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Ted's avatar

Norway is only wealthy because of oil. If the Climate Catastrophists have their way, Norway in a few years will soon find itself the target of their war on fossil fuels, and the fund will rapidly dry up. (not to mention that the fossil fuels will begin to run out. Blowing up Nordstream helped Norway short term, but the long term end is the same). That means taxes would have to be raised to support the elderly, which will make it even harder for the dwindling younger folks to afford children. This downward spiral will very rapidly bankrupt the country. Some other countries will be facing the same thing. There are only two solutions: reduce costs, or increase the population. Reducing Social Insurance and Health Insurance will be tried. Canada is already trying to reduce costs by "offing the elderly". Others may try incentives to have and raise children, which probably won't be too successful given the present attitudes of "it's all about me". Unregulated immigration is another path some countries are taking, but that means the extinction of your language, culture, and beliefs - which will very likely cause an extremely violent reaction, civil wars, and social upheaval. Of course, starting a nuclear war with Russia will mean a lot of Europe becomes a radioactive wasteland and enters a new darker age than the old Dark Ages.

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Irena's avatar

The problem with incentivizing having and raising children (from the point of view of the state) is that parents are, on average, less productive than non-parents in the here and now. Meanwhile, pension funds are already in trouble. You want to get them into even more trouble via increased birth rates? After all, today's babies will take 20+ years to start contributing to the state purse, and in the meanwhile, those pensions need to be paid somehow. So, better keep the young ones working and not reproducing. Sure, everyone understands that this cannot go on forever. But it can certainly go on until the next election, and the one after it. In fact, it can probably go on until today's pensioners are mostly dead. So, it is in today's pensioners' interests for the young not to form families. And pensioners are the most reliable voting block.

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Ted's avatar

True to a point.

Parents being "less productive" probably isn't so. In an era when few want to work, and those who do want four day workweeks (or less) with flexible hours and high pay, parents are exceptionally motivated! I have observed that (with many exceptions of course - especially among the home-schooled) young people are increasingly illiterate, lazy, don't know how to do anything much outside their narrow specialty, and generally incompetent.

Focusing on winning the next election, or having the next quarterly profit statement winning over the previous one, or winning the next war, works for a short time. But in the long run, it is the long term planners who almost always win. You can't outrun reality forever.

The long term planners mostly seem to be the Asians, and Asia seems to be the area of the globe where both money and power will be concentrated in the next decades. The USA and Europe are decaying into the dustbin of history. Hence the hatred of China and Russia. Of course, both Russia and China are facing the same dismal demographics as Europe, but they are far behind and will prosper longer.

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epimetheus's avatar

Asia is where the manufacturing is taking place; it doesn't mean, automatically, that the planners are there, too.

Your point on the hatred of Russia and China is well taken.

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Irena's avatar

About parents and productivity: okay, it's complicated. :-) First of all, we should probably exclude from consideration those who are (for this or that reason) simply incapable of being productive in the economy. The severely depressed, for example. Those people are also unlikely to have children, for the same underlying reason. And if they do have children, then those poor children!

Okay, now consider only those who have the mental and physical capacity to be productive workers. Of those, generally speaking, the fewer children, the higher the productivity. Although it is, I suppose, possible that those who have one child are in fact more productive than those who have none(?), partly due to the considerations above (to wit: same underlying cause of low productivity and childlessness), and partly due to motivation (if you have a dependent, you might just be more motivated). However, those who have only one child will be more productive than those who have two (a second child is unlikely to somehow make you more motivated), those who have two are more productive than those with three, etc. (This is only on average, of course.) So, there's that.

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epimetheus's avatar

You've heard about the Pareto Distribution, right?

It's an 80 : 20 split of less(er) productive vs. (more) productive.

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Irena's avatar

Sure, I've heard of the Pareto distribution. It'll apply in certain fields (mostly the creative ones), but it won't in others. Some nurses (for example) are more productive than others, but even the most productive nurse in the world cannot be in two places at the same time. For most jobs, you're better off with two basically competent but in no way special workers than you are with one fantastic worker.

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epimetheus's avatar

Sorry, but Norway--or the US--isn't 'only wealthy because of oil' deposits. Look at Venezuela, for instance. Chang (2008), Kicking Away the Ladder, details this clearly:

https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb

Then there's the whole cultural-societal setup thing, which, among others, Max Weber and Werner Sombart discussed prior to WW1.

As to the gist of the Nord Stream argument, I'm with you on this one, and, yes, I deem it plausible that the Nord Stream attack helps in the short term. I'm unsure it's politically possible to raise taxes further; they're already steeply progressive, even though the gov't clearly sees the fertility problems.

How does one 'reduce costs'? By downscaling esp. production and, above all, consumption patterns. It won't be done voluntarily, as too many people in 'the West' are hooked and addicted to their spendthrift behaviours. In this, 'the West' isn't anything special in principle, albeit the scale is staggering.

There may--in techno-utopia terms--a way out: AI and robotics-driven reduction of the need of human labour as the primary input, which could, technically, usher in an eternity of spare time. Most people won't be included as they are, in Yuval Harari's words, 'useless eaters', and even if, for the sake of the argument, such a future would be materialising, I'm doubtful as to most people using their time for anything else other than mindless numbing of the senses (see the present, think about the future as that--on steroids).

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cm27874's avatar

The "economic" argument (children are too expensive) is a slap in the face of Mr. Hov's parents, his grandparents, all his ancestors, and 99.999% of people who ever lived.

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epimetheus's avatar

I neither care nor will check what Mr. Hov’s specialisation is, because it’s irrelevant.

No children, no future. It’s actually really simple, and since Mr. Hov apparently doesn’t know, care, or understand that his ‘lifestyle’ is entirely dependent on other people having children who do the jobs he won’t do (eg, working on oil rigs), there’s no discussion to be had with someone as uninformed, or disingenuous, as him and his ilk.

The same goes for that SSB ‘analyst’.

As an aside, I read somewhere that the energy equivalent of machines, computers, etc in the West is that everone uses about 70-100 times the energy of the average human to gonabout his or her daily life.

Granted, it referres to the wasteful US a few years ago, but this merely indicates differences of degree, and not of kind to smug people like these two.

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Rikard's avatar

Easiest fix is changing the taxation system to enable single-income households with children.

It is also the hardest to enact, since lowering taxes is "impossible".

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epimetheus's avatar

Well, you live 'up north', too, so, that would include changing the tax code to (re)enable taxation based on households. Here in Norway, every adult is taxed individually, and while there are certain deductions for married couples with children, it's also mind-bogglingly 'complicated'.

As to lowering taxes, well, the Oil Fund has never been fuller, and tax receipts were never higher than 2023. No-one talks about lowering taxes, which I find esp. absurd as, with a flurry of mainstream media pieces both in Norway and Switzlerland--a couple of high-profile rich people left Norway for the Alpine Confederation--attest: literally everything works better in Switzerland, these wealthy attest (which isn't that hard to say if you're rich), but having lived in Switzerland for a decade before moving to Norway, many things do work (way) better there.

Talk about dysfunctionality.

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Rikard's avatar

The reaction I see/get from politicians in Sweden when trying to discuss changing taxation (not necessarily lowering the overall tax-pressure even, just changing what is taxed and how much, when and where) is akin to how the catholic church reacted when AIDS came on the scene in the early 1980s:

Instead of accepting that condoms protects against it, at least mitigating and slowing the spread of the virus, they instead insisted condoms be banned and that people practice abstinency: dogma before reality.

Or abortion for liberals et cetera: it is anathema to debate it at all unless you are calling for more abortions wiht even less restraint than today.

No sense, just nonsensical emotional attachement to no longer functioning ideas.

And it's not just straight taxes, it's the nickel&diming of fees that hit many people hard. Just compare these two:

Before privatisation of power production/transfer/repair&service:

You paid a nominal fee to your local municipal power company, the fee going to a repairs-fund. You also paid per kilowatt-hour used, and 25% VAT on top; meaning you could affect your cost.

After privatisation (in reality, corporatisation):

You pay one fee to be hooked up, one fee to the transfer company, a safety&security fee, and a sum for however much power you used - the price fluctuating all the time. And on top of each of these you pay VAT, and then you pay VAT on the sum total; meaning you can't do much about the cost.

Or garbage collection, my perennial favourite. I must pay ca 2 000:- a year even if I don't want municipal garbage collection. We have a pick-up truck. We can sort it ourselves and take it to the dump every time the bins are full. We can even help neighbours do that. We could organise non-profit help each other systems in all the smaller villages; we're not even a 100 people in this one.

But no. "It has been decided" they say and people go along with it.

If you want to and have the time, check out Jens Nylander's homepage. It's for finding out how money is being spent on public contracts in Sweden. I'm sure a norwegian version would be most welcome. He found out that more than 90 000 000 000:- (the low-end estimate) are wasted each year by local municipalities, frittered away on things they often don't realise they pay for.

This of course led to a shit-storm and him being accused by prominent politicians of being in the service of foreign interests (read: Russia).

https://www.jensnylander.com/

https://kommun.jensnylander.com/

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epimetheus's avatar

I 'suspect' it's the same here.

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Christine's avatar

If you don't know why yet, now you do: Dr. Yeadon’s Recent Message to Support Criminal Investigations in UK

https://interestofjustice.substack.com/p/dr-mike-yeadon-introductory-statement?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email

I don’t think it’s too great a claim to say that there isn’t anyone better qualified than I am to do this in relation to these novel treatments. I’m going to go directly to the charges. These injections have been carefully designed to intentionally cause toxicity in those injected with them. I can detect at least three, separate features of these injections which would be expected to injure, to kill or to reduce fertility in survivors. These are not mistakes. Each are so obviously deliberate to anyone who has a history of involvement in rational drug design for new medicines. -Dr. Yeadon

Subject: Fw: Dr Mike Yeadon: Introductory statement about serious crimes per Mark Sexton communication

To: Ben.Bates@met.police.uk

<Ben.Bates@met.police.uk>

Cc: Mark Sexton

Dear Ben Bates,

Dear Ben Bates, I have been asked by former policeman, Mark Sexton (copied) to introduce myself to you & to indicate the fields in which I have unequivocal evidence of criminal activity.

Let me begin my outlining my credentials to have realised that the areas I will outline were incorrect in the first place. My name is Dr Mike Yeadon.

I am the most senior, former “big pharma” & biotech research executive speaking out about several serious crimes in relation to what I call the “Covid era”.

My original training was in Biochemistry & Toxicology, in which I was awarded the strongest first class joint honours degree that the School of Biomedical Sciences had ever awarded at the time (1985, University of Surrey).

Part of my undergraduate training involved research placements at the Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Down, Wiltshire, where I was a small cog in the long term development of injected antidotes for nerve gas poisoning to protect British troops. I also worked at the then Central Laboratory of the Forensic Sciences Service, Aldermaston, Berkshire, adjacent to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. While with the Forensic Science Service, I received training on several precision analytical methods including mass spectrometry, then a highly technically complex method.

As far as I recall, I had security clearance for both establishments. Porton Down, then as now, is a top security facility with an international reputation.

My PhD, in the field of Pharmacology was “On the effect of opiates on respiratory function” (1988) and this was sponsored by the MOD.

After securing my PhD, which gave me a sound training in several additional subdisciplines of biology, chemistry & drug metabolism, I joined the pharmaceutical industry.

I spent 24 years with “big pharma”, starting at Wellcome Research Laboratories, where I briefly worked alongside a Dr Patrick Vallance (who became Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government).

For the longest period, I was in charge of Pfizer’s global research in the field of Allergic & Respiratory Disease Therapeutics. I left Pfizer in 2011, having reached the level of Vice President, because the company had decided to exit their large R&D base in Kent. The parting was cordial. Before leaving, I sought to find new homes for the portfolio of exploratory medicines I had helped create & was gratified that Mylan U.K. Ltd, the world’s second largest generics company, acquired much of my former portfolio soon after I had left.

I later founded & lead as CEO a highly successful biotechnology company, Ziarco Pharma Ltd. Pfizer and four other venture capital firms were investors in my company, which was acquired by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, in 2017.

My accomplishments are considered by some to have been unusual. So much so that a former Pfizer board member & previously worldwide head of R&D, Dr John LaMattina, wrote up my last venture in Forbes, a leading business magazine (February 2017). https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2017/03/15/turning-pfizer-discards-into-novartis-gold-the-story-of-ziarco/?sh=2470f09a7572

In summary, I have had a very strong training in multiple disciplines and over 30 years leadership experience in the field of inventing and testing new medicines for respiratory illnesses. I have an excellent analytical background and I can claim to be at least the equal of anyone advising the government in science.

I have no history of “conspiracy theory” or political campaigns or protests. I don’t believe I made a single public comment on anything prior to 2020.

My accomplishments in applied biomedical sciences qualify me to be taken seriously. I ask that the evidence I marshall is evaluated thoroughly. I am confident in my assessments, which have been tested by dozens of others, internationally well known scientists and doctors.

I have filed numerous legal statements as affidavits used in court proceedings in several countries.

I’m going to introduce just two topics at this point. To cover everything would be simply too overwhelming to read, let alone absorb & understand at a single sitting. I’m simply going to make statements. I’m not going to attempt to prove them in this short communication. Rest assured I have done so however, on dozens of occasions. I’ve given upwards of 250 full length interviews.

I must warn the reader that even this deliberately limited information is going to be shocking, if you hadn’t already realised that something without precedent in the world was going on. Please also note that ordinary searching on the internet, often colloquially as “googling”, is not going to find many of the sources upon which I have drawn. The major search engines have been manipulated such that the results exclude material troubling to the authorities.

The two areas are:

1. The claimed pandemic.

2. The injections, purporting to be vaccines.

The main claims are stark.

1. Put simply, there has been no pandemic. There was the normal range of illnesses in the early part of 2020 as in any other year. What was different about 2020 was that all governments, lead by the WHO, engaged in coordinated lying to their citizens.

This continues to this day. Everyone was told there was a pandemic was coming. The illusion was created by deliberate misuse of a clinical diagnostic test called PCR. The heart of this entire deception is the incorrect belief that PCR is nearly flawless and so a positive result means that a person “had covid”.

There is no such disease. Not one symptom is unique to the claimed new disease. A positive test was called “a case”. Anybody dying within a few weeks of a positive test was declared “a covid death”. All that was needed was to roll out such tests rapidly in early 2020 & the carefully planned result, an apparent “pandemic” was created. Government & media lies was initially all it took to maintain the illusion.

Crucially, the epidemiological evidence shows that there was no additional illness or deaths compared with the same period in any other year. Numerous scientific papers and authors will present their evidence on this point, including university professors qualified in epidemiology.

The WHO played their part in the crime, by declaring a “public health emergency of international concern”, or a “pandemic”. Immediately after WHO’s fraudulent declaration, changes in medical procedures were imposed everywhere.

Download and read the rest

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Irena's avatar

"Hedonism." By and large, hedonism is to childlessness what avocado toast is to houselessness. To wit: you have no hope of buying a house, and so you might as well enjoy your avocado toast. Likewise, you cannot afford children, and so you might as well enjoy your vacations or whatever it is that you're doing instead of raising children. Don't tell me about my ancestors who raised their children in mud huts, blah blah blah. Half of their children died, and even if you were fine with that, the state wouldn't be and would remove the kids from your care (and would be right to do so, if I may say so). Moreover, there is no shortage of humans, or even young humans. There are countless young humans in (for example) Niger who'd be perfectly happy to move to Norway, if only Norway would take them. And why won't Norway take them? Because they have nothing to offer Norway. You see, it's not just a matter of bringing a child to the world and making sure he or she doesn't starve. It's also a matter of raising that kid to be productive in the neoliberal economy (otherwise, that kid will never contribute to those struggling pension funds in any case). And that, as it happens, is difficult and very expensive. Especially if you have to do it while being productive in the neoliberal economy yourself. Expect birth rates to fall way more than they already have.

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Martin Bassani's avatar

This phenomenon is mostly due to deliberate brainwashing by Predators. We shouldn’t use birth rate interchangeably with (in)fertility. People who choose not to have children aren’t necessarily infertile. It is true that fertility itself in the West has been dropping during last several decades. The cause for that is deliberate poisoning of population, through air, water, food, “medicine” and health damaging frequencies. If we had true public health agencies they would be keenly interested in finding out true causes of precipitous drops in fertility of their populations. Note that there are no investigations, just like they aren’t interested in investigating obvious correlation between KOVID jabs and increases of excess deaths and chronic diseases. This is so because “our’ governments don’t work for us but for the globalist predator class, keenly interested in their population reduction schemes. Peoples of the West are under attack through multiple vectors while hardly noticing the real war being waged on them. One of those vectors is outright menticide. That is the main reason why we can’t notice the assault on us.

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