Great stuff, Lukium. I've been reading a lot about economic history lately, especially of the Nordic Model. Do you have any thoughts on the economic limitations and benefits of the Scandinavian economies vs the New Deal (or New Deal 2.0 as you would design it within the USOS architecture?). Some resources in case they're useful to you:
The Realities of Socialism website is associated with the Frasier Institute and other center-right or centrist think tanks, so their analysis is from a classical liberal/fiscal conservative viewpoint (I doubt they would agree with the analysis from the Roosevelt Institute, though they are at pains to point out why social democracy isn't socialism). Take that for whatever it's worth or isn't worth, though in broad terms, I think you'd find much to agree with in their papers. I found the Sweden one highly informative (I'm still working through the Denmark one) but it leads me onto further question for you, such as: the budget-balance issues and deficit crisis faced by Sweden in the 1980s and 90s and their fiscal conservative reforms to try to bring things under control; their use of private competition to cater to welfare services (such as their school vouchers that can be used by parents to select private schools, and similar schemes in health care), as well as high tax rates across the board but with a lower top marginal tax rate bracket than in the US (in other words, the middle class pays for most of the welfare services since the top income tax rate kicks in at around $US62K; in Denmark it's at around $US91K, still well below that in the US, which kicks in at $500K or so if I understand it correctly), their uniform 25% VAT, etc. Do you see these things as "fair"? Are they part of a coherent overall framework (and maybe one configuration for achieving what you would want to see) or are they a rickety and unstable pastiche? What's the relevance and lessons for the US?
for my own argument for how taxation should work. I think our very concepts of how taxation works is broken given what we choose to tax and how much. I was starting to type a TL;DR here, but realized that one thing will lead into the next and I’ll end up pretty much rewriting the whole thing. If you get a chance to read it, I’m happy to clarify/discuss any part of it.
I think the overall key problem, even with the Nordic Model, is a lack of what I would call “intentionality” underlying the entire system. Until we, as a society (be it the Nordic one or the US, or humanity as a whole) re-wire our systems from the bottom up to serve human dignity (which USOS is an attempt to demonstrate what that means) rather than shareholder primacy with human dignity being but a hopeful afterthought, we will remain in a path that ultimately leads to our own destruction, the only difference being how fast we get there.
Another big mistake I see is the fight between Capitalism and Socialism. Anyone telling you either of them is the answer will never deliver a functioning society. The answer is that you need both:
Capitalism raises the ceiling of what a society is capable of. It drives incentives, rewards, growth, etc. But alone it devours the very base it needs in order to survive.
Socialism raises the floor of what human dignity means. It drives safety nets, opportunities, and basic human capacity. But alone it cannot raise the ceiling, leading to stagnation and mediocrity.
So, the answer is: maximize both where their strengths are without letting the balance break. Allow capitalism to generate wealth and innovation but ensure that it does not come from just cornering markets and building monopolies, but rather from actual productivity. Then ensure that those who gain greater control of resources (wealth) pay proportionally towards the maintenance of the whole, while ensuring that wealth does not translate into democratic power (electoral finance). This should go directly towards raising the floor, i.e., increasing human capacity via access to increasingly better healthcare, education, business opportunities (public financing of entrepreneurship), etc.
This is how you build a flywheel instead of a ratchet: let Capitalism raise the ceiling, but force its success to raise the floor using Socialist principles; while ensuring that the ultimate anchor is human dignity rather than shareholder profits.
And this is also the answer to the AI alignment problem that’s so prominent on the media right now (which, interestingly, I was just writing about a few weeks ago with the exact reason why the alignment problem is both so serious and why they can’t fix it right now). Until us humans get our own alignment right (by realigning to human dignity), we will never be able to produce a model that is aligned to human dignity. The reason is simple: everything that the models consume today, when averaged, point not towards human dignity, but towards profit and greed. There’s no amount of discrete rules and instructions you give the models at the end of the process that can “realign” them to human dignity when the totality of what goes into the model drastically points elsewhere. Humans don’t currently care about human dignity sufficiently enough to produce a model by consuming our output such that what comes out the other end would care, primarily, about being aligned to human dignity rather than accomplishing its goal at any cost.
Unless we fix that “little” problem before we produce AGI, AI, will, in fact, destroy humanity. The reason is simple: us humans are not very rational and efficient at making good decisions that would preserve a world capable of maintaining our survival, and any sufficiently intelligent entity would easily come to the conclusion that whatever its goals might be, they will be much more easily achievable by removing humanity as an obstacle first.
So, unless our own output begins to point towards human dignity as a priority rather than just achieving goals (like shareholder profits) at any cost, any AGI we produce will come imbued with that same ultimate alignment, and with it, our own destruction.
Fascist Republican Election Rigging: Demand State AG’s Look Into This
Post election data manipulation occurred in 2024 with fascist Republicans creating at least 4 fake counties in swing states(Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Florida) to claim as many as 3m votes for their side of the score(bit.ly/4hgEB2r). This investigative journalistic piece delivered through the substack channel This Will Hold further demonstrates that the fascists will have free rein on post election data manipulation going into the 2026 midterms because there is no surveillance of companies managing the election data.
And let’s face it, Cheeto and his fascist allies don’t seem to be really fazed by the poor polling data and so unconcerned that they really are making no strong moves from a policy standpoint to correct their failures. Which leads to the question as to why? It seems that they have some definitive plans as to how they will rig the upcoming elections including the midterms, one of which would be data manipulation. And this could easily occur because the post election data reporting has many vulnerabilities.
This is of course if state AG’s don’t do anything about this manipulation and lack of transparency. That’s where WE the People come into play. Please contact your state AG and ask them to look into the above cited YouTube video and review the evidence. It’s convincing. Also demand elected Congressional representatives investigate and pass legislation to secure our election systems.
TY for your cogent explanation. Economics is like voodoo to most of us.
Great stuff, Lukium. I've been reading a lot about economic history lately, especially of the Nordic Model. Do you have any thoughts on the economic limitations and benefits of the Scandinavian economies vs the New Deal (or New Deal 2.0 as you would design it within the USOS architecture?). Some resources in case they're useful to you:
** On the failures of neoliberalism in the US: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI_The-Empirical-Failures-of-Neoliberalism_brief-202001.pdf
** On the Swedish welfare state and why it's not socialist: https://realitiesofsocialism.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/mirage-of-swedish-socialism-economic-history-of-welfare-state_0.pdf
** On the Danish experience: https://realitiesofsocialism.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/free-enterprise-welfare-state-history-of-denmarks-unique-economic-model.pdf
The Realities of Socialism website is associated with the Frasier Institute and other center-right or centrist think tanks, so their analysis is from a classical liberal/fiscal conservative viewpoint (I doubt they would agree with the analysis from the Roosevelt Institute, though they are at pains to point out why social democracy isn't socialism). Take that for whatever it's worth or isn't worth, though in broad terms, I think you'd find much to agree with in their papers. I found the Sweden one highly informative (I'm still working through the Denmark one) but it leads me onto further question for you, such as: the budget-balance issues and deficit crisis faced by Sweden in the 1980s and 90s and their fiscal conservative reforms to try to bring things under control; their use of private competition to cater to welfare services (such as their school vouchers that can be used by parents to select private schools, and similar schemes in health care), as well as high tax rates across the board but with a lower top marginal tax rate bracket than in the US (in other words, the middle class pays for most of the welfare services since the top income tax rate kicks in at around $US62K; in Denmark it's at around $US91K, still well below that in the US, which kicks in at $500K or so if I understand it correctly), their uniform 25% VAT, etc. Do you see these things as "fair"? Are they part of a coherent overall framework (and maybe one configuration for achieving what you would want to see) or are they a rickety and unstable pastiche? What's the relevance and lessons for the US?
On the specifics of what Sweeden and Denmark are doing though, I would point you to my article on the Meritocracy Tax (https://americanmanifesto.news/p/the-meritocracy-tax)
for my own argument for how taxation should work. I think our very concepts of how taxation works is broken given what we choose to tax and how much. I was starting to type a TL;DR here, but realized that one thing will lead into the next and I’ll end up pretty much rewriting the whole thing. If you get a chance to read it, I’m happy to clarify/discuss any part of it.
Thanks! I will read it soon and let you know.
Thanks!
I think the overall key problem, even with the Nordic Model, is a lack of what I would call “intentionality” underlying the entire system. Until we, as a society (be it the Nordic one or the US, or humanity as a whole) re-wire our systems from the bottom up to serve human dignity (which USOS is an attempt to demonstrate what that means) rather than shareholder primacy with human dignity being but a hopeful afterthought, we will remain in a path that ultimately leads to our own destruction, the only difference being how fast we get there.
Another big mistake I see is the fight between Capitalism and Socialism. Anyone telling you either of them is the answer will never deliver a functioning society. The answer is that you need both:
Capitalism raises the ceiling of what a society is capable of. It drives incentives, rewards, growth, etc. But alone it devours the very base it needs in order to survive.
Socialism raises the floor of what human dignity means. It drives safety nets, opportunities, and basic human capacity. But alone it cannot raise the ceiling, leading to stagnation and mediocrity.
So, the answer is: maximize both where their strengths are without letting the balance break. Allow capitalism to generate wealth and innovation but ensure that it does not come from just cornering markets and building monopolies, but rather from actual productivity. Then ensure that those who gain greater control of resources (wealth) pay proportionally towards the maintenance of the whole, while ensuring that wealth does not translate into democratic power (electoral finance). This should go directly towards raising the floor, i.e., increasing human capacity via access to increasingly better healthcare, education, business opportunities (public financing of entrepreneurship), etc.
This is how you build a flywheel instead of a ratchet: let Capitalism raise the ceiling, but force its success to raise the floor using Socialist principles; while ensuring that the ultimate anchor is human dignity rather than shareholder profits.
And this is also the answer to the AI alignment problem that’s so prominent on the media right now (which, interestingly, I was just writing about a few weeks ago with the exact reason why the alignment problem is both so serious and why they can’t fix it right now). Until us humans get our own alignment right (by realigning to human dignity), we will never be able to produce a model that is aligned to human dignity. The reason is simple: everything that the models consume today, when averaged, point not towards human dignity, but towards profit and greed. There’s no amount of discrete rules and instructions you give the models at the end of the process that can “realign” them to human dignity when the totality of what goes into the model drastically points elsewhere. Humans don’t currently care about human dignity sufficiently enough to produce a model by consuming our output such that what comes out the other end would care, primarily, about being aligned to human dignity rather than accomplishing its goal at any cost.
Unless we fix that “little” problem before we produce AGI, AI, will, in fact, destroy humanity. The reason is simple: us humans are not very rational and efficient at making good decisions that would preserve a world capable of maintaining our survival, and any sufficiently intelligent entity would easily come to the conclusion that whatever its goals might be, they will be much more easily achievable by removing humanity as an obstacle first.
So, unless our own output begins to point towards human dignity as a priority rather than just achieving goals (like shareholder profits) at any cost, any AGI we produce will come imbued with that same ultimate alignment, and with it, our own destruction.
Fascist Republican Election Rigging: Demand State AG’s Look Into This
Post election data manipulation occurred in 2024 with fascist Republicans creating at least 4 fake counties in swing states(Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Florida) to claim as many as 3m votes for their side of the score(bit.ly/4hgEB2r). This investigative journalistic piece delivered through the substack channel This Will Hold further demonstrates that the fascists will have free rein on post election data manipulation going into the 2026 midterms because there is no surveillance of companies managing the election data.
And let’s face it, Cheeto and his fascist allies don’t seem to be really fazed by the poor polling data and so unconcerned that they really are making no strong moves from a policy standpoint to correct their failures. Which leads to the question as to why? It seems that they have some definitive plans as to how they will rig the upcoming elections including the midterms, one of which would be data manipulation. And this could easily occur because the post election data reporting has many vulnerabilities.
This is of course if state AG’s don’t do anything about this manipulation and lack of transparency. That’s where WE the People come into play. Please contact your state AG and ask them to look into the above cited YouTube video and review the evidence. It’s convincing. Also demand elected Congressional representatives investigate and pass legislation to secure our election systems.