The fall of the West / The parents that failed their children

The US + EU axis has been, until now, the place for talented people to live and thrive.

This trend has now reverted, and the time to leave is approaching.

You might think “nah, it’s fine, the fall will take a long time anyway”. I will argue here why this trend has been covertly going on since the 70s, and why we are years/a decade away from massive civil unrest and tyranny in the US and the EU.

Many Ukrainians and Russians also thought that things weren’t that bad. They thought starting afresh somewhere new, leaving some family and friends behind, maybe having to sell properties and switch school for their kids was too much hassle for the risk. But the risk is existential. They are now being mobilized to essentially fight their brothers and sisters, possibly dying in the process. Calculated risks are okay — catastrophic risks are not.

A fair and free society rests on the pillar of constitutional civil liberties. I will explore the most important ones, and argue why they are on their knees already, providing concrete examples. Some examples are in the US, some in the EU, and some in Spain — the country I’m originally from, and thus very familiar with.

Freedom of speech

Censorship (oh, sorry, moderation!) is becoming widespread quickly.

It’s just as impossible for men to become a lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant. Men are men regardless of their sexual fetishes. — Tonje Gjevjon, Norwegian actress

Tonje faces a 3-year prison sentence for posting that on her Facebook page.

Norwegian actress Tonje Gjevjon faces up to 3 years in prison for saying men cannot be lesbians

A woman in Norway is facing up to three years in prison on criminal hate-speech charges after saying that a man cannot become a lesbian.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/15/tonje-gjevjon-faces-up-to-3-years-in-prison-for-saying-men-cannot-be-lesbians/

Right wing activist Dries Van Langenhove has been sentenced to 1 year in prison for being in a group with racist/anti-semitism memes. He argues he was just part of the group and didn’t post them himself. Whether he did or not, the point stands: he’s going to jail for the memes.

A Belgian court sentences a prominent far-right activist to 1 year in prison for spreading hate

A court in Belgium has sentenced prominent far-right activist Dries Van Langenhove to a year in prison for what the judge called “racist, hateful, Nazi and negationist speech” in a major ruling on how the nation deals with extremism.

https://apnews.com/article/eu-right-belgium-extremism-langenhove-82d44caa76bbada7da99f8c01f7762d2

I can agree or disagree with them both, and that’s the whole point of freedom of speech — that every human being can say things I disagree with, and as long as there’s no violence involved, they are within their right.

It’s even better in the internet, because if I disagree so much that it’s repulsive or it offends me, I just close the tab and move on.

The advent of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) has created a wave of far-left activists that go to great lengths to make sure other people are jailed for having different viewpoints.

The fact that people are going to jail in the “first world” for having a viewpoint about sexual orientation and posting memes is alarming, and reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

Cancel culture and the Dark Ages | Luis Cuende

It takes two things for a society to thrive: freedom and truth. Cancel culture undermines both.

https://luis.com/posts/cancel-culture

As the separation of powers has been slowly subverted in “first world” countries, we end up with situations like this:

A Spanish judge decided to ban Telegram in Spain while investigating (so without even a final court decision) the service because people can upload clips of content that is copyrighted by Spanish TV stations.

That rationale can justify essentially taking down any website or service out there.

He then backtracked, citing that he needed time to understand how the service works — yes, we are in the hands of boomers that don’t even understand messaging.

It’s not the first time this happens. The Spanish government banned gateway.ipfs.io because Catalan activists were using it to help Catalans vote whether they want to stay in Spain or not.

Again, I can agree or not with Catalan independence, but that’s not the point. The point is that freedom of speech should exist, and censorship is literally the opposite of it.

Freedom of education

DEI has entered the classroom in many schools already. I’m not even talking about the wave of Harvard/Stanford resignations/firings because professors are stating and seeking truth (which is the point of university), although those are alarming too.

Carole Hooven: Why I Left Harvard

After I stated banal facts about human biology, I found myself caught in a DEI web, without the support to do the job I loved. The only way out was to leave it.

https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard

I’m talking about schools, both elementary schools and high schools. In many countries the government controls the syllabus. What happens when freedom of speech ceases to exist? Questioning the “new truth” becomes illegal, so it becomes the status quo, and ultimately lies become the syllabus.

What can you do as a parent in such a circumstance? Again, you cannot even raise questions because you’ll be framed for “hate speech” or God knows what.

Many countries now allow kids to start the one-way street to change gender.

██████████████████████████████████

(redacted since freedom of speech doesn’t exist anymore and I was genuinely worried about pointing out a biological truth).

In many countries, this has become the only thing that kids can do against the will of their parents. And when kids become teenagers, we all know about their willingness to be as contrarian as possible.

These therapies, at that age, are driving suicide rates through the roof. Fortunately some countries are reacting and stopping this madness.

England's health service says it won't give puberty blockers to children at gender clinics

England's publicly funded health service says it will not routinely offer puberty-blocking drugs to children at gender identity clinics. It says more evidence is needed about their potential benefits and harms. The National Health Service said Friday that “outside of a research setting, puberty-suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children and adolescents.” Hormone blockers are drugs that pause puberty. They are sometimes prescribed to help children with gender dysphoria by giving them more time to consider their options. The issue of gender-affirming care for children isn't as heated in Britain as in the U.S., but it has ended up in the courts.

https://apnews.com/article/uk-transgender-puberty-blockers-abd9145484006fea23de6b4656c937da

To recap, a state-approved syllabus is quite dystopian, but if there’s free speech, it’s somewhat balanced. Without free speech, education becomes dogmatic indoctrination.

Financial freedom

As I predicted last year, the EU is making its first moves to ban self-custodied crypto.

Financial freedom is important because money correlates very positively with freedom.

It’s impossible to have financial freedom if the money supply is controlled by the state.

We all have heard of how the Spaniards stole Latin American gold. But that’s a very brute tactic.

Historically, other colonizers have been smarter. Go to a place and force them to use your currency. No one gets harmed, it’s way less confrontational. Then you print the hell out of it — impoverishing the colonized country.

This has been going on since 1971, when Nixon ended the gold standard.

WTF Happened In 1971?

"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

But there’s more. Let’s talk about pensions.

There are two kinds of Western societies: the ones that need to bear with the mismanagement and selfishness of the boomers, and the rest. If you don’t know Spanish: sanidad is healthcare, defensa is military. Education and infrastructure don’t even have a label because they are too small in the chart.

When someone — for example a working Gen X mom — gets her paycheck and her taxes are retained, almost half is going to pay pensions and debt interest payments. Around 5% of all taxes goes to sustain and build infrastructure, public healthcare, education and military. So, 5% goes to actually sustain the goddamn country.

Most public pension systems are pyramid schemes, which by definition only works if the pyramid keeps growing. What happens now that the pyramid has shrunk? Remember, younger generations always pay the bill, even if that means financial and labor slavery.

Skilled immigration might help alleviate the problem, but countries with draconian taxes, falling civil liberties and left-wing governments usually attract the wrong kind of immigration. For example, left-wing governments are incentivized to attract illegal immigration because despite increasing crime, they usually support the left. Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.

On top of that younger generations are having to spend most of their income in rent or mortgages — in other words, paying the boomers, who own most of the real estate. Why?

Boomers could pretty much build anywhere back in the day. Then, once they owned property, they pushed for regulation to make it harder and more expensive to build. Even though there are areas massively underpopulated everywhere in the West, housing is artificially scarce and thus expensive. The NIMBY movement got started.

From building new housing to building nuclear stations, they kept opposing progress.

There’s a common denominator: Profits are privatized, but losses are socialized. Since boomers are the largest voting demographic, the bill is always passed on to younger generations. The house always wins.

Some boomers say millennials and Gen Z are lazy, but it’s hard to achieve financial success, let alone freedom if:

Most of your paycheck goes to pay for a roof over your head.

A big chunk goes to pay for inflated energy prices.

A small chunk of the taxes you pay actually goes towards enhancing infrastructure, education, defense and healthcare, so that you can remain safe, productive and enjoy a better quality of life.

Exit freedom

What do the US and Spain have in common? Apart from having eroded separation of powers, an exit tax.

The US exit tax is draconian because it’s based on citizenship, not residency.

The Spanish exit tax doesn’t run short on draconianism, since it can be up to 23% (cap gains tax) of all your assets.

The freedom of exit is a very basic one. Without it, we are slaves of a country, a government, or in the best case, a majority or an intransigent minority. We are cattle and we are milked.

The fact that these countries are restricting the freedom of exit is an obvious sign of incoming tyranny. It screams “we know we are doing undesirable things to our citizens/residents, so we don’t want them to leave”.

If citizenship-based taxation or a 23% tax on all your worldwide assets is palatable, where do we draw the line? A 100% tax is only a ~4x increase of the latter.

Again, the time to leave a regime like that is when the tax is 23% — there’s nothing preventing it to become full on expropriation.

The way forward

Any solution would have to rely on:

Intergenerational solidarity: I have heard this concept used a thousand times to justify increased taxes, to pay for pensions and do COVID lockdowns — since COVID’s death rate was extremely low for the young population, but quite high for the boomers. In theory, boomers could apologize, eat up their mistakes, and ease up on housing restrictions and let their pyramid scheme (pension systems) collapse — to allow the youth to have a chance at life. But I have never ever heard intergenerational solidarity benefitting the youth. So intergenerational solidarity is a one-way street. Did you know boomers used to be called the Me Generation? In some countries, even though they had decades to compound their wealth, they enjoy tax breaks and price discounts. Can you believe it?

Total constitutional overhaul: Would have to change the voting system in such a way that voting power is a curve — the more years left to live in the country, the more voting power, maybe starting from the 20s. Otherwise any other proposal — such as abolishing the public pension system or reducing housing regulations — will be voted against by the boomers.

War: This one is initially hard to see, since it would be children fighting their parents. However, since parents have basically left their children a burnt Earth with an indebted society — therefore they have been fighting a Cold War against their children for decades — I start seeing this is as a real possibility.

In any way, talented people will see this dead end and flee the country, further lowering productivity, which reduces tax collection, thus requiring more draconian policies, thus forcing more youth to leave. Rinse and repeat, and war and poverty are the only prospects.

However, if we can learn something from history, is that when people get poor fast, they resort to tyranny.

Hitler didn’t “come into power” — he was voted in.

Thus I believe the US and the EU will resort to tyranny, and possibly dictatorship. It can be camouflaged in multiple ways — don’t forget that many Russians still don’t think they live in a dictatorship — but it will be obvious from the outside.

Most talented individuals have flown Russia, first during the USSR, then during Putin’s regime. The ones that stay are by definition the ones prone to being servants to a dictatorship. If most talented individuals start fleeing the US and the EU after the erosion of civil liberties, it’s a matter of time until a dictator is voted in.

Conclusion

If I had to summarize it in two quotes:

Ate their fill of housing, resources, a clean planet, government spending, and then closed the door but didn't forget to pass the check on us. — zxc123zxc123, fellow Redditoor

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times — Michael Hopf

I’m not being a catastrophist — life will go on. Freedom might not go on in the West, but it will certainly go on somewhere else. I’m a rational optimist, but it’s hard to be rationally optimistic about the West.

In any way, I don’t feel safe writing about topics I care about anymore — which should be an alarming sign of how we are entering tyranny.

Luis Cuende ✧