The 2017-2018 Flu Season

Having found very little evidence of any pandemic in Wikipedia's notable deaths, I've decided to take a closer look at the data to see if I can find anything noteworthy. I'm going through every month, starting with January 2018, and in doing this I've found that February 2018 is a big outlier. Relatively young people were dying at an unusually high rate.

I decided to search for this, and sure enough, the 2017-2018 flu season was the most severe in at least a decade.

Interestingly, Wikipedia's data for the 2020 flu season has many deaths, but nothing indicating that it was very severe for those under 70. By the look of it, 2017-2018 was the really dangerous flu season for the relatively young.

The mask of the beast

The Rich and the Powerful

My stepdaughter brought up an interesting conspiracy theory over lunch today. One of her friends was of the opinion that the richest people in the world are not the ones we think they are. They are not Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the like, but people completely anonymous to us.

To me, this is not really a conspiracy theory. It's a fact that requires little research to validate. I mention this in my book on economics. Once a person is officially without direct possession of anything, that person can hide in plain sight. No-one needs to know how much control remains with him.

This is how I've arranged things for myself. I've passed all my registered wealth onto my children. That was sufficient to reduce my tax burden to zero, and it happened without my children being much burdened with any additional taxation.

The trick is to separate ownership from control. Ownership is registered and taxed. Control can be secret or indirect. It can't be taxed in the way that ownership can be taxed. It allows for more freedom, partly due to the fact that the rich stay anonymous.

We may know that the guy in the big house up the road is rich. But we don't know how rich he is. Hence, we assume him to be wealthy but otherwise normal. He may in fact control vast amounts of wealth through foundations and proxies of various kinds, but we'll never know, and he can therefore go about his daily affairs without any bother from anyone.

True power and wealth is often hidden through the establishment of proxies, like foundations and common ownership arrangements. This remains obscure and overlooked as long as things are running smoothly for the Status Quo. However, when there's a hick-up, we get a glimpse into this obscurity. We get to see the power of the truly wealthy, and we may get a taste of this relatively soon, because there's a loose canon roaming around on deck.

Elon Musk is a bit of a clown. He's one of the establishment guys, afforded special privileges. He's role is to play the techno wizard in the charade that passes as free market. However, he's too full of himself for his own good. He thinks he can do as he pleases, so he says things that don't ring well with the established narrative. His latest stunt has been to buy Twitter, and a lot of people with power are worried that this will lead to too much free speech.

The big guys have to rain in Musk, or stop him from succeeding in taking control of Twitter. Suddenly, Musk is in the cross hairs for SEC violations. He's being dragged through the mud by media outlets. Most telling is the sudden plunge in the price of Tesla.

The value of Tesla is crucial for Musk's plan. His bid for Twitter is based on it, so if Tesla falls below a certain price, the deal falls apart. It's therefore likely that Tesla is falling in price precisely because Musk made a bid for Twitter.

The Status Quo is out in force, and may even engineer a stock market crash in order to stop Musk from taking control of Twitter.

My guess is that Twitter will either remain remarkably unchanged after a Musk takeover, or magically escape his bid due to a crash in Tesla, and possibly the entire stock market. However, if none of this happens, and Twitter becomes a beacon of free speech after a successful Musk takeover, it may be that he really is one of the richest people alive, and that the existence of a shadow government made up of anonymous super-rich people is nothing but a conspiracy theory after all.

Elon Musk

By Duncan.Hull - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Culture Revealed by the Virus

Culture is hard to pin down when it comes to particulars. We know that different nations have different cultures, and that culture can vary within a nation. However, when asked exactly what distinguishes one nation from another, we're often at a loss. We either resort to vague references or we home in on detailed peculiarities.

I might for instance say that the Portuguese are like the Spanish, only less aggressive. This can in turn be explained in terms of history, and how the two nations are organized. Spain is a federation, while Portugal is a single country. Hence, brute force is needed in order to keep Spain together, while appeal to national pride is sufficient to keep the Portuguese from rioting.

Yet, a visitor will not notice much difference between Spain and Portugal. A skeptic may conclude that the whole culture thing is an invention. People are pretty much the same everywhere. Some are bad, but most are good. All that's required to travel the world in safety is to stay away from bad neighborhoods. The rest sorts itself out by being polite and friendly.

In times of peace and prosperity, everywhere is pretty much like everywhere else when it comes to how we interact with our fellow men. However, this changed when the virus scare hit. The difference in response between nations was striking, and often surprising. Who would have thought that even to this day Australia was ruled by prison guards? Or that the gentle anarchists of Europe would end up the most vaccinated?

Scandinavia revealed itself to be more divided than we would have thought, with Sweden taking the extreme other position of Norway. Two countries that are almost identical in most things ended up with wildly different responses.

The competitive nature of Swedish-Norwegian relationships revealed themselves. Norway, being the most conformist of the two nations became obsessed about conformity, driven by a desire to be best in the eyes of the rest of the world. Sweden, being more autonomous and somewhat less conformist, ended up taking the extreme other position in order to demonstrate their independence and pragmatism.

Conformism played a big role in Portugal too, but for different reasons from Norway. The Portuguese are conformist for pragmatic reasons. They do what they are told as long as it's no big deal. Having convinced people that the vaccine is safe and effective, just about everyone went out to get it to have it over and done with.

Conformism in Norway is based on a belief that the majority is always right, and that good must always be preferred over evil. Once everybody were convinced that the vaccine was not only a wise thing, but a good thing as well, a large majority went out to get themselves injected. However, Norway houses many eccentrics and fierce libertarians. It is not as homogenous in culture as Portugal, and Norway ended up with fewer people vaccinated than in Portugal.

The US is another nation that's divided into two cultures. One being conformist and the other being libertarian leaning. But the split is much more noticeable in the US than in Norway, partly because the US is much bigger than Norway, but also because the US has a culture of fierce competition. There's an intense desire to win in every way possible. There's also a desire to subjugate and humiliate opponents. The result of this is a clustering of opposing views, reflected in regional differences and party politics.

Canada doesn't have the same  culture of competition. Conformism is a mix of idealism and pragmatism. A conformist agenda can be pushed far without opposition. But there is a limit to what people accept. Once it's clear that the political elite is merely trying to subjugate dissidents, there's resistance.

Germany and Austria are nations driven by ideals, which also lead to divisions. Austria being the most extreme of the two is known for their tendency to analyze things down to their purest essence. This explains why Austria is home both to extreme collectivism and extreme libertarian thinking. This was in turn reflected in the low participation rate in the vaccination program.

Collectivists, who are always in the majority, especially in government, decided to force their view onto the rest by mandating the vaccine in Austria. It was the only way they would get the anti-vaccine club vaccinated. But it failed because the principled Austrians smelled a rat. The ones who had been against the vaccine became all the more convinced of their moral superiority. Those formerly in favor became less convinced. Many were taken in my the staunch opposition.

As for China, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's a mess, with intolerant totalitarians at the top and submissive peasants itching to revolt, but too afraid to do so. We can safely say that nothing coming from China should be believed on face value.

Pushing things too far in Canada

Superstitions and Wishful Thinking

My stepdaughter is determined to make a living from acting, film and theatre. As such, she's embarked on something of a campaign where she's making humorous TikTok snippets, finding odd jobs as a model, hanging out with friends in the business, and generally expanding her network as much as possible.

Looking for opportunities

One promising connection is the daughter of the former mayor of Matosinhos. She's the same age as my stepdaughter and endowed with many connections. This industrious and ambitious woman has decided to incorporate my stepdaughter into her plans, and they have spent much time together lately. They've been making plans, called various schools, and set up appointments where they present some of their projects, including a drama course targeted towards high school students.

Matosinhos beach

A meeting was ensured with a school, and the two women were naturally excited. They got together, and planned everything down to the last detail. My daughter was invited to stay the night for good measure. But the next day, something unforeseen happened. The society girl developed a cough and a fever. She felt absolutely horrible, and their meeting with the school was going to happen the next day. What was she to do?

First concern was to check if my stepdaughter was ill as well. They'd been close with each other for 24 hours straight. The chances of my stepdaughter not having caught a whiff of whatever was ailing her was close to nil. But my stepdaughter was feeling fine.

Her second concern was with the planned meeting. Was she to postpone it? After thinking about it for some time, she decided to keep the appointment. She'd don a mask. That would protect everyone in the room from her cough, fever and sniffles.

Magic mask

So the two women showed up at the school. My daughter feeling fine, and her friend a mess, coughing and sneezing. Sweaty and cold, but still able to present a coherent story. The meeting went all right. Dates were agreed upon for a small performance to illustrate what they can deliver. But these dates had to be postponed.

It turns out that my stepdaughter's friend was smitten by the feared virus. She tested herself first thing on returning home, and the test came out positive. My stepdaughter has subsequently tested herself, with a negative result. But with the project owner sick, no meetings of any kind can be legally arranged. She was forced to postpone the agreed upon meetings.

What I find interesting in all of this is how superstitions and wishful thinking played into this story. The society girl could have tested herself right away. But she decided to take the test after the crucial first meeting. To protect everybody, she donned a magic mask. Then, she tests herself after the fact, discovering that she was smitten.

All of this is a jumbled mix of nonsense when seen from a pure medical perspective. But pragmatic issues take precedence in most people's lives. We don't act according to fixed rules, and the propaganda surrounding vaccines, masks and social distancing has made the world open for a whole lot of superstition. These superstitions are in turn used pragmatically to arrange for things that shouldn't be done if one was true to logic and principles of science.

Aunt Augusta's Gold

Aunt Augusta who died with the virus more than a year ago had no children, and she left no will. Hence, it's up to her nephews and nieces to sort out the inheritance. This takes time. There's a lot of people to coordinate. There's also a lot of possessions to distribute, sell and otherwise manage.

Luckily for my wife, she has an honest and pragmatic cousin who takes care of things. My wife responds dutifully to whatever is asked of her, and her cousin takes care of the formalities in cooperation with a lawyer.

Aunt Augusta was relatively wealthy. She owned some real-estate, which will be auctioned off, and she had some gold jewelry that has been appraised. The gold will be sold to the vendor who did the appraisal unless someone in the family decides to buy it.

With most people these days uninterested in gold, I wasn't surprised to learn that some of my wife's cousins were sad to see the gold disappear out of the family. They assumed that nobody would want to buy it. However, the gold is in fact the best deal in the inheritance, and I've advised my wife to buy it all. The gold isn't going to disappear out of the family. It will become my wife's possession. Instead of cash, my wife will walk away with Aunt Augusta's gold.

In their eagerness to get their hands on cash, my wife's cousins have failed to realize that the appraiser was putting in a bid on the gold. This is at least 30% below what the gold will be sold for in his store. This is easy to confirm by going to a gold smith to look for jewelry of comparative quality. My wife will in this way walk away with 30% more than her cousins if she ends up with all the gold instead of cash.

My wife stands to get about 4% of Aunt Augusta's inheritance. But the gold is about 5% of Augusta's net worth, so my wife will have to chip in with savings of her own. But with a low bid on the gold, it's a good deal.

This situation illustrates the value in having some savings available for this kind of opportunities. People who live constantly on the edge of bankruptcy end up with less than what can be achieved with a little bit of spare cash.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Freedom Day

"A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years."

- Lysander Spooner

April 25 is Portugal's day of liberty. This is in memory of April 25, 1974. A small group of military men staged a coup, and much to their own surprise, it succeeded. The story is both cute and humorous, illustrating that the world does at times come up with some crazy surprises.

The Fascist government was overthrown, and a democratic republic came in its place. However, much of the old regime remained. Bureaucrats who had worked for Fascism, were now working for democracy. The same people, the same institutions, and pretty much the same laws. Only difference was that people no longer lived under dictatorship. Democracy allowed them to choose their new masters.

Choosing a new master

By Rama - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, Link

This modest change in the way society was organized put an end to colonial wars. It opened Portugal up to more foreign trade and investments. All sorts of things changed for the better, including EU membership, with access to subsidies. There was a marked improvement in people's lives. However, people aren't all that much more free now than they were. That's abundantly clear after two years of virus hysteria.

But this doesn't stop people from celebrating. People sing songs, and listen to old speeches. Asked why they are so happy, they tell us that it's because they are free. The fact that they're hardly free at all doesn't seem to interfere with their festive moods. The illusion of freedom is for most people all that's required.

This odd disconnect between reality and what people say is not unique to Portugal. I noticed this behavior in Norway even as a kid. People would celebrate May 17 with a passion. But what exactly were these people so happy about? They would tell me that it was independence as a nation. It's about freedom. Self determination. All these words and phrases were thrown about in speeches and songs, with little to no bearing on reality.

My favorite way to celebrate anything is to take life easy and relax, and that has been true all my life. So why was I forced to get up extra early on May 17, and go in a huge parade where I was forced to sing along with everybody else? How is this a celebration freedom?

Oslo May 17 2010

By evelinagustafsson@live.se - Own work, Public Domain, Link

Truth is that none of this has much to do with freedom. It's romanticism of the worst sort. Ideals are reduced to words, and we're going about celebrating these words as if they are the real thing. Some people seem to derive real pleasures from this type of platitudes. But I never saw the charm in it. However, I'm not grumpily refusing to partake in the fun. I've just made it a rule for myself to celebrate freedom by doing exactly what I like to do.

I stopped going to the parades in Norway long before I left that country. I would show up for the games, ice-creams and hot dogs in the afternoon. I would be with friends in the evening. We'd barbeque and celebrate spring.

Freedom is about community and simple pleasures. It has nothing to do with the nation state, the constitution or revolutions. That's all history and pretense. The only thing that matters is that we're free to do exactly what we want to do, and there's no other honest way to celebrate freedom than to do exactly that.

Quick Wins and Lasting Wins

Putin is looking frail these days. The war in Ukraine is dragging on. The West is ganging up on him, and it's easy to understand that paranoia may have gotten the better of him. However, none of this means that the Russians are losing the war.

Getting rid of Putin isn't going to change anything on the ground. Russia has a strategic interest in eastern Ukraine, and this will remain true no matter who's in charge in Kremlin. Even the unlikely replacement of Putin with a Western puppet won't change this, because the strategic interests of Russia go beyond mere party politics.

The West's obsession with party politics make us blind to the fact that national interests go beyond the petty intrigues that go on in the halls of power. We fail to see that the state apparatus is not the most important part of a nation. The state and the nation is not the same thing. Hence, we cannot conquer a nation by simply taking control of the state apparatus.

It's this failure to understand the subordinate importance of the state that has led the West into its current pattern of quick victories followed by humiliating defeats.

Once a nation's capital is conquered, together with all provincial capitals, the West declares victory, only to discover that the nation is in no way defeated. However, it should be obvious that this would happen. Especially to people living in the US.

Imagine an enemy taking control of Washington D.C. and thereby declaring victory over the entire USA. Such an idea is ridiculous. Nobody in Nebraska will consider themselves conquered just because old Joe has been replaced by Jack. Even if Nebraska's capital, Lincoln, was captured and its governor replaced, most people in Nebraska would keep on doing things their own way. The average Nebraskan would be pretty much unaffected by the change of regime. If the new regime makes a nuisance, people will feel free to take pot shots at the hot shots, and this will continue until the new regime becomes more like the original regime.

This is exactly what's been happening in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. These places were swiftly conquered and then lost. Nothing much was achieved.

The only way to turn a swift victory into a lasting one is if there's an inherent interest in the captured nation to become more like the conquering nation. Japan became Westernized after the second world war because Japanese people have a fascination with the West that dates back 500 years. However, hardly anyone in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya is interested in becoming Westernized.

As for Russia and Ukraine, a swift victory against Kiev would have made things easier for the Russians. If they had taken it early on, as they tried, they could have negotiated a ceasefire, and gotten the eastern provinces handed to them. However, this failed.

The Russians are going for plan B, which means that they will secure the current front line as best they can, and wait things out until the newly gained territories become de facto Russian.

The Russians failed in their attempt at a quick win. However, they are likely to secure a lasting win, because eastern Ukraine houses a lot of Russians who see the invaders as liberators. If the Russians manage to keep things reasonably peaceful in the occupied territories, they will win because people there want them to win.

Vladimir Putin

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link