Gleaners

Gleaning is a form of scavenging where unutilized food is collected and consumed. As such, gleaning plays a role in the economy in that it reduces waste. When gleaners find and consume food that otherwise would have been left to rot, more is left for others to consume in the market economy. Gleaning is in this respect a sign of economic efficiency.

Gleaners have existed since the dawn of organized food production. They are mentioned in the Bible where it's considered a sin to chase them away. However, they have always been a thorn in the eye of those who want to rule the world. Their lifestyle renders them autonomous despite their poverty, and that's too much to bear for would be tyrants who want everyone dependent on the state. Hence, gleaning was considered a crime in the Soviet Union. It's also increasingly discouraged in the western world where a combination of regulations and welfare handouts are putting an end to the practice.

The modern day phenomenon of dumpster diving is a form of gleaning that has been regulated away. Restaurants and supermarkets are required to lock their dumpster so that no-one can enter them. Instead of letting individuals scavenge for food, the state encourages charities to collect unused food, and distribute this to the would be gleaners. What used to be an activity engaged in by bands of hippies has thus been transformed into an orderly business of standing in line for handouts.

However, this intervention has removed much of the efficiency that gleaning provided to the economy. Charities require people to work and to spend their time doing what their clients would have done on their own. This is a needless layer of bureaucracy that does nothing to help anyone. It merely consumes resources that would otherwise have been used more effectively.

The disappearance of gleaners is an artificiality created by the welfare state, similar to the disappearance of the servant class. People who would otherwise have been employed effectively in the economy have been sedated and made dependent on the state. Instead of having these people employed productively, they are sitting at home, watching TV, while receiving welfare handouts. The cost of this is put on the shoulders of tax donkeys who could have employed the servants directly and let the gleaners free to scavenge for food, thereby keeping food prices down.

No-one besides would be tyrants are gaining anything from this. The servants and gleaners are cut out of the economy, and are thereby prevented from opportunities that would otherwise present themselves. Servants and their families are separated from people higher up in the social ladder, and are thereby left with fewer opportunities to extract themselves from poverty. Gleaners are similarly prevented from offers of day labor and other opportunities to better their lots.

Tax donkeys are left with the financial burden that the welfare state puts on them without giving them anything in return. People who would have otherwise employed servants and nannies are left to do household tasks themselves. This tiers and distracts the productive to the point of burn out and sick leave. The number of productive people in the economy is thus reduced further, and this will continue until there's a collapse of the system. People will refuse to work, and production grinds to a halt.

By the look of it, we're now entering this final phase of social decline. There are far more job openings than job takers. People are revolting against the system by refusing to work.

What follows is inevitably a collapse. The current system has to be scaled back so that efficiencies can return to the economy. This will be visible in a return of the servant class and a return of gleaners. Only then will we know for sure that the natural order of things has returned and that we once again are in for a prolonged period of economic growth.

Gleaners

By Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F004601-0004 / Enzen / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Protector and Ultimate Decision Maker

Thinking in terms of archetypes is a quick and easy way to figure out how we are doing in life. With archetypes in mind, we can analyze things with ease, and we don't have to invent ways to improve things. It's all laid out intuitively. By comparing ourselves with archetypes, we see where things may be lacking, and what we may do to improve things.

The king and queen archetypes can be used in this way with respect to relationships. They have a perfect arrangement between themselves. The queen is the king's partner, supporter and administrator of the household, and the king is the queen's partner, protector and ultimate decision maker. This provides stability that allows them to maintain and build wealth, a family and a legacy.

All we have to do in order to conjure up this insight is to mention the archetypes, and we can immediately point to aspects of our relationships that may be lacking. The man in the household may too eager to please and to willing to let the wife take big decisions for him. The wife may be too fond of herself and too quick to complain. There may be all sorts of things that aren't very kingly or queenly, and this should be dealt with and fixed.

Key to fixing a waning relationship is for each to start acting more in tune with their respective archetypes, and much of this can be done without direct confrontation. The man that's too eager to bend to the woman's whims can firm up his act without informing her first. The woman who's too submissive can start acting more like a queen and a partner. She can point out that chores should be shared equally. If the man cannot provide servants, then the two must act as partners in dealing with everyday things in the house.

Keeping archetypes in mind makes it easier for us to fix things. However, that only works in a relationship if both accept the legitimacy of the archetypes, and many women revolt against the idea that the man should be the ultimate decision maker. Such a rule seems fundamentally misogynous? Why shouldn't women have this role?

The answer to this is that an ultimate decision may turn out to be wrong, and the consequences of this may invoke the need to protect, and that is also the role of the husband. He is not merely the ultimate decision maker. He is the protector, and must therefore have the right to veto things that may get the household in trouble. This has nothing to do with misogyny. It's merely a recognition of the world's harsh realities. This is how women are protected and why they have the privilege of being whimsical and emotional. Good men provide a framework of stability and vision. Good women act within this framework, and this is all done as a partnership between equals, exactly as suggested by the archetypes.

Constance and William

Av Gustav Borgen – Norsk Folkemuseum: image no. NFB.49970, via digitaltmuseum.no., Offentlig eiendom, Lenke

Two Years from Now

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

― George Orwell, 1984

I plan to end my Facebook posts with news stories from 2020 in February. I've already posted about people dropping dead in the streets of Wuhan, the science of lockdowns, and Boris Johnson's quick recovery from the virus after having been deadly ill. The only two remaining stories are operation warp speed, without which the vaccine would still have been in the testing phase, and the rollout of vaccines with 97% effectiveness. The style of my comments will remain dry and to the point. I'll leave it to the readers to interpret our recent history for themselves.

I'm not getting any likes or comments on my posts, but that's all right. The posts are not there to be liked. They are there to highlight things that look odd in retrospect. The idea is to make readers uneasy about our recent history, and have this unease rub off on their perception of how things are today, and how things will unfold into the future.

This is an optimistic variant on Orwell's thoughts on the matter. Unlike Orwell, I'm a strong believer in circles of influence and networks. The peeks of power do not control the narrative nearly as much as they think. Interpersonal dialogs and comments are much more powerful. Hence, I have faith in my strategy, not least because I see others doing similar stunts. It's easy to dig up a news story from two years ago and make journalists look like buffoons. Especially now that they have been lying to us for two years straight.

People are so obsessed by the here and now these days that news from more than a year ago is mostly forgotten, so it's easy for the buffoons to push their ridiculous stories. As long as they limited contextual anecdotes to a few weeks, things can be molded and adapted to fit whatever narrative they want. However, once we look beyond immediate context, things look weird, and this is something we can take advantage of.

A friendly reminder about our recent past doesn't require more than a second or two, so recipients can be fully immerged in their Tick-Tock environments and still be reminded of the past, because long term memory is still intact. It's just not used very much.

There's also the value of retrospect to us as posters. It's hard to see which pieces of news are worth talking about in the here and now, and people are generally passionate about everything, so we end up with a lot of hot air and much squabbling if we decide to comment exclusively on the present. However, few have strong feelings about things that happened more than a year ago, no matter how important certain things have turned out to be with respect to how things are today. We can therefore post about the most important bits of new from the past without causing heated debate, yet at the same time make people realize that some things are not as they should be.

Things that happened in 2021 are too close to the present to post about without a stir, so I will refrain from mentioning them before next year. That's when I can mention the Delta and the Omicron variants, the boosters, tennis players and detention camps in Australia, and other such matters.

What's happening now in Canada is something I will refrain from posting about until 2024. I may write a comment or two on other people's posts, but I'll keep it to that because there's no way to judge how historic the truckers' caravan will be, and there are way too many emotions rolled up in it. Besides, it's not like no-one has heard about it by now. No-one needs me to tell them what they already know. However, they may need a reminder of the event in two years from now so that their present impression of what's happening can be modified to fit a broader narrative.

History is not merely what's written in history books. It's also what's remembered by people, so my reminders are nuggets of revisionist history. For instance, many believe that Boris Johnson was deadly ill from the virus two years ago. However, this doesn't fit the current perception of the virus as a relatively benign thing. Those who have woken up to the fact that the virus is largely harmless are therefore likely to revise their memory of Boris Johnson confronted by a reminder, and they will share this new perception with their peers, children and grand children should the subject become part of our formal history.

If enough people start thinking of Boris Johnson as a habitual liar and a fraud, perception of politicians in general will change, and the future takes a different course than it otherwise would have done. However, it's not merely up to the establishment to lay out this story. Our history isn't owned and controlled by them. History is something that we can shape and present in our own ways, and that's especially true about our recent history which is not yet coded into history books.

Boris Johnson

By Ben Shread / Cabinet Office, OGL 3, Link

A Ten Year old Rebel

Part of my daily routines is to pick up my ten year old son at school in the afternoons, and it's a little disheartening to see how many of the parents wear their masks like good little serfs. The children are also required to wear a masks from age ten and up, which I find positively revolting. Even worse, the school administration have encouraged parents to vaccinate their children, and to have even younger kids wear masks. However, there are signs of hope even here.

It appears that my wife and I are not the only parents who were appalled by the school's recommendations. Some must have been just as vocal as my wife, and expressed their thoughts to the school board as well as to their children. This is evident in a change in tone by the school board, and by the fact that some kids don't wear masks, despite school policy.

My son can report of several kids in his class that do not wear their masks, and my son has now joined this group of rebels, so far without any protests from the teachers. My wife and I did not push this on our son. We've left it up to him to decide what to do. We don't want to push him in front of us in our personal crusade against mask mandates. However, we're not making any secret of our position either, and we are happy to hear that he's doing his little part in putting an end to the hysteria.

It appears that mask wearing is become a personal choice, also in schools. My son is enrolled in a private school, so the administration is necessarily more sensitive to parents' wishes than would be the case for a public school. But I see kids wearing their masks sloppily in public school yards when I pass them on my walks in our neighborhood. There's dissent everywhere, and teachers are accepting it without much fuss.

As an added bonus, my son is learning an important lesson. He's being trained in the subtle art of subversive action. He's developing a healthy skepticism and defiance that's likely to serve him well in life.

Mask of the beast

Large Meteorites Always Explode Before Impact

Large meteorites explode before impact. This is a conclusion we can draw from observed facts. We also know that small meteorites don't explode. They glow for an instance before they disappear from sight.

The conventional explanation for this is that small meteorites burn up before they can explode. Bigger ones take longer to heat up. They get very hot, and then they explode due to heat convection. However, this explanation doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Heat convection is too slow to explain the explosion. The meteorite's journey from ionosphere to ground lasts a few seconds, so the meteorite would be glowing hot at its front, but cool in its center and back. The heat would melt the rock at its front, but it wouldn't explode.

Looking at the observed facts, we see that meteorites glow all over. They don't just glow at their front, and their light is an intense white. They look like ball lightning, as if their surfaces are covered in electrical sparks, which suggests an electrical explanation to why they glow, and why they explode.

Left out of the conventional explanation is the fact that Earth's electrical potential between ground and ionosphere is a whopping 300,000 volt. This means that an incoming rock will have to equalize this potential on its way through the atmosphere, and the larger the rock, the harder it is to do this because discharge is a surface phenomenon, while charge is a function of volume.

A small rock is easier to slow down through friction. It discharges quickly as it enters the atmosphere. It slows down, and further equalizing of electrical potential happens without visible discharge. However, a large rock doesn't slow down nearly as fast. This means that little of its charge potential is discharged high up in the atmosphere. We have a situation where a rock is hurdling towards Earth with a charge potential similar to the ionosphere. The closer it gets to ground, the more intense the need to discharge. The sparks that cover its surface grow exponentially larger. The rock is ripped apart by intense electrical machining. Every bit of it discharges into the atmosphere, and we have an electrical explosion.

The larger the rock, and the more acute its angle of entry, the closer it will get to Earth before exploding, but it will never touch the ground directly because the potential for an explosion increases exponentially with a meteorite's closeness to ground. There will be electrical contact between the incoming rock and ground before impact, and this will cause instant obliteration of the rock. The pressure between Earth and the rock will be enormous, and there will be a round crater where the impact would have been, but the rock itself will not reach ground before it's blown to bits. Hence, the conspicuous lack of large meteorite remnants found on Earth.

Large meteorite glowing before exploding

Can't Eat Gold

Every now and again, I come across someone making the rather obvious claim that we can't eat gold. The statement is usually made by someone with a survivalist vision of the future where everyone hunkers down in their bunkers for the apocalypse, whereupon they come out of their shelters to scavenge the world for food in a hunter gatherer modus. However, never in recorded history has there been such an apocalypse, and if there was to be one, the chances of anyone surviving in the way envisioned by the survivalists is pretty much null.

The only way to survive an apocalypse is to form communities in its aftermath. There has to be cooperation. There has to be division of labor, and there has to be trade. Anything less will be misery and early death. Hence, there will be a need for a medium of exchange even in the most extreme of situations, and precious metals are ideal for this. The alternatives would be some sort of credit based system, or a gift economy.

An economy based on barter will quickly discover that gold and silver are ideal, and we'll be back to gold and silver as money, so barter isn't an alternative to precious metals, they are complementary. Trade with gold and silver as money is barter. The only difference in trading a chicken for a given amount of silver as opposed to a big sack of potatoes is that silver is more versatile. Silver can be kept for longer, and since everyone accepts silver as money, it becomes a unit of account, making it easier to write contracts and perform economic calculations.

This is no new insight. Precious metals have been used as money for millennia. The subject of money is discussed in religious texts. There are passages in the Bible where Jesus gives investment advice, and money in the form of gold and silver coins is specifically mentioned as the medium of exchange. This should not come as news to survivalists, because they tend to be religiously inclined. Hence, they should know that even a society as primitive as the one Jesus was part of took money seriously.

But we're not going back to such a primitive society. The collapse of the current world order will not herald the dawn of a new primitive age, and the collapse of a society isn't something that happens over night. Rome's collapse took 200 years to complete, and it's not entirely clear whether Rome fell. Many historians see the Latin world as the continuation of Rome.

The dark ages that followed Rome's administrative handover to the Ostrogoths, were turbulent times. But it was also a time of opportunity. There were small kingdoms everywhere. There was trade and competition. Those with ambition and a good head on their shoulders could make it big.

As things unravel anew, I intend to take advantage of opportunities that come my way. The way to do this is to have a foot both in the old and the new order, and to be on friendly terms with people in our community. There also has to be a vision of a better future, and a plan to get there.

Owning a bunker in the woods is neither a plan nor a vision. However, an economy based on sound money is a vision, and converting savings into gold and silver is a plan. The current system is heavily dependent on banks and registry offices. Anything that diverts resources away from this and towards things more directly under our control is therefore an attack on the system. But this transition from the old to the new system cannot be made over night without major pain.

We need to be sensible and patient, and do things in the correct order. Only then can we reap the fruits of our efforts as we go. Step by step, we chip away on the old order while we build something new and better. We can reduce the number of bank accounts we have. We can close our savings accounts and save in precious metals instead. We can own land. We can express preference for gold and silver over fiat money.

We don't have to stupidly accept the system as it is, nor do we have to reject it completely over night. Done correctly, the migration is both painless and profitable. I know, because I've started the process for myself and my family, and the rewards have been plenty both socially and economically.

Jesus

By Carl Bloch - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVdd6dZPU3nrHUoYjTuN9VNudnSwm6_ckL4my_jNr9y0jQXOkTeF5lzEN7RsSyiIlatLoriO91OkOEHrVvJ3bToCcmcjVcgQ76Ios4s0OCGS2ivlOP2i3K8L1rG1Svqv2EdEDnGRpLzOC-/s1600/Sermon_on_the_Mount_Carl_Bloch.jpg and Carl Bloch, p. 313, ISBN 9788798746591, Public Domain, Link

A Dry Winter

Some early snow on the peeks of Portugal in November made me think that this winter might end up both cold and wet. However, quite the opposite has happened. December turned out to be unusually mild, and we've hardly had a drop of rain through the winter.

This is a big deal because winter is the season for rain. If there's no rain during winter, we'll face a drought this summer.

Portugal has a Mediterranean climate. It hardly ever rains during summer, so the assumption is that we're heading for trouble. However, the last couple of summers have not been as Mediterranean as they used to be. Last summer was cool and relatively wet, and I suspect that this year may end up equally unusual.

My guess is that we'll get rain this spring, and that summer will be similar to what we've been having lately. This is more in tune with weather patterns farther north, and something to be expected during a grand solar minimum.

A sprinkle of snow

Two Year Old News

I've recently made two posts related to the pandemic on my Facebook wall. They are separated by some ten days to make them seem independent and not part of a single narrative. I'm also careful with my language. I'm stating facts that everyone can agree on regardless of their personal opinion on the matter.

My plan is to continue this until I complete my story some time this spring. There might be as many as ten posts necessary to do this. But I'm not working from a set script, so I don't know. All I know is that every post is going to be about something that happened almost two years back.

My first post was about people dropping dead in the streets of Wuhan. I found a two year old news article on this that I posted on my wall with the following description: "This is how it all started some two years ago."

I got no likes or comments on this post. I was merely reporting on some old news. However, the news looks distinctly fake in retrospect, and that's all I wanted to show.

My next post was about "flatten the curve". I found a scientific looking Wikipedia post on this that I linked to. My description: "Two years since we embarked on the greatest social experiment in human history."

I got one like on this one, but no comments. That's not surprising, because there's not much to say. The science looks artificial. But I'm not passing judgments. I'm merely stating a truth that everyone can agree on.

I plan to post another link in about a week from now. That will be a YouTube video of Boris Johnson's speech to the British people after his stay in hospital during Easter. I'll point out his remarkable recovery. He bounced back from his oxygen treatment within days. Without this treatment, Boris Johnson would have been dead. Those are his own words.

The video is embarrassing to watch. Only people deep asleep can still watch it without a feeling of unease.

Other things to post about in the months to come include the science behind mask mandates, operation warp speed, the 97% effective vaccines, vaccine passports, lockdowns, etc.

A Facebook friend of mine did something similar yesterday. He too posted an article from two years ago. He chose one about a law against hugging strangers. Violators could face up to two years in jail. That's how wacky lawmakers were back then.

I hope this will help people wake up from their slumber. Most of my friends will skip past my posts without any thought, I'm sure. But one or two may be sufficiently triggered, and that's enough for the network effect to kick in. Once there's momentum in the right direction, people will start waking up all over the place. It hasn't happened yet, but I remain optimistic.

By Facebook, Inc. - http://en.facebookbrand.com, Public Domain, Link

Well Executed but Badly Conceived

My wife and I went out for a coffee and Éclair yesterday. It was another fine winter day, so we could sit outside in the sun and fresh air.

We talked again about how the official narrative is falling apart. It's been well executed, but the basic idea was so badly conceived that not even the best propaganda in the world can keep it together. Whoever came up with the idea to issue vaccine passports based on people's willingness to be inoculated every nine months was a complete moron. Such an unappealing idea was doomed to failure from the start, and it's astonishing to think that this idea, of all possible ideas, was the one they decided to implement.

The result of this is that the world's best propaganda has been wasted on an impossible project, and the damage done to the propagandists is in many ways as bad as the damage done to society, because a social experiment like this can only be executed once. People remember and learn, so a method is rendered less effective once it's been used. It's effectiveness diminishes over time.

The evidence for this is everywhere. Masks used to be a highly divisive subject. There were hobby fascists out in the streets reprimanding the mask-less. But this is no longer happening. Masks have become a personal choice, and vaccination status is soon to follow. My in-laws no longer rave about the vaccines. No-one is concerned about us being unvaccinated. This is evident from the fact that my wife and I have granny with us at home while she's recuperating from her heart attack . If vaccine status was as big a deal as they have claimed, my in-laws would have been up in arms, demanding a safer environment for their frail old mother. But that's not happening.

Time is on our side. Even the staunchest vaccine proponents are starting to waver, and the longer we remain unmoved by their hysteria, the more they will moderate themselves. It may even be possible to have a reasonable conversation with these people in a few months from now.

Vaccine passports were doomed from the start, and the vaccines turned out to be poison. Yet, the would be tyrants went all in. They threw everything at us, and revealed in this way both their true nature, and the impotence of their tools. The bio-weapon released in Wuhan was a dud, and the propaganda, however well executed, was unable to cover up for this fact.

Trust has been eroded. Fear is evaporating, and the future will look very different from what the would be tyrants had envisioned. Try as they may, they will fail to put the genie back in the bottle.

Dom Luís I bridge

Three Months with Bitcoin ETFs

Bitcoin is down almost 50% since October, when I pointed out the negative effect that Bitcoin ETFs will have on the price of this crypto-currency. The derivative has eroded Bitcoin's demand side, leaving sellers with a smaller pool of buyers. Hence, the lower price.

Meanwhile, gold remains stuck in its wedge formation. It has been pushing up against resistance as of late, but so far without success.

Monthly chart of the gold price in US dollars

A Perfect Bowl of Vegetable Soup

Food traditions and food habits have changed a lot over the centuries. Foods and habits that were common a few centuries ago are now in some cases only found in individual countries. Meat pies, stews and soups were common everywhere in Europe in the past, but are now fairly rare. They have become specialties of certain countries and regions.

One such habit is the vegetable soup that everyone ate as a starter for the main meal. I know of no other country than Portugal where this is still the rule. The habit has somehow survived. Most Portuguese insist on a bowl of vegetable soup before digging into the main dish.

This is a habit I've adopted myself, and I can highly recommend it. Making a soup is quick and easy, and it makes for a perfect starter. It's neither too filling nor boring. If done correctly, it's positively delicious.

I follow no recipe when making a soup. There's the essential clove of garlic and teaspoon of salt, but apart from that anything can be tossed into the pot. Typical vegetables used include potato, pumpkin, beans, carrot, onions and spinach. The vegetables are cut into dices and boiled for 25 minutes. Once boiled, olive oil is added, and the soup is blended with an immersion blender.

As it turns out, the end result depends heavily on the quality of the olive oil. The more fragrant and delicious the olive oil, the better the soup will taste, and there's a huge difference between the typical olive oil found in a supermarket and a fine olive oil bought in a delicatessen.

My wife has a nephew who owns an olive grove, and he gave us a bottle of his finest press for Christmas, and there can be no doubt about its superiority. A dash of his oil elevates our soups to levels impossible to reach with even the best oil found in our local supermarket. Hence, we're now set on exploring in more detail the world of olive oils.

We've had similar experiences with tea and coffee. That too depends very much on quality. There's a huge difference between what's sold in supermarkets when compared to what's sold in delicatessens, and the difference in price is not so big that only the rich can afford the luxury of top quality products. My wife and I have found our preferred teas and coffees, and we will now see if we can find a reliable high end olive oil as well.

Lunch

The Banality of Politics

Boris Johnson has decided to roll back most of England's Covid related mandates and restrictions. The logic behind this is that Covid is now so contagious and so benign that there's no point in trying to contain it. However, the real reason behind this decision is likely something else. Johnson is after all a politician and not a medical expert. His only real concern is his own political survival, and this latest decision bears all the signs of political maneuvering.

Johnson is in trouble for having broken his own rules, and this is probably the main motivation behind the change in policy. By removing all the rules that he broke himself, he can claim to have broken no rules at all, he was merely early in adopting the new ones.

In addition to this, Johnson gains several other benefits:

• It makes him look victorious in the eyes of the gullible
• It sets the UK apart from the EU, making Brexit more popular
• It's good for the economy, on which he's dependent for his popularity

All of this is good for Johnson, and therefore smart politics as far as he's concerned. However, it's horrible politics from a globalist viewpoint. Their hope was that the virus would align all governments into a single unified response, thereby paving the way for a central world government, but the very opposite is what we're getting.

The UK is such an influential nation that it's hard to see how countries within its sphere of influence can continue their restrictions in light of these latest changes. Scandinavia, Holland and Portugal are heavily influenced by the UK, so we can expect regulations to be rolled back there too. The same goes for Commonwealth countries and the US.

Things are also falling apart farther east. The Czech republic has rolled back their restrictions. This may have been inspired by the UK, but local issues are probably primary here too. The Czech republic is part of "Mitteleuropa", a region where cultural and political bickering is deeply rooted in history. The Czechs have most likely adopted their liberal stance simply because Austria has adopted a totalitarian stance. Prague is only an hour away from Vienna by car, so they stand to gain a lot from emigrants leaving Vienna for Prague.

This pattern is becoming more pronounced throughout Europe, precisely as I predicted. Some places are doubling down on totalitarian measures. Other places are scrapping them. Others again adopt something in between. There's no unified plan. Every country does things their own way.

This exposes the EU as a useless organization, and the fact that the EU has sided with the totalitarians has pretty much sealed its fate. It will have to be scaled back substantially if it hopes to retain any relevance at all.

All of this is good news for the liberty minded. We're again heading for an era of diversity in governance. Every country will come up with their own rules, and they will have to compete with every other country. This has always been good for liberty. Europe's success is rooted in this constant bickering back and forth between nations.

Liberty

Narrative and Controlled Opposition in Science

Miles Mathis is of the opinion that the Electric Universe group known as the Thunderbolt project, is controlled opposition. He bases this on several factors, including the fact that the project isn't delivering much in terms of results. All that comes out of it is an endless stream of ramblings and rants, mixed in with some truths to make them seem legitimate. The project is a dead end that makes the official narrative look good in comparison. It's a false alternative that keeps people from finding true alternatives.

All of this may be true. However, I don't think the problem is as serious as Mathis makes it out to be. The real problem isn't the various blind alleys we find everywhere we look. The real problem is a lack of critical thinking. Spending years on end focusing on a single narrative is a waste of time regardless of which story we home in on. That's why I encourage readers of my physics to come up with their own models. People should pick and choose. They should know the essence of various theories, and they should know the experiments that either support or refute these theories.

None of this needs years of our time. All it requires is an open mind and an ability to think things through. A clear separation between theory and observation is key. Observations should not be denied unless they are shrouded in secrecy. Theories, on the other hand, should be constantly challenged. A single observation may be explained by a multiple of theories, and the informed reader knows this. A distant glow surrounding a dark center is only a black hole in mainstream physics. Plasma physics see it as a hot whirlpool of plasma. Highly regular radio signals from deep space is no proof of neutron stars. An electric model can explain this as discharges between two closely orbiting stars.

Interested readers can learn the main features of multiple theories in the space of a few years thanks to the internet. I had no trouble finding all sorts of alternative theories when I decided to look closer at the problems related to gravity with respect to Peter Woodhead's hollow Earth theory. I don't think that Woodhead was right in all his ideas, but I still prefer his hollow Earth model over solid Earth models.

I've been inspired by all sorts of ideas, many of them coming from the Thunderbolt project. If they are controlled opposition, it was no hindrance to me. I spent a few weeks looking into their stuff. I don't think it was a waste of time. I think they are wrong about gravity, but I think they're right in their claim that gravity is related to the electric force, and I'm sure capacitance has much to do with it. Their views related to gravity are in my mind a mix of good and bad ideas. It took me some time to separate the good from the bad, but I don't think I was deceived or deliberately tricked.

In the end, I stumbled onto my solution when I came across a YouTube lecture by Halton Arp shortly after having read the work of Morton Spears. Both were talking in terms of particles and particle quanta, and it dawned on me that this might be key to the puzzle. Some say that Halton Arp was controlled opposition. Many think of Morton Spears as a crank. But none of this mattered to me. They triggered some interesting thoughts from which I've developed my own theory, and I'm hopeful that my work will in turn inspire others.

The important thing to note is that no theory should be considered complete. There are errors everywhere, and we're far from having figured it all out. My theory is no exception. I'm not pretending to have figured it all out. All I've done is to show that a strict particle model ends up with results consistent with observations. There's no need for mysterious mathematical concepts.

The mainstream narrative is in this respect deceptive. We're told that pretty much everything is figured out and proven to be true. Furthermore, physics is so complicated that laymen cannot hope to ever penetrate the true significance of things. For that, we need experts.

A whole range of pretend experts are presented on TV, talking with confidence about theory as proven facts. This is deliberate deception. These so called experts are spooks. They work for the status quo who's only real concern is to keep people from thinking critically for themselves. The establishment isn't concerned about truth. Government agents may know things that they don't want others to know, but that is a secondary concern. Primary to the elite is not the suppression of truth but the suppression of critical thinking.

Similarly, I'm sure there's controlled opposition, not only in politics but in science as well. The purpose of it is to make sure that those who see through the official narrative are led into another narrative that's equally controlled by the elite. However, this only works because people aren't thinking critically about things. People are wasting their time, not so much because they're fed false narratives, as for their general intellectual laziness. 

This means that we don't have to concern ourselves about the official narrative and the controlled opposition. There are bits of truth in both camps. There are also a lot of interesting ideas to be found by searching the internet. Anyone can become a critical thinker, and it's easier these days than it has been in the past. The problem isn't the elite and their control of things. Rather, it's our lazy approach to things and a general desire to be told what to think rather than to think things through for ourselves.

Thinking about stuff

Avoiding the Individual Case Trap

Whenever mainstream news focus on a specific case, we can be certain that there's something nefarious going on. The public is fed something emotional that they can argue about. Our attention is diverted from the overall picture. A detail is selected. We're thrown a bone that we can fight over.

The latest such story here in Portugal is the six year old boy that died shortly after taking the vaccine. It mirrors the story from a year ago when a nurse died shortly after her second shot. That too was at the start of a vaccine rollout. That too ended up with experts concluding that the death was unrelated to the vaccine.

The purpose of such stories is not to enlighten anybody, but to set us up against each other. Some people are inclined to trust the experts and others are not, and so we end up fighting over a single case that doesn't in the end mean anything to anyone. The story is a trap, deliberately engineered to stir emotions on both sides of the debate, and to narrow the debate down to a single case.

If journalists were sincere in wanting to enlighten us, there would be more cases covered, and there would be an honest debate related to statistics. But none of this is happening. We get a single case to bicker over, and a bunch of numbers without enough context to be meaningful.

When it comes to the vaccine, the stories serve a particularly sinister agenda. They make it clear that the vaccine may be dangerous. Taking them becomes therefore an act of submission. We offer ourselves and our children to the greater good, known in biblical times as Molech.

Once we give this kind of offerings, we become attached to the narrative, and we start to view those who refuse to make similar offering as our enemies. Taking the vaccine is a ritual that brings us closer to Molech. To get even closer to him, people offer up their children as well. The common good requires us to make sacrifices, and those who don't are seen as evil. So goes the logic among those who have taken part in this ritual.

However, the common good is merely the aggregate of individual goods. No-one needs to sacrifice anything to Molech. We're not collectively benefitting from such sacrifices. The only ones benefitting are the priests, i.e. the political elite. Hence, we should treat the bones that are tossed to us by journalists with prejudice. We should refuse to take any strong side in any argument related to them. We can acknowledge the facts, yet refuse to conclude anything from them.

In the case of the six year old boy, we can agree that it's a tragic story, but there isn't anything more we can reasonably say based on it. It's too narrow a fact to conclude anything, so we shouldn't use it as a base for an argument.

Our arguments should first and foremost be based on principles of liberty. Everyone should be free to make decision based on their own judgments. Only when this is made clear does it make sense to bring up statistics. Beyond that, we can mention personal observations. We can point out that we know more people who've gotten sick from the vaccine than from the virus. That helps to clarify our personal position. But there's no point in mentioning the bone tossed to us by journalists. That's merely a sad story. It doesn't provide any context for us to make any decision one way or the other.

The whole point of the emotionally laden story is to create conflict, and to control both sides of the argument. Those who trust the experts are made more obedient than they were. The ones that use the story to defend their objections are given a shaky foundation for their arguments. We end up with obedient subjects and tinfoil-hat opponents.

However, if we merely state our position as suggested above, there's nothing to argue about. People can disagree with our position. They can rage against our stance, and they can express disbelief in our observations and the data we've gathered. But that has no purpose. We're not interested in arguing about any of this. We're making a decision, and we're simply laying out our thinking. If others want to continue their offerings to Molech, that's their decision to make. But it's neither good nor wise nor something we want to do ourselves.

Offering to Molech

By Charles Foster - Illustrators of the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us http://associate.com/photos/Bible-Pictures--1897-W-A-Foster/page-0074-1.jpg, Public Domain, Link

Timely Sensitivity

I'm glad I didn't post anything derogatory about vaccine enthusiasts on Facebook this morning. The timing of such a post would have been horrible, because it turns out that my brother in law in Lisbon is terribly ill from the booster. This is the guy who kept on calling my wife, and almost managed to push her into taking the vaccine. However, I actually like the guy. I think he's misled by the constant propaganda, so I don't blame him for anything. I'm glad I didn't post anything to make him feel even more miserable than he already is. He's learning his lesson on his own. He doesn't need me to tell him that he's stupid.

Making things worse for the man is the fact that he went ahead and had his 5 year old son injected with the mystery serum a few weeks ago, and I got a feeling that the poor kid isn't feeling all that well either. The man has basically poisoned himself and his kid, and the latest news from a hospital in Lisbon isn't going to cheer him up much. A 6 year old kid has died of complications from Covid, which we now know to be code for "dead from the vaccine". The story is headline news, so I'm sure he's aware of it.

The news of the kid's death was coded in it's usual fashion. It was all about how the kid got Covid and how he died in the hospital from terrible complications. It wasn't until the very end of the news story that it was revealed that the kid had been vaccinated only days before being rushed to hospital. My dimwitted brother in law may not have picked up on the underlying message. He may also be so deep in denial that he's simply refusing to add two and two together. But my guess is that even he is starting to understand that he's been conned by a bunch of snake oil salesmen.

This sort of tragedies are now happening everywhere, and it's bound to wake people up. Now that the ugly truth is right in front of them, they can no longer deny it. The game is up. The con is exposed. My predictions for the year are panning out. We're seeing some weird stuff this winter. Politicians are all over the place. Some heading for the exits, and others doubling down with extreme measures. It's a complete farce, and a tragic one at that.

The social contract

A Shift in Sentiment

Sick as a dog from the first two. Is offered a third one. Accepts it. Sick as a dog again. #CantFixStupid

I woke up this morning thinking I should post something like this on my Facebook wall. However, I've changed my mind. There's no point in trying to be clever. I have a lot of vaccinated Facebook friends, and they're not likely to be much impressed with me calling them stupid. Besides, there seems to be a shift in sentiment. The current madness is likely to roll by on its own.

Cognitive dissonance is on full display in the streets of Porto. We're back to seeing 80% of everybody wearing their masks. But there's something tortured in their eyes. It's clear that they know that they're being played. They are wearing their masks despite knowing that it's useless. Hence, they look away in shame. No-one confronts the mask-less with angry rants. The hobby fascists of yesteryear are long gone. 

My son and I went for our regular morning walk to his school. Seeing me mask-less at the gate, my Covid-survivor-friend decided to skip it as well. He too knows how pointless it is, so my only surprise with him is that he sometimes wears the mask anyway.

On my way home, I came across my brother in law who used to be a big believer in the importance of wearing a mask. However, he too has dropped it. Maybe my stubborn refusal to wear one has rubbed off on him. In any event, I was happy to see him more relaxed about it.

Back home, my wife told me that her cousin who works as a nurse had just posted a joke about herself taking the booster. It was a picture of a cured ham. Coming from somebody who used to call all her relatives to tell them to get vaccinated, that's quite a change.

With so much welcomed news within my own personal sphere, there really isn't any point in posting anything derogatory. There's no point in telling people "I told you so", when they are in the process of waking up.

The mask of the beast

Sick as a Dog, as Usual

My wife works for a school book publisher. That's the sort of work that can be done from home, and with the plague raging in the media, just about everyone is doing just that. It's great, because it means that my wife can take care of little things through the day while officially at work. That's all the more important to her now that her mother is ill, and at home with us for recuperation.

However, not everyone working from home has managed to stay healthy. One of my wife's colleagues called in sick on Thursday. She's been unable to work for the last few days, even from home. That's how ill she's feeling. But this is not due to the virus. My wife's colleague is ill from the vaccine. She took the booster, and now she's "sick as a dog, as usual." Those were her own words.

This means that my wife's colleague got sick from the first two shots as well. Yet, here she is, taking the booster despite having no gun to her head. My wife and I are unvaccinated, and we have experienced very few inconveniences related to our vaccine status, so nobody can claim that they're forced to take the vaccine. My wife's colleague took the booster voluntarily, despite having fallen ill after the first two shots.

It makes me wonder what's going through people's heads. How dangerous do they think that the virus is? We're dealing with a disease that's no more dangerous than a regular flu, yet people take a vaccine with unknown long term consequences, and personally experienced short term consequences. Will this woman take the next booster as well, I wonder. It wouldn't surprise me if she does. Not that I will properly understand it. But this kind of idiotic behavior is everywhere, and probably going to be around for a good while longer.

Headache

By Phee - Pixabay, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Miles Mathis - Aether

Miles Mathis mentions the aether in his book. But he doesn't say much about it, so I was left thinking that his thoughts are pretty much the same as mine. However, that turned out to be false. Looking through the articles listed on his webpage, I found one dedicated to the aehter, and it revealed that his ideas about the aether are radically different from mine.

Mathis' aether is not a material thing. It's an abstraction based on the constancy of the speed of light. It's not light itself, nor a pool of particles. It's a fixed background that can be used in his calculations.

This is similar to how Newton introduced mass into his equations in his time. It too is an abstraction. Mass is a convenient name for measurements related to inertia and gravity. However, there's no such thing as mass in the real world. That's why my physics doesn't talk of mass. It talks of inertia and gravity as two separate phenomena. They are linked together by the fact that both relate to particle quanta. However, that doesn't make mass real. Mass is a proxy for the number of particle quanta making up a particular body. These particle quanta are real, but mass is not. It's an abstraction.

Similarly, Mathis's aether can be used in calculations, but there's no point in looking for it in the real world. It only exists as a proxy for the speed of light. That's radically different from my aether which is a mix of low energy photons and neutrinos.

Mathis and I are in two opposite camps. He's primarily concerned with equations, while I'm primarily concerned with physical models. However, this doesn't mean I dislike his article. On the contrary, I found it well worth a read.

Mathis points out that relative speeds can be calculated from red-shifts, and that Einstein's equations transform external data into local values so that a proper timeline of events can be calculated. This means that all events can be mapped onto a universal timeline. We have a background against which all motion can be related, and it is this background that Mathis thinks of when he uses the word aether.

Interestingly, I come to a similar conclusion. All reference frames exist inside some bigger reference frame. A moving car is a reference frame inside the reference frame of our planet, which in turn is a reference frame inside the solar system. This hierarchy has the visible universe as its top node, which can be considered universal and stationary.

But reference frames should not be confused with the aether. Mathis' use of the word is unfortunate. It makes us think that he has some physical medium in mind when in reality, he's thinking of a stationary background.

The universe

By NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI) - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/27/image/a/ (image link), Public Domain, Link

Miles Mathis - Relativity Corrected

Chapter four, five, six and seven of Miles Mathis' book are dedicated to errors in Einstein's equations, and how to fix them. They are also the final chapters of his book. There's no overall conclusion. The book is not a complete theory. It's a collection of essays, of which many more can be found on Mathis' homepage.

Having no quarrel with Einstein myself, I didn't bother to read these final chapters. I skimmed through them. I'm sure Mathis has some valid points, but this is not of great importance to me. I'm neither for or against Einstein's ideas. Some, I like, others I don't, and for the ones I don't I've proposed a different way of looking at things. There's no space-time in my physics. Instead of curvatures of space, I have an aether with a varying composition relative to massive bodies. This produces much the same math without having to resort to exotic geometry. That's a result I'm satisfied with for my own purpose. I don't need to know the exact details of Einstein's equations to reach this conclusion. We get similar results, and that's good enough for me.

As for Mathis' overall world view, it's clear that he sees relativity as a problem mainly related to measurements. Relativity theory is a way to transform measurements between reference systems. That's a valid way of looking at it, but I don't think he's entirely right. I think there's something real and physical going on. That's why I've proposed a mechanism that makes time move slower for moving bodies.

Time slows down for speeding bodies due to an increase in effort required to transfer energy onto them. Since time is experienced and measured in relation to energy transfers we have time slowing down with increased speed. But this is only noticeable from the outside. The rules of physics remain unchanged within the local frame because the slowing down of time is directly related to a slowing down of the aether and everything else inside the speeding object. It's only when we look out that we notice that things have changed. Everything outside of our reference frame moves at a more frantic pace.

Key to this line of thinking is the presumption of an aether aiding in the transfer of energy onto objects. The equation we get for time dilation is as follows:

Time dilation

The photon represents the aether, acting as medium for energy transfer. The photon has to travel back and forth across the particle to complete the energy transfer. As we see from the resulting formula. Time required to transfer energy onto a particle approaches infinity when its speed approaches the speed of light.

I don't think Mathis will be much impressed by this explanation. He doesn't need it in order to satisfy his equations. But that's not to say that no such mechanism exists. I have no idea who is right and who is wrong in this respect. I don't claim to have fund the solution to all the mysteries of the world. All I'm saying is that my view of things makes for a coherent explanation of observed facts, and I'm sure Mathis can make the same claim.

There's more than one way to approach the problems of physics, and that's a good thing.

Miles Mathis - The Michelson-Morley Experiment

The third chapter in Miles Mathis' book is a critique of the Michelson-Morley experiment; an experiment frequently used as argument against the existence of an aether. Mathis goes about this in his usual way, using algebra to prove his points. However, the critique doesn't require any math. All we need to point out is that the experiment was designed to detect a very peculiar kind of aether, so the negative results are no proof against the fluid aether proposed by people like Mathis and myself, nor is it proof positive for Einstein's dismissal of it.

The aether that the Michelson-Morley experiment tried to detect was not a fluid, but a solid. It's properties were derived from the need to explain light as waves. It had to be extremely rigid and dense. However, the discovery of the photon rendered void the need for such an aether. Photons can travel through space on their own. No rigid medium is needed.

But to conclude from this that there's no aether at all is quite a stretch, because there are all sorts of other phenomena that do require an aether. Without it, we're stuck with a mysterious wave-particle duality for photons, and action at a distance becomes a puzzle. There's also no simple way to explain the spontaneous appearance and disappearance of photons and neutrinos from empty space, or the electromagnetic breakdown of space under extreme electrostatic conditions.

But Mathis doesn't go this way in his explanation. Instead, he criticizes the setup itself, which I believe is an error. The Michelson-Morley interferometer was correctly designed. They would have detected an aether flow if it was present. But the experiment was done in the basement of a building. That's a reference frame of its own, and no aether flow can be expected within such a reference frame.

Mathis hints at this explanation with his example of an aircraft. There's no wind inside the aircraft. That's all that's needed to explain the failure of the experiment to detect an aether flow. His math doesn't add to this explanation. On the contrary, it makes the chapter needlessly complicated.

However, the chapter is not a complete waste. There's a link to a paper where Mathis enumerates several other aether related experiments. His math, although somewhat misplaced, is clear and relevant to relativity. It's also clear that Mathis thinks of the aether as something fluid, and that it can be boxed in like air in an aircraft.

This means that any attempt at detecting the aether must be done with equipment that's open to the environment. The interferometer mustn't be boxed in, and it must certainly not be placed in a basement. The best way to get a good reading is to perform the experiment at high speeds in the emptiness of free space.

Modern optical resonator

By User:Stigmatella aurantiaca - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Miles Mathis - Relativity

The second chapter in Miles Mathis' book is an introduction to relativity as a concept. He points out that relativity is real. The speed of light is finite, so data from moving objects must be adjusted for this. There's a need to transform observed data in order to make proper sense of it.

This has been known since the 17th century when Ole Rømer made the observation that light coming from Jupiter's moon Io was red-shifted and blue-shifted depending on its motion relative to Earth.

However, there's a difference between relativity as a physical reality and relativity as theory. We do not have to accept Einstein's equations without question simply because we agree with him that relativity is part of reality. In fact, there's an error in one of his equations, according to Mathis. The faulty equation fails to account for the direction of movement when applied to time dilation.

The fact that this error has been overlooked, is evidence that Einstein's work has never been fully understood by anyone. Einstein was right about relativity as a concept. However, he made errors in his efforts to formalize this into equations.

Miles claims to have fixed Einstein's equations, and I have no reason to doubt him. In fact, I'll use his formulas if I ever get around to put more math into my work. Not least because I too ended up with relativity being slightly different from what Einstein predicted when I approached the problem from a purely logical standpoint. I suspect that Mathis is right, and that the error he points out is a real error and not a misinterpretation on his part.

Miles uses his equations to explain the Pioneer anomaly that has puzzled scientists ever since it was discovered that the Pioneer spacecraft was moving in a different trajectory than predicted by Einstein's equations. I'm open to the idea that there may be more going on than mere relativity when it comes to this anomaly, but it may also be true that it can be explained entirely as an error in Einstein's equations.

Green photons registered by detector moving from right to left

Miles Mathis - Time

I had never heard of Miles Mathis before one of my readers mentioned him in response to my post about Quantum Space Theory. The commenter finds his work similar to mine, so I looked him up this morning to learn more, and from the little I've read, I must say I agree. Miles Mathis comes across as a formal version of myself.

I've only started reading his book, but I can already recommend it. I trust that he will take his readers in a similar direction as I do in my books, and if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll make excellent arguments for himself, well worth reading even if I end up disagreeing with him.

It may seem strange to recommend a book that I haven't read to the end, but I do this for a reason. The overlaps between my work and his thoughts are so many that I'd like to comment on his book as I work my way through it. Hence, I start with this review of his first pages.

The preface sets his work in the historic context of our day. It's written in fine prose, with a touch of humor. Mathis explains his position. He's neither for or against anyone or anything. He wants merely to point out the errors that have taken hold of modern physics. He attacks the obscurity of it, and the deceptive ways false conclusions are cloaked in fancy mathematics. His approach will be simple, he promises. He will point out errors with basic algebra, and he will propose alternative solutions and interpretations.

The first chapter of his book is about time, which he defines as relative speed, exactly the way I define it in my work. He makes an excellent argument for his position which dovetails perfectly with my observations. Additionally, he argues against the concept of space-time. He points out that what is by necessity a feature of three dimensional space cannot at the same time be a dimension of its own. Time is not a spatial dimension. It's a relative measure of speed.

Photon traversing an electron

Dead from Covid Complications

Wikipedia's list of notable deaths for 2022 has five entries so far of people dead from Covid complications. But what what does this mean?

To shed some light on this question, we have this article about Valentina Boscardin, a 18 year old Brazilian model who died of Covid complications on January 11. The cause of her death was not Covid but thrombosis, commonly known as blood clots, a known adverse side-effect of Pfizer's vaccine of which she had recently taken two shots. It's in other words a near certainty that she died of the vaccine and not the virus, so it appears that "dead from Covid complications" is code for "dead from Covid vaccine".

Mask of the beast

Quantum Space Theory

I recently came across a web site promoting Quantum Space Theory; the idea that space is quantized. The theory was first proposed by Lord Kelvin back in the 19th century, so the idea is neither new nor fringe. Furthermore, it hasn't been satisfactory refuted, so its validity cannot be ruled out. The theory isn't dead. It's merely ignored. Once Lord Kelvin fell out of favor, his ideas were tossed out with him it seems.

The similarities between Quantum Space Theory (QST) and my particle theory are striking. A series of logical steps led me to the same conclusion about the nature of space, despite me never having heard about QST.

My starting point was the assumption that everything in the universe is made up of particles. This led to the ultimate conclusion that space itself is made up of particles. The aether and space are synonymous. Lord Kelvin started out with the assumption that the aether is composed of particles, and concluded from this that space and aether are interchangeable concepts.

Kelvin's aether exists in a super-space. My aether exists in a void. Kelvin's aether particles are different from known particles. My aether particles are low energy neutrinos and photons, particles that we now know to exist, but were as yet unknown to Kelvin. Kelvin imagined his particles to be vortexes. I propose no particular form. My position is that whatever they are, they are three dimensional and they have texture, something Kelvin agrees with in his own way.

The similarities between QST and my theory are so many that my theory can be considered a variant of QST. Readers who like my theory should give QST a read as well, not least because QST contains the formality that my books lack. My approach has been deductive, without much focus on mathematical formulas. QST contains the formulas, and explain their significance in the context of quantized space.

My work complements QST in that it gives the reader a simple introduction to the basic ideas of quantum reality, where everything in nature is a consequence of something real and easily conceptualized. Nothing counterintuitive exists in nature. There are no mysterious dualities that can only be understood in mathematical terms. On the contrary, everything can be seen in light of particles knocking into each other to produce force and hooking up with each other to produce structures.

A particle quantum

Vengeance Belongs to the Lord

It's now ten years since I retired from my career as a software developer. I didn't at the time know what to do with my newfound freedom, so I tried my hand at various projects with the intent of making some money to cover the shortfalls I expected in our overall cash flow. However, that came to nothing, and I was in the end forced to sell my house in Norway to balance our budget.

The process was frustrating, to say the least. I was being squeezed by the system; forced to do things I'd rather not do. But once my house was sold, things sorted themselves out. Our budgets balanced, and our need to make money to cover the costs of owning a house disappeared. Instead of a house in Norway, we have a box of gold close at hand. There are no costs associated with this box, and it keeps its value just as well as a house. It is, as it were, real-estate in condensed form.

Things have turned out well for me and my wife. But it didn't always look that way. The system was full of hurdles. Life decisions that didn't conform to preferred norms were heavily taxed. Most people saw nothing wrong in the way I was targeted for taxation. It wasn't their problem, so they didn't care. There was a clear majority in favor of the system as it was. There was no hope for any change. The system would for ever work against me.

All of this made me angry. But what could I do? The only way to escape was to sell everything and retire, and that's what I ended up doing.

I'm not the only one who've made this kind of decision. Thousands of Norwegian tax-donkeys disappear from the system every year. Just like me, they leave Norway for better climates and lower costs of living.

No-one has so far complained about this apart from some politicians pointing their fingers at the emigrants, claiming that they are selfish. But the public don't see any problems in this. After all; who needs them? If they hate Norway so much, let them go.

The average person is ignorant of economy. They don't see how a steady exodus of tax-donkeys means that more taxes must be paid by those who remain. They don't see how unsustainable the situation is. The general consensus is that Norway has so much oil that it doesn't matter if a few rich people leave. There's also a sovereign wealth fund that will keep everyone affluent for ever.

But the thing about unsustainable systems is that they can remain afloat for a long time before they break. There's usually a long and slow decline, hardly noticeable by most people, followed by a sudden collapse.

In the case of Norway, the decline has been going on for more than a decade. I was hardly the first one to leave. But consensus is that things are going all right. There might be some signs of decay here and there, but this is nothing to worry about. The downturn is temporary and will soon turn into renewed growth. However, the collapse might already have arrived. People are simply blind to it due to decades of having been shielded from reality.

If the state remains large, as it is in Norway, the tax burden must at some point reveal itself, either as monetary debasement or as some sudden increase in public fees. As it turns out, Norwegians are getting the latter. Their currency is holding up, but their electricity bills have skyrocketed. Electricity is now five times more expensive than normal.

This is a big deal because winters in Norway are cold, and most people heat their houses with electricity. Many are now experiencing living costs at more than 100% of their income. This problem that used to be confined to a small group of tax-donkeys is now suddenly widespread among ordinary people.

They don't know it yet, but this is probably the end of Norwegian affluence relative to the rest of Europe. The cost of living is now so high that most people will find themselves no better off than people living in more impoverished parts of Europe. The cost of electricity will go down from where it's currently trading, but there will be similar spikes in the future. The cost of living has permanently shifted higher.

Seeing this, I cannot help being reminded of the Bible that states that vengeance belongs to the Lord. My Norwegian peers tolerated too easily the injustices of the system when they were unaffected by them, and now they have to pay a heavy toll for their sins.

I'm past being angry at anyone for the way I was treated, but my former self would no doubt have taken comfort in what's currently happening, and in a way I did, because I knew that a day would come when the chickens would come home to roost. I trusted that this would happen, and so I let it be up to reality to take care of things at a future date. Instead of ranting against the system, I chose to take practical actions to save myself from the inevitable.

I shudder to think how things would have been if I had held onto my house in Norway. The bills would have been horrific. I would have been in a deep liquidity crisis. As it turned out, the adverse conditions I found myself under in the past were a blessing in disguise. I got out of dodge, and I can now watch the unfolding disaster from a distance.

It's hard to see how the elevated cost of living in Norway can continue without a severe blow to house prices. The spike in electricity prices is likely to work its way through the economy like a shockwave. The Lord is about to hand out vengeance left, right and center.

Reflection in a soap bubble

By Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link