Signal

A good definition of racist is being opposed to high-skilled immigration. It's maybe the policy issue where all the facts are most on one side. Most people who like talking about race and IQ oppose Chinese and Indian engineers, so fail the test of being rational and decent people. richardhanania.com/p/do-peop…

Sweden is choosing capitalism. Social spending as percentage of GDP is now 24%, lower than most of Northern Europe. Sweden has surpassed the US in billionaires per capita. School choice is universal, one in ten teens goes to a school operated by a company listed on the Stockholm stock exchange. Taxes have been cut three years in a row. Sweden has seen "more than 500 initial public offerings over the 10 years through 2024, more than Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain combined" Nearly half of primary healthcare clinics are now privately owned. The result? Same as always. Sweden is projected to grow 2% a year through 2030, which is the same as the US and double France and Germany. How many times does this have to keep happening across the world? How many times does free market capitalism have to prove itself superior to socialism before the world accepts the truth?

I wrote about why Low Human Capital is so obsessed with "pedophilia." People at the bottom feel the need to punch down. But they justify it by pretending pedos run society, so they're actually punching up. The result is resentment-based mass hysteria. richardhanania.com/p/why-low…

Iran reports that the head of IRGC was killed. Israel believes it took out the chief of the Iranian military, along with other leaders. Multiple top nuclear scientists killed. Just complete destruction. I don’t know how the regime doesn’t just die of shame at this point.

I watched the entire press conference with Zelensky. There was 40 minutes of discussion up to the argument. Most people saw at most the last ten minutes. The whole video gives the proper context. When I first watched the argument without the proper context, I thought it was possible that Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky or were even trying to humiliate him. That's not what happened. You had 40 minutes of calm conversation. Vance made a point that didn't attack Zelensky and wasn't even addressed to him, and Zelensky clearly started the argument. In the first 40 minutes, Zelensky kept trying to go beyond what was negotiated in the deal. When Trump was asked a question, it was always "we'll see." Zelensky made blanket assertions that there would be no negotiating with Putin, and that Russia would pay for the war. When Trump said that it was a tragedy that people on both sides were dying, Zelensky interjected that the Russians were the invaders. For his part, Trump made clear that the US would continue delivering military aid. All Zelensky had to do was remain calm for a few more minutes and they would've signed a deal. The argument started when Trump pointed out that it would be hard to make a deal if you talk about Putin the way Zelensky does. Vance interjects to make the reasonable point that Biden called Putin names and that didn't get us anywhere. The Zelensky/Trump dynamic was calm and stable. It was when Vance spoke that Zelensky started to interrogate him. Throughout the press conference to that point, everyone was making their arguments directly to the audience. Zelensky decided to challenge Vance and ask him hostile questions. He went back to his point that Putin never sticks to ceasefires, once again implying that negotiations are pointless. Why on earth would you do this? Then came the fight we all saw. Zelensky was minutes away from being home free, and he would have had the deal and new commitments from the Trump administration. The point Vance made was directed against Biden and the media, taking them to task for speaking in moralistic terms. This offended Zelensky, and that began the argument. I've been a fan of Zelensky up to this point, but this showed so much incompetence, if not emotional instability, that I don't see how he recovers from this. The relationship with the administration is broken. Ukraine should probably go with new leadership at this point.