Tag: history

A portrait of Karl Marx

Marxism

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Core beliefs

Marx sees human history in terms of class struggle. Hegel had an idealist concept of a struggle of ideas driving history. The Marxist view of history holds that change arises from the material interests of classes, particularly those of the ruling and working classes. Individuals can play key roles at certain moments in history, but change depends on economic and class factors. There is an unavoidable historical progress from primitive to advanced, so from primitive societies, to feudalism, to bourgeois capitalism, which would finally end in workers owning the means of production, so socialism.

The second core Marxist idea is the law of value under capitalism. Capitalism is a system of production for the profit of the owners of the means of production, who exploit those who own nothing but their ability to work. Labour creates all the things and services that we use and need, but the value of that labour is appropriated by the owners of the means of production as ‘surplus value’ over and above what labour receives for its work. That surplus value is accumulated as capital, which adds value to labour. A worker with the proper equipment can produce far more widgets than one without.

Marx’s theories have little standing in economics, but that is not the strength of Marxism. It lies in recognising that the organisation of societies depends on economic factors, with competition as the hidden driving force. We work in corporations because that gives a competitive advantage, which affects the organisation of societies. The simple fact that we have time zones with standardised times is a result of the Industrial Revolution and train schedules. And Marx offered keen insights into what is wrong with capitalism, but these were 19th-century views, so translating them into modern equivalents can be illuminating.

Value is subjective

Marx claimed that capitalists’ profits come from appropriating the value that workers create, so stealing it. He based his claim on the labour theory of value, which economists of his time considered valid. The theory says that the price of an item equals the cost of labour required to make it, thus including the labour to produce the raw materials. If making a pair of shoes takes twice as much labour as making a pair of trousers, shoes cost twice as much as trousers. Marx asked himself, ‘If that is correct, how can there be profits?’ It is because the theory is wrong, not because capitalists are appropriating the value that workers create. There is no objective measure of value.

On the market, the price of an item depends on what people are willing to pay for it, not on what it costs to make. Otherwise, you could work a year on building a better mousetrap and sell it for €50,000. Nobody will buy a €50,000 mouse trap. However, after spending another €50,000 on building a brand in a marketing campaign, you might sell that same mousetrap for €200,000. That is because value is subjective. It might seem stupid to buy a €200,000 mousetrap, but if you have too much money and showing off the mousetrap makes you attractive to the ladies, it may be worth it.

Marx drew the incorrect conclusion that labour gives a product value, when it is entrepreneurship that does. Businesspeople organise the production and distribution of goods and services, which includes hiring labour, managing customer and supplier networks, making estimates about future consumer desires, or creating them with marketing campaigns, and doing all of this at a profit, as the operation requires capital. Marx overlooked that part of capitalism. That is why communist countries are poor. They don’t have entrepreneurs. As we near the end of humanity, with the profit motive as the primary cause, leaving it there would be a fatal mistake.

Value is what we believe it is. Nothing is sacred. Everything is for sale, including the rainforests and even the Earth. The so-called owners think it is all theirs and can do with it as they please. In a communist dictatorship, the government tells you what to believe. In the market, a story becomes true if you can sell it. That is why businesses advertise products that are bad for us. As money represents power, we stare into the moral abyss. That is why communists called their newspapers The Truth.

In a world without someone telling us what the truth is, there is no truth, and communism is just another message on the marketplace. The communists appealed to the workers’ self-interest. And that was a poor sell because workers were worse off under communism. It is why communism was doomed to fail, not because it is impossible to live like communists. Early Christians did. Rather than concluding he had just proven the labour value theory wrong, Marx claimed capitalists stole from their employees.

Silvio Gesell made the astute observation that the problem is not entrepreneurs and profits but passive interest income. Plenty of people live off their capital without contributing anything, except perhaps by bringing in capital to produce things we don’t need. Gesell aimed for a society where capital has no privilege, so where there is no passive capital income, but where people can put their talents to good use and are rewarded for taking risks and making the right decisions. And if we terminate the bullshit economy, which includes status products like €200,000 mousetraps, that could create a fairer economy.

Fulfilling work

Marx further said that producing for markets alienates us from what we make. Many workers experience this. It is why Dilbert comics are so successful. Marx claimed we could be free, creative beings, but the modern, technologically developed world dictates our lives. Marx believed that ending the market mechanism and replacing it with democratic planning would liberate us. So if workers received what they owed and we replaced capitalism with democratic planning, we would live in a paradise where we could do the jobs we like and have everything we need.

That is a silly idea. There will be long lines of people who wish to be actresses, but few want to be cleaners. Likewise, communes don’t attract farmers and construction workers, but artists and Reiki healers. We need food and homes, not art and quacks. Work is doing something useful. If it isn’t useful, it isn’t work, but a hobby. Even if everyone contributes, planning will never do as well as markets. You could live with that if you have enough and have no worries. You might want a pear, but you could settle for an apple. And you have heard of oranges but never tasted one.

Capitalism causing misery

Marxists claim that capitalism causes misery as adding capital means doing more with fewer workers, which reduces the need for labour, pushing wages below the subsistence level and leaving workers to starve. In the 19th century, most economists believed wages would remain close to the subsistence level. If wages increased, more people would survive, expanding the labour supply. That would cause wages to decrease, so that more people would starve. The market would keep population levels in check. Marxists argue that making more stuff with fewer people was impossible because the unemployed couldn’t buy it. So, there would be either underconsumption or overproduction.

Marx himself held a slightly different view. Capitalist production occurs only if it is profitable. The drive for more production undermines the profitability of that production, Marx believed. Capitalists compete against each other to gain market share and a larger share of profits appropriated from workers. To gain an advantage, they resort to labour-saving technology to reduce costs and increase labour productivity. Marx argued that profit comes from labour, so investment in machines replacing labour may increase productivity, but at the expense of profitability. It would eventually lead to the halting of production and the layoff of workers. That didn’t happen because of Say’s Law.

Due to higher production efficiency and increased production, items became cheaper, so consumers had money to spend on other items. And humans can create money from thin air. When capitalists produce more, they must sell their merchandise, and, if necessary, they can encourage people to borrow money. And so, the general level of opulence rose. Marx had vastly underestimated human ingenuity in finance, marketing and job creation in the services sector and government, the so-called bullshit jobs in the bullshit economy. These jobs make sense because they solve problems in an increasingly complex society, but didn’t exist before as people lived simpler lives.

Scientific and rational

Marx believed that his theories were scientific and rational. He devised a theory of history using Hegel’s dialectic, arguing that power structures in society reflect economic conditions. To Marx, it was not new ideas challenging the status quo but economic conditions that drove historical change. He would say that the status quo of serfdom in Europe ended because towns challenged it by providing alternative jobs for serfs. Lords had to compete with them for their labour. And so, employer-employee relationships replaced serfdom, which became the new status quo.

Marx also believed nationalism was a temporary phase, imposed by economic conditions. Industrialisation required larger markets, thus societies rather than communities. Nationalism allowed the elites to divide and rule the working class. And because capitalism would eventually bankrupt itself, Marx predicted, as if it were a logical certainty, communism would replace employer-employee relationships, and everyone would become free and equal. In reality, people weren’t free or equal under communism, and a new elite of party bureaucrats replaced the capitalists.

Marx aimed to violently overturn the existing capitalist order through revolution, whereas Hegel believed that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had been necessary to replace the feudal or aristocratic order with a new order grounded in European Enlightenment ideals. Karl Marx became the prophet of the most successful cult in recent history. In many ways, Marxism became Christianity without God, by claiming there is a plan behind history, that there will be an End Time, a communist revolution, after which we will live in Paradise. Marx raised concerns that are still valid today:

  • Instead of saying we will enter the communist paradise as a historical necessity, we may argue that the script is that we are about to enter God’s Paradise, which could be a Hegelian synthesis of the Marxist challenge to the existing bourgeois order.
  • Instead of saying capitalists steal value from workers, you can argue that we work to make the rich richer. Despite economic growth in advanced economies, many workers still can hardly get by. And that is not because they are all lazy or stupid.
  • Instead of saying the system alienates us from what we produce, you can argue that we are part of a system over which we have no control. We can’t democratically decide on ending the creative destruction of this planet and humanity.
  • Instead of saying that capitalism causes misery, it has improved billions of lives, at great cost perhaps. Yet it will end in a disaster due to excessive resource consumption or technological development caused by out-of-control competition.

Feature image: A portrait of Karl Marx. Public Domain.

Property Rights

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Property rights play a central role in economic organisations. The concept originates in agricultural societies. To hunter-gatherers, property has little meaning. A hunter-gatherer band carries hardly any items and moves around to find food, so there was no point in owning things. Owning nothing and being happy was the state of humankind in the Garden of Eden. That changed with agriculture. After the Fall, Adam had to toil to make a living. You aren’t going to work hard to plant and grow crops or to raise and feed livestock if someone else takes them. The protection of property from thieves and other tribes is one reason humans organised themselves into tribes and states. Yet traditional societies usually had no private property. In most cases, family groups or villages held ownership, and clan leaders or elders made decisions.

Privately owned property and individualism became commonplace in Western Europe first. The Church wished to inherit the property of Christians who had no heir. That is harder to do if a clan owns the property, so the Church promoted private property to let the Church inherit the property of Christians who had no heirs. Individual property rights and women’s right to own property led to the end of family groups headed by my male clan leaders. And it promoted individualism.1 In the Middle Ages, after clans had disintegrated, feudal lords held most property, which the Church could inherit. Feudalism was, in principle, a voluntary agreement. Lacking a clan, a serf sought the protection of a lord. A serf had rights, like the right to protection by his lord. The development paved the way for modern capitalism, which led Europe to lead the process of modernisation.

The communist experiment has demonstrated that the absence of property rights causes shortages and sometimes famines. Another argument for property ownership is the tragedy of the commons. Individuals who act out their own self-interest deplete or spoil a shared resource, ruining it for everyone. If you share items like tools with your neighbours, you might run into conflicts if some neighbours care less about them or use them more. All pay for these shared items, but some benefit more than others, and some people might not benefit and only pay. A solution is ownership. Either we all own these items individually, or, if that is more efficient, we rent them from someone who owns them. Collective ownership can work better if there is social trust within the group, which requires members’ trustworthiness. It usually works best with family and friends and, in the past, with clans.

You can look at the role of property from different perspectives. One is the competitiveness of societies. Property rights have made societies more competitive, which is why they have prevailed. If someone else takes away what you make, you stop working. If people work harder, there is more to go around. Another perspective is how property rights contribute to an agreeable society. Property ownership may prevent shortages and famine. Property rights are often limited. One reason is to protect other people’s property. If you own a plot of land between other homes, you may not be able to build the home you like. Then you pay property taxes. And so ownership is often incomplete. And somehow, most property ends up in the hands of a few, who come to control society, making it less agreeable to others. Billionaires now determine what happens.

The problem we face is that societies function poorly without property. The pursuit of personal gain motivates us to work and be productive. Yet, property rights as they are now, and the pursuit of profit that comes from them, are among the ingredients in the toxic cocktail that is about to terminate humankind. Working hard to get ahead as we do now is suicide, while removing the incentive to be productive is disastrous. And interest income, so the leeching by the rich, is bleeding societies, while complexity is increasingly weighing on us in the form of rules and taxes, and the costs more often outweigh the benefits. That is why we must make the economic reward system align with the goals of our survival and contribution to society, including the role of property.

Featured image: screenshot from a WEF video promoting sharing items like cars

1. The Origins of Political Order. Francis Fukuyama (2011). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Amish family, Lyndenville, New York. Public domain.

Economic Development

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Before the Industrial Revolution

Before the Industrial Revolution began in England, European crafts and sciences had already advanced. During the Middle Ages, inventions such as gunpowder, eyeglasses, the compass, the printing press, the mechanical clock, the windmill, and the spinning wheel had reached Europe from China or the Middle East. What made Europe culturally different was its individualism. In the 14th and 15th centuries, a new spirit emerged in Italian merchant towns like Venice, Florence, and Genoa. It was the spirit of the merchant which subsequently spread throughout Europe.

And so, Europeans gradually abandoned their traditional Christian values and developed a capitalist spirit by pursuing worldly wealth and pleasure rather than modesty and bliss in the afterlife. There were merchants elsewhere, but the populace held them in low regard because of their depraved ethics, as greed was their core value. It was the pursuit of profit that drove European explorations and colonialism. Making money became the new moral virtue, alongside inquisitiveness, creating a dynamic that would change the world.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans explored the world and invented the microscope, the steam turbine, the telescope, and the steam pump. Modern science began when Nicolaus Copernicus calculated the trajectories of the planets by assuming that they revolved around the Sun. Isaac Newton later formulated the laws of motion. Europeans expanded their colonial empires, thereby increasing the size of their markets, a prerequisite for the mass production that industrialisation was to bring.

The British were the most successful. Supported by a strong navy, they built the largest colonial empire. They also invented modern banking, creating money out of thin air or financing capital by imagining future revenues. In 1689, the British had the Glorious Revolution, which, like many revolutions, was about taxation. Businesspeople then took over the government. Taxation henceforth required the consent of the taxed, thus, property owners. And the state became a venture of the propertied classes, like the Dutch Republic, the wealthiest nation at the time, already was.

The taxpayers didn’t like to pay for ineptitude and corruption, so the quality of the British state improved, and the state used its military to support the colonial business ventures of the propertied classes. Great Britain had easily accessible coal deposits and developed a large coal mining industry. Due to a lack of firewood, coal had become England’s primary heating source. As mine pits grew deeper, they became prone to flooding. With no transport costs, a coal-fired steam engine to pump water out of the mine became cheaper than manually pumping with buckets.

Ignition

Trade with the colonies promoted British industries, resulting in high living standards and wages in England. In England, coal was easily accessible, so energy was cheap. In Great Britain, the aristocracy had an entrepreneurial spirit and paid taxes, making the British government a reliable borrower. Banking innovations, most notably the creation of money, made British capital markets more efficient. And so, Great Britain had low interest rates, so a low price for capital. The first machines were clumsy and inefficient, but high wages, cheap capital and affordable energy made them profitable.

This combination of factors is why the Industrial Revolution started in England rather than elsewhere. Wages in France were lower, while the banking system was less developed. The rent-seeking French aristocracy didn’t pay taxes, making the French government an unreliable borrower. Thus, interest rates in France were higher. Once the first machines were in operation, inventing new ones or improving existing ones became profitable, so British engineers got busy enhancing the steam engine’s efficiency and inventing contraptions like the spinning jenny and the cotton gin.

The fuel consumption of steam engines dropped from 44 pounds of coal per horsepower-hour in 1727 to 3 pounds in 1847, making it economical to use the steam engine for other purposes, such as trains. The dramatically improved fuel efficiency, combined with other improvements, made it economical to mechanise production elsewhere where wages were lower, interest rates were higher, or energy was more expensive. That allowed the Industrial Revolution to spread to other countries.1

It was a watershed moment. Until then, inventions were rare. Scientists made them out of curiosity. However, from then on, the profit motive generated a permanent drive to pursue knowledge and new technologies and to invent new products. In this way, economising through innovation and scale became a constant, unstoppable process that economists call creative destruction. Factories needed scale to operate profitably, while inventions birthed new industries and made others obsolete.

Humans have started a fire in their midst that continues to grow. We can’t stop it. A classic book on the Industrial Revolution used at universities is David Landes’ The Unbound Prometheus. According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. The Greek supreme deity, Zeus, punished him for his act. The story parallels the biblical story of the Fall. The Industrial Revolution unleashed the unlimited fire of the gods that will devour us.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the general level of opulence has risen dramatically, though it was hardly noticeable at first. Industrialisation made craftspeople in the clothing industry destitute as they couldn’t compete with factories. Everyone else profited from cheaper cloth. Mechanisation made existing products like cloth more affordable, so people had money to spend on new products like light bulbs, making investing in new inventions profitable. Economists call it Say’s Law. More supply generates new demand.

Due to these innovations, production costs decreased, and industrialisation became profitable where wages were lower, energy was more expensive or interest rates were higher. Industrialisation first took off in Europe and North America, but not elsewhere. One reason is that Europeans had become innovation-minded and eagerly adopted new technologies like railroads and telegraphs. These first technologies were simple, thus easy to apply, but the Chinese and others remained reluctant to use them.2

Standard development recipe

Western Europe followed quickly, helped by the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s reforms. The French Revolution wiped out the corrupt old French regime and replaced it with a modernised, efficient bureaucracy. The aristocrats lost their power. The French introduced civil registries, rationalised the law code, standardised weights and measures by introducing the metric system with kilograms and metres, and made everyone drive on the right side of the road. Napoleon’s armies then spread these reforms over Europe. Napoleon did to Europe what the first Chinese emperor did to China 2,000 years earlier. Both reigned shortly but left a lasting legacy.

Countries Napoleon didn’t conquer, such as Great Britain, continued to drive on the wrong side of the road and use arcane measures like miles and ounces. And only in Great Britain do aristocrats still influence politics through the House of Lords. To catch up, Western Europe and the United States followed a standard recipe consisting of the following elements:

  • Creating a national market by eliminating internal tariffs and building railroads.
  • Developing domestic industries by using external tariffs.
  • Instituting banks to finance investments and stabilise the national currency.
  • Establishing a mass education system to upgrade the labour force.

These measures had enormous social consequences, which we now refer to as modernisation. Societies came to replace communities. It was the age of nationalism. With the help of mass education, everyone learned the national language, and local dialects disappeared. People learned to identify with their nation rather than their kin and village. The outcome was that modern humans rely on markets and the state more than on their family and community.

Other countries implemented the same recipe but with modifications due to local economic factors. Factory layouts that operated at a profit in Europe were loss-making elsewhere. If energy were expensive, the operation would become more cost-effective using fewer machines and more labour. Japan was the first non-Western country to follow. The Japanese had to deal with local circumstances. High interest rates made investment capital expensive, so Japanese factories held no stockpiles of raw materials and semi-finished products but let their suppliers make them when needed. So, when interest rates rose in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Western industries couldn’t compete with Japan.

There are varying views on why industrialisation succeeded in some countries but not in others. If you dare to generalise, you can make the following observations:

  • East Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and later China modernised successfully. They had a sense of nation and experience with rational government administration. Their bureaucrats and businesspeople successfully implemented modernisation projects.
  • Latin American countries were less successful. They were former colonies lacking national identities. Their white elites neglected the education of indigenous people. There were a few large estates and hardly any small-scale farmers. Wealth inequality prevented the development of a middle class.
  • The Soviet Union modernised with the help of state planning. Industrialisation of heavy industries succeeded, allowing the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. Agricultural reforms were a disaster, and consumer products were of poor quality. By the 1970s, it became clear the Soviet Union couldn’t keep up with the West.
  • Several countries in the Middle East modernised with dictators implementing socialist development models based on the experiences in the Soviet Union. Some Arab countries became wealthy from oil revenues. Few countries in the Middle East have developed industries that compete in international markets.
  • Africa lagged. African borders didn’t match the tribes living there, so there was no sense of nationhood. There have never been states in most of Africa. European colonisers ended traditional forms of government and property rights, contributing to poor governance and corruption. Africans started with a disadvantage.

Industrial politics

There are requirements for a modern economy, though a country doesn’t need to meet all of them. A capable government and an educated workforce can turn a situation around. Japan has few natural resources, but has become one of the most advanced countries in the world. It was the first non-Western country to industrialise. Japan was also lucky. After World War II, it had access to US markets because it was a close ally of the United States, which needed it to help it export its way into prosperity. Argentina had fertile land and was one of the wealthiest countries by 1900, but it has since then gone downhill. To successfully modernise, a country probably needs:

  • a capable government that understands economics and is business-friendly
  • an educated workforce as workers must read, write and use technology
  • businesspeople, investment capital, and sufficiently ensured property rights
  • a large enough market, thus a sizeable middle class
  • an industrial policy, thus picking industries to compete in international markets, helping to develop them, and supporting them with tariffs or subsidies

There are several kinds of industrial politics. Neo-liberal politics aim to pursue economic growth by promoting trade, lowering taxes, and reducing regulations. Unrestricted trade allows areas and people to specialise and compete to produce more and better products, enhancing overall opulence. It also promotes a race to the bottom at the expense of our future. Industries go where wages are lowest or where they can dump their waste and avoid paying for government services.

Making the economy sustainable and people-friendly also requires industrial policies, such as reducing competition and introducing regulations and controls. And it requires ending imports from countries that don’t adhere to the same ethical standards. A sustainable, people-friendly economy can only exist on a level playing field with other economies that adhere to the same standards. These measures increase costs and reduce living standards. An extreme case is the Old Order Amish. They choose to be self-sufficient and live simple lives. Their economic model resembles community economics.

Community economics aims to enable people in a community to help each other by buying and selling goods and services using local currencies. It never became a worldwide success because communities lack the scale for self-sufficiency. There is also a lack of commitment, which is something the Amish do have. Few people barter their labour or goods in their community if they can get better deals elsewhere. Commitment is vital. Without it, there will be black markets with merchants smuggling in illicit goods.

Featured image: Amish family, Lyndenville, New York. Public domain.

1. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Robert C. Allen (2014). Cambridge University Press.
2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.

Doomsday Machine

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Forces of nature

How did we get where we are today? Nature’s driving forces are competition and cooperation. This perspective provides a great deal of insight into what happened. Plants and animals cooperate and compete for resources. Cooperation and competition are everywhere. Cooperation increases the available resources. Plants generate the oxygen animals need, while animals produce the carbon dioxide plants need. Still, the available resources are limited. There is only room for one tree on that spot. And so, there is a competition called the struggle for life, where the fittest survive.

Plants and animals are opportunistic, taking advantage of opportunities whenever possible, with the help of both competition and cooperation. Plants and animals have a blueprint, their genes. These genes have the urge to make copies of themselves. It is why we exist and the basis of our will to live and our sexual desires. And so, the biological purpose of plants and animals, including humans, is to spread their genes. That is indeed a most peculiar purpose. The copying of genes is prone to errors. And so changes occur, resulting in variation within species. It is why people vary in appearance and character.

Some changes make individual plants and animals better adapted to their environment, thereby increasing their chances of survival and reproduction, resulting in a rising number of individuals with these features. Environments allow for several species to coexist, most notably when they don’t compete for the same resources. It is why ants and monkeys can live in the same area. The balance in nature is always precarious, as changes in circumstances can favour different species. And so, introducing foreign species in places where they have no natural predators can lead to pests.

Like other social animals, humans operate in groups. Social animals benefit from group cooperation, which enhances their chances of survival. Within the group, competition can arise, resulting in rankings and struggles among members. Cooperating in groups also helps us to compete with other groups, usually in warfare. And groups can form coalitions to compete with coalitions of different groups. Stories enable humans to work together in groups of any size, which then further increases the competition between these groups.

Meet our closest relatives

Chimpanzees are our closest kin. Studying these apes provides us with insights into our nature. Chimpanzees live in small troops of a few dozen individuals. They form friendships, work with reliable group members, and avoid those who are unreliable. Chimpanzees have rules, may cheat on them, and can feel guilty when they do. Within the group, the members have ranks. When there is food available, the highest-status animals eat first. Ranks and rules regulate competition within the troop, reducing conflicts and enabling its members to collaborate more effectively.

Like human leaders, chimpanzee alpha males acquire their status by building coalitions and gaining support. Others show their submission to the alpha male. Like a government, the alpha male strives to maintain social harmony within his group. He takes sought-after pieces of food like a government collects taxes. Within a chimpanzee band, there are subgroups and coalitions. There are close friendships and more distant relationships. They unite as a single fighting force in the event of an external threat.

Coalition members in a chimpanzee band build and maintain close ties through intimate daily contact such as hugging and kissing, and doing each other favours. For the band to function effectively, its members must be aware of what others will do in critical situations. For that, they need to know each other through personal experiences. Unlike humans, chimpanzees have no language to share social information. That limits the size of the group in which chimpanzees can live and work together to about thirty individuals.

Chimpanzees also commit violence in groups. Like humans, they are among the species that commit genocide on their congeners. Humans and chimpanzees are not alone in this. Chickens are known to fight racial wars when they face a lack of food. Groups of chickens may start to kill those with different colours from themselves. And so, racism could be a natural behaviour caused by competition between genes.

The human advantage

Humans have become the dominant species on Earth. We can collaborate flexibly in large numbers. We have mastered fire, which enhances our power and allows us to eat foods we couldn’t otherwise. It allowed us to become the top predator. We use tools and clothing, allowing us to do things other animals can’t and live in inhospitable environments. Compared to other animals, humans employ a rich language. That enables us to express countless meanings and describe situations in precise terms.

We pass on social information, such as who is fit for a particular job. We get information about others in our group without needing personal experience. If someone cheats, you don’t need to learn it the hard way like chimpanzees must, but someone can tell you. That allows us to cooperate more effectively. Most human communication is social information or gossip. We need the group to survive, so we must understand what is happening within our group and the decisions our group needs to make.

Human politics is about cooperating and competing. We must agree on what we should do as a group and on how we divide the spoils of our cooperation. Within the group, we may compete to cooperate. Leadership contests benefit the group when the outcome is better leadership. That isn’t always the case, and infighting can weaken the group. We also cooperate to compete. We organise ourselves in groups to compete with other groups, such as defeating them in warfare.

Early humans lived in bands of up to 150 individuals. The number of individuals with whom we can closely collaborate is one of our natural limitations. We overcame the limit of our natural group size by cooperating based on shared imaginings, such as religions, laws, money, and nation-states. That competitive advantage over other species allowed us to take over this planet and become the ‘killer bug’ that has completely upended nature and has terminated more species than any other species.

Unlike other animals and plants, which adapt to their environment, we have altered our environment to suit us. We have created societies and civilisations and have become immensely powerful collectives to compete with other collectives. However, our civilisations also shield us from the forces of nature, turning us into weak individuals. We have become integrated into the system, and many of us won’t survive a collapse of civilisation. It is crucial to understand that competition drives this process.

We imagine corporations, laws, money, and nation-states. We believe a law exists, and that is why the law works. It is also why religion works. These shared imaginations allow us to cooperate on any scale for any purpose. We are programmable, with our brains serving as the hardware and our imaginations serving as the software. And we can change the software overnight. During the French Revolution, the French stopped believing in the divine right of kings overnight and began to envision the sovereignty of the people.

Organising to compete

The forces of competition and population density drove humans to organise. There is a competition between groups of humans. Just as there is a competition between species in nature, there is also a competition between human groups. Groups that succeeded in adapting to new circumstances survived those that did not. We are rule-following animals. Once we start to cooperate on a larger scale, we need political institutions that embody the rules of a community or society.

Humans design political institutions while genetic mutations emerge by chance. Still, competition determines which designs survive and become copied. In general, under the pressure of competition, which mainly was warfare, human organisation advanced from bands to tribes to feudalism to states. The experts deem this explanation simplistic and flawed. Still, overall, that trend towards more advanced organisation occurred.

Hunter-gatherers lived in family groups of a few dozen individuals. They had few violent conflicts, probably because they had no property, and population density was low. Hunter-gatherers could move on if a stronger band invaded their territory. Small groups were egalitarian. They often had no permanent leader or hierarchy and decided on their leaders based on group consensus.

The Agricultural Revolution changed that. Farming allows more people to survive. Farmers invest heavily in their cattle and crops, so agricultural societies need property rights and defence forces. Agriculture promoted the transition from bands to tribes. Population density increased, leading to more frequent violent conflicts among people. Tribes are much larger than bands and can muster more men for war, so tribes replaced bands.

Tribes were usually egalitarian, but a separate warrior caste often emerged. The most basic form of political organisation was the lord and his armed vassals, known as feudalism. The lord and his vassals exchange favours. The loyalty of the vassals is crucial, and politics is about these loyalties and betrayals. Tribalism centres around kinship, but also includes feudalist, personal relationships of mutual reciprocity and personal ties.

States yield more power than tribes because they force people to cooperate, while tribes work with voluntary arrangements. As population density increased and people lived closer to each other, the need to regulate conflicts also grew, so some states also provided justice services. Leaders, with their family and friends, led these states. They worked with personal, feudal relationships, thus making deals and returning favours. And so, the transition from tribes to feudalism to states is not a straightforward process.

The first modern, rationally organised states with professional bureaucracies based on merit rather than personal relationships and favours appeared in China. The reason was a centuries-long cut-throat competition of warfare on an unprecedented scale, with states having armies of up to 500,000 men, in the period now known as the Warring States Era. Fielding these armies required professional tax collection, with records of people and their possessions, as well as the provisioning of soldiers in the field.

Once the state of Qin emerged victorious by 200 BC, China became unified, and the competition between the states ended, and China’s modernisation ground to a halt. Even so, China adhered to modern bureaucratic principles and remained the most modern state for 2,000 years, enabling its rulers to govern a vast empire. States remained the most competitive organisational form until Europeans invented capitalism and corporations, which would cause a radical new dynamic of permanent change driven by competition.

Capitalism and corporations

China had a strong centralised state that prevented the merchants from becoming the dominant force in society. In the Middle Ages, Europe had no strong states, so capitalism could gradually emerge in Europe. The rise of merchants and later corporations brought a new economic dynamic and wealth. Corporations are legal entities serving a specific purpose. Invented in Roman times, they included the state, municipalities, political groups, and guilds of artisans or traders.

From the Middle Ages onward, Europeans introduced commercial corporations with shares and stock markets such as the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). The advent of corporations triggered a new phase in the competitive cycle, further increasing efficiency by specialising in specific tasks. The Europeans combined their entrepreneurship with inquisitiveness, so eventually the profit motive began to drive innovations as well.

The new dynamic intensified competition and innovation, causing permanent economic growth and disruptive change, a process that economists call creative destruction. Capitalism increases available resources via cooperation or the division of labour, but competition is the driving force. As long as that remains so, competition rather than our desires determines what our future will look like.

Currently, China may have the most competitive socio-economic model, potentially outcompeting those of the West. But it will not end well for them either. Artificial intelligence may soon outcompete humans. It may become a ‘killer bug’ that ends humanity. We can’t keep up with artificial intelligence. The future doesn’t need us. We aren’t sufficiently efficient and innovative. Competition is our first and foremost problem. It is our doomsday machine. Competition, insofar as we allow it, should be at the service of cooperation rather than the opposite. If we don’t do that, we are doomed.

Featured image: Tower of Babel by The Tower of Babel (1569). Public Domain.

Twilight That Could Be Dawn

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The collapse of liberalism

In 2016, Trump enthusiasts took over the GodlikeProductions.com message board. The mood turned grim, much as it had fifteen years earlier, when Fortuyn fans flooded the IEX message board. This time, I stayed as I had missed something important. Given my possible future job, and supposedly being Adolf Hitler reincarnate, not comprehending fascism was no excuse, so I familiarised myself with the MAGA crowd. Hanging out with people helps you to understand them. And it served as a reality check. God’s plan for the New World Order seems to turn the world into one happy family, a global multicultural society. So, one people, one nation, and one leader. It is where fascism comes in. So what stands in the way of peace and happiness? The former Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende offered a suggestion: norms and values. That answer fell short. We also identify with groups. Our identities stand in the way of becoming one people.

If you hope that MAGA people are misogynistic, hateful of LGBTQ people, and racist, you will not be disappointed if you visit Godlikeproductions.com. If that makes you feel superior to them, you are like them. We like to hate others and feel superior. I also followed the feed of r/BlackPeopleofReddit, which features stories and footage of MAGA people harassing blacks or scoulding them with racist slurs. Racism is widespread, but it is not why fascism is seeing a revival. Some indeed hope for a race war to kick out all non-white people. Yet, most fascists worry about crime, fear the future, and want migration to stop. As MAGA enthusiasts point out, the violent crime rate among blacks in the United States is six times as high as among whites. Yet, most immigrants and blacks aren’t violent criminals and have jobs. So, should good people suffer for the deeds of bad ones?

Shared values and norms, and their enforcement, are the principal requirements for a good society. What truly makes a society good is social trust, which allows you to trust strangers and the government. Yet, there is more. The foundation of our societies, from where the authority comes, is myths such as religions or tales about the founding fathers. We fight over these myths because we don’t all believe in the same myths. Last but not least, we are staring into the abyss because Western culture itself is suicidal. It is the problem that led to the other problems. The pursuit of money ruins its moral foundation, turns Earth into a wasteland and promotes a rat race that will terminate humanity. And it drives migration. Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions. I wasn’t quick to judge. God wrote the script.

Turning humanity into a happy family will require unorthodox methods of an unimaginable kind. Yet that seems to be what the Kingdom of God is about. Even though it seems impossible, if God wants it to happen, it will. The multicultural societies in the West have progressed the furthest socially. The problems we are seeing could be a learning experience for the future. Yet, Paradise will never come from the interplay of social and political forces. It must be an act of God. Humans are a failed species, or to frame it as Christians would, sinners not worthy of God’s grace, and in need of a messiah. GodlikeProductions.com could ban you for no reason, only to let you back in later. It made me use Reddit as well, where you can hang out with other groups, like a fly on the wall.

Flies on walls like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel can arrive at profound insights. Hegel had figured out how God’s plan would unfold over the next 200 years as a struggle between ideas, leading to social progress. Hegel observed what happened around him, looked back at history, and reasoned from there. It appears that social progress has come to an end, and it may be up to us to figure out what to do next. We are facing a mass extinction event, which makes our fights look like a brawl on the deck of the sinking Titanic. The idea of social progress developed in the West under pressure from social justice activists, and it seems central to God’s plan. Yet we are running into the limits of human nature and would gain more by bringing the rest of the world up to that same standard. So, having a quota for women in management is of lesser importance than ending child brides. The first Trump presidency was not a clean break with the past, as his cabinet featured several old-order Republican figures. They kept The Donald in check.

The second Trump administration became a different ballgame. Trump went unhinged after he had surrounded himself with sycophants. His erratic and spiteful caprices became a spectacle so hilarious that even Monty Python couldn’t have made it up, with Trump naming buildings after himself, declaring his birthday a public holiday, going after his opponents in the most unclassy fashion while claiming they lacked class, and numerous other self-aggrandising acts. It was hard to see a plan behind his actions, so he must be a genius playing five-dimensional chess, his cult claimed, and if you don’t see it that way, you suffer from a terrible affliction called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). His economic policies included raising tariffs on Swiss imports because he didn’t like how the Swiss leader spoke to him. Then there were his brazen lies, his self-enrichment and that of his family members by abusing his office, eclipsing all previous corruption by US presidents, his pardoning of criminals, and his divisive Christmas message.

Also noteworthy were Trump’s war threats against Denmark, for, among other reasons, not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which he blamed on Norway. Then he went to war with Iran while negotiations were still ongoing for enriching uranium after he had torpedoed the previous nuclear agreement with Iran because Barack Obama signed it, and Bibi Netanyahu told him it was a bad deal for Israel. Later, he agreed to an even worse deal, leaving the rest of the world to pay for the disaster that war caused, including famine due to a lack of fertiliser. Meanwhile, the Trump regime was already eying an attack on Cuba. As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’

No doubt that the second Trump administration will go down in history as the greatest joke in the history of government as a lasting monument of God’s sense of humour. Many of his followers believe that God sent Donald Trump. And they are right. The name Trump means trumpeteer, and the noise of trumpets would herald the end times. The word ‘trump’ also means to outdo or overcome the competition, which Donald Trump did in politics like few ever did. And the word ‘trumped-up’ refers to the fantasy level of Trump’s statements, in which the connection to reality is often remote at best. And finally, I live in the former Tromp family residence. That name is the Dutch equivalent of Trump. As I may come to replace him, that could be a prophetic coincidence.

By 1 January 2025, it was already clear that the second Trump administration would be very different from the first. Trump had ousted those who might rein him in, so his erratic conduct could destabilise the world, or so I guessed. My preparations were not yet complete but seemed good enough should the time come, and were close to the moment when additional preparation would make little sense, which I estimated to be around 1 April 2027. I further surmised that the job would start before Trump’s second term ended. My new deadline became 1 January 2029. Things will not return to what they were before. The liberal world order has ended. Normally, the end of an order would herald a dark age, but the liberal order was never ideal to begin with. Yet, a poor order is better than none.

Liberal states have long had an edge because of capitalism and science. When the Soviet Union collapsed, liberalism seemed to have won. Yet, it is better to say that our consumption addiction has won. The communists had given up on their project because they had promised their workers more stuff, while everyone knew that workers in capitalist countries had more stuff. The modern consumer is not much unlike a drug addict busy committing suicide by overdosing, wanting his dealer to bring on more. He has no survival skills and is hooked on a system he can’t survive without. The merchants of death, selling us all that merchandise, are like drug dealers selling opioids. Liberalism was yet another fairy tale. It has just collapsed in front of us, but liberals have yet to catch on.

We are at a turning point in history. A crucial pillar of Western civilisation, social progress, is falling apart. Civilisation is just a thin veneer to keep the beast within us in check. Liberalism was an attempt to achieve a good society through a social contract, giving all groups in society a suitable place based on the idea of a fundamental equality of all individuals. That is only possible if we all share these same liberal values and adhere to these same liberal norms. That begins with the myths we believe in. They give our lives meaning, and we derive our values and norms from them. Myths also divide us, so we keep fighting over them. That is not going to end well. We are at the end of Hegel’s ride. We may either see the end of civilisation or the completion of our journey to Paradise.

Peak bullshit

In the early 2000s, I had a hunch that we would soon see Peak Bullshit, the era when nonsense couldn’t reach higher levels, after seeing that the Internet is an ideal medium to spread misinformation like climate change denial. Social media didn’t exist at the time. Yet, bullshit is everywhere, and has always been there. We need myths to cooperate. We need to agree rather than be right to collaborate effectively. Even in science, there is bullshit, so many people don’t trust science, including climate science, and see it as a hobby for progressives. We can measure temperature and relate it to CO2 levels, so there is little doubt about climate change. Yet, Woke ideology has affected science, either by narrowing the range of subjects open to investigation or the range of acceptable conclusions.

A high-profile case in the Netherlands was Wouter Buikhuisen’s research into the causes of criminal behaviour. Buikhuisen concentrated on biological factors. Could genes affect conduct, and could you identify criminal genes? Leftist opinion makers attacked him, claiming that the modern capitalist society and authoritarian upbringing cause behavioural issues like crime. Buikhuisen had to deal with personal attacks portraying him as dumb and evil, as well as disturbances during his lectures, some of which were violent. Partly due to the upheaval and its effect on Buikhuisen’s private life, the research project eventually faltered. The myths we believe in relate to our political preferences.

The left dominated the social sciences because science might bring social progress, an idea that appeals to progressives. Humans are programmable but also constrained. Progressives focus on us being programmable, while conservatives focus on the constrained part. Going against human nature does more harm than good, they think. The profit motive also affects research topics and acceptable conclusions. So, can you trust the vaccines Big Pharma profits from? The COVID-19 vaccines weren’t harmless, but they have prevented millions of deaths. And the spread of vaccine misinformation may have caused 200,000 fatalities in the US alone. With Donald Trump lying more than any politician ever did, to the point that even many of his followers get fed up with it, we may finally have reached Peak Bullshit, and the Day of Truth may be upon us.

Mediocre vision

Humanity’s lack of collective intelligence implies that a single leader with the right vision will do better, provided that individual has unlimited authority, like a messiah. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ You can save yourself by following me and accepting that what I say is the truth. That makes having the idea of being the messiah an uneasy predicament for any sensible person. What if people believe me, and it turns out that I am crazy? You can’t have that, do you? I have been wrong many times. It made me question my views. Yet, if something goes wrong because of a choice you make, the alternative can still be worse. If the captain had saved the Titanic but made an error that caused 200 fatalities, his actions would still have saved 2,000. Those who disagree are morons who are part of the collective suicide cult that has humanity in its grip.

What I write is the truth as I see it. I may have to revise my views, but the truth I present to you may be the truth that saves you. You may find older writings of mine, but insofar as they contradict my current ones, the latter reflect a greater deal of experience-based realism, not a fundamental change of view. God isn’t going to change human nature, or so I gradually came to assume, and human nature is more problematic than I previously thought in my naivety. It also took me fifteen years to realise that I had to become a dictator and endure a leadership cult. That is far worse than my worst nightmare. And so, it took time to accept it and find peace within. Whatever will be, will be. Every perspective is to some degree arbitrary, as is every order.

Yet, it is no accident that I live in the Netherlands, one of the most progressive countries on issues like dealing with the limits of growth, LGBTQ rights, animal welfare, balancing work and private life, opportunities for ethnic minorities, and the right to decide to terminate one’s own life. The Netherlands was also the first to have a fascist party in parliament, and later, a fascist messianic leadership cult. The Netherlands even had a political party named New Social Contract. There is no coincidence here. And culture is so ubiquitous that the Netherlands may be the only country I could have come from. Given that we can only live in one reality, we would otherwise descend into confusion. So, I must tell you what to think, because no matter how smart you think you are, the collective intelligence of humanity is less than that of a single worm.

Learning history is one thing, but experiencing it is a different ballgame. The Dutch culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries formed me, just as first-century Jewish culture shaped Jesus. The Netherlands is an agreeable place to live in, a paradise, maybe. Yet, progress comes with drawbacks and losers. Feminism came at the expense of conservative men. If they can, they will reverse women’s rights. You don’t have to doubt it. Conservative men rewrote the Bible to that aim. And so, you also don’t have to doubt that the winners write history, or rewrite it, as MAGA tries to do with slavery.

I must rewrite history once again by focusing on the underlying mechanisms and human nature, to show that culture is the decisive factor in building an agreeable world society. Of course, I believe I am right, but if you aren’t the winner, you can’t write history, and there is no point in being right. Luckily, might makes right. And as faith can move mountains, we can make the rest of the world a better place. God’s plan seems that Europe has been the battleground of ideas, so the Hegelian dialectic has progressed the farthest there, and the outcomes of this grand experiment should guide our future. We face fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take, leading to an authority crisis and a moral crisis. As Judgement Day approaches, it seems no coincidence that the International Court of Justice is in The Hague, the Netherlands.

If the world is to become one society, it will be multicultural. It is an intermediary phase, as cultures will gradually give way to folklore, because we will live by the same standards and myths and know that we share a common destiny. We must find out what the future requires of us, and from there, define acceptable conduct. None of the major cultures currently in existence meets the requirements so that the change will be hard on everyone. Yet cultural differences remain the last obstacle to the unification of humankind. And that can be fixed. The Danes descend from the raping and pillaging Vikings. The Viking raids ended soon after they had become Christians, so beliefs shape cultures.

Only a brutal truth exercise that spares no one can save us now. These are shitty issues, and you can’t fix them without getting your hands dirty. Coming from a family of farmers, I am not afraid of shit. The starting point could be the separation of the good and the evil ones, so the sheep and the goats, so it will be the Day of Judgement. You either fit in God’s Paradise, or you don’t. It doesn’t matter who you are. What matters is what you do. If we care about the world, we can’t have those who don’t care ruin it for us. There is no place for excuses. And you can’t have people believing in other myths because we will fight over them until we are all dead. Those who don’t fit in can’t live among us, and have to go to brainwashing centres to clean up their minds or to prison labour camps to repay their debt to society. Most will probably return to society at some point.

Make America Go Apeshit

A 2013 poll indicated 26% of Americans believed that Barack Obama is the Antichrist or might be.1 Most of these people later voted for Trump. Compared to Obama, Donald Trump is a jackass. No woman has accused Obama of sexual misconduct, nor did his name pop up in the Epstein files. Racism plays a role here, but it is not the entire story. The introduction of public healthcare insurance has infuriated conservatives. Barack Obama once gave the following Easter message, ‘Michelle and I wish you a joyful holiday filled with the enduring power of faith and hope.’ And Donald Trump, ‘Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell. Praise be to Allah.’ Why some think that Obama is an evil genius, and a Muslim, while the Allah-praising Trump is the best choice for Christians, is a mystery for those who don’t comprehend America.

The hatred of progressive presidents has a long history. John F. Kennedy faced the John Birch Society’s Wanted for Treason campaign. The John Birch Society had found that Kennedy was a communist and that communists had infiltrated the highest ranks of the US government, and were conspiring to create a totalitarian one-world government. The supposed proof for that was the US administration’s attempt to prevent the spread of John Birch Society propaganda. To American conservatives, the expansion of government or international cooperation like the United Nations smells like communism. These are collectivist organisations. And communists oppose and repress religion, so it is Satan’s work as well, in their view at least. That goes a long way in explaining these extremist sentiments. Perhaps, there was racism involved, as Kennedy had proposed the Civil Rights Bill to end racial segregation shortly before his assassination.

If he had them, Kennedy did an excellent job of hiding his communist sympathies. After, like a true puppet of the Military Industrial Complex, having grilled his opponent, Eisenhower, during the election campaign for neglecting America’s defences, making Eisenhower warn of the influence of the Military Industrial Complex at his farewell speech, he risked World War III with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those geniuses at the John Birch Society saw through all that and found Eisenhower to be an even more dangerous radical leftist lunatic extremist. While conspiracy theorists, with their eyeballs glued to their computer screens, were busy analysing every move by every secret society and imagining countless others, the John Birch Society has taken over the United States, with a little help from Russia’s secret services, by making people believe these conspiracy theories. If that was the plot to destroy America, it has succeeded marvellously.

The system is as corrupt as that of France before the revolution of 1789, and it only grew more corrupt, until conservatives finally had enough, fled into extremism, gathered behind Trump, and threw out the old order Republicans. Now, liberals and conservatives hate each other’s guts. To illustrate the point, on 31 December 2025, someone reposted a RealDonaldTrump social media post on Reddit headlined ‘Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!’ It featured a photograph of a dead bird, not a bald eagle, near a windmill in Israel, so not the United States. I reacted jokingly, ‘At least, Donald Trump was real.’ These were unmistakably his words, and he posted them as RealDonaldTrump. That was the joke. The post was downvoted. It is impossible to say whether Trump haters or Trump lovers did it, because both groups lack a sense of humour, but something is wrong with those who found it offensive.

Conspiracy thinking is more widespread in the United States than in the Netherlands. Conspiracy theories often relate to the facts, but if you investigate them, much remains unproven, inaccurate or wrong. Conspiracy theorists don’t adhere to strict logic. Pizzagate may be a fabrication, but they claim the Epstein files prove it. If you call conspiracy theories hunches, they make more sense. We don’t know what’s going on, so getting the direction right is already a success. And if you remove the crap, the New World Order conspiracy theory has a lot going for it, as does the belief that Jews run US politics. Worse yet, the conspiracy theorists aren’t paranoid enough by far, as the scheme is much more elaborate than their wildest imaginations. These secret plots are all part of a greater plot that seems to include the ultimate psyop: undermining trust in US society to make America go crazy and ready for the messiah. So, MAGA could stand for ‘Make America Go Apeshit.’

Idealism and realism

A good society is based on social trust, which requires everyone to be trustworthy. There are always people trying to take advantage of others, but when there are few of them, most people keep their end of the bargain, and social trust is high. If you believe that others are as trustworthy as you are, and you are trustworthy, you are willing to contribute to the common good. It also works the other way, so degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rewards and punishments can help to make people obey the rules and keep the group focused on the common good. It is why we have prisons and fines. As we are nearing an apocalypse, we face a global collective action problem. We can only save ourselves if we do it together. That would normally be impossible because tribalism and money are both stronger than any moral system, except in fairy tales.

Only one of the disciples betrayed Jesus. That already proved fatal. Judas must have witnessed God’s power, if we are to believe the Bible on the matter, yet he betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would oust the Romans to establish a Jewish state, and grew disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. And only one Indian patriot sufficed to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Since then, India and Pakistan have been one step away from a great patriotic war with nukes. It is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script, and thus have a chance of success. Without a script, being a messiah is a losing proposition, with zero chance of success, not worth entertaining for rational individuals.

Muslims are no better than Christians. Money also turns their religion into a hollow custom. Where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few might generously donate to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and murder infidels in the name of God. Yet they are more interested in building the tallest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are killing us, then trade and money are the problem.

Not all merchants are evil people. Many are not. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with identifying the cause. We can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best, for their corrupting influence is hard to contain. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens, and you need money to make money. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to the challenge. And they have tried very hard indeed, and they had an impressive stash of weapons, so you can’t blame them for not trying hard enough. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If you know how deep the problem runs, you can only appreciate their effort. If there is no God, as the communists believed, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior force of money and tribalism, and religion blinds people from these brutal facts, so there is no chance at all that we survive. The elites will play us out by sowing divisions with religious and nationalist fairy tales. They make others toil for them so they get rich without working. It will end in destruction, albeit it will be creative, economists assure us, so that our suicide will go down in memory as a form of concept art.

The elites fund think tanks that tell us fairy tales about individual freedom and make us fear collectivism, so that we will not unite and overturn the order in which they are our masters, and we are their serfs. And we, the gullible people, need myths to believe in. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only, communism doesn’t change human nature, so their economic system performed poorly while a new class society with an elite of party bureaucrats arose.

Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to make the world a better place or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. Humans are a failed species, and only God can save us. As Christianity points out, we are sinners and need a saviour. We must leave our cynicism behind and care about other people and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected, so our actions affect others and nature, and transgressions that disturb the balance in Paradise are heinous crimes.

Since the Hegelian dialectic is how God sees social progress, and the West has progressed the furthest, the West will lead the way. My reason for focusing on the United States is that Americans are pragmatic, get things done, and are the most eager to receive the messiah. Many are literally begging for the Second Coming, so I am not going to criticise them, as only God can save us and God wrote the script. Compromising with the old, corrupt order is a dead end. We need a spiritual rebirth, must break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, ground our society in ethical principles, and make humankind live in harmony with nature. Europe will probably be next, and the rest of the world will follow. That is my guess for now. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

Central planning of detail doesn’t work. And you cannot design a society on assumptions alone. Software engineers like me who have learned from experience design, build, test, start small to see if it works, correct errors, scale up, and fix bugs until the system operates smoothly. That is, unless changes are required. Then, you have to do it all over again. Small changes can have a dramatic, unexpected impact. It is why the absence of further changes is the single most crucial success factor in this endeavour to build a world society for the coming 1,000 years. Future generations must resist pressures to make improvements if things were okay to begin with. Things were okay in Eden, and all the improvements that followed since then have only made matters worse.

Selling versus convincing

US politics is corrupt also because moral corruption in the United States is a cultural issue. In that sense, Americans have the government they deserve, as it reflects the spirit of their nation. America has a tradition of moral pragmatism, in contrast to Europe’s idealism. You convince Europeans, but sell to Americans. The difference is not just in the wording. It reflects a cultural divide. I have heard Brits use the phrase, but in a negative sense, meaning getting scammed. It is more common in the United States, where it has a more neutral meaning of becoming convinced. The United States is a nation of salespeople. A typical American book is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and its cover claims it is the only book you need to succeed.

To have success, you have to be ‘genuinely interested’ in other people, the book elucidates to us, so that you can sell to them and can get rich. In other words, the ‘genuine interest’ of Americans in you might be fake. And it was precisely that which I felt when visiting the United States. If a Dutchman shows interest in you, it is usually genuine without quotes or politeness, perhaps, but usually not with personal gain in mind. And so, the Dutch may appear to be jerks, as they show far less ‘genuine interest’ in you. Carnegie’s book also tells us that people can’t handle criticism and that we should praise rather than criticise them. That is why we are here, at the edge of the abyss.

If an American likes your argument, he buys it as if it were a product. It is a different idea of truth, and a corrupt one. It sheds some light on why religion and climate change denial are more widespread in the United States than in Western Europe. It is part of the American success story. Money is power, and bullshit sells. We are religious beings who need myths to believe in. The typical American phenomenon, less seen elsewhere, is the confidence man, the snake-oil salesman, the grifter who sells you a dream, or stuff you don’t need, for which you go into debt, and pay interest to the usurers. A bit of corruption greases the wheels of industry. It contributed to America’s success. And the United States is not the most corrupt country. Yet, compared to North-West Europe, it is more corrupt.

You may not buy the science of climate change because you don’t like taking public transport or cutting back on meat. And so, you buy into climate change denial. That makes you morally corrupt, but no problem, you can buy the story that Jesus died for your sins, and believing that will get you into heaven. That Jesus died for our sins is pretty unbelievable, and if you had been honest and truthful, you would have questioned your faith, which Western Europeans do more than Americans. They believe because they want to believe, not because it is the truth.

Moral corruption particularly affects some denominations of Protestantism. History and culture go a long way in explaining that. Catholic doctrine holds that faith and good works can save you. Catholics must perform good works, such as giving money to the Church, to atone for their sins. That promoted corruption within the Catholic Church through the sale of indulgences. Protestants objected to this moral corruption and took moral integrity very seriously. They made morality a matter of personal choice, making them personally responsible. Catholics are more morally flexible, so Catholic countries in Europe tend to be more corrupt than Protestant ones. Protestants should think for themselves, while Catholics merely follow the Church’s lead.

And so, despite the presence of a sizeable Roman Catholic minority, the moral conflict defining Dutch culture, the vicar versus the merchant, is ‘dominee versus koopman’ rather than ‘pastoor versus koopman.’ It was the Protestant vicar, not the Roman Catholic priest, who objected to the merchant’s wicked deeds. The merchant was also a Protestant. This dualism still profoundly affects Dutch culture, making the Netherlands a nation of merchants and vicars. For a vicar, money can never be the highest good, while successful merchants are morally depraved, as greed drives them. The merchant usually prevailed, so the Netherlands became the wealthiest nation before the Industrial Revolution started.

Roman Catholics didn’t suffer from that kind of gut-wrenching ethical dualism. It made Protestants seem sanctimonious and sneaky to them. They would take the moral high ground and lecture Catholics on trivial matters of the scripture while acting as greedy merchants. That is also a caricature. Protestants generally take ethical matters seriously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had idealists like Kant and Hegel seeking absolute truth and absolute morality. And it affected Roman Catholics in the Netherlands, making the Dutch Catholics think for themselves on ethical matters and rebel against Rome after the Church reversed progressive reforms. There is a profound difference between most Protestant vicars, also in the United States, and televangelists, who are the personification of America’s religious corruption. So, what is the origin of the Protestant moral corruption?

Personal moral choice can also go the wrong way, as you can find a justification in the Bible for anything if you pick selectively. The Protestant doctrine also holds that faith alone suffices. And Protestants take the scriptures more seriously than Roman Catholics. That is why there are so many branches of Protestantism differing on the correct interpretation of the scriptures. It opened the door to a different form of moral corruption, more prevalent in the United States. What the Bible says is right and wrong is not always objectively so. Paul condemned homosexual acts in no uncertain terms. We don’t know Jesus’ opinion on this matter, but he said not to judge and that he who is without sin should cast the first stone.

Yet, there is no objective moral reason to condemn gays and lesbians or deny them the right to marry. It became a contentious issue for many Protestants, who take both scripture and moral conscience seriously. When you follow the scriptures on this matter, you shut down your moral conscience. And if only faith can save you, you don’t have to do good works to compensate for your misdeeds. Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead, and Catholics must do good works to compensate for their sins, so that gets them off the hook. And Catholics knew that many nuns and monks did it with each other, since joining a convent or becoming a priest was a way to avoid marriage. Priesthood also attracted paedophiles, as several scandals have revealed.

This morally corrupt Protestantism also existed, but didn’t prevail in North-West Europe. Many of the least corrupt countries are there, while LGBTQ rights in these countries remain uncontested. Meanwhile, Catholic priests lived the good life, which the Dutch call ‘het Roomse leven’ or the Burgundian lifestyle. Jews, as Karl Marx observed, are amoral merchants, and this, rather than racism or religious bigotry, stands at the root of today’s anti-Semitism. Jews are often the merchants and usurers who buy the American politicians. It makes the moral corruption in the United States a sensitive issue, most notably because anti-Semitism has led to the Holocaust. This particular account also demonstrates the ubiquitous nature of culture in our conduct and that the harm we do to each other is often a cultural phenomenon. Now we are at the bottom of the manure pit.

The appetiser Donald Trump

I have been incredibly fortunate to have lived a peaceful, prosperous life in Western Europe during its most agreeable era. For most of my life, I have barely realised it. The situation you live in looks normal to you. It is not. Living in post-war Western Europe is like winning the lottery jackpot of history and geography. The welfare states of post-war Western Europe have been among the brightest spots in an otherwise bleak history of humankind. I wish that everyone could live a life like that, but you can’t have a paradise if not all the right things are in place. They hardly ever are. Barring a miracle, things aren’t going to stay pretty. The European paradise is fading due to war, resource shortages, environmental degradation, political instability, migration, and technological change.

Paradises don’t last. Due to competition, we live in a ‘dynamic environment.’ Competition is a destructive force, even though a creative one, as economists assure us. Donald Trump recognised that. Tariffs are a measure to reduce competition. The Soviet bloc survived because it had irredeemable currencies, hampering trade with the rest of the world. Had they chosen to do so, the Soviets could still be there, mired in stagnation, as North Korea still is. If the United States continues on that path, it will become more like the Soviet Union. Yet, if we don’t halt the competition, we need artificial intelligence to keep up with our rivals, and humans may soon become useless.

For an engineer, there are systems, relationships, variables, inputs, outputs, actions, their consequences, humans with properties, groups with properties, how they interact, and where all that leads. We are cogs in a system, doing our acts, not unique, wonderful, deserving individuals, as many people would like to think. If we were, we would all have been like Mahatma Gandhi, and humanity would have done fine. Gandhi was truly one of a kind. My ethical standards do not come close to his. And I should be your saviour? Yet, as an engineer with far more data at my disposal, I confidently claim that the system will lead us to our destruction. What would otherwise be the point of being a messiah? For me, unlimited authority would be a tool in the engineer’s toolbox, nothing more, nothing less.

Being like Jesus is not enough to succeed. Mahatma Gandhi might have been even more morally pure. Gandhi did what he did purely because he believed it was right. Jesus did what he did because, like me, he was in love and saw no way out. God suggested that I was also Adolf Hitler reincarnate. You can’t fix the world’s problems if you don’t have the guts to do whatever it takes, as Hitler had. Jokes helped deal with that inconvenient truth, such as imagining coming on stage after an introduction by a lady in tight stockings and a hairdo like Helga from the comedy series Allo Allo, who would raise her hand to give the Hitler salute and scream, ‘Our Great Leader!’ Then, I would come up and say, ‘Oh, it’s me. Shame and scandal in the family.’ My mother wasn’t my mother, and she didn’t know.

Donald Trump hurts people’s feelings, but you may soon forget that Donald Trump was such a jerk. You are a bunch of delusional morons busy committing suicide, and I must tell you that. I have worked on a concept plan for the future of humankind that may last for 1,000 years. Such a plan can only lack in detail, but it must set out how to address the most relevant issues we face. The plan is a scary jump into the unknown, also for me, but not making that jump comes with a near-certain fatal outcome. I don’t think that God is on my side. Jesus made that mistake. I play the role I am supposed to play, thinking that failure is worse than death. As the Dutch say, ‘Death or the gladiolas.’ Success or death.

Donald Trump has acted as if he were above the law. A messiah must be above the law. The joke is on me as it would be a l’état-c’est-moi situation, a term that the bureaucrats at my secondary school coined a long time ago, or as the former Dutch minister of immigration, Marjolein Faber, once put it, ‘I am policy.’ A messiah has the divine right of kings, or as the Chinese would say, the mandate of heaven. That is an absolute rule no one should question. It can provide political stability that enabled the Chinese to administer a vast empire and survive as a nation for over 2,000 years. That would require a stable situation, as change will upset the balance. A strong state made that possible. Europe became dynamic because there were no strong states in the Middle Ages, so merchants could take over. That is why we are facing the apocalypse.

Kicking off a revolution

Many, perhaps most, US politicians are corrupt, but Donald Trump tops them all, even though, unlike ordinary politicians who accept bribes to finance their campaigns, he and his entourage exploit the office for personal gain.2 There appears to be insider trading preceding Trump’s social media posts.3 So much for draining the swamp and ridding US politics of corruption. By his own admission, Trump is a pussy grabber who would ‘do’ his daughter had she not been his daughter. At least 26 women have accused him of sexual misconduct.4 Dutch television once aired a fragment, probably because it was hilarious, of a preacher standing in front of Donald Trump, with Trump putting up his best sanctimonious face. The preacher thanked Trump for ‘saving America from Satan.’ Then my wife, Ingrid, said, ‘Look! There you have him! That’s Satan!’ She meant Donald Trump. She was joking, but that can only be funny if there is some truth to it.

My wife doesn’t dislike Trump as I do, and tends to look on the bright side of what he is doing, and forcing Ukraine to accept a bad deal? That’s fine with her if it ends the war. Taking out Maduro? Things were bad in Venezuela already. He ended the Gaza war, sort of, at least. Invading Greenland? She didn’t express an opinion. Bombing Iran back to the Stone Age? They shouldn’t have a nuclear bomb. My wife’s feelings didn’t form that opinion. At the very least, the orange madman is impulsive, vindictive and unwilling to listen to others. When I later recalled the moment, my wife said the preacher had said ‘Antichrist’ rather than ‘Satan.’ His lambasting of the pope’s peace efforts, while portraying himself as Jesus, and the religious display by Donald Trump and his inner circle in the Oval Office, give him a strong shot at the title of Antichrist, who is just a boogeyman, only mentioned in John’s first epistle. And so, you shouldn’t make too much of it.

Trump being a jerk is why people voted for him. When order falls apart, we revert to gangsterism and choose gangsters as our leaders. As a result, the Trump gangster regime and MAGA have become the world’s first and foremost problem and the gravest threat to world peace. The regime threatened to attack Denmark to secure security guarantees it already had, tore up a deal with Iran, and started a war with Iran to acquire a worse deal, while leaving the rest of the world without oil and fertiliser, thereby triggering possible famines. The regime’s next war could be against Cuba after the corporate Supreme Court ruled that Exxon should receive damages for the Cuban nationalisation of its assets. That ruling means corporations run the world, not governments, and that the US regime can attack any country to enforce it. After the US invasion, the Cubans might borrow to pay off Exxon, and then pay interest to the usurers forever.

And so, the United States has lost its right to exist as an independent nation. Donald Trump should face trial in The Hague, Netherlands. The United States can’t give him a fair trial. Liberals may want to hang him, while conservatives might want to give him a pass. Whether trying to overthrow a legitimate election result constitutes treason may remain a matter of contention but that Donald Trump and his pal Bibi Netanyahu violated international law and committed crimes against humanity by starting the Iran war cannot be in doubt, as the world’s ultimate expert on murders committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law, Vladimir Putin, called the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei a murder committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.

On 15 May 2025, precisely 8647 days after 11 September 2001, former FBI director James Comey posted a photo of seashells on social media spelling ‘8647’, a code for removing Trump from office. That drew the ire of the Trump regime after the MAGA movement had previously sold hats with ‘8646’ on them, calling for Biden’s removal from office. The Trump regime now considers writing the number 8647 an act of terrorism. There is no evidence suggesting that Comey intended that 8647-day interval, but he could have. Yet, the incident is also part of the 11 September 2001 coincidence scheme, which is beyond the capabilities of human conspirators to organise.

In April 2025, I dreamed of being part of a crowd in The Hague during the NATO summit scheduled for that summer. The leaders of the NATO member states were all there. When Trump passed by in his car, I began to scold him in Dutch, ‘Hij is een hondenlul (He is a dog dick).’ It is an offensive slur that football fans sing when disagreeing with the referee’s decision. For a moment, there was absolute silence. Bystanders were shocked, making me fear that the police would round me up. But then the crowd joined in, and the singing grew louder until it became a thundering chant. It made the news worldwide, and in every football stadium, it became the chant. From then on, no one called him President Trump anymore. Everyone called him dog dick. Anyway, play time is over. Adults should run the world. If I am Adam reincarnate, I am 6,000 years old. And there may be no one else left to save you. So maybe you can sing along and become part of the change.

Latest revision: 27 June 2026

Featured image: AI-generated

1. One in four Americans think Obama may be the Antichrist, survey says. The Guardian (2013).
2. The Corruption Chronicles: Donald Trump’s profiteering from public service, by the numbers. Kei Chin, Michael Beckel, and Oliver Ni (2025). Issue One.
3. The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency. Nick Marsh (2026). BBC.
4. The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun (2017). Business Insider.