This article is written by Geir Hasnes, who is a great fan og G.K. Chesterton, and also of Donald Duck. He is a sivil engineer in cyber cybernetics, and a writer of several books.

When politicians and cultural personalities embrace diversity, I believe them. They truly embrace any idiotic idea that can make life worse for most people.

Stupidity is extremely diverse, it comes in all versions and variants and it must be the most sustainable human trait since there are so many people who profit from other people’s stupidity.

Mario Draghi’s report

Today I can read in Document about Mario Draghi’s report on the future competitiveness of the EU. The report is full of the usual nonsense, with words like beacon, leading, world stage, digitise, decarbonise etc etc. ad nauseam. At the same time, Europe needs to grow, become more productive, and therefore change radical.

The radical part is that Europe needs to close the innovation gap with the US and China, it needs to have a common decarbonisation and competitiveness plan, and it needs to increase security and decrease dependency.

The answer to this is simply that it’s wishful thinking. There is no connection between what he (and the EU) wants and reality.

• Innovation within the EU is stifled by laws, regulations, ordinances, and made impossible by taxes and fees, where all sorts of bystanders stand around and are supposed to gobble up the innovated cake. In addition, energy prices have been established as an exchange commodity, which was truly innovative for the few and disastrous for the many.
• Decarbonisation is nothing more than the utopian dream of returning to nature, based on a pagan religion that carbon dioxide is detrimental to society, and since we are surrounded by oil-based products, especially electronics, this will not be possible without killing off at least 90% of the world’s population and returning to rural self-sufficiency. But this won’t be possible as long as the EU is in charge either, since the EU micromanages every single profession and business today and does so via electronic reporting. The most important effect of decarbonisation is that you will not be able to be competitive.
• Security has to do with geopolitical stability and the EU is doing its best to destroy it through uncontrollable immigration and the cheapening of industry so that industry simply shuts down or flags out. dependence on China and the US will of course continue and the EU, in line with the US and other Western countries, has been outsourcing labour to cheaper third countries for a number of years.

In short:

• Innovation is dependent on cheap energy, destroyed by the EU.
• Carbon dioxide is the basis of life, and therefore opposed by the EU.
• Decarbonisation and competitiveness are terminological opposites. They work in opposite directions.
• Security is dependent on cheap energy, good trade and the absence of war, and destroyed by the EU and NATO.
• Dependence on countries outside the EU has been EU policy from the start.
• The EU is a parasitic mechanism, a well-developed parasitic institution, and destructive for Europe

Leaders’ thought bubble

I can recall a boss we had once who came up with what he thought was a great idea that the engineers would jump on with glee. He wasn’t intellectually equipped to come up with something so stupid on his own, since stupidity actually requires a certain degree of intelligence, and we assumed that the idea had been generated in the merry company of other managers in an outdoor hot tub in the evening under the influence of strong drink.

The good idea was that we engineers would come up with product ideas for the managers to choose from. These product ideas would ensure that each of them would generate 20 million annually for the company within a few years of initiating the projects.

The extra good idea was that the engineers who came up with product ideas worth 20 million a year would be rewarded with five flax tickets.

I think this story is a very good illustration of the different worlds that engineers and management operate in. I’ve actually modelled this relationship in a scientific theory where engineers and management operate on planes that are 90 degrees apart, just as electricity and magnetism are separated. They are literally not ‘on the same plane’ in this world.

This phenomenon, that managers can really come and present something like this to engineers, is cheerfully documented in the comic strip Dilbert, where engineers have been sending stories to the cartoonist since the late 1980s. This has led me to formulate several laws for managers:

Law:

When a leader has said something will happen, it is equivalent to it having happened.

Derived law:

When a leader says something will happen, it doesn’t happen.

That’s why we know, based on Draghi’s report, that innovation, competitiveness and security will not occur, that dependency will continue, that misery, parasitism, the closure of German industry and Dutch food production, and the destruction of the energy system will continue, and the only thing we can be happy about is that decarbonisation will not be carried out.

The spectre of inflation

From the law of leaders above, we know that when leaders, and therefore also politicians, say they are going to fight inflation, then inflation will only increase and increase.

We learnt about purchase price, markdown and selling price in fifth grade maths lessons in primary school. Perhaps that’s why politicians have forgotten about it, and what’s more, no politicians in the Storting or, as far as I know, in the EU, have ever needed to think about business economics. This is primarily due to the fact that the EU is a parasitic institution whose existence is based on destroying sound business economics. The EU, like any other bureaucracy, can only exist as a parasite.

The EU is not interested in the advanced philosophy that profits consist of both the profits and the company’s expenses for operations, especially rent, light and fuel and of course salaries, as well as taxes such as sales tax, VAT, toms, boms, sloms, fjoms, grums, carbon graphs etc. They are not interested in inflation being driven in particular by expenses that are unnecessary and that do not bring anything more compared to previous expenses, such as electricity prices, carbon graphs tax, emissions tax, fees to pay extra managers and semi-managers that bring nothing productive and only increase bureaucracy and reporting obligations, fees to promote corruption in countries around the world, fees to pay for the bureaucracy’s own heat, etc.

Donald Trump was asked during the 2016 election campaign whether he was happy to pay his taxes. No, he said, on the contrary, because politicians come up with so many stupid things for tax revenue that he did his best to pay as little as possible. Unfortunately, ordinary taxpayers don’t have the same opportunity.

In Norway, we were innovative on the basis of hydropower. That competitive advantage has now been abandoned and there’s little point in being innovative today, unless you invent some kind of social media app.

Energy prices bring nothing more if they are sky-high; they lead to mark-ups in the mark-up and therefore to higher prices without getting more for your money. This is the very definition of inflation.

Increased taxes and increased public activity are of course inflationary, because you get nothing in return for paying more.

Everything enters a metaphorical spiral, where the unnecessary expenses increase and increase, after which the price of goods must be increased, after which wages must be increased.

The greater a society’s bureaucracy, which includes taxes and fees on anything, the smaller its ability to attract investors. The opportunity becomes even smaller if it actually starts to become risky to invest in the country, e.g. if you belong to a country or a political party or an organisation that is frowned upon by the government, whereupon the funds are seized.</p

Sustainability and maintenance.

We can learn from the use of the word sustainability. When you hear a politician talk about being sustainable, you can be sure that what is being proposed is the exact opposite. Nothing is as inflationary as the sustainability measures, in the form of the carbon graph industry that charges a lot for nothing. Nothing in the world.

The studies cost millions and millions, the consultancies are running like clockwork as long as there are subsidies. The central politicians don’t care about ordinary people other than as election fodder, they don’t care about schools, hospitals, care for the elderly, small businesses, infrastructure; they only care about getting re-elected.

This is due to another law, which has also been shaped through decades of observing leaders.

Law:

Managers hate maintenance.

Derived law:

Managers would rather build new than maintain the old

Schooling is the maintenance of the knowledge base of the country. Hospitals are about maintaining the sick so that some can be healthy and productive, but some will never be healthy and some are retired. The elderly care system is about maintaining the pensioners. Infrastructure is nice to have, but only new projects bring prestige and buzz. Small businesses are nice to have, but they don’t give central politicians feathers in their caps.

When you realise that politics is just a game, you also realise that maintenance does not bring prestige

The funny thing is that the word ‘maintenance’, i.e. maintenance in French and English, originally stands for a financial outlay for which there is no quid pro quo. Child support from a child’s father to a mother who lives alone with the child is maintenance. It does not mean that the child’s father receives a quid pro quo through contact with the child.

Fines as such are maintenance. Maintenance has entered the collective consciousness as something that ‘just has to be done’ without getting anything in return. That’s why managers are always banging on about the need to cut back on maintenance. Rather than analysing why you’re paying so much for other things, like major new buildings or software projects.

The game of politics

Religion or ideology defines how people want to treat each other. Politics tells how to get there. Without religion or ideology, there is no politics.

Their policy is to graph better than others have graphed before them. Their learning consists of learning from how other professional politicians have grafted the most and gained the most influence. They copy the most successful ones. Because they copy, they admire those who have achieved the most and want to be as much like them as possible.

That’s why they don’t want “innovation” even though they say it over and over again. It’s just something you say. None of what they say means anything other than that through their language they achieve a class affiliation with the other professional politicians. It’s a game, and nothing else.

That’s why amateurs and ordinary people don’t realise that when a professional politician says: “That’s a new idea!” it’s almost the worst compliment that can be given. If it was “a bold idea”, it’s apparently worse.

The best way to maintain your position is to create as many management positions as possible so that others can join the game. Where there used to be one company and one director, there are now ten companies and a hundred directors. People who are appointed to such positions usually have little to do, so they can be appointed to various boards and committees so that they get lots of extra income with minimal work, thinking and responsibility.

Law:

No manager invents anything new.

Derived law:

Leaders only tell each other the obvious things everyone already knows

Leaders interact with each other like a religious sect interacts with each other. “Are you saved, brother?” has its equivalent in “What have you done to decarbonise your business lately?”. “We need revival!” has its equivalent in “We need to be sustainable!”, with the implication that there isn’t enough revival, or enough sustainability.

Words like hate speech, inclusion, tolerance, diversity, immigration, forward-thinking, stakeholder, these are code words that signal that you are on the same party. It doesn’t matter what you as a private person might think. The vaguer, the better. Just avoid being specific. It’s dangerous. It can lead to the politician having to do something, having to commit to something, making promises that can’t be kept.

All politicians know that we need to maintain the oil industry, but they are forced to spout phrases about decarbonisation, ‘after oil’, ‘the green shift’, even though they know that these are phrases without content. That’s why you can’t achieve anything with a professional politician.

Wishful thinking

Both politicians and most people have pipe dreams. Once politicians have settled into a system, they want to stay there, hence the word stability. But when politicians realise that stability is threatened by one or more phenomena, they are unable to break out of the code word link. They have stopped thinking, or rather, they have stopped allowing themselves to think. They cannot allow themselves to think differently. At least, they can’t allow themselves to try to understand the other side’s arguments.

The Draghi report is a stellar example of wishful thinking, vague wording, terminological contradictions, unsubstantiated assertions, logical shortcuts, well supplied with what you “must” do:

• We need to lean more on productivity to drive growth. [What does leaning on productivity mean? That you relax while others do the work? And how can leaning make something drive growth? It’s hard to understand the physical model here]
• The EU is facing a number of new investment needs that need to be financed through higher growth. [A way of saying: Give me money! The logic is short-circuited: We need more money coming in because we want to spend more money.]
• To digitise and decarbonise the economy and increase our defence capabilities, the share of investment in Europe needs to increase by around 5 percentage points of GDP. [Logical short-circuit. Investment means spending money to make money. But here it is said that you have to spend money to spend more money]
• Firstly – and most importantly – Europe must redirect its collective efforts to close the innovation gap with the US and China. [Butter on pork. ‘Firstly’ means the same as ‘most importantly’. The metaphor is also strange: You can’t close a gap without choking it.]
• We need to unlock our innovative potential. [Right here it’s hard not to laugh. When you release a potential physically, it discharges. Try releasing the potential in the socket. You’ll get a shock and the fuse will blow.]
• Decarbonisation must happen for the sake of our planet. [No, it’s the opposite, according to the laws of physics and biology.
• The EU must coordinate preferential trade agreements and direct investments with resource-rich nations, build up stockpiles in selected critical areas and create industrial partnerships to secure the supply chain of key technologies. [Read more Currently, resource-rich nations such as Venezuela and Russia are sanctioned en masse, contingency stocks of e.g. food are being massively depleted in Norway as well, and the EU is constantly working to drive key technology out of the EU, just look at the German mechanical and chemical industry. Note the difference between vague idealisations and concrete reality]
• But physical security threats are increasing and we need to prepare. [Aren’t you prepared already? This is an admission that the EU has not prepared anything. Particularly given the uncontrollable immigration and subsequent terror that has been going on for years with the likes of Draghi at the helm, this is a strange statement. It’s as if only undefined threats are building up, and the situation within the EU is actually just fine. Note how vague words are used to make the reader imagine whatever comes to mind]
• Even if Europe has to go ahead with its capital markets union, the private sector will not be able to shoulder the lion’s share of the financing of investment without public sector support. [How can it be said more explicitly that the CMU has failed? It has existed for 40-50 years, grown bigger and bigger, and still needs to be supported by government subsidies]
• We’ve reached a point where, without action, we must either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom. [It’s a conflict of convenience. We can keep our welfare, environment and freedom. Here the idea is introduced as an ultimatum: What do you give up?]
• For the strategy outlined in this report to succeed, we must begin with a shared assessment of where we stand, what goals we want to prioritise, what risks we want to avoid, and what trade-offs we are willing to make. [It’s possible that this wording is so daffy that no one reacts. You should shout out: Haven’t you done this already? Isn’t this done continuously? How can the EU be managed without continuous situation description, goal prioritisation, risk avoidance and trade-offs?
• We need to make sure that our democratically elected institutions are at the centre of these debates. [The EU is not a democratically elected institution. Why don’t you point to some democratically elected institution?]
• And we need to take a new approach to cooperation: by removing barriers, harmonising rules and laws and coordinating policies. [Is this a ‘new attitude? Hasn’t the EU always been working towards this?

Today, politics is nothing but phrases and wishful thinking. Even we ordinary fools who are not leaders or politicians engage in wishful thinking on social media and alternative news sites, in small parties and small organisations, where politically incorrect noise immediately arises and suddenly there are divisions and confrontations – where you need to stick together more than anything else.

That’s why it’s a pipe dream that Norway will do well. It won’t. The EU won’t do well either, because the organisation freeloads too much and through that suffocates its own population. No matter what pipe dreams Draghi and his cronies publish.

Should we not sing together

(for those who remember the prehistoric Eurovision Song Contest entry):

Must must must must must must must hurry to
become become become become become become become productive
So, so, so, so, so the EU earns more!

We we we we we we must become innovative
Tiv tiv tiv tiv tiv-e so we can get
Productivity out of many more!

Sub sub sub sub sub sub sub si diering
Must must must must from our government
So that everyone sees that we can do more:

Welfare and the environment depend
On freeing up enough money
So pay your taxes as we need more!

We we we we we we we guarantee
And we stand in unison and postulate
That you’re more free than you think you are

Don’t hate hate hate hate hate speech
Publish in social media
Me me media Nothing more!

Must must must must must digitise
Must must must must decarbonise
Invest everything you’ve paid

Put in put in put in put in put in into our
Building without shedding a tear:
Ba ba just do as you’re told.