Stocks of sectors and flow chart of money, energy, and materials of a Stock-Flow Consistent Input–Output Model. Matthew Berg, Brian Hartley, Oliver Richters. CC BY 3.0.

Model Thinking

13 Feb 202416 Oct 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Minimising surprise

A model is a simplified representation of reality, not reality itself. For example, a map is not the territory itself. The same goes for our language. The word tree is not a tree. Now, if there is a tree on the map, it says little about the scenery, except that there is probably a tree at the location designated by the map. What we think of as reality is also a model. Our brain doesn’t register reality itself but merely processes it. The outside world generates inputs via our senses, such as seeing, hearing, and touching, which the brain integrates with our memories and emotions. It is what we call consciousness. What we experience as reality is a model. A dog experiences that same reality very differently, and the dog’s experience centres more around smell. We may see a couch and notice its colour, while a dog smells that a cat has been lying on it recently.

The brain generates our perception of reality, and our consciousness is an integrated experience shaped by that brain, informed by its own expectations and the senses. The brain works with an expectation and adapts it when the senses disagree. We imagine reality, and correct it if contradicting information emerges. It is efficient because it greatly reduces the need for information processing. The brain aims to minimise surprise by having the best possible representation of reality. If our brain fails, for instance, when we are sleep-deprived, the world begins to look unreal. And so, intense stress can cause psychosis. During dreaming, the integrated experience of consciousness remains active, except that the information may not come from the senses but from the brain itself.

We employ models of reality to explain the world. Together, they form our worldview. We try to minimise surprises because we depend on our worldview to survive. Models are imaginations. We may believe that X causes Y because after X occurs, Y happens. We infer our models of reality from our observations and thoughts, as well as those of others. Scientific models are more formal and, if the scientific method is properly applied, have passed some formal checks. Models have a wide array of uses, including weather and economic models. Using multiple models can help us to reduce surprise, because different models have different strengths and weaknesses. It is, however, crucial to understand that models are not true or false but aim to minimise surprise. And that is because we cannot know the truth. Yet, we can minimise surprise, which helps us to survive.

Your model of reality may say that all swans are white, perhaps because you base it on the swans you have seen. Once you see a black one, you may change your view to minimise future surprises. That seems a rather straightforward case. You can also reduce surprise by ignoring evidence, as we have trouble handling complexity and contradictions. We may also do that because we are group animals who cooperate and survive based on shared fantasies. Faced with an unknown future and an uncertain role, my aim in conducting research was also to minimise future surprises by looking for evidence that contradicted my views and seeking better explanations, so that my guidance would at least be in the right direction. That is already ambitious.

Often, I wrote down my views on relevant subjects. Every time new information came to light, I adapted my texts accordingly. The more accurate the direction is, the more straightforward the execution becomes. It made me focus on demonstrating that this universe is a virtual reality, that God is an artificial intelligence that may present itself as a woman, that we can have a global usury-free financial system, and that we need to socially engineer the future world society to be the most socially advanced. That requires fine-tuning, but if the direction is incorrect, we will end up in the wrong place. And so, this model of reality has undergone over 17 years of work, with numerous revisions, and is far from complete. As minimising surprise seems essential for our survival, this supports the case for simplicity and stability. This finding is a crucial element in my model of reality.

Limitations of simplicity

Proverbs state contradictory things. One proverb says that two heads are better than one, while another says that too many cooks spoil the broth. How can both be right at the same time? In this case, the answer is that there is an optimal number of people working on a project. It is a simplistic view, but these proverbs were drawn up in a time when life was simple and predictable, so that they worked better then. Today, building teams has become an expert affair. The qualities of the individuals working on the project also matter, as do the available tools and countless other factors. It can be hard to get it right. Headcount is just one of many variables you need to manage if you run a business or a government. If you decide on these matters, you don’t open up a book with proverbs for guidance. Life has become complex and unpredictable.

A one-dimensional spectrum, so a line, with two opposites, ranging from one participant to a large number, can make you fail to see the solution. Perhaps it lies outside that line, so this way of thinking keeps us from seeing it. Maybe the project isn’t worth undertaking in the first place, or perhaps success depends on the right tools. The number of people working on the project may still matter, so you have to consider that also. The debate about capitalism versus socialism has dragged on for over a century and has dominated world politics during the Cold War. So, do we need more or less state interference in markets? Yet, markets and states don’t create agreeable societies on their own.

That is also why economic models include multiple variables, such as employment, inflation, consumption, business investment, and government spending. You can add more, such as workforce education, market flexibility, foreign competition, and regulations. There are countless variables to consider. If you have identified variables, you need data to estimate their impact. The available economic data is usually insufficient to achieve certainty, as changes can have multiple causes. How do you know that some other variable didn’t interfere with the outcome? Despite all the models central banks used, they didn’t foresee the 2008 financial crisis. Models can fail, and often do. Are they wrong? The financial models did get countless other things right, but missing one crucial variable can already produce an epic surprise. Chaos theory might explain why.

Here we run into the issue of planning errors. We make our plans based on the available information and our models of reality that give that information meaning. We all plan because we must make important decisions, like investments which tie us up for a long period. If you own a business, you must recoup your investments. Otherwise, you will go bankrupt. Yet that may take years, and conditions may change, such as costs, consumer preferences, or regulations. You have to adapt your plans along the way. Still, some investments may turn out worthless. We all plan for futures that don’t materialise. You may buy a home with your spouse, and then you divorce because something unexpected happened, such as infidelity. It is also the problem with models. Surprises remain.

Still, models can be helpful. The more models we use, the more surprises we can eliminate, but even then, we may still miss something crucial. Our minds have constraints. We often take a perspective and reason from there. A socialist economist might be good at pinpointing why capitalism fails but may not see what is wrong with socialism. Economic theories explain specific phenomena under certain conditions. You might find additional explanations in psychology, sociology, or even history. You might want to check your ideas before trying. You can run the idea through several economic theories. That might give new insights. You can’t be sure you are right, but models help you eliminate errors.

That was also my approach to designing a usury-free financial system. Natural Money draws on economic theory, monetary economics, banking, psychology, and history. There was not much to go on, so I reviewed that idea using existing theories and historical evidence to investigate how it might work in practice. During a real-life experiment, unforeseen issues came to light. Once interest rates in Europe fell below zero, resistance to negative interest rates emerged. Savers are irrational. They prefer 2% interest and 10% inflation over -2% and 0% inflation, it turned out. That is normal human behaviour, so humans are not, as standard economics may suggest, rationally calculating individuals.

We measure our gains and losses in currency units rather than purchasing power. And behavioural economics says we give more weight to losses than gains. It is why inflation and money printing meet little resistance, while negative interest rates make people go berserk. A 4% loss in interest income impresses us more than the 10% reduction in inflation because we count our money units. Emotions can be intense and lead us to act irrationally. It is pointless to try to convince savers that they are better off by appealing to their rational thinking, which was obviously absent. Once that became apparent, I could look for a fix by making negative interest rates appear as inflation.

Insights models give

The use of models yields fewer surprises than uneducated guesses, and combining several models yields fewer unexpected outcomes than using a single model. Models tie us to a mast of logic so that we are not carried away by our thoughts and can figure out which ideas are useful to us under what circumstances. Using data, we can calibrate our models, so if our model is wrong, we can investigate why and correct the error. Scientific disciplines such as economics, sociology, linguistics, and biology use models. According to a leading expert on the matter, Scott Page, models share the following characteristics:

They simplify by omitting irrelevant details and focusing on the essentials. Models abstract from reality.
They formalise by making precise definitions and providing a framework for logical thinking to explain and predict.
They are somewhat wrong because they simplify and omit details. Using multiple models can reduce errors arising from that.

Weather models make calculations, such as predicting that the maximum temperature in Amsterdam will be 26°C in 8 days. That is a precise calculation, but it is likely inaccurate. Yet, most likely, the temperature will be between 22°C and 30°C. Weather forecasters use up to fifty models to reduce surprise outcomes. The average of these models is more reliable than the individual models. People who use a single model do poorly at predicting. They may be correct occasionally, just like a clock that has stopped is sometimes accurate, and then tout their few successes while forgetting about their impressive list of epic failures. Experts know that their models have limitations. When constructing a model, we can choose from the following approaches:

Aiming for realism by describing relevant parts and relationships. Climate models work with CO2 levels and their effects on temperatures.
Using an analogy by describing a process as similar to another. You can compare the ruinous growth of human activities with a cancer.
Exploring possibilities if limits change. You can explore what will happen when unlimited energy becomes available at no cost.

When devising a plan for humanity that lasts a thousand years or more, numbers and mathematics become meaningless, and we have to do it with words. We can’t measure culture, but it is a central ingredient in human conduct. And still, we must try to pin down things by modelling humans to predict what we can do and how it might work. And then we must get it right for eternity. That forces us to dig deeper even. We then arrive at observations like religion can save us because humans are imaginative creatures who cooperate based on myths. This is a precise and meaningful statement without any mathematics. Still, it has seen no failures in the entire history of humankind. And so, it might help us when working on a plan for the future.

Two examples from Scott Page’s Model Thinking course on Coursera illustrate the use of models. They investigate why people of the same ethnicity often live together, and why revolutions are difficult to predict.

Sorting and peer effects

Groups of people who hang out together tend to look alike, think alike and act alike. If you look at the map of Detroit, you see people of the same ethnicity living together. Blue dots represent black people, and red dots represent white people. We can’t change our skin colour, so if we hang around with people who look like us, that is sorting. We also adapt our behaviour to match that of others around us. When you hang around with smokers, you may start smoking too. Alternatively, if you hang out with people who don’t smoke, you might quit smoking. That is the peer effect. Both sorting and peer effects create groups of similar people who hang out with each other. Models can help us understand how these processes work by modelling them.¹

Schelling’s segregation model offers insight into the segregation process. It says nothing about why people move. That we seek out people who are like us is an observation. Why would people move? That is an interesting question, most notably if it points to problems. If we believe that skin colour shouldn’t matter, then why does it matter? Maybe income plays a role. Yet, the model doesn’t say anything about that. So, that is a limitation. Schelling developed a model in which individuals follow simple rules. Suppose income is the segregation criterion, and that everyone lives in a block with eight neighbours. Red boxes represent homes where rich people live, and grey boxes are homes where poor people dwell. The blank box is an empty home. Assume now that everyone has a threshold of similar people who will make them stay.

A wealthy individual might stay as long as at least 30% of his neighbours are rich. Assume a rich person lives at X. In this case, three out of seven or 43%, of the neighbours are rich, like the person living at X. If one of the wealthy neighbours moves out, and a poor person takes that place, 29% of the neighbours will be rich, and the person living at X will move.

A computer can simulate how that works out over time. Assume there are 2,000 people. Of them, 1,000 are poor, represented by yellow dots, and 1,000 are rich, represented by blue dots, while black spots are vacant homes. Suppose that rich and poor people are randomly distributed at the start, and everyone wants to live among at least 30% similar people. In that case, the average is 50% alike, and only 16% are unhappy because less than 30% of their neighbours are alike. As a result, the unhappy people start moving. Yet their relocation makes some others unhappy, as the number of similar people falls below the threshold. And so, relocations continue until everyone is happy, and you end up with an average similarity of 72%.

Even when everyone likes to live in a diverse neighbourhood where only 30% of their neighbours are like them, segregation occurs. Segregation may not be the intention of the individuals involved, as they might be tolerant people requiring only a minority of similar people living in their neighbourhood.¹ Whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen, and the issue is not always intolerance. It can also be conduct. Now, wealthy people may not like scoulding and men drinking beer in the front garden. But if the assumption is correct, and if we believe segregation is undesirable, socially engineering the ethnic or wealth characteristics of neighbourhoods by mixing homes for different income groups makes sense. Some countries plan neighbourhoods that way to prevent the emergence of ghettos without economic opportunities.

Peer effects cause people to act alike. Contagious phenomena are peer effects. They often start suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In uprisings and revolutions, extremists frequently determine the course of events, as seen in the American, French, Bolshevik, and Maidan revolutions. History could have proceeded differently. It is difficult to predict revolutions. Usually, a revolution requires widespread discontent. Yet reasonable people don’t storm buildings and set them on fire. And so, the question remains: when do extremists get the upper hand? The answer is that we can’t predict it.

Granovetter’s model offers possible insight into why that is so. Suppose there is a group of individuals. Each individual has a threshold for participating in an event like an uprising and will join if at least a specific number of others join. If your threshold is 0, you do it anyway. If your threshold is 50, you start if you see 50 participants. The outcome varies depending on the thresholds of other people who might get involved.

Suppose there are five individuals, and the behaviour is wearing a suit. One individual has a threshold of 0, one has a threshold of 1, and three have a threshold of 2. The following will happen: one extremist starts wearing a suit because her threshold is 0. The second individual joins because his threshold is 1. Then, the three remaining individuals join in because their threshold is 2.

If the thresholds had been 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, nobody would have worn a suit despite the group, on average, being more open to the idea. If the thresholds had been 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, everyone would have worn a suit after five turns, even though the group, on average, was less keen to do so. And so, the model suggests that revolutions come by surprise. And so, it should not surprise us that they do. Otherwise, we might end up surprised, and to achieve that outcome, we might as well have employed no model at all.

Peer effects cause people to act alike. Contagious phenomena are peer effects. They may start suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In uprisings and revolutions, extremists often determine the course of events, as in the American, French, Bolshevik, and Maidan revolutions. Things could have proceeded differently. It is difficult to predict revolutions. Granovetter’s model might offer an insight into why that is so.¹

Yet what motivates people to join a movement greatly determines the thresholds, and the model offers no insight into it. Is it hardship? Is it beliefs? Is it political agitators? The British Tea Tax, which sparked the outrage that led the Americans to declare independence, was actually a good deal for the Americans, as it would lower tea prices. The Americans had a good life, only no influence on British policies. They didn’t suffer as the Russian labourers, soldiers and farmers who supported the Bolshevik Revolution did. Yet many risked life and limb for independence and ideals, such as the right to pursue happiness, in the American War of Independence.

Proof in the pudding

Do similar people hang out together because of sorting or the peer effect? That is the identification problem. Sometimes, it is clear. Segregation by race occurs through sorting, since you can’t change your skin colour. Other situations are less clear, and you can’t tell whether it is sorting or peer effects, since the outcomes are the same. Happy people hang out with each other, as do unhappy people. Both sorting and peer effects may have caused this.1 Happy people may seek each other’s company because they don’t like to hear the whining of unhappy people. That would be sorting. Alternatively, the company of happy people could make you happier. That would be a peer effect.

Models can provide insights as to why similar people hang out together and why revolutions are difficult to predict. Yet, they don’t tell the whole story. Other models help us investigate what might happen under which circumstances. Thus, models explore the dimensions of complex questions and help us identify the spots where the best solutions hang out. These best solutions tend to hang out in spots where humans don’t look. Models can assist us in finding them. If we intend to get people to contribute to a cause, we might want to model human behaviour to see how we can do that. We are conditioned into thinking in particular fixed patterns. Burdened by these patterns and hampered by limited imagination, I spent decades on the theory of Natural Money. At the same time, an artificial intelligence might have figured it out in a matter of seconds.

If we envision humans as rational beings, we may try to convince them with arguments to do the right thing. If we see humans as myth-believing creatures, an inspiring fairy tale about their country’s greatness can prompt them to act. If we think humans are calculating individuals, incentives and punishments can make them do the right thing. If we see humans as social animals seeking recognition, we might achieve the objective by telling them how great they are. And if you believe that money motivates people, bribing them might be an approach you may entertain. You may get the best results by employing a combined approach with multiple models. Not everyone is the same, so the effects of the listed approaches may vary per individual and cultural group.

Latest revision: 16 October 2026

Featured image: Sector stocks and a flowchart of money, energy, and materials in a Stock-Flow Consistent Input–Output Model. Matthew Berg, Brian Hartley, Oliver Richters. CC BY 3.0.

1. Model Thinking. Scott Page. Coursera (2014).

Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay on 14 July 1789.

Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood

24 Nov 202323 Oct 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Social struggle forever?

The motto of the French Revolution, based on the ideals of the European Enlightenment, was ‘Liberty, equality, and brotherhood.’ It means that we should all be free and equal, as brothers and sisters. That was a tad ambitious back then, and it still is today, because human nature is not particularly forthcoming. Values like liberty, equality, and brotherhood existed elsewhere, but developments in the West came to shape world history, making them the most worthy of investigation. The European Enlightenment turned these values into abstract ideals that apply to everyone. The French Revolution and the subsequent spread of Enlightenment ideas across Europe by French armies led by Napoleon prompted the German philosopher Hegel to formulate his dialectic of progress. That would be how God’s plan would operate, he figured. Yet there probably would have been no French Revolution had there not been an American Revolution a few years earlier. Well, talking about unforeseen consequences, let’s go out on a few limbs.

The Americans came to reject the English king’s authority. That proved an opportunity to base the brand-new country’s constitution on recently developed Enlightenment ideas, such as basing sovereignty on the people and holding that people are born equal and have unalienable rights, including the right to pursue happiness. These wonderful-sounding words also enthralled blacks, women, and natives, which was not what the property-owning American whites had in mind. Yet, once written down, the fairy tale began to inspire others, creating a lasting achievement that changed the world. The French soldiers, who had fought alongside the American revolutionaries, brought these ideals home. These ideas then motivated the French revolutionaries and, later, the Russian communists to overthrow and murder monarchs God had put in place. And so, the American Revolution became the spark that ignited a fire in Europe and, later, even in China, which became a republic after over 2,000 years as a monarchy.

As for the intentions of the American revolutionaries, they were not all that enlightened. George Washington, the first American president, wished to rob Native Americans of their lands, which the British were trying to prevent. Washington was a land speculator who had purchased that land even though the people living there hadn’t sold it. The settlers’ intentions were one reason many natives sided with the British. After America had won the War of Independence, Washington organised military campaigns to ethnically cleanse tribal lands, burning down villages of the native tribes, destroying their crops, and forcing them to relocate. And so, the Iroquois nicknamed him ‘Town Destroyer’.

It is not that Washington was destitute and had to feed his hungry children, as he was well-to-do. No, he was a man of ambition pursuing the American Dream. The Tea Tax, which sparked the outrage that led to the Declaration of Independence, was actually a good deal that would lower tea prices. But not paying taxes without having a representation in the British Parliament was at least one moral principle the unruly mobs could agree on. When drawing up the Constitution, the founding fathers were divided on several issues, such as the powers of the state, equal representation (so that all votes count equally), and slavery. The outcomes of the ensuing lawmaking process were compromises, resulting in a shaky Constitution that left the country with arcane curiosities like voter registration, gerrymandering, and the president not necessarily having the popular vote, and for a while, slavery in the South.

Many European thinkers saw these Enlightenment ideas as the way to social progress. Unlike the British, the French had an incompetent government. And unlike in Great Britain, the aristocracy didn’t pay taxes, so the tax burden fell on ordinary people, so the French had reason to complain. As a result, the Enlightenment ideas fell on fertile ground in France. After the French Revolution, Napoleon’s armies spread them throughout Europe. It is indeed a remarkable historical accident. Progress was in the air. Hegel then laid out the ideological conflict between progressives and conservatives that would dominate Western societies over the next two centuries. Better ideas would replace poorer ones in a competition that includes revolution and warfare, he prophesied.

One particular branch of progressivism was Marxism. Marx believed that the organisation of societies stems from unenlightened self-interest, thus our willingness to accept the myths of the elites and our unwillingness to accept the facts. At the time, intellectuals came to agree that much of the Bible was fiction. And Jesus still had not shown up after 1,800 years. Religion kept people dumb and obedient, Marx reasoned.

Christ taught that the meek would inherit the Earth. Marx taught that the meek should rise against their oppressors to achieve Paradise themselves. In the Soviet Union, communists started a state-run economy. In the West, socialists pressed for labour reforms and higher wages. Once workers in Western societies had come to live the good life, the Marxists moved on to liberate other oppressed groups. Critical Theory, also known as Cultural Marxism, examines and criticises society and culture using the social sciences and the humanities. The question remains: what is oppression and what is not? And if liberating requires repression, would the end still justify the means?

Max Horkheimer described Critical Theory as seeking to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. You can free yourself from thoughts such as the belief that your job or role in society is natural or divinely ordained. And you can free yourself and your group from another’s oppression. Critical Theory examines power structures, societal roles, cultures and their alternatives. You can ask yourself why most members of parliament are men. Is it culture, human nature, or power structures? Critical Theory leads to serious problems if it tries to liberate us from human nature. Still, culture influences our conduct, so there is room for change. Cultural attitudes affect the amount of sexual abuse. Still, it would be an illusion to think we can eradicate it. It will always be a man’s problem despite cultural influences. And Critical Theory can lead to a new power structure of opinion-makers who tell you what you should think.

The critical theorists suspect the existence of conspiracies of those in power to keep the oppression going, such as men in positions of power aiming to keep women out of positions of power. There is something like an old boys’ network. Men being in power have consequences for the rules in society. If men are in control, they make the rules and determine what constitutes acceptable conduct in relationships between men and women. Most complaints about improper behaviour come from women complaining about men. What men might consider harmless, women might see as intimidating. And so, women started the MeToo movement. Humans are genetically nearly identical, so differences in behaviour between groups are mostly cultural.

Conservatives object to Critical Theory, claiming it promotes divisions within society. They might claim the order is natural. Men should treat women right, but aren’t gender roles natural? And if you dress like that, should you complain about men making remarks? Do we need political correctness officers who tell us what we should and shouldn’t say? Why do we need a new language? Does replacing the word ‘alderman’ with ‘alderperson’ change anything for the better? What people believe is acceptable and reasonable changes over time, and that change often comes from activism. Women have fought for the right to vote. Now most people accept it. Social justice causes have helped to make societies more agreeable. Still, there is a limit to what we can achieve, and when order falls apart, civilisation will prove to be a thin veneer, and gone before we know it.

The long road to ending slavery

One noteworthy example of Hegelian progress is the end of slavery. It was a long struggle, as it took more than 1,000 years, at least if you reason from the Western perspective, and that is the most fruitful approach, as the West shaped the world. It involved political activism and war. Most ancient societies had classes like slaves, serfs, free men, nobility, and priests. We pursue social status, not only for ourselves but also for the groups we belong to. We divide societies into social classes, while conquerors often enslaved the conquered. It helps to explain why ending slavery took so long, or why raising blacks to equality with whites aroused strong negative sentiments among whites. And even when we are equal before the law, cultural differences can make us unequal in reality. In the past, most people considered slavery normal or natural, but our values and culture have changed. There were also entrenched interests within societies. Slave owners were usually wealthy and powerful. In 1860, they were the elite in the Southern United States.

One of the first efforts to end slavery and serfdom in Western Europe began in the 7^th century with Queen Balthild, a former slave, who forbade the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders. In 1102, the Council of London banned ‘the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals.’ Around 1220, the Sachsenspiegel, a German law code, condemned slavery as ‘a violation of man’s likeness to God.’ The argument for abolishing slavery was a Christian view on human dignity. There was also an economic reason. Cities provided economic opportunities, and serfs flocked to them, prompting lords to compete for labour. It made serfdom in Western Europe untenable.

By 1500 AD, slavery and serfdom were rare in Western Europe, but by then, slavery began to take off in the colonies. Christians could still enslave non-Christians. A similar historical process would unfold, officially ending slavery more than three centuries later. Shortly after 1500, Spain banned the slavery of Native Americans but allowed unpaid forced labour or corvée called Encomienda. It made the natives serfs on paper but slaves in practice as the corvée extended. The natives weren’t sturdy enough for hard physical labour and died of diseases brought by the Europeans.

European plantation owners needed a sturdier workforce. European traders brought them from Africa by boatloads, crammed them into cargo holds, and chained them, leaving little room to move, to maximise profits by efficient use of available space. Slavery was common in Africa. Tribespeople captured and enslaved members of other tribes. The European slave trade dramatically increased demand for slaves and made it a lucrative business, so hunting people for profit became commonplace in Africa. Unhygienic conditions, dehydration, dysentery, and scurvy caused one out of six to die during the voyage. Between 1526 and 1860, slave traders put an estimated 12.5 million Africans on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million survived the trip to the Americas.

The European slavery of Africans was chattel. The slaves, and also their children, were the property of their owners and had no rights. There are other forms of slavery, such as the slavery and serfdom that existed in Europe during the Middle Ages, in which slaves had rights and sometimes could own property. The same was true for most slavery in Africa before the Europeans arrived. The Mamluks in Egypt bought enslaved boys from abroad, raised them as Muslims, and let them work in the military.

Yet, these other forms of slavery were brutal as well, and the difference with chattel slavery could be negligible. In the era of the Atlantic slave trade, North African Muslim pirates captured and enslaved over 1 million Europeans by raiding coasts and ships. They came as far as England. Europeans bought some of them back for ransom, but the others had miserable lives. The Arab slave trade, which lasted 13 centuries, involved over 17 million people. In the Saharan region alone, more than 9 million African captives were deported, and two million died on the roads. For the individual slave, the owner’s character mattered most for the living conditions.

The Europeans didn’t see African slaves as humans, but as cargo. On 1 January 1738, the Dutch slave ship De Leusden sank near the coast of Suriname. Over 600 Africans died because the crew had boarded up the hatches on the orders of the captain, thus not even allowing them to swim for their lives. Yet, in Europe, the mood began to change, and more people came to oppose slavery. In his diaries published in The Voyage Of The Beagle, Charles Darwin wrote that slaves would regularly receive beatings and torture for insignificant offences, mistakes or for no reason at all. When Darwin wrote these notes, public opinion in Great Britain was shifting, and Britain was about to abolish slavery in its colonies. There was also an economic reason. The Industrial Revolution had taken off, and the British economy no longer depended as much on slave labour as it had in the past.

History of blacks in the United States

The abolition of slavery became the central issue in the 1860-1865 US Civil War. The Northern states had abolished slavery soon after the American Revolution. Their economies didn’t depend on slave labour. That was different in the South. The invention of the cotton gin turned into a boon to the cotton industry and greatly increased the demand for slave labour. By 1860, slave plantations in the United States produced two-thirds of the global cotton supply. Efficiency improvements came from tracking each person’s output and harshly punishing those who failed to meet their production targets. Slaves who tried to escape faced brutal physical punishments like whippings, branding, or maiming. As the South’s wealth was based on slavery, it wasn’t willing to end it.

A noteworthy figure in the abolition movement was John Brown, a man of strong religious conviction, who believed himself to be ‘an instrument of God, raised to strike the death blow to slavery in the United States.’ He saw it as his sacred obligation. The opposition against slavery was broader, but Brown became dissatisfied with their pacifism. He came to propagate radical action, saying, ‘I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.’ He led a number of anti-slavery volunteers during the Civil War in Kansas about the issue of whether the state would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state, which led to his execution for treason in 1859.

The dispute leading to the Civil War was over whether to allow slavery in the new territories in the West. The controversy came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery’s expansion, became president, and Southern states seceded. Lincoln, hoping to reunite the country, didn’t plan to abolish slavery in the South at first. That changed when a peace deal remained out of sight, and the North needed soldiers to fight the war. Lincoln then signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, which freed the slaves and allowed them to enlist in the army. Many slaves escaped and fled to the North to obtain their freedom and to join the Northern Army.

At the time, Frederick Douglass, an influential black writer, complained about the unequal pay of black soldiers, who earned less than white privates. The North’s weak response to the cruel treatment of black prisoners of war by the South also angered him. He forced his way into President Lincoln’s office, and the two men came to know each other. It was a learning experience for both. Lincoln learned how slavery affected the lives of black people, while Douglass came to understand political reality. Most whites weren’t ready for black emancipation, so a politician could only do so much. Not much later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln for promising blacks suffrage.

After the Civil War, whites regained control in the South. Paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Man’s League, disrupted political campaigning, ran officeholders out of town, lynched black voters, and committed voter fraud. The federal government didn’t stop it. Voting for blacks became more restrictive with literacy requirements combined with the underfunding or closing of black schools. States and counties introduced laws to enforce racial segregation, the so-called Jim Crow laws. Successful blacks faced violence, destruction of their businesses and killing by violent mobs of whites. The most famous example of that is the Tulsa massacre of 1921.

Racial segregation officially ended in the 1960s after the civil rights movement took on the issue. Television made the nonviolent resistance led by Martin Luther King a success. Scenes of police violence highlighted the oppression of blacks, and the world could see it. It damaged the credibility of the United States, which was at the time in a propaganda war with the Soviet Union to win the hearts and minds of formerly colonised peoples. That forced President Kennedy to act. And one century after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Declaration, he signed the Civil Rights Act. Both presidents acted for political reasons rather than moral ones. One can only admire the marketing that made these self-interested political acts look like righteous moves, but fairy tales inspire people, so it had a positive effect. Since then, everyone in the United States has been equal before the law, even though not always in practice.

Something went wrong somewhere

In December 1992, I was on holiday in Florida. My travel agent had advised me not to enter a particular quarter in Miami where blacks lived. Yet, I accidentally drove into that district twice and tried to book a hotel room there. The lady behind the counter was kind enough to talk me out of it. She said, ‘Folks like you shouldn’t come here, you know.’ She meant whites. And the neighbourhood seemed okay. I had also accidentally driven through a ghetto, where the blacks living there gazed at me. It was different in the Netherlands, so the presence of blacks didn’t worry me. And I was about to move to a neighbourhood where a considerable number of blacks lived. The Netherlands has no history of antagonised race relationships like the United States has. There were issues, but not the kind of hatred you saw in the United States.

Months earlier, a jury had acquitted four Los Angeles policemen of the beating of Rodney King, a black taxi driver, despite the evidence being clear. Fury erupted, incited by grievances about racial and economic inequality, and the city burned. Something had gone wrong somewhere. The ‘something’ and the ‘somewhere’ are complicated issues. Had they been easy to resolve, we would have done so by now.

In the West, culture has become more of a determinant of success than privileges and institutions. The success of immigrants is related to their ethnic background. Education didn’t matter much to enslaved blacks in the United States, and later on, during the Jim Crow years, their education was willfully neglected. Whatever the cause is, blacks in the United States put less value on education than other groups. They might want to be successful at sports rather than to become an engineer. And sports are a waste of time and energy. You don’t eat food produced by sports nor do you live in a home built by sports. A question remains: how would blacks in the United States have fared had whites not stood in their way for so long?

Another factor contributing to the persistence of racial inequality in the United States could be the disintegration of families, which particularly affected blacks. The disappearance of industrial jobs worsened the situation. Such explanations are speculative. There is evidence supporting it and evidence to the contrary. If it were so, there would be other factors as well. In 1965, Senator Daniel Moynihan warned that the rise of out-of-wedlock births among blacks would cause a disaster. He argued that black men couldn’t become good husbands and fathers without jobs to support a family. It would cause divorce, child abandonment, out-of-wedlock births, and households headed by women living on welfare. Without a positive role model of a providing father with a job who looks after his sons, young males are more likely to enter a life of crime, Moynihan argued.

The report came at a time when the Civil Rights movement fought segregation and white racism. Civil rights leaders attacked the report as an example of white patronising, cultural bias, and racism. These issues have diverse causes, so you can be right while the person you disagree with can be right too. As people take sides, the result is a political struggle rather than a resolution. The report helped to create the black welfare queen stereotype. Blacks were more often on welfare. Also, the relationship between broken families and crime is plausible yet difficult to prove. The neighbourhood you grow up in, the people you meet and the friends you get also affect your choices and economic opportunities. In his report When Work Disappears, William Julius Wilson attributed high unemployment in urban, largely black neighbourhoods to structural changes in the economy.

The supposed relationship between the strength of communities and families and success in society comes from the idea that you have an advantage when you grow up in a stable environment with married parents who can invest more time in raising and providing for their children. However, it doesn’t explain why Muslims often perform poorly in European societies, as they usually have strong family ties. Attitudes towards education and society also matter. Blacks and Muslims may feel resentment and think that society is not for them. Blacks may say it is a white man’s world. To Muslims, the success of the West and the Jews is at odds with the supposed superiority of Islam. If you believe you aren’t a fully recognised member of society and never will be because you are black or Muslim, you are less likely to participate.

In recent years, white males increasingly drop out of the labour force in the United States, choosing a life of gaming or being drunk or high. Conservatives tend to blame this on immigrants, or the termination of DEI policies and rounding up illegal immigrants by the Trump administration did nothing to change that. Many of these men lack a decent work ethic. Welfare and low drug prices allow for these lifestyles.¹

In 2013, the acquittal of a neighbourhood watch in the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Martin had no convictions. The police had once found jewellery in his possession, but couldn’t prove he had stolen it. The neighbourhood watch tried to apprehend Martin for being in the neighbourhood where burglaries had occurred. He claimed self-defence because Martin resisted with force. The death of George Floyd in 2020 is another noteworthy case. A police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in the street, contributing to his death. Floyd said that he couldn’t breathe. The police officer ignored him. Floyd allegedly had used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. He had served eight jail terms for petty crimes.

The Black Lives Matter movement turned the brutality of American police into a race issue. Had Floyd been white, would the police officer have treated him differently? That may well be the case. Was Martin racially profiled? Likely so. Perhaps someone else was the burglar. Get blacks pulled over more often by the police? Sure. Yet, blacks are three times as likely to be killed by the police as whites, but six times as likely to be convicted of a violent crime. Relative to the number of violent crime suspects per race, the police killed fewer blacks than whites. That makes it hard to separate the two issues. There is no excuse for racism, but also not for crime, and if you look at the numbers, the latter is the bigger problem. Floyd wasn’t saving the rainforests or helping out poor people. He was a petty criminal. You shouldn’t make heroes out of criminals. You also shouldn’t erect statues and make heroes out of traitors who fought to preserve the institution of slavery.

The jury justice system adds a complication. Well-known is the case in which a jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of the 1994 double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The panel had 9 blacks, which made people question the verdict, believing the jury to be racially biased. In many more cases, the jury mainly consists of whites, especially in cases that involve blacks. Jury justice is seriously unprofessional, and one issue is that jurors’ race may impair their judgment. Research suggests that blacks get 20% to 30% more prison sentences than whites in similar cases. Access to better lawyers can also play a role, as does cultural bias, so a white person knows better what a white judge wants to hear than a black person because they share the same culture. Still, a reduction in the crime level to the level of whites would help blacks much more than correcting the racial bias in the justice system.

Culture also affects the nature of crimes. Sweden has long been one of the least violent countries with one of the most progressive justice systems. Yet, in recent years, gang violence among immigrant groups, often with young perpetrators, has led the Swedes to revise their system, as it wasn’t effective in dealing with this new type of gangsters. It is a problematic path. As culture affects the nature of crimes, immigrants may receive more severe punishments for similar crimes because of the assumption that they require different treatment due to their cultural attitudes. Maybe community service doesn’t work so well with people who grew up in a violent place.

There is also a lot of nonsense flying around. What to think of the statistic that blacks in the United States are seven times as likely to be exonerated after a wrongful arrest? That riles some people up. Yet, there is nothing remarkable about that if blacks are seven times as likely to be arrested because they are seven times as likely to commit a crime. The racial bias, if there is one, is likely much smaller, so perhaps they are seven times as likely to be convicted while being six times as likely to commit a crime. The sooner we get over it, the sooner we can move forward and do something about it, for there is much wrong with white culture as well. It is why we are in this mess in the first place. Had there been no capitalism and the Atlantic slave trade, the blacks would still be in Africa, living their life in Eden like they always did. Whether they would have been better off that way, is a matter of personal taste.

And regardless of conduct, there is racism. Blacks face more racism than others, except where they are the majority. Humans are xenophobic creatures, and the skin colour of blacks stands out. Even language works against them, as the words ‘black’ and ‘dark’ are associated with evil. On the Dutch island of Curacao, where there is racial mixing, lighter skin is more appreciated, or so an islander once told me. Solving the issue begins with accepting that it is natural for humans to exclude those who are different. Apart from differences in conduct, unfamiliarity is an obstacle to acceptance. Humans are xenophobic creatures and may hate, bully and ostracise others for differences in views, appearance and conduct. So, familiarity and similar conduct can help reduce these issues.

The cause of the high number of black fatalities at the hands of the police is brutality rather than ethnic profiling. In the United States, police fatalities are 33 per 10 million inhabitants per year, in league with countries like Angola, Colombia, Mali and Sudan, which is 30 times as much as countries like Germany, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It comes with the level of lethal violence Americans accept. In the United States, you can get away with shooting a cleaning lady trying to open the wrong door. In Europe, that would be murder. In Europe, a neighbourhood watch would also do prison time for shooting an unarmed person. In civilised society, that works better. That requires the police to do their job. And in the United States, everyone can carry a gun, so the police are on edge, making them shoot first and ask questions later.

Historical perspective

We view things from today’s perspective and assess the past through today’s values. It doesn’t help to understand history or social changes. Slavery has long been normal in many parts of the world. The Bible does not speak out against it. That Christians gradually came to reject it is a remarkable historical development. Slave owners thus didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. They could be kind people and still treat their slaves cruelly. Darwin wrote, ‘I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together.’ He could only do that if he didn’t view slaves as people. Among the Nazis exterminating Jews in the concentration camps were family men who cared for their wives and children. Most of us are capable of allowing or contributing to atrocities.

Those of us who eat meat contribute to the animal suffering in the meat industry, which is as horrific as the Holocaust, even though it concerns animals rather than humans. Animals don’t differ from us as much as many of us like to imagine. We buy clothes made by children in Bangladesh who work twelve hours six days a week in filthy factories. Many people in Europe and the United States condone the cruel treatment of immigrants because they think there are too many, and that migration undermines their societies, and giving them humane treatment would invite more to come over. And that is correct. ICE brutality led many illegal immigrants to flee the United States. Future generations may view our conduct as appalling as we view slavery today, but only if we have a better world in the future. If we end up in a Mad Max world ruled by warring gangs, few would care.

Seeing the abolition of slavery as a historical process and acknowledging the limits of our compassion helps us understand why it took so long and why slavery has never fully ended. Moral beliefs and economic issues were involved. Slavery was common in most traditional societies, but had ended in Western Europe by 1,500 AD. Europeans then turned the slavery of blacks into a large-scale commercial enterprise, making it a pillar of the European capitalist economy. European Christians engaged in the slave trade, but Christianity also contributed to the end of slavery.

Christianity proclaimed a fundamental equality of human souls. Christian churches approved of slavery and benefited from it, but they also aimed to convert indigenous peoples. These conversions themselves were often brutal, but by doing so, European Christians admitted that indigenous peoples were humans worthy of conversion. And if they were Christians, enslaving them conflicted with the Christian principles Europeans imagined. Muslims lived by that same principle, but the Muslim world has been a sideshow in world history, and by extension, the Muslim slave trade. The Western ideal of equality has its roots in Christendom. Europeans gradually began to apply the principle of equality to people of other races.

Slavery ended once the economic situation allowed it. The Industrial Revolution became the new engine of economic growth, so the slave trade and slavery contributed less to the economy. Factory workers were cheap and often lived on the brink of starvation, so the capitalists’ bottom line didn’t suffer from abolishing slavery, except in the South of the United States, which went to war over slavery, thus proving Marx’s point that economics has a considerable, if not decisive, effect on the class structure in societies. Ending slavery didn’t magically create a better world, nor did ending segregation solve inequality.

Slavery can return at any time if the conditions favour it or if a stronger power emerges to re-establish it. If so, it will come with a new myth telling us that slavery is the best system for reasons like humans being unworthy of freedom because they feel entitled to what is not theirs, and as a result, ruin this planet with their insatiable desires. That is the irony of history or God’s sense of humour. It could be chattel slavery in which God owns you and your children, and where you have to contribute positively to God’s society. Those who go along with it will own nothing and be happy. After all, it is better to be a slave in Paradise than to be free in hell.

Latest update: 2 October 2026

Featured image: The storming of the Bastille and the arrest of Governor M. de Launay on 14 July 1789. Public domain.

1. Why So Many Men Aren’t Working. Keith Humphreys and Brent Orrell (2026). The Atlantic.

Cultural Differences and Ethnic Profiling

27 Sep 202312 Oct 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Marlboro Red

In the 2000s, it struck me that nearly all the empty cigarette packages littering the streets were Marlboro Reds. There were one or two Camels and a few others, but for some reason almost all were Marlboro Red. Marlboro Red is the most popular brand in the Netherlands with a market share of nearly 30%. The second-largest brand has a market share of under 10%. Yet if I had to guess from discarded empty packages, I would have thought Marlboro Red had a 95% market share. We didn’t make tallies, but it was like that. We made jokes about it. So, if you’re looking for a jerk, check who’s smoking Marlboro Reds. That would greatly increase your chance of success. And the finding led me to have prejudices about Marlboro Red smokers being jerks.

Littering isn’t that bad compared to warfare, chemical dumping, abuses in the meat and dairy industries, and the cutting down of rainforests. Still, disrespect begins with littering. It is a matter of upbringing, hence culture. Some countries are clean, while others are a mess because people dispose of their garbage wherever they see fit. Those who litter don’t care about the world they live in. They disrespect the Creator. They shit on God’s work. There are worse offences, but it starts with littering. Next comes graffiti, which only those who make it consider art. Art is personal expression, so do it inside your home where no one else can see it. Then comes destroying property. If you want to cause even more harm, you might consider buying the latest fashion or going on holiday by aeroplane.

If 30% of the people dump 95% of the garbage, the remaining 70% is responsible for only 5% of the mess. You can calculate that Marlboro Red smokers were 44 times as likely to dump their trash on the street as other smokers ((95/30) / (5/70) = 44), a striking finding. The sample was large enough to make the finding statistically significant. The sample may have issues, but these issues can’t fully explain the difference. Today, there are still cigarette packages on the street. Still, it is hard to identify the brand name among the scary pictures of cancers and other horrible diseases you get from smoking. Marlboro Red smokers differ from other cigarette smokers. You can call it culture. Culture explains the deviant behaviour of groups of people who share characteristics.

The Marlboro Man embodies careless living in a consumerist society. Our brand choices reveal a great deal about our personalities, so marketers have done their jobs very well indeed. A politically correct person would say I am stigmatising Marlboro Red users. There could be something wrong with my sample. I live near a train station where young people gather, but I have also noticed this elsewhere. It can’t merely be an error in the sample. But even if the sample correctly reflects reality, perhaps only 0.1% of smokers discard their cigarette packages on the street, so only a tiny minority of 4.4% of Marlboro Red smokers might do so. Perhaps that is correct, or perhaps not, but 44 times as much is an eye-popping difference. It points to a rule, which is:

It is usually one of them doing it. Yet, most of them aren’t like that. The culture within their group makes the conduct more likely.

Jerks may smoke Camel, but they are more likely to smoke Marlboro Red, or there is a Camel culture of not littering that prevents Camel-smoking jerks from littering. In any case, it is an issue within the Marlboro Red smoker community. It is of crucial importance, for culture is so ubiquitous, that so far nearly everyone vastly underestimates that importance. We are a programmable species. Our bodies and brains are the hardware, and our cultures are the software. Different software can make computers behave entirely differently, albeit within the limits of the hardware.

We could solve 95% of the littering problem by locking up all those who smoke Marlboro Red. Yet, 95% of the Marlboro Red smokers might not be part of that problem, so 95% of the people you would round up and imprison would be innocent. The latter is similar to what some fascists propose to do with immigrants to solve the problem of higher crime levels among immigrants. And to solve the problem of criminal immigrants, fascists propose to let fascist criminals run the government and deport the immigrants. The experiments with this idea in the United States have been enlightening.

Patterns give rise to prejudices. Yet, reality regularly surprises me. Individuals often don’t conform to my prejudices about the groups they belong to. Groups consist of individuals. Although these groups differ on aggregate, everyone is different. Behaviours such as littering occur more often in certain groups than in others. Our prejudices about groups tend to have a basis in reality, but they aren’t reality. When there are only Marlboro Red packages on the ground, you might assume that all Marlboro Red smokers are littering jerks, but it could be a small minority. Still, Marlboro Red smokers, on average, litter more often than smokers of other brands. If this littering is a cultural problem. Cultures are usually the product of circumstances and how a group responded to them.

Can I trust my dentist?

How do cultures emerge and develop? Circumstances and how a group respond go a long way in explaining that. I trust my general practitioner but not my dentist. It is the result of my own experiences and those of others. General practitioners and dentists are similar medical professions. In the Netherlands, a general practitioner doesn’t benefit from the advised treatments, while a dentist does. You have to trust medical professionals because your health depends on them, but you can’t trust them in a ‘free’ market. A market is never fully free because some people have more information or leverage than others. In healthcare, that is particularly damaging, as your health is most precious and you depend on expert assessment. Scammers prey on desperate people and sell treatments for which there is no scientific proof. If people buy it, they sell it.

Dental care is an area where dubious practices proliferate. To prevent dental professionals from taking advantage of me too much, I see the dentist once a year rather than twice. So what made me so distrustful? As a child, I had the same dentist for over fifteen years, an old-fashioned one for peasants like me. He didn’t propose treatments unless they were necessary. He once told me that I could wear braces, but added that it wasn’t necessary for my teeth’s health. Not caring about looking perfect, I still live with the consequences that have never bothered me.

After leaving my parental home and moving to Groningen, I selected a new dentist. The first thing he did was take X-ray pictures. Then he said that a cavity was developing underneath one of the fillings. Well, what a coincidence. The other dentist had never seen it. He showed me the picture and pointed at a dark spot. There was another filling with a dark area beneath it, and I said, ‘You can see a similar blot here.’ He replied, ‘That is something different.’ I am unqualified to evaluate these X-rays, but both areas were similar, so the dentist lied. Had he not shown me the photograph, I would have believed him. It made me suspicious and very critical of what dentists were doing.

Before he could treat my tooth for the supposed cavity, I came up with a lame excuse and selected another dentist. Several years later, I had a colleague who had married a dentist. She had previously lived in the same neighbourhood. Her husband was in training at the time, so she had been seeing another dentist, who happened to be that one. She told me she had had a row with him. I wasn’t the only one who had smelled a rat there. Her husband was a dentist-in-training, so she likely had valid reasons for quarrelling.

That was a noteworthy coincidence indeed. What are the odds that she had the same dentist, that they had an altercation over malpractice, and that her husband was a dentist-in-training, which would provide me with evidence to support my suspicions? Thirty years later, the tooth and the filling were still in place. Later, I moved to Sneek and found an old-fashioned dentist. He was like my first dentist, so I trusted him. He often performed dental cleaning. That usually took 10 minutes and cost €21. After ten years, he joined a practice with some other dentists. Shortly after that, he retired.

My next dentist didn’t perform the dental cleaning. Instead, he sent me to a dental hygienist. That treatment lasted 25 minutes and was much more expensive. Instead of €21, I paid €62. Standards do change, but I doubted the sudden need for 150% more cleaning. But if my dentist advises the treatment, who am I to disagree? After all, he is the expert. It is best to accept the assessment of medical professionals unless you have proof they are wrong. Otherwise, you endanger your health.

I have worked harder on brushing and cleaning my teeth, but dental cleaning always took 25 minutes. After eight years, my dentist said my teeth were in good shape and clean. There was only a tiny bit of tartar, negligible even, the dentist said, so he advised me to see the dental hygienist anyway. In hindsight, dental cleaning was probably not required at all. And so, the dental hygienist could have stopped after 10 minutes, but she went on until 25, so she could bill me for that. The treatment was always 25 minutes, regardless of the condition of the teeth. I found it to be a scam and looked for another dentist.

It would only get worse, even though not at the beginning. A new guideline stated that dental hygienists could perform periodic dental check-ups. The following year, the dental hygienist combined the check-up with dental cleaning, making the most of the allotted time financially. I was there for thirty minutes. She billed me for thirty minutes of dental cleaning and also charged me for the check-up. A decent check-up lasts ten minutes, so you might expect a check-up and twenty minutes of dental cleaning if you are there for thirty minutes. I was surprised and wasn’t sure. Had I checked the clock correctly?

The following year, she did it again. Additionally, she charged me for taking X-rays and evaluating them. How can you do all that in thirty minutes if you already spend thirty minutes on dental cleaning? It doesn’t add up. The dentists had decided to take pictures every 3 years instead of every 5, which means even more money for them. And she was double-charging me. Dental cleaning was €160 per hour at the time (yet their prices keep rising faster than wages), which was nearly what I brought home after a day of work and paying taxes. Many people work longer for that money. To charge that per hour wasn’t enough for her. That made it particularly nefarious.

After returning home, I emailed her to request clarification. She didn’t respond, so I filed a complaint with the Dutch Association of Dentists and looked for another dentist. In the complaint letter, I protested the double-charging and noted that questionable ethics have become the norm in dental care. A few decades ago, there were no dental hygienists. My wife once said, ‘The dental hygienist is a new profession created out of thin air.’ She had left a dentist because he required her to see the dental hygienist before he would examine her teeth to determine whether that was necessary. She went to another, who also began maximising profits at the expense of clients, so she left again. I have heard several stories from others of dentists overcharging or doing unnecessary treatments.

My next dentist also advised dental cleaning. And this time, I was with the dental hygienist for 40 minutes, and she billed me €119. Over the past fifteen years, the time spent on dental cleaning has increased by 300%, and the cost has risen by 467%. I take much better care of my teeth than I did twenty years ago, and I began using toothpicks, but it doesn’t show up in the cost of the dental cleaning. It can’t be that all these dentists and dental hygienists are lying. My teeth accumulate tartar no matter how well I clean them, so cleaning is necessary, but the extent of it remains questionable, to say the least.

I suspect that 10 minutes would suffice. Think of the 80/20 rule. Generally, 80% of the outcome requires 20% of the time. Polishing and other add-ons only increase the bill. I put up the ante once again by brushing my teeth three times a day, and it finally showed in a somewhat reduced dental-cleaning time in the years that followed. The parabolic rise in dentist costs is partly due to changing standards. Dental cleaning improves dental health. At some point, the benefits of increased cleaning and more photographs become minimal while the costs escalate. The precise border between higher and scamming will always be elusive, and you can’t prove it from individual cases like mine.

Still, we have, without any doubt, entered scamming territory, but no one puts a halt to it. In 2026, a Tubantia newspaper headline said, ‘Eight minutes in the chair, pay 200 euros: more and more patients feel like cash cows at the dentist.’ And the article goes on to say, ‘Three minutes of polishing for €480 per hour. Half-cent cotton rolls billed for €10. A €1,600 treatment plan that disappears after a second opinion. Hundreds of readers contact us after reading articles about dental care fraud. And research by Zilveren Kruis shows that in six out of ten cases investigated, there was indeed overbilling.¹ Many people take out insurance and don’t care, allowing dentists to exploit the situation.

Again, I have to be politically correct and say that the number of complaints about treatments is less than 1% of all treatments. People only complain if they think something is wrong, so that 60% of complaints being justified doesn’t mean that 60% of dentists are overbilling. Still, much goes unnoticed. My wife has switched twice after being scammed, and never filed a complaint. I switched three times and complained only once. Two of those switches were due to scams, and the third to dubious practices. And so the percentage of fraudulent dentists is higher than 1%, but it could be a minority. And there is a grey area between changing standards and overtreatment. Still, more and more people can’t afford dental care, and their dental health suffers. So, as the number of treatments increases, the quality of dental healthcare in the Netherlands declines, which seems to be a systemic problem in for-profit healthcare. General practitioners don’t benefit from the treatments they recommend, leading to better care at lower cost.

The same trend is visible in veterinary practices. Douwe, our late cat, suffered from kidney failure. We had spent hundreds of euros on tests, but the vets found nothing. And we had seen several vets, because we suspected that the other vet was scamming us, but they all did it. We spent hundreds of euros more on special diets sold by these vets, but Douwe’s condition only deteriorated. We finally visited an old-fashioned vet. He examined Douwe by feeling with his hand. He found the kidney failure and euthanised Douwe. That cost us only €30. Modern veterinarians often don’t physically inspect the animals but perform tests, charging over 1000% more. Physical examinations are bad for business.

My father has spent over €5,000 on surgery for the leg of his dog. An old-fashioned vet would have amputated the leg, as the animal could still walk on three legs. But that is, of course, much cheaper and generates far fewer profits. The surgery failed, so the poor animal had to undergo a second surgery. After that, the ailment returned, so a third surgery followed. And if the treatment fails, you don’t get the next one for free. Not even a discount, unless you are, like my father, insistent on a discount and act somewhat unpleasantly. The dog didn’t recover. My father had his dog euthanised because it was in pain.

The market works such that unnecessary treatments proliferate because the rich desire them. They would rather spend €10,000 on unnecessary treatments for their dogs than spend €1,000 on feeding children in Africa. We are all like that. I don’t give all my money to charities either, so it is a most serious issue that we can only fix with unthinkably brutal measures like taxing the rich. These treatments have become the norm, so the vets sell them to the poor as well, telling them every pet deserves these treatments, even when their owners can’t afford them.

You can’t blame only the vets and dentists for the cost explosion. We view our pets as family members and want the best for them, just as we do for our children. Modern veterinary outfits look like hospitals and make investments that need to bring in a return. And we want perfect teeth, not just healthy ones. Not everyone can afford them, and healthy teeth are more important than perfect teeth. Vets make tons of money. They now retire early, purchase luxury mansions and travel around the world. It has become so lucrative that vulture capitalists are buying up veterinary practices, and scams will proliferate like cancer until the entire sector has become a scam.

Group culture is a problem. Most veterinary and dental care professionals think they are doing a good job, even though they have become a bunch of scammers. Dutch politicians are catching up and proposing a law to ban profit maximisation at the expense of pet owners, but, as usual, nothing will change. It reflects the societal mood, where we see greed as good, so dental care professionals and vets may be unaware of the damage their culture and values cause. That is precisely the problem with many cultures, whether they are professional or ethnic. So, there we are, at the greatest obstacle to the peaceful unification of humankind.

The politically incorrect

It is okay to say that something is wrong with dentists and vets, but once you do the same with an ethnic group, you’ve long stepped into a minefield. Today, you can say anything, but there was once a time of political correctness. Let’s begin with kicking in an open door. White Europeans have caused the most trouble by spreading a suicidal money-worshipping culture that is the greatest cultural problem of all. And in the elite of that culture, which places money above moral values, you find Jews more often than their share of the population would suggest. There is no point in denying that, but we should move on and fix these issues before the savages burn down civilisation. Blaming people for having grown up in a particular culture won’t solve anything. It is better to focus on what the future requires of us. And so, we have to address the harm caused by cultural differences. That is going to be harsh on everyone, as is the required change.

Stereotypes are often rooted in reality. The man on a scooter with tan skin has become a household name in the Netherlands, and the Dutch associate him with street crimes like mugging and improper behaviour towards women. If you see one, you may think of the stereotype, even when he is delivering a pizza. When a black youngster on a fatbike nearly ran me over in a park near my home, that confirmed existing prejudices. But then he excused himself like a gentleman. Not all youngsters would do that. The level of variation is usually larger than the difference between the averages.

It is hard to avoid having prejudices and acting on them because there are often underlying patterns. We are wired to fear the unknown and to react to perceived patterns. That is why we discriminate. Discrimination is undesirable, but you also can’t force people to befriend people they don’t like. If you think that Marlboro Red smokers are no good, you probably would ignore signs to the contrary, unless you know a few people belonging to the group. If you look on the street, you may see only Marlboro Red casings and fail to notice others, so you may think it is always Marlboro Red smokers doing this, even though they may be a small minority in that group.

A minority can nonetheless be quite large or cause serious trouble. Ethnic minorities may distrust the police and not rat each other out. Still, the image you get from the evidence you see is not reality itself. Yet, seemingly small differences can have a significant impact on society. If the percentage of criminals in the population rises from 2% to 4% due to the arrival of poorly adapted immigrants, you have twice as many crimes and need twice as many police, courts and prisons. As a result, a group can be a problem to society, even when a small minority within it causes the problem.

Why do mass shootings occur more often in the United States than elsewhere? The gun lobby would argue that only a tiny fraction of Americans go on a shooting spree. The image you get is not reality itself. If there are mass shootings in the United States nearly every day, you might think that Americans are gun-obsessed nutters. Only a negligible percentage of Americans go on a murder spree. Nevertheless, the number of mass shootings sets the United States apart from other countries. Conservatives don’t see it as a problem. Liberals think that stricter gun laws will solve the issue. However, the underlying causes may be gun culture, American views on the use of lethal violence, and the dog-eat-dog nature of American society, not gun ownership itself. Finland and Sweden also have widespread gun ownership without that many mass shootings.

Groups that share characteristics often share cultures. We picture Americans, Chinese, Germans, Jews and Arabs like we picture lawyers, students and construction workers. Our prejudices may identify characteristics that distinguish the group, but they will often fail us in individual cases. We may base our prejudices on experience and facts, but the facts do not base themselves on our prejudices. And the biggest problem may not be conduct, but loyalty and belief systems. We are loyal to family, friends, tribe, and nation, so if your loyalties differ, we head towards conflict. Culture is a major issue, even though it can be hard to measure. All existing cultures are problematic because different behaviours and expectations are a source of trouble. A resolution requires, on the behavioural side, ending harmful conduct and aligning behaviour where differences cause harm, and, on the expectation side, greater tolerance for differences that do not cause harm.

Is the trend your friend?

In multicultural societies, people from particular ethnic groups face greater difficulties and, as a result, cause more trouble than others. If you follow social media feeds in the Netherlands in 2026, you will remain informed about violent incidents caused by asylum seekers and particular ethnic groups, giving you the impression that they generate a massive violent crime wave that is overwhelming the Netherlands. Yet, in the statistics, you don’t see that, and violent crime numbers have gone down in recent decades. Murders are at an all-time low. Statistics can be manipulated for political or bureaucratic ends, but surveys show that the Dutch feel safer than 25 years ago and trust the police more.² And murder statistics are hard to meddle with. Yet, drug deals and frauds don’t contribute to feelings of unsafety, nor do they show up in the statistics if no one reports them. And some criminals have switched to fraud as it’s easy money with little risk.

Also, in fraud cases, particular ethnic groups are overrepresented. The relationship between ethnicity and crime is a reason why fascism is on the rise. Policymakers have long hoped that maintaining a friendly atmosphere and supporting disadvantaged groups will reduce these problems over time. That is indeed the case, but with new immigrants arriving, new troubles arise. And differences in crime levels can have a profound impact on society. Within some groups, the sentiment is that society is not theirs. Blacks may think they live in a white man’s world. Muslims have trouble accepting the values of liberal Western societies. Whatever the reasons, and often they are just excuses because criminals don’t like to toil and prefer easy money, we are running out of excuses.

Criminals are a minority in every group, but the differences between groups are significant. People of Antillian, Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish descent are, on average, four times more likely (2.5%) to be crime suspects than native Dutch (0.6%). The same is true for several other groups. About 70% of the prison population in the Netherlands consists of people of non-Dutch descent, while they make up 28% of the population. The relationship between ethnicity and crime can be misleading, as crime also relates to income. People from minority groups often have low incomes. A good question is why that is so. Circumstances play a role here, like growing up in a particular neighbourhood, and also culture. Culture, despite being hard to measure, is a factor with great explanatory power. The great thing is about culture is that it is programming, so it can change.

Ethnic profiling

Ethnic profiling is controversial. It has undesirable consequences, as the following example demonstrates. Suppose a country consists of two ethnic groups: Group A (2/3 of the population) and Group B (1/3). Assume further that people in Groups A and B are each responsible for 50% of Fraud X. Hence, people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X as people in Group A. To combat fraud effectively, you can only check on individuals from Group B to achieve the maximum result. You could apprehend twice as many fraudsters with the same effort. But now comes the catch. You don’t check on people from Group A, so only people from Group B end up in prison. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B receives 100% of the punishment. That is the problem with ethnic profiling in a nutshell. But then again, people in Group B are doing it more often, so there is also a reason to engage in ethnic profiling.

Some call it racist, but the reason for ethnic profiling can be a risk assessment related to cultural characteristics, not ethnicity. In this hypothetical case, it is the likelihood of committing Fraud X. Also, in that case, ethnic profiling can be racist. People from Group A might dislike those from Group B and elect a leader who allows authorities to investigate Group B’s crimes while disregarding Group A’s. You can end up with a situation where the authorities prosecute Fraud X and only check on people in Group B, supposedly because they commit it more frequently, while doing nothing about Fraud Y, which members of Group A commit twice as often as those in Group B.

If your job is combating Fraud X, and you dedicate only 50% of your resources to Group B, that seems reasonable because people from Group B are responsible for 50% of Fraud X. In that case, people from Group B are still twice as likely to get punished because Group B is half the size of Group A, but receives the same amount of checking. And because people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X, people from Group B end up in prison four times as likely as those from Group A. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B accounts for 67% of the prison population. So, if people from Group B claim that the authorities discriminate against them and punish them more, they are right.

People from ethnic minorities often get harsher punishment for the same crimes. A Dutch study showed that people from other ethnic groups are up to 30% more likely to receive a prison sentence for the same crime than native Dutch. The cause is likely not willful discrimination, but cultural differences, the investigators concluded. If you share the judge’s culture, you know what to say to sway the judge’s opinion. And showing remorse greatly helps your case. People from some ethnic groups have difficulty showing remorse, which might make a judge think the person is a jerk. Repenting is a Christian concept that affects Western culture, where pride is a sin, so Muslims and some other groups may show no remorse, perhaps out of pride, or they keep denying despite the evidence against them, leading to a longer prison sentence.

Because of the undesirable consequences of unequal punishment, ethnic profiling should be used with great care. It can be justified to check on people if the problem is serious and the profiling is based on evidence. If you intend to administer a multicultural society, you must take cultural differences and their consequences into account. Otherwise, it is hard to get a grip on cultural issues plaguing society. In the case of fraud detection, one could randomly check people. If it turns out that fraudsters often share characteristics, it is legitimate to use these characteristics to check people from certain groups more often.

Officially, there is no ethnic profiling in the Netherlands, but it happens nonetheless. The Dutch government conducts an offensive against ‘undermining crime’ in selected poor neighbourhoods. In Zaandam East, it led to the surveillance of suspicious individuals, sometimes based on hunches rather than evidence. The area is known for the window-cleaning gangs that divide up territories and use violence against the competition. It has been hard to crack down on these gangs, and Dutch authorities fear that they are undermining society. Zaandam East is one of the twenty areas targeted by the National Programme for Liveability and Safety, an approach to ‘clean up’ city districts. The window-cleaning ‘gangsters’ are often Bulgarians and Turks.¹ Critics ask whether frauds and crimes committed by native Dutch receive similar scrutiny.

Diversity politics

If we allow ethnic profiling, which is negative discrimination, we should also allow diversity policies, which are positive discrimination. These policies can benefit not only the group itself but also society. For businesses, it can help to have a workforce that represents the surrounding community. It can attract more customers, and if the money flows back into the community, the business will benefit from the increased purchasing power of local residents. Yet, diversity shouldn’t come at the expense of quality. Still, in situations where multiple candidates qualify, it can be good to aim for diversity in hiring. And perhaps, we shouldn’t overstate the quality issues. In the United States, white men are still dropping out of the workforce, despite the end of diversity politics.

Many Dutch advertisements feature people from ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities also buy products, so they are a part of the market, which is a valid reason to feature minority groups in advertisements. These diversity politics have crept into other issues as well. If you wish to get your story published in the subsidised artistic sector, be sure to add someone wearing a headscarf. It can also be helpful for police forces. If the police patrol a neighbourhood, it helps when they understand the people living there, so being a member of a particular minority group can make you better suited to the job. Yet, police officers of ethnic minorities often face discrimination. Another issue is that police officers from ethnic minorities are more often found to be corrupt.

Discrimination everywhere

Municipal officials from ethnic minorities say they experience discrimination by colleagues, a 2023 survey in the Netherlands revealed. Civil servants participating in the survey reported experiencing discrimination, such as criticism when another member of their ethnic group misbehaved. Those who spoke out faced bullying and exclusion. Municipal officials from ethnic minorities left their jobs due to these issues, and because they had fewer chances of promotion, the report further said. Discrimination is not a trivial issue, but there are two sides to the issue. Some might have displayed deviant behaviour or taken offence at issues a Dutch person wouldn’t. Whether the complainers are overly sensitive or discriminated against isn’t always clear. Bullying and exclusion can cause long-lasting trauma, and in the most extreme cases, psychosis after nearly two decades. Whatever the problem is, it is serious but not straightforward.

It has to do with how humans behave in groups. You either fit in, or you don’t. That is where it all boils down to. In several workplaces, a pecking order exists, with leaders, followers, and outcasts. Humans desire to establish social hierarchies. Some want to be the boss. To be a leader, you must demonstrate strength and confidence. A low-risk approach is attacking the weak or those who are different. There is a group culture that defines not precisely how you should behave, but the norms of acceptable conduct. Causing problems for the group and not fitting in are reasons for bullying and exclusion. These issues may relate to skin colour, sexual preference, or political views, and often involve divergent behaviour. Vexed responses demonstrate your weakness, and reporting incidents makes you a rat.

Workplaces should be safe, but that is not always the case. In a properly functioning group, everyone contributes to its success, members respect each other, don’t exploit each other’s weaknesses, and resolve their differences. Yet people can’t always get along, and external factors, such as overly ambitious targets or failing management, can also cause conflicts. When things go wrong, we seek scapegoats. Even if the work environment is safe, job performance can still cause trouble within teams. I have worked in a Java team for over a decade. Given the nature of our operations, failures could have devastating consequences, so we couldn’t afford to have underperforming team members. Over the course of that decade, three people had to leave. These were unpleasant situations.

That makes it difficult to pinpoint why people encounter difficulties at work. Humans make up stories, and in these stories they are never to blame. They may call it discrimination, or white men may blame diversity politics, but the underlying cause may be something else. It can be poor performance or deviant conduct. What makes you different is the attack point of bullies. If you are from a minority, they use it against you. Cultural differences cause misunderstanding, and as a result, conflicts. It is a vastly underestimated issue. It is why employers seek to select individuals who fit in with the team. They are in business to make money, not to settle disputes. In critical situations, you depend on each other, so everyone must be on the same page, and understanding reduces the need for rules.

We all discriminate, either on purpose or unconsciously. The reason why there has been a focus on white discrimination is because of a power structure in which whites held the power. This power structure still exists, but as societies grow increasingly multicultural, discrimination by others becomes increasingly problematic. As the West has long been dominant, there has been ample room for introspection, since self-criticism has long not endangered its leading position. As that changes, the call to cast away doubt and focus on pride grows stronger. It is a fatal mistake leading to hilarious clown shows like MAGA, which speed up the collapse of Western civilisation.

If people from an ethnic minority discriminate, it may seem less damaging than when the majority does it, as minorities usually have fewer favours to dispense. The Jews are an exception. They have amassed so much wealth and power that their favouring of fellow Jews has become a dire threat to global economic and political stability. Discrimination by minorities undermines society as much as discrimination by the majority. When I was on holiday in the United States, I once attempted to book a hotel room in a black neighbourhood in Miami. The lady behind the reception was kind enough to talk me out of it. Yet if there is no guest room available for a white man in a black neighbourhood, how can blacks expect whites to stop discriminating against them? Ideally, everyone should stop discriminating. But how do you achieve that?

What is the matter with me?

Once, I asked myself the following question. Suppose I had a room to let, and two men applied, one a white man from Bulgaria and the other a black man from Suriname. Both had similar jobs, and both gave a favourable impression. Who would get the room? Probably, I would choose the man from Suriname. Suriname has been a Dutch colony, and most people from Suriname living in the Netherlands are nearly as Dutch as the Dutch themselves. I have a prejudice that Surinamese are relaxed people who seldom cause trouble. About Bulgarians, I know far less, and I have never spoken to one. Yet, if it had been an option, I would have chosen a Dutchman if he had made a similar impression.

So, where did I get the idea from that Surinamese are okay? The people I have met? Television? It is unclear. Knowing I am biased, I would still choose the man from Suriname. Surinamese are culturally closer to the Dutch than Bulgarians, and I know more about them. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter, something overlooked in debates about racism and discrimination. I know very little about Bulgarians. And Bulgarians differ more from native Dutch speakers than Surinamese do. I don’t want trouble. Judging native Dutch is hard enough already, let alone people from other cultures.

Like most people, I discriminate and have prejudices. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opinions about liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Chinese, Germans, dentists and Marlboro Red smokers. I may not always be aware of my biases, but I am not a racist. Otherwise, I would have selected the white guy in the hypothetical case. The diagnosis is xenophobia. I know more about Suriname and Surinamese. That is not to say there is no racism or that it is not widespread, but the underlying issues are often unfamiliarity and cultural differences. Identifying the issue as racism only scratches the surface. If you intend to solve the problem, that kind of simplicity doesn’t get you very far.

People who are different face exclusion and violence. I know what it means when others pick you out for special treatment for no reason other than being different. It makes you doubt yourself and ask, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ By the time I had become a student, I was an emotional wreck, mired in self-doubt. It is how groups of humans deal with deviant behaviour and press for conformity. Even people who think they are open-minded and cherish diversity don’t tolerate those who disagree. That is what Woke people do by cancelling people with deviant opinions. Cooperating in groups requires conformism. Cultural differences and unfamiliarity cause trouble and uncertainty, and lead to the failure of the cooperation.

It begins with basic things, such as appointments. Keeping agreements is critical in doing business. It made the Surinamese employer not hire his fellow Surinamese. I had a friend who was always late. He didn’t do that at work, but in private appointments, he was never on time. He married a lady from Africa. Their shared relaxed view of schedules helped make their marriage work. It wouldn’t have worked with me. It might seem like a minor issue, but maintaining schedules is a foundation of modern civilisation. Europe had that same relaxed view on schedules in the Middle Ages. It changed with the Industrial Revolution, the start of the rat race to our destruction, for which Africans are not to blame. Let’s go back in history to Martin Luther King, who once said,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The problem is that, through culture, the colour of your skin says something about the content of your character. How you are brought up, the circumstances you have lived in, the people you have met, and how others have treated you greatly affect who you become, which is why the world is still not a wonderful, multicultural society where life is good. But think of the great future that lies ahead if that becomes reality.

Latest revision: 10 October 2026

1. Acht minuten in de stoel, 200 euro afrekenen: steeds meer patiënten voelen zich ‘melkkoe’ bij tandarts. Peter Ullenbroeck (2026). Tubantia.nl.
2. Factcheck: de vier dubieuze claims waarmee de politie telkens honderden miljoenen lospeutert. Tim Verlaan (2026) FTM.nl.

Featured image: Black-and-white sheep. Jesús Solana (2008). Wikimedia Commons.

Building Cathedrals

2 Sep 202314 Oct 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Negative electricity prices

Solar is the cheapest source of energy, but only when it is available. When the Sun doesn’t shine, there is no solar energy. And there can be too much. The cost of solar power and electricity storage is dropping, so renewable energy may, at some point, overtake fossil fuels as an energy source. But is it economically feasible? Electricity prices in the Netherlands fall below zero for most of the day on sunny, windy summer weekends. In 2023, electricity prices reached a negative €0.40 per kilowatt-hour on a few occasions. Taxes and delivery costs were €0,15, so you could make money using electricity in those instances. As one energy expert put it, ‘This is nuts.’¹ Since then, shutting down solar and wind farms during peak hours has helped keep prices in check.

The Netherlands has invested in solar and wind energy. Changing weather and limited battery storage cause fluctuations in the power supply, and, combined with rising electricity consumption, they strain the power grid. In 2022, 40% of the Netherlands’ electricity and 15% of its total energy consumption came from renewable sources. Plans are in place for additional wind and solar farms. To manage all that, you need large batteries to store electrical energy, as well as nuclear or fossil-fuel plants to bridge periods with little sun and wind. It is costly, so investors are starting to have second thoughts, putting the plans for new wind farms in jeopardy. The Dutch might be better off by curbing energy use. What are all those new businesses that need more power going to do? Apparently, it is nothing we need, as they are not yet in business. Only no one dares to say that.

In the drive to reduce carbon emissions, households are increasingly electrifying their energy use, adopting electric heating and electric cars, which is resulting in higher winter electricity demand and further strain on the grid. There is only so much shifting of energy demand that flexible pricing can achieve. Businesses can’t start or expand due to a shortage of grid capacity. That is also because the Netherlands has become an international hub for data centres. Power outages during peak hours, once unthinkable, become possible. Further down the road, the Dutch might end up shutting down energy-intensive industries during periods of renewable energy shortage.

The costs of halting climate change will be staggering, so some say renewable energy is a religion. Critics had a field day in 2023 when the Dutch Climate Minister said that the proposed measures to combat climate change would cost €28 billion over seven years, or €222 per person per year, and reduce global temperatures by only 0.00036°C. ‘This is nuts,’ they said. New estimates indicate that the combined national plans, if executed, will reduce the increase in global temperatures from 4.0°C to 2.5°C this century, which is not enough. The first part was the easiest. The second part could run into a cost wall, even if the price of solar energy itself nears zero. Something has to give. The climate is warming, but the costs are becoming prohibitive. We believe economic growth should fund the switch, which is thinking that the problem, growth, is the solution.

Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster

In the spring of 2021, Sri Lankan farmers went organic overnight. It was not their choice. The government had banned synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, a move intended to save Sri Lanka $ 400 million a year and protect Sri Lankans from the adverse health and environmental impacts of these substances. It led to a 20% fall in rice and tea production. The price of rice rose by 30%, and the prices of vegetables like tomatoes and carrots rose by 400%. It was another blow to a tourism-dependent economy already devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. After five months, the government made a U-turn and reduced the restrictions. By mid-2022, the economy had gone into free fall. Inflation was above 50%, with 90% of Sri Lankans missing at least one meal per day.² Some say organic farming is a religion. Current farming methods are highly dependent on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.

The recent explosion in human population is made possible by these recent innovations. Synthetic fertilisers make crops grow faster. Around 1910, two German scientists developed the Haber-Bosch Process, which produces ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen. This powerful fertiliser became critical for wheat, corn and rice varieties. Their adoption since the 1960s, advertised as the Green Revolution, which also included mechanisation and seed-breeding, has helped lift countries like Sri Lanka out of poverty. In Sri Lanka, rice yields tripled. Synthetic fertilisers and pesticides ruin our health and the environment. Soil degradation endangers our food supplies. Yet, a sudden discontinuation of fertiliser and pesticide use will lead to famine.

There is also the issue of agricultural subsidies. In developed countries, governments subsidise farmers to purchase fertilisers and fuel their tractors. Of the total energy used to produce maize in high-input agriculture, about 70% comes from fossil fuels. The manufacture of chemical fertilisers takes more than 30% of this energy. Cleaning the groundwater from excess fertiliser nitrates may be so costly that it will be impossible.³ When these subsidies disappear, less intensive farming methods become more economical. Yet, that will reduce the food supply and make food more expensive, and poor people can barely afford it already.

Organic farming requires twice as much land for the same output. There could be ten billion people by 2050, so the world’s farmers may need to increase their production even further. That is, unless we stop breeding and change our diets. Livestock use nearly 80% of global agricultural land, while producing less than 20% of our calories.⁴ Holy cow! Meat and dairy are also a religion. By reducing our meat and dairy consumption, we may feed the world through sustainable, or even organic, farming methods.

Replacement

It is sometimes hard to tell which country I live in by looking at the people walking on the street before my home. And I don’t live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague, but in a minor regional centre. It was not like that in 1997 when I moved here. What fascists call the replacement is happening over here. It is not a conspiracy. As a result of demographic trends such as immigration and higher birth rates among immigrants, the newcomers and their descendants gradually replace the natives and their descendants. Now, I never felt unsafe here, nor did my wife, nor did I witness violent incidents. When I could overhear them, so when they spoke Dutch, those who looked like newcomers often showed good manners, including the youngsters. Yet, it is not all good. A few times, I have seen suspicious things, possibly drug-related. At the swimming pool, I overheard a man of my age say,

My children are 28 and 25. Both still live with us. They can’t find a home. Homes are too expensive. That is partly the government’s doing. If you walk around in this town, it looks like the Middle East. And those Syrians. They say many of them are physicians and surgeons. Well, they are. They bring their knives with them.

He said that the town looks like the Middle East, but he might as well have said that it looks like Africa. As for his remark about Syrians, when the Syrians came, the mainstream media told us that there were many qualified people, including doctors and surgeons, among them. Yet, on social media you learn about knife violence. Some of the Syrians are traumatised, as they have lived under a brutal regime. This man’s words reflect the mood among many Dutch. There are youths on fat bikes causing trouble, and these youths are often descendants of immigrants. About one-third of the Dutch would now vote for a fascist, nationalist or anti-immigration party. Most don’t hate immigrants, but believe that it can’t go on like that. Yet, resistance to immigrants is increasing, which includes violence.

The statistics indicate that crime has declined in recent decades. It might be due to a lower willingness to report crime, since the police do little about minor offences like bicycle theft and vandalism. As for the housing shortage, migration accounted for 60% of new-home demand in the Netherlands between 2015 and 2024, with half of that attributable to asylum seekers. 11% of the Dutch aged 25-34 live with their parents, below the European average of 30%, but above the Scandinavian countries, where it is between 4% and 8%. And the Dutch have among the most living space per person. Home prices and rents have exploded. If you depend on social housing, you may wait 10 years or more to get a home.

That it has worked so far without too much trouble looks like a miracle. Most newcomers find a place thanks to the efforts of volunteers who help them integrate. In my town, blacks seem to mingle more with the natives than the Muslims. The Netherlands is an agreeable country. A 2026 survey claims it is the best place to live in. That is a subjective measure, as the outcome depends on the variables you consider and how you weigh them. Still, it says something. People move where they can find a better life. That cultures do change over time, also due to immigration, is a fact of life. Yet if newcomers don’t adapt to and integrate into the culture that has made the Netherlands the best place in the world to live, conditions will likely deteriorate, and things will be less agreeable in the future. Modernisation and the ensuing demise of traditional village life were equally profound. The difference is as great as that between Western, Islamic, and African cultures. Our traditional cultures are already dead.

If there is to be a future world society, it will be a multicultural one, but if there is not enough that unites us, a society will fall apart. And if the Netherlands is an agreeable country that many wish to live in, the rest of the world should become more like the Netherlands. Excessive consumption in wealthy countries should stop. That would be the end of the main reasons for migrants to move. The fascists are worried and call immigration an invasion. Since World War II, the ethnic makeup of several Western countries has undergone profound changes. Those who came to the Netherlands since 1960, along with their descendants, now comprise over 25% of the population.

We don’t know the future, so our choices are a matter of faith, also on the issue of the multicultural society. Science can’t even predict tomorrow’s headlines, let alone what happens a few decades from now. So, can you call the mass migration an invasion? Can the fascists be right? What seems rational depends on the future you expect. And so, some say that the multicultural society is a religion.

Had the Native North American tribes in 1650 rallied around a fascist leader who claimed whites were an evil race with nefarious inclinations, not humans, but subhuman trolls from a dark place where the Sun never shines who were planning to take their land, and united to eliminate these pale abominations, they might have fared better. And see how these pale faces have culturally enriched the land by replacing the forests with strips of tarmac surrounded by concrete constructs with neon lights. So, if you see people giving the Hitler salute, think of that. Hitler led Germany to destruction. The Native Americans who violently opposed white immigration into their lands also perished. But had the natives succeeded in exterminating the whites and prospered, critics might later have argued that it had been unnecessarily cruel to genocide these pale-faced ones.

The rear-view mirror pundits are a particularly annoying species. They can predict the past with uncanny precision, and claim they knew it all along. We can’t foresee the long-term consequences of migration. It can lead to civil war, but so can divisive politics. In Bosnia, three faiths have lived relatively peacefully alongside each other for five centuries until the 1990s, when they fought a bloody civil war. The Bosnians shared the same ethnicity, culture, and language, differing only in their religion. Nationalist and religious politics plunged them into a civil war.

The multicultural fairy tale is that people of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities live together in the same community, where individuals retain, pass down, celebrate, and share their unique cultural ways of life, languages, art, traditions, and behaviours. It is not a reality in many cases. Ethnic groups frequently reside in separate quarters. Cultural differences cause tensions. Chicago has separate neighbourhoods for whites, Mexicans, blacks, Poles, Koreans, Jews, Indians, Italians, Greeks, and they all have their neighbourhood grocery stores. The purpose of the multicultural fairy tale is to provide a story that maintains the peace long enough for us to work out our differences. That requires us to share a belief in a common destiny.

Goodbye, fossil fuels?

Fossil fuels provide 80% of humanity’s energy consumption. Perhaps you have heard tales about phasing out fossil fuels, that solar is the cheapest source of energy, and that it will all be nice and dandy with solar and wind. A 2021 International Energy Agency (IEA) projection of future energy use tells a different story. The IEA expected a 30% increase in world energy use between 2020 and 2050. Renewable energy will not even fully cover that increase.⁵ It is the reason Big Oil keeps drilling. And so, saying goodbye to fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy begins with reducing global energy consumption by 50%, and that will require drastic lifestyle changes.

The IEA concludes that the pledges by governments to date—even if fully achieved—fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world a 50% chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.⁶ The IEA presented a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It bets on cheaper solar energy and technology to store it. Achieving 50% renewable energy use may be feasible, but beyond that, the costs may become prohibitive if the bet-on technologies don’t arrive on time. We are about to find out.

A global power grid could make switching to renewable energy feasible, as it would require less spare capacity and batteries. Long-distance electricity transport incurs limited losses (26% per 10,000 kilometres). It might be profitable to transport electricity over thousands of kilometres from locations with predictable solar availability to other locations. It is mainly a political problem as nation-states have conflicting political objectives, so it requires a global government. We may have already surpassed the 1.5°C global average temperature rise, at which point things supposedly become critical. Due to the measures already taken and planned measures, the expected temperature rise may be limited to 2.6°C by 2100 AD, significantly less than the worst-case scenario of a 4°C rise.

What is our religion?

Once we accept a story as the truth, it becomes a matter of faith, whether it is renewable energy, organic farming or a multicultural society. The bottom line is often that we may disagree on whether we need to do it and whether it is possible. Yet our belief about whether we need to do it may depend on our belief about whether it is possible. Underneath lies the problem that we may have to do it, but that it may be impossible. Maybe we should do something about climate change, but it is not going to happen, so why ruin our industries with energy shortages? And if other countries aren’t switching to organic agriculture, why bankrupt our farmers? And why should we have an open multicultural society, and go through the trouble of accommodating various cultures, when others do not? And should the migrants not adapt in the first place?

Then there are the unforeseen consequences. When the Dutch began electrifying their energy consumption, few foresaw that they might end up with power shortages requiring businesses and consumers to adapt their demand to electricity availability. And there are extremes, like no Sun and no wind during winter, when energy demand is at its peak. The waiting list for grid connections is growing. The Sri Lankans suffered much more from their sudden switch to organic farming. We accept the consequences of our choices if we believe that they are right. Our future and our children’s are on the line. Only, we don’t know the future, so our choices on these matters are a matter of faith.

In the Middle Ages, most Europeans were dirt poor. Their houses were mere sheds. They often barely had enough to eat. Still, medieval Europeans built magnificent cathedrals. God was more important to them. Were they right, or were they wrong? Today, money is our religion, and we are committing suicide by subjecting ourselves to the rule of money. Renewable energy, organic agriculture and the multicultural society are choices of faith with uncertain outcomes. They can go wrong, but so can the alternatives. We often don’t know what the right choices are. Something unforeseen can happen any time, making what seems sensible today appear ill-conceived tomorrow. Yet, the doom that the pursuit of profit will cause is certain, and few see it coming.

Latest revision: 12 August 2026

Featured image: The Lady Chapel of Exeter Cathedral. User Diliff. Wikimedia Commons.

1. ‘This is nuts:’ European power prices go negative as springtime renewables soar. Joshua S Hill (2023). Renew Economy. [link]
2. Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained. Kenny Torrella (2022). VOX. [link]
3. Can conventional agriculture feed the world? Pablo Tittonell. Wageningen University.
5. How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country? Hannah Ritchie (2017). Our World In Data. [link]
5. EIA projects nearly 50% increase in world energy use by 2050, led by growth in renewables. EIA (2021). [link]
6. Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector. IEA (2021). [link]

All Roads Lead to War

28 Jul 202330 Sep 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Final answer

Why do we fight wars? We can settle for the simple answer that it is in our nature to do so, and then you can go on with your life. As we near the end of days, that life could be short, so it might be better to delve deeper into the matter to resolve the question once and for all, or to arrive at a more profound analysis of the causes of humanity’s termination before it occurs. By then, it might be too late to make such an analysis to make a meaningful difference. There have been many wars, but for the sake of argument, let’s take the war in Ukraine as a case study. One reason to do that is that it is one of the most recent wars, so we had the opportunity to learn the most from history. And the war was unnecessary, as relations between Russia and Ukraine had been friendly until 2014. So, if we, with all the knowledge of history, can’t prevent unnecessary wars, then what hope is there for us?

For the analysis, we could set aside propaganda and establish the facts to understand better why it happened. But then you have to discern between the main issue and the side issues. So, let’s start with the essence. Exactly 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days after Russia-supported Ukrainian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) in Ukrainian airspace, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine in a so-called special military operation known as the Ukraine War. The Flight 17 plane, which took off from Amsterdam and was mostly loaded up with Dutch people, first flew on 17 July 1997, exactly 17 years before the shootdown. That was precisely one year after the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 on 17 July 1996, which crashed 777 days before Swissair Flight 111. Hence, the war was destined to start on 24 February 2022. We could stop here, but that would also be quite unsatisfactory and bad journalism.

In early 2021, Russia began a military buildup along Ukraine’s borders, while Putin demanded security guarantees and the prevention of Ukraine joining NATO. Putin being an evil dictator appears the primary cause of the war at first glance, but a closer look reveals a more nuanced picture. We have emotional problems with applying logic. Our minds work like so: he is an evil dictator, so he must be wrong. That is not always the case. Adolf Hitler had a genuine case for tearing up the Versailles Peace Treaty and occupying the Rhineland. Many other things he did were less reasonable, but we know all about that. After World War II, the Allies realised that without the unreasonable Treaty of Versailles, the war probably wouldn’t have happened. Leaders make mistakes. Western leaders ignored Russian interests by expanding NATO into former Soviet territory and promising NATO membership to Ukraine after promising Russia not to do so.

Yet, making peace is not so easy. Giving in to Putin’s demands could embolden him to invade other countries. He is an evil dictator after all. So, when Donald Trump was desperately seeking the Nobel Peace Prize to make a name for himself and, like a veritable peace dove, was prepared to give Putin what he claimed to desire, Putin proved unwilling to come to the negotiating table. Blaming the West or Russia is not going to prevent the next war. Other conflicts could escalate into war, such as those between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, and Thailand and Cambodia. There are always causes to fight for, and men who wish to make names for themselves. Vladimir Putin wants to go into history as the one who made Russia great again. These kinds of ambitions are killing us.

The conflict in Ukraine comes with a history, as do many others. And new conflicts can pop up at any time. Who would have thought that the United States would be willing to invade Greenland to acquire security guarantees it already had? The motives of the warring parties make sense from their perspective. Putin’s case for invading Ukraine in 2022 had more merit than the US’s case to invade Iraq in 2003. Had the Soviet Union, a state founded on a myth of a brotherhood of peoples that brutally repressed nationalism, still existed, the war would not have happened. Had there been no nationalism, Europe wouldn’t have fought two world wars. There is no hope for world peace if it is up to us humans. Barring a miracle, warfare will go on until humans are extinct. Accepting failure and stopping breeding are a more elegant way to achieve the final solution to the human problem.

Historical background

The history of Russia and Ukraine is closely linked. Between 800 and 1240 AD, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was the centre of Kyivan Rus, a state founded by Viking traders seeking a land route to the Mediterranean. It encompassed western Russia, Belarus, and much of Ukraine. The Rus were Scandinavian Vikings, so Russia received its name from that people. By 1240, the Mongols overran the area. When Mongol power waned by 1400, a new Russian state emerged around Moscow. By then, Ukraine had become part of Poland while Turkey took over Crimea and the surrounding territories. As a result, Ukraine separated from Russia and developed its own culture and language. Polish and Turkish power declined from the 17^th century onwards, and Russia filled that void. By 1800, Russia had become a large empire controlling most of Ukraine.

During World War I, the Russian Empire collapsed, and a civil war followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. By 1922, the communists had won and conquered most of Ukraine. In the late 1920s, the Soviets forcefully collectivised farms. Farmers lost their land and ended up in prison labour camps. Agricultural output dropped, leading to a famine and the deaths of three to five million people, mostly in Ukraine. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin made a pact. They divided Poland, and the Soviet Union acquired Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Western Ukraine. After Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, some 250,000 Ukrainians helped the Germans, and Ukrainian fascists murdered 100,000 Poles in an ethnic cleansing campaign. At the same time, 6,000,000 Ukrainians fought in the Red Army. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine became independent. Yet, Crimea remained home to the Russian Black Sea fleet.

When the Soviet Union retreated from Eastern Europe, NATO leaders promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into its former sphere of influence.¹ Yet, Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO. Once liberated from Soviet oppression, they sought security guarantees against Russia, which joining NATO could provide. Several policymakers in the West believed that would be a historic mistake. Russia could see it as a violation of promises made.² NATO expansion proceeded nonetheless. The collapse of the Soviet Union had broken the Russian spirit and national pride. Russia had been an empire, and the Soviet Union a world power. It was all in shambles, while many Russians had become destitute due to the liberal economic reforms imposed by the West.

Vladimir Putin was employed by the Soviet secret service, the KGB, for sixteen years. After leaving the service in 1991, he worked as the deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg. In this capacity, he oversaw the disappearance of precious metals and food, leading to allegations of corruption.³ Later, Putin joined President Boris Yeltsin’s staff. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed him director of the FSB, the successor to the KGB. On 9 August 1999, he became Prime Minister. One month later, on 9 September (so 9/9/99), a series of terrorist attacks started inside Russia, killing 307 and wounding over 1,700 in a week, which the FSB attributed to Chechen militants. Yet, it was the FSB itself that perpetrated them. State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov announced that another bombing had occurred in Volgodonsk, while that bombing had yet to happen, proving it was a government operation. In Ryazan, the police apprehended FSB agents planting bombs.

Putin had been the FSB’s head until a month before these attacks, which undoubtedly took time to prepare. No evidence exists that Putin ordered these attacks, but he is definitely the kind of guy for it, and his KGB training has taught him not to leave behind any evidence. The conductors of an independent investigation either died mysteriously or ended up in prison. Putin vowed to go after the Chechen terrorists, which made him popular with the Russian people. Had the Russians found out that Putin himself had ordered these attacks, they might have supported him even more. Stalin is one of Russia’s most popular guys, with a 70% approval rate, so Russians love to be murdered by their leaders. The terrorist attacks became a pretext for a long and bloody war in Chechnya.

A few months later, Yeltsin stepped down and appointed Putin his successor. Putin pledged to restore Russia’s prestige and sphere of influence. He eliminated the oligarchs who opposed him and stripped them of their possessions. His opponents, including those who lived abroad, suffered from shortened lifespans, attributable to causes such as falling out of windows or exposure to nerve gases. The remaining oligarchs had to learn to pay taxes to survive, which improved state finances.

Vladimir Putin sees the former Soviet territories as a primary interest for Russia and seeks influence or dominance in the region. In 2005, despite corruption, voter intimidation, election fraud and the poisoning of the pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine held free elections due to a popular uprising, much to the dismay of Putin, who had hoped to retain his influence in the country with the help of his favourite, Viktor Yanukovych. Most other Soviet republics remained within Russia’s sphere of influence, except Georgia, which aspired to membership in the EU and NATO. Russia then invaded Georgia in 2008.

Prelude

Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine had a multi-party system with numerous corrupt political parties in which oligarchs play a central role. Ukraine is one of Europe’s most corrupt countries, which Russia’s propaganda outlets are keen to point out. Only Russia is even more corrupt. We learn little about it, because Russia has no free press anymore, and those who have investigated it, if they didn’t end up in prison, died prematurely, with the most famous fatality being Alexei Navalny, who had documented the massive corruption of Putin and his cronies, which included a massive 17,700-square-metre palace to store Putin. Following a 2020 nerve agent poisoning by the FSB, which he miraculously survived, Navalny ended up in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024, where he died under suspicious circumstances.

Ukraine became almost evenly split into two political blocs. One sought cooperation with the West, while the other aimed for closer ties with Russia. People in the West and the centre of Ukraine favoured the Western-oriented bloc, while people in the East and the South favoured the Russia-oriented bloc. It coincided with the languages spoken. People in the East mostly spoke Russian, and people in the West mostly spoke Ukrainian. Whether or not the Russian speakers were actually Russians is a matter of debate, but it highlights why the emergence of a conflict was only a matter of time.

Those living in eastern Ukraine spoke Russian, felt connected to Russia, and desired friendly relations with Russia. Those living in the West thought they were Ukrainian, felt unrelated to Russia, and hoped to become part of the West and be free from Russian influence. It was a recipe for trouble, which the imperial powers, the United States and Russia, sought to exploit. Samuel Huntington called Ukraine a cleft country as these blocs identify with separate civilisations. Ukraine had plans to join NATO. In 2008, Putin warned Moscow would view that plan as a direct threat to Russia’s security.⁴

After fair elections, Putin’s favourite, Viktor Yanukovych, became president in 2010. By 2013, there was strong support for an economic treaty with the European Union (EU) in Parliament. After lengthy negotiations, a deal was in the making. Then, Yanukovych decided not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU and instead to seek closer ties with Russia. Russia was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, and Putin had offered loans on favourable conditions while threatening to harm the interests of the Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians if they rejected his proposal.⁵

Protests erupted, calling for the resignation of the president and the government. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, but President Yanukovych responded with a police crackdown that included the use of snipers. The protesters held out for months and fought back with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, a bulldozer and firearms. At some point, the police could no longer defend themselves from protesters’ attacks. In the end, 108 civilians and 13 police officers had died. The Euromaidan protests led to the ousting of the government, and President Yanukovych fled. Most Ukrainians didn’t want to sever ties with Russia at that point, as Ukraine relied on cheap Russian gas.⁵ After the Maidan Revolution, pro-Russian protests and uprisings erupted in Crimea, the Donbas and Odesa with Russian support.

Pro-democratic groups had started the Maidan Revolution. Most participants were ordinary citizens. However, the violence of the well-organised fascists, which included the use of snipers, likely decided the outcome. The Ukrainian fascist movement has a history which traces back to the partisan movement from the 1940s. After the Maidan Revolution, fascists patrolled the streets of Kyiv. They also provided fighters for the war against Russia-backed separatists. Among them was the Azov regiment, a group of 900 fighters with Nazi sympathies.⁶ Their bravery on the battlefield at a time when the regular army struggled to defend Ukrainian territory made them more respected in Ukraine.

Russia claimed that the Maidan Revolution was a Western-sponsored coup to overthrow a legitimate government. Yanukovych had become President after fair elections. Between 1991 and 2014, the US spent $5 billion to support civil society and NGOs aimed at strengthening democracy, anti-corruption efforts, and economic development. These groups had played a central role in starting the protests.⁷ Had the fascists not come to their aid, the police might have been able to subdue the demonstrations with force.

Putin sees foreign aid money as interference and a threat to Russia. After pro-democratic protests in Russia, he made Russian NGOs receiving money from abroad subject to a foreign agent law and closed their operations. Since the Orange Revolution in 2004, Putin also began investing in increasing Russian influence abroad. It included interference with the 2016 US elections with misinformation.⁸ After the Maidan Revolution, the Obama administration had chosen not to antagonise Russia by sending more arms to Ukraine. The previous Bush administration had provided Georgia with money and weapons in an attempt to build a bridgehead in the southern Caucasus region, provoking Russia to invade Georgia in 2008.⁷

Ukraine War

Ukraine was drifting away from Russia and aligning itself with the West. Most Ukrainians didn’t wish to live under Putin’s rule, but they also hoped for a good relationship with neighbouring Russia. That is why they elected Volodymyr Zelensky. A Ukrainian NATO membership would endanger that. Putin believed Ukraine was of crucial interest to Russia. Losing Ukraine would be a damaging geopolitical loss for Putin. The Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas insurgency had soured Russian-Ukrainian relations. There had been a truce, but there was regular shelling of civilian areas.⁹ The Donbas attracted Ukrainian fascist fighters seeking combat experience. Russia-backed separatists have reported terrorist attacks with a total of 1,000 fatalities between 2015 and 2021.¹⁰

Zelensky had won the 2019 elections by promising to seek peace with Russia. The fascists blocked these plans by threatening to use violence and murder Zelensky.¹¹ A return of Ukraine to the Russian sphere of influence was not to be expected. The truce with Russia was nothing more than a truce, as neither party had any genuine desire for peace. Ukraine intended to regain its lost territories while Putin hoped to bring Ukraine under Russian influence. Ukraine was building its military and seeking NATO membership. Although NATO considers itself a defensive alliance, it is part of the Western sphere of influence. Putin sees NATO as a coalition against Russia that threatens Russia’s security.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, few pundits expected the Ukrainian army to hold out for more than a few weeks. In the early days of the war, Zelensky rejected an evacuation offer from the United States, saying he needed ammunition, not a ride. Street fighting in Kyiv was about to commence. Zelensky, who had previously been an actor, unified the nation and secured weapons and other support from his Western allies. He had previously played the Ukrainian President in a comedy. So, has fiction become a reality? Or is reality fiction? We know the answer now, so these are rhetorical questions.

During the first months of the war, there were peace talks. Both Ukrainian President Zelensky and Russian President Putin seemed willing to make concessions. Western powers blocked a peace deal, fearing the agreement would reward the aggressor state, Russia. Western powers also hoped to weaken Russia.¹² The discovery of the Bucha massacre in early April, in which Russian troops had murdered over 400 civilians, was another reason the peace talks failed.¹³ Since then, the war dragged on, while Ukraine depended on Western support to keep its army in the field. It was a stalemate, with Russia making a few territorial gains at the expense of massive losses in military personnel, yet the nature of warfare changed completely, with drones and artificial intelligence taking centre stage.

In 2025, Donald Trump became President of the United States. He initially held a favourable view of the Russian position and went so far as to parrot Russian propaganda narratives. He took upon himself the role of a peace dove, while claiming he had ended 8 wars already, and attempted to broker a peace deal with Russia by pressuring Ukraine to accept the loss of territory and give up NATO membership. The sudden change in American policy left America’s European allies in disarray, prompting them to increase their support for Ukraine. Trump soon found out that what his European allies told him was all true, and that the man in the Kremlin wasn’t at all interested in peace, so Trump then focused on making Europe pay for the war.

Clash of civilisations

Geopolitical actors abide by the logic of gang warfare, which is a particularly cynical one, but also natural to humans. Since the end of the Cold War, US policymakers have generally held two views: the Neoconservative view, driven by a desire to spread Western values by force, and realpolitik. In his book The Clash of Civilisations, Huntington argues that it is arrogant and dangerous to assume Western culture is superior. He urged the West to respect other civilisations and their leading nations, and to allow them spheres of influence that coincide with cultural and civilisational borders. It implies that Ukraine should align with Russia. Realpolitik could mean throwing Ukraine under the bus to prevent war.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Neoconservative view won out, as the United States found itself the hegemon in a unipolar world. It emboldened the Neoconservatives’ aggressive attitude and pursuit of global dominance. US planners aimed to prevent the emergence of a rival power anywhere in the world. They hoped to establish a global order, the New World Order, which George H.W. Bush described in his speeches as peaceful cooperation among nations. This arrangement would allow other countries to pursue their legitimate interests while deterring them from seeking a larger regional or global role or from challenging US leadership.¹¹

A single world order can bring peace or at least reduce warfare. The Romans pacified the Mediterranean, thereby creating the world-famous Pax Romana everyone is talking about on social media (just kidding, as no one is discussing it). The Americans sought to copy that idea and create a Pax Americana. From behind the desks of the geopolitical planners, it may have seemed a marvellous idea with the bonus of an excellent business opportunity for the military-industrial complex. It brought the Iraq War, with hundreds of thousands of fatalities. It is the prerogative of the hegemon to ignore the subjected people. The Romans never considered how the Gauls felt about Roman occupation. The resentment about the West’s colonial past and military interventions is understandable, but the end of Western dominance will not end warfare. Nothing will, except a single world order.

The clash-of-civilisations view doesn’t provide a workable alternative. Ukraine and Russia are Christian Orthodox and Slavic, but most Ukrainians now choose the West. It also applies to Taiwan and some other countries that share China’s Confucianist heritage, such as Japan and South Korea. Huntington predicted that these countries would seek leadership from the leading nations of their respective civilisations, Russia and China. The world has grown closely integrated. Separating along civilisational lines makes little sense anymore. Yet, China’s growing military power makes Neoconservative thinking increasingly risky. China seeks sovereignty over Taiwan and the South China Sea, using force to back up its claims, and China’s navy is now the largest. If China’s neighbours feel threatened and seek an alliance with the United States, that could be another path to World War III.

Gang warfare

Geopolitical actors act as gangs, defending and expanding their turf. It is insightful to paint the picture of the Ukraine war as gang warfare, so Putin’s mafia state attacking a state backed by the US mobster state run by neoconservative gangsters and the military-industrial complex, which, amongst others, invaded Iraq to loot its oil. And by the way, fascist thugs in Ukraine, the so-called Nazis, whom Putin was harping about while having Nazi mercenaries from the Wagner Group fighting on the Russian side, have prevented a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine alleges that China is supporting the Russian war effort, while China claims it can’t accept Russia losing the war.¹⁵ The major powers are all making their cynical calculations. The major powers are all making their cynical calculations and risking everything. That the nukes have not already been flying may be such a miracle that it proves we live inside a simulation.

Humans operate in gangs. It is our nature. We are gangsters. And so, the gang is our default political organisation. This type of establishment dominated most of human history and still exists today in the form of warlords, militia, drug cartels, and street gangs. States have proven to be effective in repressing gangs and violence within their borders. But once order breaks down, gangs will pop up everywhere and take over.¹⁶ Gang leaders see themselves as public benefactors, on par with eminent statesmen, or as wealth-creating entrepreneurs suffering from brutal government repression. Or to quote Al Capone,

I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them to have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.

In a unipolar world, where one power dominates, most countries fear and respect the hegemonic power. A hegemonic power can provide order, much like a police officer, or it can be a big bully. The United States was the hegemon between 1990 and 2020. Other countries didn’t challenge that position. It allowed the United States elites to develop delusions of grandeur and invade Iraq because of a belief in the superiority of Western culture and values based on the Hegelian dialectic. The Neoconservative planners assumed Iraq would miraculously turn into a liberal democracy after the invasion.¹⁷ Probably, the business case for the oil industry also seemed profitable to Dick Cheney. We are gangsters after all, even when we have the best interests of humankind in mind.

In a world with two major powers, a stable situation can emerge. During the Cold War, there was mutual assured destruction (MAD) in case of a nuclear war. Still, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and again in 1983, when Ronald Reagan’s aggressive rhetoric made the Soviet leadership believe the US would attack. They put their nuclear forces on high alert. On both the Soviet and US sides, warning systems for incoming enemy missiles malfunctioned and sounded the alarm. The soldiers watching the alarms detected red flags, suggesting these alarms were false. And so, we were lucky to come out of the Cold War alive. In a multipolar world, alliances shift, and a stable situation is less likely to emerge. That is what we are heading to, and Russia and China are aiming for.¹⁸

On the eve of World War I, Europe was a multipolar continent with five major powers in shifting alliances. The future of the multinational Austrian-Hungarian Empire was in peril as the nationalism of the different peoples living in it gradually undermined it. After a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the leadership of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire believed it had to eliminate the Serbian threat. Russia felt it had to support its ally Serbia to prevent it from being overrun by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Germany felt threatened because its foes, France and Russia, surrounded it. Germany saw no option but to back its only ally, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. France and Great Britain backed Russia because it was their ally, and Germany their foe. And so, an assassination plunged Europe into a war that killed over ten million people. We are drifting toward a multipolar world with several powers, and hence a politically unstable one.

Conspiring for world peace

Before World War I, the socialist movements had declared their opposition to war, which, according to them, meant workers murdering each other to enrich their capitalist masters. Once the war had started, most socialists and trade unions backed their government and supported their country’s war effort. The workers would have been better off if they had united and refused to fight. So, why did they go to war nonetheless? You and the other are better off without a war. But you don’t know what the other will do. If you don’t fight, the other might kill you. Workers in France were uncertain about the actions of their German counterparts. If the latter had joined the army, but not the French, then Germany would have overrun France. Furthermore, nationalist stories about pride and heritage proved more inspiring than the rational appeal to the self-interest of the international proletariat.

After World War II, Western elites conspired to prevent future warfare by promoting cooperation among nations through international institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF. Nationalists and socialists distrusted the capitalist and internationalist Western elites, who were the primary beneficiaries. Still, a single world order is a requirement for permanent world peace. Nowadays, Western power is in decline. A peaceful world order doesn’t appear to emerge anytime soon, not from peasants and workers of all nations joining hands, nor from the secretive scheming of the elites. Humans are incapable of bringing permanent peace on their own. Perhaps the survivors of World War III will come to their senses, but not for long. It is not in our nature. Memories die after a few generations, and there will always be new just causes to fight for, and there will be men who wish to make a name for themselves.

Featured image: Destroyed Russian tank near Mariupol. Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.

Latest revision: 18 September 2026

1. NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard: Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner. George Washington University (2017). [link]
2. NATO expansion: a policy error of historic importance. Michael MccGWire. Review of International Studies (1998). [link]
3. Putin’s Career Rooted in Russia’s KGB. David Hoffman (2000). Washington Post. [link]
4. Putin warns Nato over expansion. The Guardian (2008).
5. A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War. Jacobin (2022). [link]
6. Profile: Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment? AlJazeera (2022). [link]
7. Did Uncle Sam buy off the Maidan? Marc Young (2015). Die Zeit. [link]
8. Fact Sheet: What We Know about Russia’s Interference Operations. German Marshall Fund of the United States.
9. UN report on 2014-16 killings in Ukraine highlights ‘rampant impunity’. United Nations (2016). [link]
10. Ukraine-Russia Crisis: Terrorism Briefing. The Institute for Economics & Peace (2022).
11. Why Zelensky won’t be able to negotiate peace himself. Ted Snider (2024). Responsible Statecraft.
12. ‘We want to see Russia weakened’: Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin says he wants Putin’s forces depleted so he cannot repeat what he has done in Ukraine during his Kyiv trip. Daily Mail (2022). [link]
13. The Grinding War in Ukraine Could Have Ended a Long Time Ago. Branko Marcetic. Jacobin (2023). [link]
14. Defence Planning Guidance (1992). George Washington University. [link]
15. China tells EU it can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine, official says. Nick Paton Walsh. CNN (2025) [link]
16. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. Francis Fukuyama (2011). [link]
17. What the Neocons Got Wrong. Max Boot. Foreign Affairs (2023). [link]
18. China-Russia ties strengthen, accelerate multipolar world. Andrew Korybko (2025). GlobalTimes.cn. [link]

The Plan For The Future

There is a plan

Category: society