Sometimes I sit down to write a post with an idea of what I want to say on a subject, but a third of the way through I realize I’m going to make a different set of points about the same topic. For me, posting is really just a form of thinking out loud. Sometimes that means taking what started writing, saving it for later and starting over with my new set of thoughts in mind. More than a few posts have gone this way, shattering into two or more posts.
This rarely happens with the podcast, because I actually do some prep for it. I start on the weekend, thinking about a theme for the week. I’ll then come up with ideas for each segment and then a outline those. I don’t use a script, but that outline is like a set of notes for when I record the segment. That way I don’t meander around too much and I don’t forget the points I wanted to make. It’s not professional, but it works for me.
This week, I got about halfway through I realized I should have done the show different that I set out to do it. For example, I could probably do a whole show on taxes from the classical right-wing perspective. Distributionism really does need a whole show on it and I could probably do a few shows on guys like de Maistre, Belloc and Chesterton. In other words, the topic was too big for one hour, so it is way too superficial.
The trouble is, unlike a blog post, there is a point of no return with these things. A typical blog post consumed 30 minutes of my time. The podcast takes about ten hours to put together each week. There’s no turning back once I get to recording, so I had to go with what I had planned. It’s not cats singing Jingle Bells, but it is certainly one of the topics that will get a do-over in the future. Maybe I’ll call it a prequel.
This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below. I have been de-platformed by Spotify, because they feared I was poisoning the minds of their Millennial customers.
This Week’s Show
Contents
- 00:00: Opening
- 02:00: Means To An End
- 12:00: Taxes
- 22:00: Duty To The Poor
- 32:00: The Marketplace
- 42:00: Free Trade
- 52:00: Regulation
- 57:00: Closing
Direct Download, The iTunes Page, Google Play Link, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed
Full Show On Spreaker
Full Show On YouTube
https://youtu.be/eK6wljcLhWE
Hose off the machine and grab another Juan….
Great show. I’m glad you’re continuing to emphasize the primacy of culture over economics. I don’t think that can be said enough.
Great, now people will earn up to ten million and then quit, almost as good as the “We’ll have to pass this revolution to see whats in it.”
If you want to know why the “Right” loses – read the goofy discussion on IP in this comment section. Who owns most IP? Leftist Rich people. Hollywood. The Entertainment Industry. Who’s responsible for bribing Congress and getting the Constitutional Copyright of “limited times” to life + 75 years ? Rich Leftists in Hollywood. So why is the Right helping these people by arguing for long-term IP? Copyright used to be for 28 years and then another 28 years – if renewed. Why don’t we go back to that? I sometimes get the impression most people on the Right would go to a concentration camp if you labeled it “Free Enterprise”.
I particularly enjoyed this episode because I’ve recently resumed my masochistic hobby of trolling “conservatarian” (I felt gay just typing that term) comment sections like Breitbart’s and Zman’s skillfully constructed arrows are invaluable additions to my quiver.
I get that the industrial revolution has had long-term and ongoing and dramatic effects on populations around the world and bismarck’s response was a conservative way to keep social stability that the Socialists and the Communists we’re trying to create so that they could instill a totalitarian regime. And in that vein it’s clear the social instability is what is being seeded here but even if leftist get their wish and the entire white race is exterminated how are they going to control the remaining groups. China and Russia instilled a totalitarian regime but all those people were Chinese or Russian. I don’t see how they think the Venezuelans the somalis and the eritreans and whatnot are all going to play nice together. And that’s not even getting into the IQ shortages that Russia and China did not have to deal with.
I actually take comfort in the fact that the future cannot be predicted.
I remember the debacle Harley Davidson found itself in. Under AMF, they were shitty. I recall all these articles bemoaning unfair trade practices and crap. Never mind the Nippon-sei Kawasakis were just plain superior to anything Harley was offering in the ‘80s. For a young guy looking to blow his Army Ranger bonus on something, a Transam or a crotch rocket was a typical choice. Saw a lot of guys running Kawasakis around Fort Benning back then.
Fast forward a few decades, Harley’s are practically a status symbol in Japan. A bunch of new dealerships popped up around Tokyo the last few years. I live out in the country side, in a little berg. Every morning these herds of kids on Isuzu scooters will zoom down the highway on their way to the college. My neighbor loves to fly past these turds on his FXDR 114. Friggin thing sounds like God ripping a fart.
Sean. Great post. Post more often. I do wish everyone could stop saying fart though.
Yes, the fart jokes must stop!
Sometimes i wonder if the comments here are infiltrated by jews and poc. You’re comment is worth more that and comprehensive NSA vetting. You are definitely a tight-ass (please excuse my crudity) white guy. Carry on bro.
While listening I couldn’t help thinking of the “prosperity gospel” so many faux Christians embrace today–the idea that wealthy people deserve their money because, well, they’re wealthy. Poor people are only that way because of their moral failings. I’m no theologian but this is as warped an interpretation of Christianity as Zionist Evangelicalism. The total surrender of the church is one reason why lefty nuts are making hay. Only they are talking about the 1%. Trump’s boomer posting from 1985 about socialism isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need a third way. We thought Trump could be that guy. Obviously he’s not.
No one who has accumulated 100 million or100 billion dollars is going to pay a heavy tax on it when he dies unless he dies very unexpectedly. So wherever an estate goes it won’t go to government. Likely the money will become a foundation or foundatins before that time, and foundations enivitably are or become left wing. If the purpose is to break up dynastic formations, perhaps that will help. My money’s on money. At any rate no right thing can be done before democracy ends. Lord Z may accompish great things with for King’s tax plans, but like anything else there will be many unexpected consequenses.
On free market systems, it’s absurd to think that in a winner-take-all system that there won’t eventually be a winner (or small group of winners) who do take all. Isn’t that how the great families of Europe got to the top a thousand years ago or the Jews today?
Sure. The big difference is that in modernity winner takes all ends your society since no one has enough babies to make up for natural death
Its not useful for a culture to have a few rich and a TFR of 1.5 , that culture is doomed and will be replaced by Barbarians or just fall
Give up some loot, make sure people can make a living or cease to exists. Choose wisely
Bismark was a Lutheran. I suggest that maybe that has something to do with his position on the welfare state. What the Libertarians did was replace Christian values with economic ones.
Eagerly looking forward to hearing about your travels.
Probably best not to tell your Finnish hosts about the Swedish Nokia phones.
Excellent podcast. I’m about half way through now.
Grateful for your continuing efforts. Thanks!
I know I have Finnish listeners, so I expect letters.
One of the problems we face is a lack of acknowledged diversity within our own group. Modernism destroyed the symbiotic relationship between the naturally evolved estates within our civilization. Everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator: economic efficiency.
The different estates operated with different economies and different politics. It was the function of the monarchy and priests to see to and maintain a balance within this system. Our current winner take all system expects apples to be oranges and tubers to blossom into grapes.
Even if we manage to overturn the pozz, if we keep the current system(winner sets the agenda for everyone), we will end up pretty much were we are today.
Well said Yves.
Modernity itself is a population shredder and as such a long term thinking leader should assume that a population TFR above replacement is impossible and that some natural decline is inevitable
It sticks in everyone’s craw always had. There was a ton of ink during the 14th century after the Black Death about how much land was fallow and nothing was being produced even though it was a much needed if horrific population correction
Personally I don’t think the planet can support more than two billion and to my way of thinking I want as many of then as possible to be mine
n free market systems, it’s absurd to think that in a winner-take-all system that there won’t eventually be a Winer (or small group of winners) who do take all. Isn’t that how the great families of Europe got to the top a thousand years ago or the Jews today?
Those markets weren’t all that free so solidifying power was easier maintain. “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations” used to be a common saying for a reason. I’ve seen many big inheritances squandered and lost within 2 generations. It’s in my own family history – I have some great-great uncle back in the 1800’s who was a fabulously wealthy shipping baron. Two generations later there wasn’t a trace of that money.
The only reason the Kennedy clan isn’t flat broke is because Papa Joe stashed all the money in Fiji with professional management who pay his idiot greatgrandkids an allowance and never let them near the principal.
Hard men love soft women. Opposites attract. Genetics matters. Brutal dictators produce moderate kings after 3-4 generations if they can consolidate power for their dynasty and the idiot peasants don’t interfere. Regression to the mean is a real phenomenon, and it’s why monarchy is ultimately more representative of the population than the unstable rule of professional politicians.
Yup…a few winners and a whole lot of whiners.
The whiners are men who want to have families and the winners are cheating sociopaths who want ever bigger harems for themselves. The poverty of socialism and the sudden ensuing respect among the women for nice “beta male” workers is a feature, not a bug.
Capitalism stops working when its host society becomes rich enough to afford feminism. North and South Korea are the two biggest experiments in this field. South Korea prospered after the war and has about twice the population of North Korea now, but from about 2020 on North Korea will actually have more newborns because they aren’t aborting themselves out of existence.
Poorer women are forced to be more respectful of “beta male” labor and its value. Capitalism fails when elite capitalists all want to live like the Wolf of Wall Street, with polygamy for themselves and sterile orgies for everyone else. They imagine they solve their predictable demographic collapse with immigrants until the barbarians at the gate start getting ideas of their own.
Western capitalists are stuck in the 1950’s. They want their postwar prosperity without degeneracy, because that generation could remember harder times and avoid excess. It’s nostalgia, not ideology. Conservative ideology condemns capitalism and its usury, and the crude sexual motivations of elite capitalists. Trump is hated so much just because he is open and honest about it!
Islam is gaining so much ground in the West because it is a religion based on wealthy merchants (or oil sheiks, these days) and their desire for polygamy. It is designed for the rich to have their luxuries as long as they commit to jihad so the lower 99% of men can have war brides. The monogamy tradition of the West does not hold up well under capitalism at all.
Due to conscription, women in South Korea have a two year edge on nearly every male in the labor market. They also have absurdly high demands for weddings and households. That appears to be why fertility is so low. SK cities are also quite densely populated, as most of Korea is mountainous akin to Greece.
Conscription increases fertility in Israel because it plausibly makes every man an alpha male in the right context, that of killing the enemy. National service is also the single most obvious conservative way to fill up careers randomly that would otherwise be at risk of adverse selection. Reactionary caste revival isn’t happening any time soon.
The South Korean demographic collapse is a result of absurdly high housing costs for a nation that won’t exist in just a century, but that’s how the globalist capitalists like things done. Housing can be made arbitrarily expensive by strictly financial manipulation no matter how absurd the facts are on the ground. Predictably, the pretense is dropped as soon as waves of “refugees” invade the country and receive free housing. Real estate is the biggest boomer bubble of all, worse than the myths of college or pensions for everyone forever.
North Korea is despised for being a monarchy that takes care of its long term population. Its existence humiliates globalists everywhere. When South Korea becomes a Muslim colony of Indonesia the world will wake up.
Zman points out whites don’t usually complain about welfare for whites, using Appalachia as an example. This may not be true any longer, at least not among True Conservatives. Recall the gold-plated phony Kevin D. Williamson, who suggested impoverished rural communities should either learn to code or die. We all know what he meant, that only them Caucasian opioid eating hillbillies deserve to perish. He never says this about, say, the vibrant people of Baltimore. Instead he makes excuses for that community because they are under the thumb of those deplorable Democrats running Baltimore, never addressing the fact that vibrant Baltimore elects Democrats willingly. There are plenty of people on the mainstream Right who will give POC a pass on gibs, but if lower class rural whitey gets some, it’s time to call for their extermination. The goodwhite vs. badwhite war continues unabated.
Another issue might be the size of the country. America is so big, and so diverse even among just its whites, that it may be hard to have that coherence, that “family sense,” throughout the country.
America is more like a continent badly larping as a country.
The Scandanavian countries are small, remember, which may be part of their secret. There may be some country-scale equivalent of the Dunbar number over which countries fail to cohere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
I’ve also done long tours of duty in both Taiwan and China for business. Tiny Taiwan has much more fellow-feeling. And runs a high-quality single-payer healthcare system with almost no fuss. There is also a lot of freedom in daily life–not just formal political freedom, but the “practical freedom” of being able to speak your mind without people running to the Though Police or internet dog-piling you. They can have civil disagreements–imagine that!
People in China, on the other hand, are much more cold and untrusting, and of course the government uses the awful social credit system to hold it all together.
I think the size of the two places is a relevant factor (among many others, of course.)
I should think that Mao destroyed any sense of community and fellow feeling.
You could be indirectly making the case for the rule of subsidiarity, which states that the smallest possible unit of government should be primary in resolving social problems. Your sense that ‘coherence’ is better in smaller territories would tend to support that.
I think welfare for whites doesn’t get the same level of resentment because we know most of them will be off of welfare eventually – or at least not make it a generational lifestyle.
Lewiston Maine had a big population of mill workers of mainly French-Canadian descent. When the mills closed 40 or so years ago, many of them ended up on various forms of welfare for a while, then they moved on and got out of town. So the leftist back-filled the city with Somali immigrants who will never, ever cease to collect public benefits.
Zman may have been referring to racially aware whites on the right. It wasn’t clear.
The Protestant work ethic is what saved the Norse countries from the usual problems of slackers in socialism. That and they weren’t treated to incessant Jesuit propaganda as were those in Catholic countries. Latin America is still suffering the after effects.
Heck, all of the world’s Catholics are suffering under the current South American “Pope”. 😉
Also don’t forget Justice Kavanaugh’s statement that he still abides by the teachings of the Jesuit High School he attended. That scares me more than if he ran a brothel in a Yale dorm.
Umnnhhh….that doesn’t explain Poland and Austria, both of which are VERY Catholic countries.
And let’s cut the BS about “Prot” work ethic. Jews work as hard or harder, and Catholics are not now, nor ever have been, slackers; check the Bavarian (Catholic) Germans.
You DO have a point about the Jesuits, however. Would you like a few? Actual Catholics are having a fire sale……
You may note I said nothing about Catholic, my remarks are about Jesuits. You are right about Jews who not only work hard, but work smart and are very generous and honorable in their dealings with each other and non-Jews.
I grew up in NYC among Orthodox Jews, the most saintly people I’ve ever known and I’m 84 and have lived up and down the eastern seaboard as well traveled pretty much all over the US, Canada, Mexico and much of Europe.
PS I’m using my iPad now that’s why my sign on looks different.
K, then! But you still haven’t taken my offer of Free Jesuits!!
Sorry, I’ve managed to personally have very little contact with the critters and have no desire to change that happy state of affairs. BTW – Where do you have them confined?
I’ve been arguing with my normie MAGA conservative brother. I see the fundamental issue as racial and he sees it as economic. Now that Trump has embraced de facto open borders, my brother is willing to do the same.
He believes that if conservatives control the economy then endlessly rising GDP will minimize all other problems. If everyone’s paychecks are always rising, then the hostility of non-whites will be mollified and the country can withstand massive immigration and degeneracy. It’s so frustrating. Compared to racial issues, economic policy is insignificant.
Do what I do with my brother. Set an alarm clock for 3AM and toss it under his bed.
My brother is a great guy and I take it as a personal challenge to accept that I can’t convince him to share my views. “Smart and well-intentioned people can disagree,” I repeat to myself over and over as more direct solutions to our plight intrude into my thoughts.
LineIn. Really good comment. Especially that last line. You’re right. There’s something about the people closest to us, (usually family), that bring out an urge to convince. I’m kinda glad I barely have family, because I remember waking up in the morning thinking, “did I just fight with this moron last night? why? to what end?”
So your brother isn’t aware that immigrant voting patterns guarantee conservatives won’t control the economy? Or anything else?
The biggest problem with distributism was the name, which sounded like “redistributionism.” Despite their verbal talents, Chesterbelloc never could come up with a better one.
As I heard it, the biggest problem was figuring out how to make it work in their society, late 19th/early 20thC England. There are some attempts here, such as “worker-owned” companies, but none of them are large. Farm co-ops are another example.
Of course, size does not matter as much as profitability, or viability.
The attraction for reducing one’s attitude and policy in any area to an ideology is a way to avoid thinking about an issue with the excuse that one is principled and unhypocritical.
Guilty – Once you get past the minimum tax rate required to run the state, taxes are theft and estate taxes are one of the worst forms of that theft. How is keeping most of the money you earned a “nutty idea”?
Having been through the estate-tax / settlement process a couple of times, it is the least transparent, most complex and stressful form of tax I’ve witnessed. Literally all your deceased relatives stuff goes into a legal process with expensive lawyers and state bureaucrats – and a year or two later, they tell you what the living relatives get to keep.
There is a simple way of explaining this “it takes money to make money”. So there are certain investment opportunities that the average person is incapable of making, limited to certain HNWIs as they say in finance.
There are some differences between how much inheritance is divided amongst the super-rich, who tend to have more children than average. Historical patterns of primogeniture concentrated wealth, and forced lower sons into the army, clergy or colonies.
The problem with the estate tax is that it creates demand for lawyers to evade it. It would be better off to just tax the unrealized capital gains. In economic terms, property taxes (estate taxes are a property tax) are generally the best, with income taxes being the worst.
I think if we are going to consider intellectual property qua property, then it should be taxed in a way similar to real property. I have unproductive land that I get no income off of. I am taxed for the right to own it and use in exchange. I can get out of paying tax by declaring it a public asset. The same thing should be done with any intellectual property that is protected and laying dormant. It should be taxed, and if the owner doesn’t want to pay the tax on his absentee owner possessions he can let it fall into the public domain.
Just think how much more active the entertainment world would be, and how many patents companies are sitting on that could be used. Talk about market activity.
The same thing should be done with any intellectual property that is protected and laying dormant. It should be taxed, and if the owner doesn’t want to pay the tax on his absentee owner possessions he can let it fall into the public domain.
Excellent idea!
Patents last 20 years
Copyright lasts life+70 or 125 years. Most IP is worthless, mainly we are talking about highly valuable Disney-type franchises.
Trade secrets and trademarks are indefinite. I don’t know how you tax that.
Most IP is worthless, mainly we are talking about highly valuable Disney-type franchises.
Well, if it’s worthless, why not put it in the public domain?
I think that is what they call “orphan works”, where the copyright holder is unknown or doesn’t enforce their legal rights with lawsuits.
It would be more effective to charge a renewal fee every 20 years. Putting the copyright up to an auction would be interesting. Imagine if Star Wars was auctioned off every 20 years, with billions paid to the Treasury each time.
I think that is what they call “orphan works”, where the copyright holder is unknown or doesn’t enforce their legal rights with lawsuits.
Yes, but that’s slightly different: I was thinking of IPs not being actively used by the proprietor. If you taxed those, you’d put a lot of stuff out there, and not all of it worthless either.
It would be more effective to…
Yes, good ideas. That way, we would also see if those brands are really as valuable as is claimed.
As an aside, I’ve been told that the first Steamboat Willie-toons enter the public domain this year. Should be interesting to see how Disney handles that.
My layman’s understanding is that only the original animation can be copied, so I guess the drawings and 35MM film. Every time Disney updated it into VHS, DVD, 1080p, 4K, etc; that created a new copyright.
Even if you make a “legal” copy of the film, you can’t really adapt it because they own copyrights and trademarks on all of the other characters and story elements.
One major element of the negotiations with China is to get the white man’s IP laws enforced in Chinese courts. Otherwise you will see gray market China Disney.
I see. But you could still print obscene Steamboat Willie t-shirts and sell them?
Asking for a friend.
I don’t know if “Steamboat Willie” is trademarked, if it is a ride at Disney World then it certainly has been TM’d. If you wanted to make shirts saying “Choomboat Willie” then it would become a parody, and presumably exempt.
What they would do next is sue you for “trade dress”, where supposedly you were misleading people that your merchandise was actually Disney brand. Historically Disney would claim they are “family-friendly” and making lewd drawings was damaging brand value.
Now they would only care about being “woke”. So if you made Mickey Mouse Hitler shirts they’d go nuts. Ideally you want to be judgement proof, or having no assets.
Hm. There’s my get-rich-quick-scheme busted…
Would “Choomboat Willie” be about Bill Clinton or Obama? Or maybe Bill visiting Barak on a boat?
The purpose of protection of intellectual property is to encourage innovation.
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”
There is no mention of heirs and designees.
There was no intention to, nor authorization of
creating a passive income stream for corporations,
One point of the negotiations with China is to get the white man’s IP laws enforced in PRC courts.
When the old copyrights expire, only the drawings and film presumably become public. The VHS, DVD, etc are a new copyright.
Copyright could easily be reverted back to the original two terms of 14 years if we wished.
This would put Disney to a much lower profit margin and as we have the best Congress money can buy its a non starter.
Real fixes to US corruption would essentially require dictatorial power and nation that have gone down this route can reduce corruption as some Indian provinces have found out but it can take decades for economic activity to recover if it ever dos
Sarbanes Oxley was once such effort here and it killed the IPO for years
We’d have to be willing to accept significant decline and a pretty draconian state effort over long periods to make it work
Boots on necks . This gets expensive and build resentment until essentially social pressure gets strong enough to make grifting shameful
Unrealized capital gains might work better. It would still force Farmer John’s family to sell the farm if it’s near a population center.
Z-Man takes his tax position after the premise that government’s role is to make policy to benefit its citizens. This is an excellent theoretical vantage point, but in practice is completely off base.
Government of the United States is run to the benefit of the can’t-dos at the expense of the can-dos. This typically falls along racial lines and provides the pipeline to siphons whites of their money and feed it to blacks. The tribal reality of government welfare policy, as Z-Man points out, is why everyone of the can-do tribe is completely against taxation. Much of it is wasted at best and much of it is used against the can-dos.
But to follow up, he assumes that in his future nation, we will some how find a identity that enables the can-dos to accept this policy. This is something which is currently unachievable even amongst white groups. Historically, it’s also been exceedingly rare and has only happened amongst peoples with many centuries of social bonds and a homogeneous culture. This is something that also will not exist in his ideal, future post-US nation state.
Which is why Z-Man’a argument can only exist in the theoretical – much in the way the libertarian’s dream of zero government can only exist in fantasy. It completely ignores the reality on the ground.
Z-Man needs to be more tactically adept at positioning the benefits we have to create a new system, not the ultimate toolkit of lofty ideal. Perhaps this great nation of Z-Man’a ideal is possible, but the foundations of our starting point must come first.
It’s sub-optimal, but that foundation rests in the ideals of our perverted Conservative party. To get from GOP – to Z-Man is going to take a lot of intermediate steps. Let’s work on those.
Yak-15, a couple of thoughts. A lot of those “can’t-dos” are actually “don’t-wanna-dos”. Also, it needs to be made as clear as possible, that half of our population pays for everything, and the other half receives direct benefits of a big chunk of it. You can’t square that circle in a multicultural shared society.
“The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.” ― Thomas Sowell
That’s why I instinctively resist taxes. Most of our government is just reelection campaigns I’m paying for.
“Most of our government is just re-election campaigns I am paying for”. Nailed it!
O/T:
Did anyone predict “The Conservative case for Reparations”. David Brooks just published it yesterday. For after he has burned the US to the ground, he’ll be off to Tel Aviv with the rest of his family.
Will Brooks ask to resign his NYT position and nominate a black replacement? Will he give the royalties from his books to the NAACP?
Anyone could have predicted that. Conservatives are just 5 year ago leftists now
Our people should seriously respond by telling Brooks to do exactly what I laid out. Brooks is certainly wealthy enough to retire, and the Israeli government would literally pay his moving expenses.
And if he seriously believes that YT has to pay up, he can make no better endorsement than by doing it himself without state action. And this could inspire every other cuckservative. National Review can pay reparations by giving blacks 13% of the positions. Bill Kristol can spend Omidyar’s money on the hitherto unheard of black neocons, of which John McWhorter was previously the only one.
I don’t take anyone’s request for generosity of any sort to be principled, until they give away their wealth and accumulations in similar fashion. Not a little off the top that changes nothing in their lives, but deep and meaningful giving that impoverishes the giver. Then I will take them seriously.
Certainly Brooks could go teach in a public high school.
In five-ten years, we’ll be getting “The Conservative Case for White Genocide” . Bet on it.
I’m waiting for “The Conservative Case Against Conservatism”!
Maybe I’ll write that one myself.
There are few better examples of a working welfare state than Sweden.
In the late 19th. century, they were the poorest country in Europe, with actual famine a regular occurrence. There are Swedes alive today whose parents have experienced real poverty and hunger, the sort of no-shoes, stone-soup kind of poverty.
But the sons and daughters of those starving, hardscrabble farmers grew up to be engineers, lawyers and doctors, thanks to the Swedish “People-Home”, and in three generations, they went from the poorest country in Europe to the richest.
As a measure of how far Sweden has come, the most illustrative example is that they managed to build a domestic nuclear power program out of a nation of seven million people – something only countries ten times their size are capable of. It is thanks to this growth miracle, that the Social Democrats have been in power for more than seventy out of the last hundred years.
So if you ever wonder, why the Swedes are so submissive to government, it’s because Big Government – or powerful government, at any rate – has worked really well for them, up until recently.
The Swedes consider themselves, above all else, rational. They elect the best (Social Democrat) leader they can find, and then let him get on with the leading in a scientific and rational manner.
But now the Social Democrats have betrayed them, and there’s no plan B: they elected the best man their system could produce, and he failed.
Did you once post a very similar comment on Taki’s before Mandolyna shoa’d the comment section?
If that was you, thanks. It was a great starting point for some very informative reading on a topic about which I’d been totally ignorant.
Most likely, yes. I was a regular at Taki, Sweden was a recurring subject there, and I believe I was the only Scandi in the Takitariat.
And thanks for the complimentary feedback.
My guess is plan B will be in the form of some kind of quiet reparation while retaining the Social Democratic system . Norway is already going down this route
Most of the Swedish, heck most of the Dissident European Right shares these views as well though Sweden apparently has soft Neo Liberals as well in the form of the #2 party The New Moderates
However consensus is glacial at the best of times and most Swedes haven’t really been impacted enough for them to take the leap to untested parties like the Swedish Democrats
Regardless and despite a massive propaganda campaign against them the Swedish Democrats have managed 3rd in size pushing into second. No one will caucus with them, yet but again this is subject to change.
I’ll note also the 12% of the Swedish Democrats votes come from immigrants tired of crime and probably immigration. Those folks know they have something good and want to keep it
A big part of the success of Scandinavian socialism is, that it wasn’t really a socialist system, it was capitalism with heavy taxation of labor and lots of freebies. The non-government Industry was lightly taxed and regulated, especially in Sweden.
As the saying goes, Swedes hate capitalism, but love big corporations.
No system in the past ever truly really was “socialist”. Next time they’ll get it right, though.
True, but Sweden – the part of the economy that wasn’t state owned – was less socialist than most of Europe. In the sixties and seventies, Britain was East Germany compared to Sweden.
There are several reasons – as Zman explains in his podcast – why Sweden was a success, and to a large extend still is, but the light touch on industry regulation was a central one, and one most often overlooked by BernieBro-types.
And dare I say it ? They were all Swedes. There was no gorgeous mosaic of diversity. Until now.
Yes, of course. Zman mentions this in his podcast.
A major part of the success was culture. Look at the societies that eventually gave birth to the Nordic nations. They had evolved customs for sharing scarce public resources and regulating plentiful public resources. Agricultural output and forest products were essentially common goods. Fisheries were protected communally, but otherwise individuals were free to exploit them. That unique form of Scandinavian socialism that evolved in the industrial age was an outgrowth of that earlier culture.
Again, it can only work in a homogeneous society.
While the forests were – and largely still are – communally owned in Sweden and Norway, agricultural output was definitely not common goods.
Private land ownership extended to virtually all of minuscule Denmark at least back to the 16th c., and the few commons we had, were strictly regulated by the church, down to the amount of driftwood and reeds each person was allowed to collect.
What was, from the late 19th, communally owned as co-ops in Denmark, was some agricultural infrastructure like diaries, mills, breweries and machine stations. This happened after Denmark lost a third of her territory to Germany in 1864. Under the slogan “What outward is lost shall inward be won”, Denmark went through a number of communally oriented reforms in agriculture, education and religion, which are still the backbone of Danish society and culture today.
All this to say that the communal ethos in Scandinavia is a relatively new thing, 150 years at most. It certainly does not, as some Scandi-romanticists will have you believe, extend back to Viking times.
I’m thinking further back, like 9th and 10th century. The Norse did a lot of resource sharing out of necessity. Even the proceeds from raiding were shared. It strikes me that the Nordic people have a much longer and deeper understanding of resource sharing, so they are more comfortable with it, relative to Americans.
That might be true, but the current collectivist mindset is not an extension of Viking era culture, rather than a modern one prompted by socialist influences. In Sweden, it was the welfare state as a national, popular project, in Denmark, it was co-op businesses.
For most of its history, Scandinavia has had a mainstream Christian culture, and there’s a 700-year gap between the demise of the Vikings and the rise of the welfare state, filled with feudalism, monarchic absolutism and monarchic military dictatorship. Sweden, especially, had a very harsh feudal system not much different from Russia’s.
There’s a tradition for some communal decision-making on the village-level, but that’s not particular to Scandinavia.
”Sweden, especially, had a very harsh feudal system not much different from Russia’s.”
Well, that’s just nonsense. Serfdom never existed in Sweden. Or to be more accurate, it never existed in Sweden proper or in Finland, which had been part of Sweden since the middle ages. It probably existed in territories that were conquered by Sweden during the 17th century. Nevertheless, in Sweden and Finland the peasants always remained free of bondage.
Nobility, of course, had privileges, and especially in the 17th century, when Sweden was almost constantly at war, the peasants were surely taxed harshly. But at least they weren’t serfs. When Finland was conquered and annexed by Russia during the Napoleonic wars, the biggest fears of Finns were that 1) Russians would force Finns to convert from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity, and 2) that Finnish peasants would be made serfs. Fortunately, neither of those things happened.
Land owning in Sweden was based on the medieval open-field system until the 18th century, when it was finally deemed economically too inefficient and replaced by individual farms. In this system the peasants owned and farmed the fields together, and each family had it’s own narrow strip in every field. The open-field system was very communal in nature, but similar system was used all over Europe, so there was nothing peculiar to Nordic countries in it.
What was peculiar to Sweden, Finland and Norway was that forests were basically communal property for a long time, and you could use them to get food and other resources within reasonable limits. The ”everyman’s right” or ”freedom to roam” is based on these ancient customs. However, in Denmark, which was always more densely populated, similar customs didn’t exist or at least weren’t as broad.
Nobility, of course, had privileges, and especially in the 17th century, when Sweden was almost constantly at war, the peasants were surely taxed harshly. But at least they weren’t serfs.
Well, we disagree on that. During the heyday of Swedish imperialism, the king would tax villages in the form of soldiers: it doesn’t get more serfy than that, and hence my comparison to Russia.
I am aware that a lot of people – historians, even – believe differently, but I’ve never had an actual explanation why. Perhaps the nobility didn’t technically owe allegiance to the king or something, maybe the peasant were taxed rather than conscripted for forced labor, but anyhow the nobility could enforce arbitrary laws on their peasants, as long as those laws didn’t conflict with canonical law. I don’t see much of a practical difference from feudalism.
I suspect it’s Swedish national propaganda.
Land owning in Sweden was based on the medieval open-field system until the 18th century
I don’t know how an open-field system is pertinent to serfdom, but reading the wiki, it says that the system was ubiquitous throughout Europe and Turkey, so it’s hardly incompatible.
”I don’t know how an open-field system is pertinent to serfdom, but reading the wiki, it says that the system was ubiquitous throughout Europe and Turkey, so it’s hardly incompatible.”
Indeed, it’s not pertinent to serfdom at all. Open-field system has been practiced both under serfdom and among free peasants. For example once the Russian serfs were liberated, they still continued to cultivate the land under the same open-field system.
It was a reference to Z-man’s claim, that back in the day agricultural output and forest products were essentially common goods. No, the agricultural output really wasn’t, but the way the peasants cultivated their land for a long time was very communal in nature. However, there was nothing special in that, similar system was practiced all over Europe, so it hardly explains why Nordic countries have a relatively collectivist culture today.
”During the heyday of Swedish imperialism, the king would tax villages in the form of soldiers: it doesn’t get more serfy than that, and hence my comparison to Russia.”
Yes, the Swedish kings sure exploited their population to the fullest to fight their constant wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. But while sending huge amounts of your own soldiers to the meat grinder may be morally reprehensible, it’s not serfdom. A serf simply means a peasant, who is tied to the land.
English term for this recruitment practice you are referring to seems to be allotment system. It was sort of like a primitive form of conscription. It was practiced in Sweden until the early 1900s, and also for a short while in Finland in the 19th century, when the country was part of Russia. If forcing people to serve in the army is serfdom, isn’t a conscription army then also serfdom? Were almost all the men who fought in the world wars serfs? Am I a serf, since I had to go to the Finnish army?
Words have meaning, and using the term ”serfdom” to describe something else is a bit like the blue hair brigade calling anything they don’t happen to like ”fascism”.
A serf simply means a peasant, who is tied to the land.
I see. I suppose that makes sense.
The subject is somewhat out of my comfort zone, I admit. I took serfdom to be understood as a feudal thing, the king serves under god, the nobleman owes service to the king, and the serf to his lord, each suzerain holding temporal power over his subjects.
the way the peasants cultivated their land for a long time was very communal in nature
How is that? They each cultivated their own little strip.
The closest thing to communal farming I’ve come across in 16th and 17th c. Danish history, is that local the magistrate/priest decided which fields were to be harvested first. The whole village would then, collectively, harvest one field at a time.
English term for this recruitment practice you are referring to seems to be allotment system.
Just so. Communal conscription, if you will.
Am I a serf, since I had to go to the Finnish army?
No, because the army paid you. The soldiers of Charles XII served as a form of taxation, much like in a feudal system, where you were obliged to serve a certain number of days per year.
”How is that? They each cultivated their own little strip.”
Yes, all the families had their own strips and they got the harvest from those strips. But since those strips were on same fields, all the decisions about how to farm those fields had to be made at the village level, all the work on the fields had to be made at the same time and so on. This probably led to those peasant villages being very tightly knit communities, but it left very little room for individual decision making and experimentation.
When the land was redistributed in such a manner that each family got their own field, agricultural output increased because now the smartest and most hard working peasants had an incentive to put their talents to use. This kind of land reform was far from uncontroversial however. Many peasants felt it was a threat to their traditional way of life, and had to be coerced by the state to accept the new system. And they were not wrong, it did change the society in a significant way.
It’s a great example of how there are no perfect solutions, and even necessary changes have negative aspects. Getting rid of the old system of farming and replacing it with independent farms created the agricultural surpluses that made the industrial revolution possible, but it also caused a great deal of social disruption.
And if the problem back in the day was that too much collectivism hindered economic and technological development, nowadays we have the problem that too much individualism leads to the atomization of society. There are trade-offs in both making society more collectivist and making it more individualistic.
Goal of the genuine political right should be balancing these kinds of trade-offs, and when changing the way society works is necessary, to make sure that the new way is compatible with human nature, and that the transition to it happens gradually and causes as little social disruption as possible.
The recent debate about self driving cars is a very tangible example of this. Yes, eventually we are probably going to have self driving cars. But while that transition happens, we better make sure it happens in a way that millions of people don’t suddenly lose their jobs. It almost seems like for the market fundamentalists like that irritating little prick Shapiro destroying the way people live is a goal in itself.
”No, because the army paid you. The soldiers of Charles XII served as a form of taxation, much like in a feudal system, where you were obliged to serve a certain number of days per year.”
Not really. You get a daily allowance or whatever it’s called in English, but that’s only few euros a day. It’s enough to buy you a cup of coffee and a donut in the canteen. It gets a bit higher the longer you serve, but at most you get few hundred euros a month. It’s in no way comparable to a real salary.
So yes, conscription is a way of taxation just as the old allotment system was. For example, on paper the Finnish defence budget is usually less than 1,5 % of GDP, but when you count in the value of labour that is lost when you send most of your young men to the army (the compulsory service is either six, nine or twelve months), the real defence spending is more like 2,5–3,5 % of GDP.
It’s also one of the reasons why I very much support having a large conscription army, even though most European countries have abandoned it. When large part of your defence spending is hidden in this way, the lefties cannot cut it when they are in power.
I see. Interesting. Danish conscripts don’t get rich, but they get what amounts to a salary.
Still, you could’ve claimed conscious objector status (I assume) but yes, in a sense, I’d call conscription serfdom. Taxation too, for that matter.
It relates to the theme of this blog: you need to hand some of your freedom over to the collective, if you want to have a collective at all.
It’s also one of the reasons why I very much support having a large conscription army, even though most European countries have abandoned it. When large part of your defence spending is hidden in this way, the lefties cannot cut it when they are in power.
Yes. And conscription is a great vehicle for cultural cohesion. They should put everyone through nine months of boot camp, just so you got to meet and work with people from different walks of life.
Also, they should keep the girls out, they could go play nurse or something. Few modern men get to experience male bonding without women present, that’s why they’re such pussies.
Yes, I’ve read that conscripts in Danish army get actually paid unlike here. But isn’t that because the army recruits only a portion of every age group, so those who volunteer to join the army have to have some economic incentive to do so?
In Finland your options are 1) go to the army like normal men do 2) go to civilian service instead, which means working free for the government for 13 months, and as a bonus you get called a coward pussy faggot; also, if a war breaks out, you’ll get sent to the front anyway after few weeks of rudimentary training, so you’ll probably die very quickly 3) claim to be a conscientious objector and get thrown to prison 4) pretend to be crazy at the doctor’s inspection.
The reason why I object using the term ”serfdom” in a metaphorical sense to describe conscription is, that ”serfdom” implies that you are property of someone else. Both a serf and a conscript are forced to do something, but a serf is forced to do something, i.e. work at his master’s fields, because he belongs to his master, whereas a conscript is forced to do something, i.e. run around in a forest and learn to shoot russkies, because it’s his duty as part of a national community, not because he is property of the state.
America was founded by tax cheats, traitors and criminals at least from the British point of view
Later immigrants basically had nothing in common and were often the bottom of the barrel, surplus populations who could barely turn a dime. The rest were grifters looking for a score
A big enough rural enough country can handle that but a developed one cannot and its made worse by adding in the same kind of people from non European nations
You really shouldn’t make a country from those people and had the Founding Fathers been truly smart they’d have prohibited slavery and non British immigration
They did not for a lot of reasons, many good and so we got what we got
The only reason the Baby Boom economy was so good is a near monopoly on production and a high demand for labor with jobs that paid decently with modest education and we have a limited information
We don’t have that and as such won’t have an economy like that
If we had no immigration and another few years of Roosevelt we’d have gone the Social Democratic route same as Europe which again sans immigration would buy a bit of time
We didn’t though and we’ve guaranteed a structural collapse if not a civil war.
We simply can’t make it work as we don’t get along well enough the Scandinavian and other European models won’t work for us even if we were vastly more White
As it is we’ll get the Latin American model until things go boom. At that point China floods the US with more arms and fentanyl sits back and watches the US die.
Interesting perspective on the unflattering “tax cheats” characterization of the founding motive: friend and acknowledged SME on aspects of America’s founding is rekindling discussion of religious war as true nature of the break. Apparently there was wide discussion and acceptance among scholars and popular support for this until it was successfully dethroned by those seeking to build a new narrative. Last major work advancing this was published circa ‘62, just in time to be buried by new, aggressive, and ascendent anti-American academy. Tax cheats so much better fit their story line … greedy capitalists and all that motivated by plunder.
In this older explication, cause was traced to colonial anger over British plans to field Anglican bishops amongst the colonials. Locals saw this as a threat to religious institutions, affiliations and practices around which their communities were built.
Colonials rejected the concept, a pamphlet war ensued and a strong push for religious freedom began, which quickly crossed over into political freedom.
Sure, they may have objected to the (as I understand it relatively minor) increase in tax burden. But what was held was that they were furious about the coopting of their religious life by Anglican authorities, who came complete with some degree of civil authority. See Reverand James Caldwell.
So perhaps it wasn’t just a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing merchants who founded this place after all. That, of course, would not lend the proper color to the narrative so firmly espoused by our internal detractors — America as essentially and unfailingly evil.
I would agree, though, that many follow-on actions were poorly thought out, and have poisoned this experiment in citizen self-govt.
I suspect that there were a lot of real grievances on the side of the Founders. Some valid, some not.
As noted above the Tax Cheats was the British prospective not the Colonists one
Religious motivations certainly played in as did quartering and a host of other things .
Its a rather complex thing though I stand by my notion that a nation with too many non cooperators can handle development after a certain point and beyond adding clannish White people , who at least somewhat assimilated, we have other groups that basically do not wish too.
I’d argue that the Nordic bloc had managed to avoid shredding their populations in the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century and the mid century revolutionary revanchist movement of Red Republicans, and then managed to avoid participating at all in round one, and minimally in round two in the bloodbaths of 1914-1945. (the hand of German occupation was deliberately lighter to the “racial kindred”) By being lightly populated, relatively unimportant and inoffensive, the Nords could develop without the deeply traumatic episodes that fueled the bloody minded radicalism of their neighbors.
This is key. As far as I can tell, Sweden has not been involved in a real war in a real way since the 17th century.
”This is key.”
No, it’s not. Lack of war hardly explains why the Nordic countries are the way they are today.
Sweden has indeed enjoyed peace for a long time (though not for as long as Vegetius thinks). Last war that Sweden participated in was the Finnish War in 1808–09, in which Sweden lost Finland to Russia. That was, by the way, part of the Napoleonic wars. However, during the preceding two centuries Sweden fought plenty of wars that caused horrific casualties. During the 17th century 1/3 of Finnish men died in wars waged by Swedish kings. The Great Northern war in 1700–1721 killed about tenth of the population of Sweden.
During the Second World War Denmark didn’t suffer that much, but the Norwegians weren’t quite as lucky. While the actual fighting lasted only for few months and the occupation was lenient compared to the unmitigated barbarism that was going on at the occupied territories in Eastern Europe, Norway nevertheless lost 0,35 % of its population during the war. Doesn’t sound much? United States lost 0,32 % of its population during the war. I bet no American goes to Normandy, sees the sea of crosses and says, nah, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Of the Nordic countries Finland suffered the most because of war during the last century. First there was the short but bloody and bitter civil war in 1918, in which approximately 1 % of the population died. And yes, it was an extremely traumatic episode and caused deep rifts in the society that took decades to heal. During the Second World War Finland fought against the Russians and lost 2.30 to 2.57 % of its population. The economic burden caused by the war was also huge for such a poor country.
So the experiences of the Nordic countries regarding war during the last two hundred years have been very different. Swedes and Danes were pretty lucky, Norwegians less so, and Finns suffered heavily. Yet today they are very similar societies. Or at least they were until the 90s, when Swedes began committing national suicide in earnest.
I suspect the Swedes in charge didn’t treat the socialist elements of their system as a license to skim a bunch off the top for their own personal use. Everyone probably knew everyone else, more or less, and skimming would have been cobsidered stealing from your friends and neighbors. Our “gibs” culture is simply scooping what you can out of the big anonymous money pot, so a lot of that goes on, without shame.
The use of the word Socialist is a misnomer caused by the language barrier.
Socialism over there is what we call Communism and no one thinks that works. They’d call what they have Social Democracy , Folkhemmet (the Middle Way) a Mixed Economy or anything else.
Americans idiotically use the term Socialism for that and worse do to political conditioning assume Social Democracy can’t work even though the US has had a form of it since the 30’s and for the most part it was far more stable than the 19th Century Lassiez Faire . It works very well.
What kills such systems is immigration for the most part and automation though female entry into the workforce is none to good either.
Right now the #1 issue is immigration which lowers wages and increases demands on services which is not good . Repatriate 40 million to buy time and social comity
The thing is societies in general have a cap on how much they can raise and spend in taxes and how honest the systems distribution is. Sweden? High Tax, High honesty. The US ? Not so much
Ironically the US welfare system is among the least corrupt bodies here compared to defense and pork and Social Security is very efficient
Basically we can’t tax enough and have too much demand for revenue and services
The worst part is automation will make it much much worse and if we don’t basically ban a lot of uses like self driving trucks and kiosks, this will rapidly caused the US economy to die from lack of wages
Peter Yang’s Basic Income proposal is typical for Silicon Valley types, way out of touch. It can’t happen since the US cannot support the tax base and minting the money will just cause inflation. So you give everyone a grand a month, housing goes up $800 than comes cost controls and so on.
It can’t work here.
Worse if it did, its going to have the effect of suppressing fertility further and increasing the out of wedlock rates
Its amusingly a classic Marxist problem, alienation from the means of production . The solution is basically a guild/union system with rather heavy regulation , things like 28 hour work weeks and more. That’s incredibly inefficient but inefficiency is consumption as a perfectly efficiency economy has no workers and thus no means to allocate goods
Long term its going to be solved as the US will no longer be an industrial society in a couple of centuries maybe sooner and will have a much smaller population
I’d guess it will revert to a more agrarian one with subsistence and family farms and ruined cities . Not post apocalyptic , that’s one bang but post catablic collapse
A big part of the success of Scandinavian socialism is, Their ancestors successfully compete with other European at Belle Epoque
All Their Wealth came from Old Age where European still dominate earth
Scandinavian socialism actually begins 1930s when those times ended and Financial inheritance left behind
it’s nothing to do about Modern Swedish or unique high trust culture
it’s just part of helping prolong old system much longer
unfortunately heirs soon learn what’s mean about can’t be paid as economic terms