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“Socialism Was Good in Theory” That sentence assumes the theory was never seriously challenged. It was. Long before the Soviet Union existed, before Lenin seized power, and before socialism had been tested on a national scale, major thinkers were already attacking its foundations—from very different directions. Five of them stand out. Tocqueville: Equality Can Become Servitude In 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville drew a sharp distinction between democracy and socialism. Both spoke about equality. But Tocqueville believed they pursued it in fundamentally different ways. Democracy, in his view, sought equality while preserving individual freedom. Socialism risked achieving equality by expanding the power of the state over the individual. His warning was essentially this: equality is not automatically liberty. A society can pursue equality so aggressively that it begins sacrificing the independence that makes political freedom meaningful. Bastiat: Follow Where Redistribution Leads Two years later, Frédéric Bastiat attacked socialism from a different direction. His question was deceptively simple: What happens when the state acquires the authority to take from some people and give to others in the name of justice? Bastiat called this “legal plunder.” His concern was not merely that redistribution might be expensive. It was that once government becomes the instrument through which competing groups obtain benefits from one another, politics can turn into a permanent struggle over who controls the machinery of redistribution. The problem, therefore, wasn’t simply how much the state redistributed. It was the principle that made redistribution legitimate in the first place. (bastiat.org⁠) Nietzsche: Equality Can Become Resentment Nietzsche approached socialism neither as an economist nor as a constitutional theorist. He attacked its psychology. He saw modern egalitarian movements as part of a much older moral impulse: resentment toward exceptional individuals and suspicion of strength, ambition and hierarchy. For Nietzsche, the danger was not simply that everyone might become economically equal. It was that a culture could begin treating excellence itself as something morally suspect. The goal would cease to be lifting people upward. It would become bringing the exceptional downward. Böhm-Bawerk: Challenge the Economics Then came Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. In 1896, he turned his attention specifically toward Marx’s economic system. His criticism was not primarily moral or political. It was technical. Böhm-Bawerk argued that Marx’s theory of value did not adequately explain how the labor values developed in Capital could be reconciled with the actual prices Marx subsequently needed to explain. In other words, he attacked socialism where it claimed to possess a scientific economic foundation. The argument became one of the central criticisms of Marxian economics and helped launch a debate that would continue for generations. Mises: The Calculation Problem Then, in 1920, Ludwig von Mises attacked an even more fundamental question: Even if socialism is morally desirable, how would a socialist economy actually know what to produce? A functioning economy has millions of competing uses for scarce resources. Build a bridge or a hospital? Use steel here or there? Produce more machinery or more consumer goods? Under private ownership and markets, prices for capital goods provide information about relative scarcity and opportunity costs. Mises argued that abolishing private ownership of the means of production also removes the genuine market prices necessary for rational economic calculation. The problem wasn’t simply that socialist planners might make bad decisions. It was that the system deprived them of the very economic signals required to systematically compare those decisions. (Mises Institute⁠) And that was the sequence. Tocqueville challenged the political premise. Bastiat challenged the moral and legal mechanism of redistribution. Nietzsche challenged the psychology behind egalitarianism. Böhm-Bawerk challenged Marx’s economic theory. Mises challenged the possibility of rational central economic calculation. Five different thinkers. Five different objections. And all of them came before the Soviet Union had demonstrated what large-scale socialist government would actually look like. So “socialism was good in theory, but bad in practice” is not an argument. It is a historical claim that requires you to explain why these theoretical objections were wrong. The interesting question isn’t whether socialism had critics. It did. The interesting question is whether socialism ever adequately answered them” - ChatGPT

🚨| Dani Olmo ha hablado de cómo era compartir vestuario con Ferran Torres: “Al tío le decías 4-2-3-1 y cogía la calculadora para ver qué daba” “Había siempre que ayudarle a ponerse calcetín, medias y botas porque según él tenía un orden muy complejo” “El cabron no marcaba gol ni jugando al crossbar challenge. Iban todas fuera” “Flipabamos cuando se duchaba después de los partidos con tanga y chanclas. Maricon perdido” #DaniOlmo #FerranTorres #Fútbol

The article examines the differing approaches of Chinese and Nepalese media to reports on Himalayan floods, emphasizing how Chinese state media suppress personal stories of victims and the causes of the disaster through the selection of witnesses and focus on government responses. (translated)

Delighted to open today with @JozefSikela the 2026 EU Arctic Forum. The Arctic is not a distant frontier or a peripheral concern for us. It is a climate alarm bell, a security challenge, and a test for global cooperation. This is why the EU is stepping up: 🤝 stronger cooperation https://t.co/X2k9LY3gxE #EUArcticForum #ClimateAction #GlobalCooperation #EU

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni faces a challenge from the right — a macho ex general whose party manifesto says Italy should be a “Mediterranean patriarchy” and delivers critiques of her policies on Instagram while holding melons to his chest https://t.co/QwLJJIUZuM #GiorgiaMeloni #ItalianPolitics #Patriarchy #IT

I joined a meeting of the #G7 finance ministers and central bank governors via videoconference. We had a very productive discussion about the global economy, artificial intelligence, and Ukraine. The current global challenges require coordinated policy actions. https://t.co/CQxdNregwz #G7 #GlobalEconomy #AI #CA #DE #FR #IT #JP #UK #US #UA

John Klaver begon op 11-jarige leeftijd met gitaarspelen, geïnspireerd door Gary Moore, Jimi Hendrix en Robben Ford. Na zijn VWO-studie studeerde hij muziektheorie en gitaar aan de University of the Pacific in de USA en later aan het conservatorium van Amsterdam werd hij naast muzikant ook muziekdocent. In 2007 formeerde hij zijn trio, dat later zijn band werd. Zijn eerste album, ‘Jetpepper’, kwam uit in 2008, gevolgd door ‘Coming Back For More’ in 2011 en dat jaar won hij ook net als in 2013 won hij de Dutch Blues Challenge iets wat hij in 2024 herhaalde in de categorie solo/duo. Met het derde album, ‘Wheels In Motion’, uit 2012 won hij een Dutch blues Award Beste Bluesalbum. Op dit album spelen onder andere blues, mondharmonica, grootheid Big Pete, toetsenist Bob Fridzema en drummer Even Jenkins (Matt Schofield) mee. https://hvdommelen.nl/blues/KlaverJ.html

From September 4 to 6, 2026, Krakow will host the European Rover Challenge, a prestigious competition of Mars rovers, in which 25 teams from leading technological universities will participate, and an international science popularization conference with the participation of outstanding experts will also take place simultaneously. (translated)

Interview by @ObservateursCH, a French-language Swiss conservative-sovereigntist outlet, covering the political situation in Hungary, the challenges facing the national camp and the future of Europe’s patriotic movement. After sixteen years, many voters wanted change. As #Hungary #PatrioticMovement #PoliticalChange #FR #HU

The Downward Spiral of Gender Polarization The growing divide between men and women resembles less a debate than a divorce involving millions. Both sides escalate, talk past each other, and blame the other gender amid a mental-health crisis. Depression among Americans under thirty has doubled in eight years, while anxiety continues to rise. Each gender has failure modes and one successful path. Carl Jung called it individuation; a simpler term is integration. The integrated are not leading the conversation. The disordered are. Every man carries an inner feminine—the part that feels, intuits, and creates meaning. Jung called it the anima. Cut off from it, he becomes cold and contemptuous; overwhelmed by it, passive and moody. Every woman carries an inner masculine—the part that decides, asserts, and holds the line. Jung called it the animus. Cut off from it, she defers to stronger people; possessed by it, argumentative and rigid. I believe the four failure modes pair off. The cold, contemptuous man finds a timid woman who cannot challenge him; the red-pill industry calls this manhood. The passive man finds a domineering woman who can run his life; the feminist industry calls this liberation. A 2025 Nature Human Behaviour study of 14.8 million people in Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden found that disordered individuals consistently marry one another across cultures and generations dating back to the 1930s. My theory is that integrated people increasingly date within a pool dominated by the disordered. They try, fail, and get hurt, then drift toward the same patterns. The pool corrupts those who might have healed it, creating a feedback loop. We are in a downward spiral: integrated people encounter disordered partners and become disordered themselves, while the already disordered grow worse. Reversal requires enough people to reject cynicism. When every encounter feels like proof that the other gender is broken, our own drift toward disorder begins to feel justified.

The Age of Experts Is Over If the past two decades—COVID-19, the 2008 financial crisis, and the net-zero charade—have taught us anything, it is this: the age of unquestioned experts is over. Authority issued by corrupt, bloated institutions no longer commands automatic respect. We are entering an era in which trust must be earned, not assumed. Credentials matter less than results. Expertise can become conformity wrapped in a credential; status is no substitute for trustworthiness. The future belongs to those with proven track records, not merely letters after their names. Friedrich Nietzsche warned of this more than a century ago. He distrusted experts who served the spirit of their age—those who mistook consensus for courage and conformity for principle. To Nietzsche, many authorities were functionaries of the status quo: too timid to challenge the sacred assumptions of their time. University professors, state philosophers, and moral enforcers wore obedience as a badge of honor. They did not think; they repeated. They did not challenge; they conformed. They made the ordinary seem profound through jargon, complexity, and ambiguity. Nietzsche saw these not as signs of insight, but as camouflage—cowardice in disguise. He also distinguished knowledge from wisdom. Knowledge can be taught, measured, and tested. Wisdom must be earned through suffering, struggle, and brutal self-examination. Nietzsche admired those who forged their own paths rather than simply climbing institutional ladders. Even in science, he saw a danger. He respected its methods but feared their sanctification. Science, he argued, still required justification; materialists confused method with meaning and data with truth. Experts who presented science as the only path to knowledge were, in Nietzsche’s eyes, dogmatists in lab coats. So the question is no longer, “What are your qualifications?” It is: What have you done? What have you risked? What have you proved? We must recover the courage to think for ourselves—and place our confidence only in those who have earned it through action, not appointment.

Met a German founder this week and asked him if all the stories one reads about the challenges of startups in Germany are exaggerated. "No, they're understated." Proceeded to describe spending a full day having a 90-page investment contract read to him (mandatory under German #startups #Germany #entrepreneurship #DE

Five Lessons on Aggression and Dominance “There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that… it sides even with those who harm it.” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote this nearly 140 years ago, yet it still sounds contemporary. In *Chimpanzee Politics*, Frans de Waal shows that dominance, aggression, hierarchy and confrontation—often dismissed in humans as “toxic masculinity”—also appear in our closest relatives. These behaviors may reflect deep-rooted drives, not merely social constructs. **1. The threat of violence can keep the peace** Most chimp confrontations are displays, not fights. Only about 0.4% of male confrontations become physical. Rank depends on strength, alliances, displays and recognition. Violence matters partly because it is rare: conflict must be allowed to resolve before it escalates. **2. When respect disappears, violence rises** Chimpanzees maintain hierarchy through formal greetings, including bowing. At Arnhem, 22 of 37 serious male fights occurred when males had stopped greeting one another—even though such periods made up less than a quarter of observation time. Violence was nearly five times more likely when recognition rituals broke down. **3. Power requires alliances** Before challenging the dominant male, a chimp often grooms females and plays with their young. Like Machiavelli’s political challengers, he builds support before attempting to seize power. **4. Influence can replace force** Female chimps sometimes recruit males to attack rivals, signaling distress and flattering the enforcer while avoiding the fight. Power can operate through alliances and influence, not just strength. **5. Concentrated resources create conflict** Chimpanzees normally forage for scattered food, limiting competition. When humans provide concentrated food, aggression rises. Larger groups are also harder to govern because familiarity declines and hierarchies become unstable. Stable societies may require hierarchy, respect, controlled confrontation and distributed power. Suppressing every expression of dominance may not eliminate conflict; it may remove mechanisms that keep conflict contained.

🚨 Walid Acherchour 🇫🇷 : « ON DISAIT SOUVENT QUE LA LIGUE 1 ÉTAIT TROP FACILE POUR LE PSG, qu’ils ne sont pas challengés pour la LDC. Mais moi je trouve que dans beaucoup de matchs extérieurs, LE PSG EST CHALLENGÉ.  Kvara est plus à l’aise avec plus d’espace en Ligue des Champions que face à ce genre d’équipe. » 🎙️ @AfterRMC #Ligue1 #PSG #ChampionsLeague

The 7 Types of People Who Create Evil Societies Andrew Łobaczewski, a psychiatrist who lived under Nazism and Communism in Poland, proposed political ponerology: pathological personalities and social dynamics can generate totalitarian systems. He describes seven recurring types: 1) **Psychopaths**: power seekers who gain control via coercion, intimidation, and violence. 2) **Schizoids**: ideological engineers who craft abstract systems and utopian theories; if reality conflicts, they rationalize more rather than revise. 3) **Spellbinders**: propagandists who convert ideology into slogans, moral stories, and emotional appeals that sort “good/evil” and define the in‑group. 4) **The Spellbound**: true believers who absorb the message and enforce it socially, driven by moral certainty; they often recruit through institutions and peer networks. 5) **Adapted Conformists**: quiet enablers who comply from fear and self‑preservation, often within bureaucracy (“I’m just doing my job”). 6) **Resistors**: a moral minority who refuse cooperation and prioritize conscience, often paying costs like isolation or punishment. 7) **Bystanders**: a passive majority who stay silent through fear, confusion, and disengagement. Together: psychopaths hold power; schizoids supply ideology; spellbinders publicize it; the spellbound enforce it; conformists administer; bystanders tolerate; resistors challenge. Crucially, totalitarianism doesn’t require everyone to be fanatical—enforcers and ideologues can pressure the wider population to comply. It can arise under many systems (communist, fascist, theocratic, etc.), not just left vs right.

Why Leftist Activists and Revolutionaries Can Never Declare Victory Leftist movements face a paradox: they use oppression narratives to gain institutional power, then keep claiming victimhood as that power grows. Instead of disappearing, activism “shapeshifts” inside bureaucracy, media, academia, corporations, and the arts. Even when DEI is challenged, its structures often remain under new names—diversity becomes “belonging” or “inclusive culture.” The logic is permanent revolution: influence depends on the struggle never ending. Goals shift, new categories of oppression are defined, and intersectionality divides people into ever finer oppressor/oppressed groups, creating an endless hierarchy of grievances. If activists declared victory, the justification for ongoing mobilization would collapse. The risk is social atomization: identities replace shared citizenship, and the state shifts from neutral protector to an instrument for redistributing power between designated victims and oppressors. Bureaucracy and propaganda can replace community and argument. History shows recurring purges—once the revolution’s machinery turns inward, yesterday’s enforcers become today’s targets. The result is also a ressentiment psychology: identity forms around an “enemy,” not one’s own strength. This dynamic helps sustain the consultancy model—identify the guilty, define the aggrieved, and perpetuate conflict. Equality with a finish line is manageable; equality of outcomes is not, so there is always another disparity, injustice, or enemy. The movement fears completion less than failure, because ending would make its power machinery unnecessary.

Who Gets Promoted in a Broken Society? In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling created a villain: Dolores Umbridge. She gains power not through competence, but conformity, loyalty, and bureaucracy. Evil rarely looks like Voldemort. Umbridge resembles Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”: ordinary people pursuing advancement by playing the institutional game. She enforces ideology through bureaucracy. Loyalists replace competent people, dissenters are labelled extremists, and punishment becomes a tool of conformity. The goal is not truth, but compliance. Political Ponerology Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski studied how institutions can be captured by pathological individuals. He called the resulting system pathocracy, and the transformation of normal institutions into ones serving pathological interests ponerization. The danger begins when institutions lose the ability to distinguish competence from manipulation. Those willing to conform can rise precisely because others will not. Ideologues create doctrines, propagandists spread them, and ruthless operators capture institutions. The lesson: totalitarianism does not require one tyrant. It emerges when institutions lose the ability to distinguish the pathological from the honest. The Case of Mao Mao’s China offers a striking example. During the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Tiesheng became famous for submitting a blank exam paper while denouncing intellectuals. Political loyalty mattered more than academic ability. Mao elevated being politically “red” over being technically “expert.” Specialists were displaced by ideologically reliable outsiders. Officials who honestly reported collapsing harvests were purged, while those telling Mao what he wanted to hear advanced. False information helped sustain the Great Leap Forward, whose famine killed tens of millions. China abolished university entrance exams in 1966; they were not restored until 1977. A system that selects against competence eventually loses the ability to see reality. Mediocrity protects power; moral compromise enforces it. Capture education, and you shape a generation unable to challenge the system.