A reliable and safe society
Many people who have travelled in Asia, especially in Japan, come home and tell us how safe and orderly it is there. They are fascinated by clean streets →
Ideology
Great, greater, greatest – in the age of mega-corporations – where capitalism leads to socialism
According to many communists, the fate of the capitalist system is that the corporations keep growing, until there are only a handful of global giants left, and they →
The missing elite
It was not the Swedes who built one of the richest countries in the world until the 1950s, with strong industry and a world-class air force, any more →
Nobody wants to be called a racist
No one wants to be called a racist, for it is considered particularly degrading to engage in ethnic sorting of people for bad traits; and being subjected to →
Look at me, love me – and give me money!
Is it reasonable that everyone should love transsexuals, queers, overweight people, people with full tattoos, etc, etc? Today we see more and more strange groups demanding acceptance and →
Demography and population exchanges in turn-of-the-century Europe, a brief historical comment
In 1916 there were about 2.2 million inhabitants in Vienna, almost half of whom came from Bohemia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, etc. In 1939 the population was down →
Best in the world at democracy
The concept of democracy is an interesting one to revisit periodically. What is considered important in a democratic society has changed throughout history. When modern democracies emerged after →
Is local self-government a threat to nations and empires?
Are self-governing regions and municipalities a threat to the idea of nation and empire building? Of course, this objection can be made. The US is an empire, as →
Building a functioning nation out of a multicultural society of chaos
Historically, of course, the idea of governing a diverse society with many different ethnicities is nothing new. Romans, Greeks, Ottomans and Habsburgs have tried, and indeed succeeded, in →
