolute a problem for democracy. But the right-wing elitist solution offers by Thiel and his ilk is to take away voting rights and cement power within the rich elite. He wants a form of plutocracy.

For us on the left the solution is to simply educate our voters. And that has long been the view of many people that democracy is not merely about voting but it is about an enlightened public making a decision of who should run the country and how.

I believe it can be argue that without enlightenment there is no such thing as democracy. If you are too poorly informed to know what choice you even make then that is not a genuine choice. If you want universal healthcare but you are so poorly informed that you pick the opposite when given a choice, then your “choice” wasn’t really your choice now was it?

It is like buying a fake Gucci belt from someone. If they told you it was real when you bought it then that was a swindle. You did not get what you asked for. Politics can work the same. Politicians can sell you something entirely different from what you wanted.

You do not have a functioning free market if people can just sell you junk and cheat you. Just as you do not have a functioning democracy if they can just lie and manipulate the voters.

How to Create informed Voters

For voters to be informed they need a functioning media and education system. When I look at US democracy today I think that people make unreasonable demands on the average American voter. They demand votes should be well informed when the media landscape they inhabit is drowning in disinformation, propaganda and lies.

This is the big lie of free speech absolutism. We say that anyone should be able to say anything no matter how manipulative or how big a lie and it is your responsibility to figure out that it is a lie. Imagine going to school and the teacher lies to you every day. And then on the exam you expect perfect answers. When students get it all wrong you say “Well it was your responsibility to figure out that the teach lied to you and find the correct information.”

I think that is utterly unreasonable. and I do not believe we can have an enlightened electorate in a society where deliberate lies and propaganda is protected by the legal system. We would have fired a teacher presenting complete falsehoods to their students everyday, but somehow we allow large media organizations to do the same without any consequences. I think in particular about media organizations such as Fox News which is little besides a right-wing lying machine and propaganda machine. And that is not my personal opinion.

Read more: Fox, Dominion reach $787M settlement over election claims

The lawsuit brought by Dominion against Fox News proved in court that Fox regularly lied in their broadcasting to win viewers.

It is utterly unreasonable to expect well informed voters when major networks routinely lie to them. But it is also a question of education.

Educating the Bottom Properly

A problem I see with American society is that it is completely preoccupied with the “winners.” If you do well you get more opportunities. It goes if you do well in education, in sports of anything. Then the opportunities are laid at your feet. Some call the meritocracy. But there is a dark side to that.

Most of us are not “winners.” The common people who select the leaders are not the winners. Think about the 80/20 rule. It might make sense to push 20% of the people to the max because they will make up the engineers, scientists, political leaders etc that propel society forward.

However it is the 80% that actually decide who gets into power. So it is utterly irrelevant you have a brilliant 20% elite if psychopaths and morons are elected as leaders instead because the 80% are too poorly informed, too poorly educated and too stupid to grasp what they are doing.

In other words you ignore the bottom at your own peril. This goes back to how society spends resources. Should our best resources be spent on the brilliant ones or should it be spent more on raising up those who struggle?

As someone who was often ahead of my class and with kids who were often ahead of their class I know that talented kids need tailoring to their needs just as those who struggle. But usually that simply requires a curriculum matching their level. It does not need to mean significantly more resources. Let smarter kids do more advanced curriculums. It doesn’t need to mean they need to get more teachers, fancier buildings, laboratories etc allocated to them.

I believe we can help both those with talent and those who struggle. It doesn’t have to be either/or.

Creating an Intellectual Society

I will focus on American society because the election of Trump is perhaps the starkest example of a Western society that has failed. An example of a democracy that has malfunctioned.

Often when discussing American society there is a sense that US education is poor and that is why Americans are so poorly informed about many issues. From my time living in the US I believe that is the wrong analysis. I do not believe American school system as such is particularly bad.

Nor that Americans as a whole are ignorant. Rather there is a lack of an intellectual culture that values reading and intellectual knowledge. Americans in my experience know far more about medicines and consumer goods than the average European. That is an outcome of a consumer culture that pushes pills on their population 24/7.

America has decided that commercial interests go ahead of everything else. So things like ads, entertainment, sales and profit dominates American society. It should come to no surprise that this means the average citizens is primarily getting educated to be a consumer rather than well versed generalist that knows about history, politics and society.

The underlying problem that I see as a leftist is that American society has decided that whatever the market decides is the “correct” choice. But that is about as intelligent as letting children decide everything about what they should eat. We know they would just pick candy all the time.

So who should decide?

A Genuine Democracy

When I suggest that letting markets decide is not the smartest choice it is easy for many people to think I suggest an elite should decide what your interests should be. But this gets us back to democracy itself. I believe democracy is typically a lot better way for the people to express what they want than the market.

Markets tend to reflect short term emotionally charged choices. Marketing experts have figured out how to manipulate the human mind to make us crave things we don’t actually want or need. Suggesting the market represents true human choice is a bit like suggesting that an alcoholic picking up another beer represents a true choice. If you ask an alcoholic if they want to be an alcoholic then most would say no. Their overall long term belief is not that drinking is good. In the short term however they may not be able to control themselves.

This brings us to a full circle. If democracy is there to help guide our knowledge and what is important in life, then we need to make sure democracy isn’t broken.

That is why I have some principles for how to make democracy work:

1. Truth must dominate over lies. In other words there must be obvious and effective ways to combat lies.

2. The opinions of the many ought to dominate over the opinions of the rich.

3. Expert opinion should be valued.

Small lies such as Joe saying he can do 60 pushups when he can in fact only do 20, are not consequential for democracy. What matters is lies at scale. Such as when major networks lie about election results, pandemics, economy etc.

Citizens and viewers should be allowed to sue for being lied to and deceived. Being wrong must always be legal. Keep in mind the definition of lying: Saying something you know to be untrue.

The point here is that one would have to be able to prove in court that a media organization is saying something they know to be untrue.

And this should apply to social media platforms. They should have a responsibility to curb the spread of known lies. Now, here there is a balance to meet. Sometimes it can come down to a disagreement among the media platform and those making a claim what is true.

But I have a simple solution for this. Right now social media simply promotes controversial and extreme content regardless of its truth. We don’t need to ban lies straight out. We can simply stop actively promoting them. Because social media algorithms today are in effect promoting lies. That has got to stop.

Let users rate posts based on both whether they agree and truthfulness. For instance as a leftist there are many right-wing views I disagree with but which I know are not falsehoods. I ought to be able to mark a post as “serious” or “truthful” while also strongly disagreeing with it.

Social media today does not allow this distinction. And why would they? Their concern is only profits not truth. It is upon us as society to tell them that truth matters. We do that through regulations. We cannot simply sit back and wait for capitalists to do “the right thing.” Especially not when it kills their profits.

Capitalism at Odds with Democracy

At a fundamental level capitalism is at odds with democracy, because it amplifies the voices of the rich and powerful over the common man. It will spread falsehoods or extreme views if that makes money. In other words as a system capitalism is not wedded to truth and enlightenment as such.

Does that mean we need to end capitalism? No, but it means we need to be aware of the inherent anti-democratic forces built into capitalism and actively counter them through regulation and government actions.

For instance I think government should help fund more independent media that is wedded to promoting truth over simply making a buck.

Summary

My central point is that the alternative to a democracy full of uniformed stupid voters is not an elite society or plutocracy but rather a society where we enlighten and educate all voters. We owe it to all citizens that they are informed and that they can express they views and needs.

The right-wing it seems is interested in making voters are stupid and deplorable as possible so as to get a case for advancing an elitist anti-democratic system.

We must say no to this vision. We should not reward the rich corrupt elite for failing to educate and enlighten the common man and woman.