In a recent article, I wrote about the cognitive dissonance of women who believe that their professional success is due to their own ability as opposed to affirmative action and quotas. Some women are indeed so deluded that they do not even realize that theirs is a make work job that is merely seen as a cost of doing business. Companies who compete for public projects have to have women and minorities on board, so they get hired, almost regardless of competence. In any case, for them the hiring bar is a lot lower than it is for men.
In my professional life, I have encountered several examples of women who were just not cut out for their job. They would not know that, though. One woman I know of got promoted to the position of manager in a large tech company. She had joined that company as a software developer as a fresh graduate with a degree in Information Systems a few months prior. I know that she was a poor student; in her last year, she finally managed to pass a first-year introduction to programming. Yet, she got readily hired. Apparently, women can’t get fired once they are hired, so she now spends her days bossing nerds around. What is even worse is that a guy with that kind of tech-lite degree would not even have gotten an interview.
At my first real job, I was part of a small skunkworks team. It would have been a fine job; I liked the work and the freedom we had was quite extraordinary. We were just three guys, doing our thing. We basically got paid to come up with ideas and develop prototypes. One fine day, my manager told me that he got approval to hire another person for our team and, just like last time (when I was hired), he’d like the team to comment on CVs. We’d also get to have a final say in who gets hired. When I came on board, I had three rounds of interviews. First, there was an external recruiting company. After they had OK
After a few weeks, I wondered what the status was. It could well have been that funding for that position got yanked in the meantime. But that was not what had happened. Instead, I was informed that the position has been filled already. I was a bit taken aback by that, but before I could say anything, my manager went on to elaborate that “a woman had applied, so we hired her”. Apparently, women had to be hired preferentially. She only had an interview with him; we were not even part of the discussion. I was quite annoyed by that. The very same day, I applied for a new job, quickly found one, and I was gone before that woman came onboard. At my new job, our team had not one but two female managers. Apparently, they had so many sick days that two women were needed to do the work of one man. That was when I realized what an incredible shit show the modern workplace is.
A third example is an acquaintance, more an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Her story is that she came to Germany to rejoin her husband, an engineer from the Middle East. Her spoken English is horrible, based on the few words I exchanged with her; her German is non-existent. Back then she was in her late 30s or early 40s; she never worked,
There is not much point getting upset about those stories as a guy. It is simply an example of how corrupt our society is because dominant corporations are not exposed to competition. If you do business with government or, worse, are government-funded, you can burn heaps of money and you’ll be fine, at least until things come crashing down. Yet, such is
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“better, if we scrapped democracy altogether and erected an authoritarian system with strong leaders”
No thanks. That’s not sustainable and you know it. It’s too dependent on the quality of the leaders. One generation of leaders = maybe good, next generation = maybe shit. And you can’t do anything about it.
Better set up a system of concurring small states with no voting inside these states, but free choice between these states.
You cannot vote the contractual features of your mobile phone provider, but the fact that you have the freedom of choice to go to another provider keeps them in check.
Competition as a regulator is actually sustainable as opposed to the authoritarian solution you propose. The “strong leader” might be the smartest guy in the room, but that doesn’t give him the right to determine what’s best for others. Because that would be no different from the collectivist bullshit called socialism, where an enlightened group of people think they have the moral high ground to tell all others what they need and what they don’t need.
You’re going to need a dictator to clean up the mess in Europe. The only problem is how to remove him after he has done that job. Maybe we could take a look at the old Roman system. Change it up a bit. But thats all just daydreaming. You’ll need a war first to take power. Democrazy doesnt allow us to change it in any meaningfull way. To win that war you’ll need someone whose capable of leading and will not stop at a couple million dead people. It would be really messy. After you win that war, you’ll have a even bigger mess to clean up. So we are talking about generations before things would be restored. We would never see a better world than this. only worse. If you want a better life yourself, just move to a place thats more to your taste. Any action you’ll take to better the Western world would be a sacrifice made for the next generation. Not for yourself.
Everyone who wishes for a dictator imagines the dictator implementing all the policies that one wants and none of the policies one doesn’t want. In other words one imagines himself as the dictator.
@Ben
Fully agree. in other words, what you are saying is that revolutions have a bad track record.
And that’s historically proven.
The best way to hurt the system is to remove its funding. Given that the net tax payers are only 15mio people in Germany, and the rest of people are net recipients of transfer money, the math is quite simple. The leverage is pretty high in favour of those who actually pay.
Go to the place where you are treated best. This accomplishes two things: You hurt the fuckers, but most importantly, you live a better life.
See y’all in Central America. In three years from now, I want to live in a so-called free private city. I’m pretty much done with this socialist experimental playground called Switzerland.
https://freeprivatecities.com/
@GMoney: I agree. But i dont believe in a peaceful solution in Europe. It’s to far gone for that. So any meaningful action would be a military one. You cant have democracy within a military operation. The Romans had systems for this. Thats why i bring it up. And yes it would be horrible. But without it, the long term result could be even worse. I rather see a dictator from the same culture as me for 4 or 5 years kicking ass. Than muslim overlords taking it over. That would be even worse. And is surely to happen in time if this crazy stuff goes on for a while longer. It’s a choice between two evils.
@Neutralrandomthoughts: Interesting concept. Only problem would be if the host country goes bankrupt and send it’s army in to take your shit. Or simply changes the rules towards the {citystate}. We have almost the same stuf in Thailand. You can already live there for about 1000 Euro’s a month. You’ll have a nice 4 bed/4bath family villa with swimming pool and hot-tub for that money. All inclusive with golf course, club, cleaning service, gardener, repairman and armed guards. It’s not as foolproof as they claim it to be. But maybe the best concept for now. Beats working your ass off so that immigrants and single mothers can have a better life. Just make sure you double check. There were some of these programs that failed in Thailand. But those were buy-in projects, not rent.
Maybe Aaron will do a review of his book one day.
I skimmed that book. In short, I liked the general idea, but I found it to be impractical. A private city on its own will be taken over by an outside force. However, multiple private cities within one country will lead to enormous inequality. In the West, the goal is to lower the standard of living for everyone, not just for most people. Thus, if one city would rise above the rest by attracting the best and allowing them to keep more of the money they make, you’d have the parasites wanting to move in, just like the Third World is swarming into the West. Now imagine you’re building up your own Third World right outside city borders! What would work, though, is if you had private cities with the military backing of the host nation. That is a very appealing idea, which I’d love to see realized. Alternatively, you could restrict freedom of movement, like the Chinese do it. The concept of private cities is great; it’s an idea that’s either too early or too late — Medieval European cities worked somewhat similarly, after all. Yet, we ended up strengthening the nation state instead of cities, presumably because the aristocrats back then had too much beef with eath other and were too eager to go to war.
We’ll see.
Tge first opening is one parliamentary decision away. It’s in Central America.
The second project that is being worked on is in Eastern Europe.
Nobody is invading Liechtenstein, just saying.
Also, if you can have strong border control that’ll help.
As for an invading third party – I guess what matters is if the host country has agreed to let the FPC build up a military.
If yes, then you can come up with some pretty nasty asymetrical instruments of warfare.
Overall I believe, that the economic growth potential is vastly underestimated given maximum economical freedom. Just look what Singapore pulled off in 50 years.
Lichtenstein is a tax shelter; Singapore is too, on top it has a splendid location for trade. Until Shanghai took their crown a year or two ago, they had the busiest seaport in the world. Thus, there are vested interests that keep those places from getting invaded. What advantages would a private city in South America have that could keep it from just getting taken over by a bunch of guerilla fighters?
@NeutralRandomThoughts: where in Central America are they planning to build these private cities. I skimmed the site but didn’t find it mentioned. A quick Google search showed something in Honduras. But it’s a notoriously violent country (at least the cities) and might become highly politically unstable in light of the protests. Maybe not as highly unstable as their Southern neighbors, where I happen to hail from.
Fair enough, LI is a tax shelter.
But so are many other places like CAY and BVI. Nobody has interest in invading a place that lives off of providing services. Plus, let’s not forget, a mere 10% of LI’s workforce are employed im finance. It’s not a shady secretive money laundering place.
You’ll need a port for sure, but that’s a given in the planned place.
What keeps a place from being invaded?
Why is nobody invading Liechtenstein?
Because of the piss poor Swiss Army defending it? Certainly not. It’s because there are no resources there.
With economic power comes military power. The example about Venice from the book seems quite convincing to me.
Plus, anybody operating the city has an economic interest to keep the bad guys out, otherwise no productive people will settle down there.
@Manuel
Yes, Honduras it is. and yes it’s a violent country (by far) but that’s the problem in the beginning. You can’t sell the first city concept wise to e.g. Norway.
Just note that even before the opening of this city in Honduras (360° sea access cough cough) an Eastern European country has approached FPC Inc. and has asked them how they can modify their constitution to acommodate such a city. All I’m saying is that interest is rising.
Let me just say this: Most of the counterarguments are coming from a “pff yeah but what if (insert extreme event like invasion, social unrest, takeover, war)” point of view as if that’s not a risk in any of the existing systems. Europe and the US are literally on the brink of civil war, in France all it would take is for that granny-fucker to instruct his military to shoot at the yellow vests.
It all just looks stable, but it’s not. The big difference is that a Free Private City has an economic incentive to be successfull, and a state hasn’t. An FPC provider has a contract with its citizens to fulfill and has limited resources.
I’m pretty sure none of you has signed that magical “social contract” that can be changed unilaterally and everybody here lives in a nation state where the ressources for the gov are unlimited in the form of ever increasing taxes and money printing, oh excuse me “monetizing debt” by their central banks.
Think about that for a while.
Just from the setup a Free Private City could work, our natikn states can’t but have created a near perfect illusion that they can.