The foreign aid argument is an old one.
Yes it is totally bonkers to be giving money to say India who has a space programme. I don’t know how this ends up in Parliament but I think the various “give money to poor countries charities” (whose executives are mostly on 100k+ and driving nice cars) keep banging on about it and lobbying constantly, and they rig it so the politicians end up looking mean and tight, and it is easier for them to chuck 100M at say India than to have these buggers hassling them 24/7. This is how a lot of stuff happens in political life… it is how 0.001% of the population can out-shout the other 99.999%.
Another argument is that foreign aid buys influence abroad. Look at e.g. the US taxpayer funded FAA supports GA all over the world. It’s really amazing. The influence the US gets with this miniscule cost is out of all proportion.
For sure much foreign aid is wasted, but another pro argument is that you can target it to areas where it has effect. India or Pakistan are not interested in looking after its poor people. In the 3rd World you just don’t do that.
Malibuflyer wrote:
It depends on the fine print of your definition of “skipping school” – technically she fulfilled the minimum requirements for school education in Sweden…
In particular, she finished school with exceptional grades. (The highest grade in all subjects save one where she, IIRC, got the next highest grade.) She is currently attending high school.
So any claims that she is a dropout, “mentally challenged”, uneducated etc. are just BS.
Peter wrote:
Yes it is totally bonkers to be giving money to say India who has a space programme
Apparently also India just sided with Putin. Looks like some places want to make sure he does not accidently drop something on them.
Airborne_Again wrote:
So any claims that she is a dropout, “mentally challenged”, uneducated etc. are just BS.
Truth to be told – many of these claims are not really BS but have true roots or even have been actively promoted by herself:
- She always called her own own actions “SKOLSTREJK” – giving herself the image of a dropout.
- The mentally challenged theme was also brought up by herself and by her team. They wanted to present a narrative to let it appear even more exceptional what she does and create a soft link to the myth that people suffering from Asperger have a superior IQ
- Uneducated is a question of perspective. It is fact that at the time she started the hype around herself, she was still in the middle of Swedish primary school – and even up to now her primary school degree is her highest education. This is obviously not uneducated in the sense of illiterate – but especially for somebody with the core claim “do what science says” this is a surprisingly low level of education (one could even argue that in the form “don’t do what an elementary student says” it is an interesting variation of epimenides’ paradox).
So no: These claims are not BS – they are at least partly correct and more importantly they are mainly based on the narrative she created herself.
P.S.: On the “best grade” theme. Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I remember there is no such thing as a national or regional final examination in Sweden but graduating grades are basically decided upon by the individual teachers/schools and national exams are an indicator that should influence the individual decision but does not define them. True?
So the grades of Greta as a person of interest are also a political statement set by her teachers…
Neil wrote:
I may consider a move to Estonia if things are that bright and prosperous
The neighbours are a bit worrying though
Whats wrong with Finns and Latvians? I assure you both are great guys…
Malibuflyer wrote:
Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I remember there is no such thing as a national or regional final examination in Sweden but graduating grades are basically decided upon by the individual teachers/schools and national exams are an indicator that should influence the individual decision but does not define them. True?
You’re correct that there are no national final examinations, but there are standardised national tests in most subjects during the last year and the authorities carefully check that average grades correspond to the result of these tests. Of course that doesn’t prevent the occasional incorrect grading.
Malibuflyer wrote:
This is obviously not uneducated in the sense of illiterate – but especially for somebody with the core claim “do what science says” this is a surprisingly low level of education (one could even argue that in the form “don’t do what an elementary student says” it is an interesting variation of epimenides’ paradox).
Isn’t that the problem with all “expert” advice. The uneducated (politician typically) takes the advice as gospel, even though he is in no position to verify or question the advice or the expert. If the expert is a scientist, the uneducated will surely mention this and say, if you don’t believe in me, at least you should believe in science. It’s just that it’s still only an advice, it doesn’t become scientific fact before the advice is verified to be true by future events. When every scientist in the world agrees, this is every bit as not science as if the advice came only from one scientist, and he could be a very poor one, makes no difference.
The other side of the spectrum is equally weird. Flat earthers believe the world is flat because they only believe the stuff they themselves can experience with their own senses. They don’t believe in experts at all. If the eyes and ears tells them the earth is flat, then the earth is flat 100%. In itself it’s all according to the scientific method. Flat earthers are much more logical and scientific than every “Greta” out there.
The world is an odd place, that’s for sure. It reminds me of a sign my old professor used to have above his door. It said (maybe I have told it before):
Theory is when nothing works, and everybody knows why.
Practice is when everything works, and nobody knows why
In this room theory and practice are united.
Nothing works, and nobody knows why
Now if the world was populated only by Gretas and flat earthers. Then every single person would believe the world was flat, and no one would ever question it, ever. IMO the world is a bit like that atm.
OK, back to Putin 
IMO the world is a bit like that atm.
You mean flat? the universe is indeed flat, it’s one of the most remarkable cosmology predictions, it has the right amount of dark energy to keep it flat without going out of control in “big crunch” due to gravity or “big rip” due to expansion…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda-CDM_model
Back to Putin !
LeSving wrote:
Isn’t that the problem with all “expert” advice.
Absolutely. And I very much like your post, it’s a nice summary of what we have seen demonstrated in Covid and right now as well. Of course, none of this is new (I might add climate change) but very accurate nevertheless.
Prior to the Internet and particularly social media you had comparatively few experts who had to prove their worth before they got published or onto TV or whatever. Today you literally get millions of them, everyone 100% sure he/she/it is right and everyone else is wrong. Stuff gets published in order to be first and not after careful peer review and subsequent appearances on media by merit. Today, every idiot frankly can call himself expert and start spreading b.s. around which will get a bunch of followers who then spread it further. And while fake news and similar stuff did indeed exist earlier than the net, it was never easier to spread it. Some of this stuff has very serious implications and is a tremendous problem.
In a situation of war this stuff gets worse because people are sucking up information like desert plants do in the rainy season. Fear, anxiety and outright terror can grossly distort a person’s ability to reason with presented “facts”. Consequently, everything posted without exception will have a bias which is very likely to incense the opposition (and often intended to), as well as the own people.
But the sheer number of talking heads on TV, of which very few are really worth their money and us listening to them, does not help in a crisis, any crisis. You need people who really know what they are talking about and who will be able to reassure, warn, give advice which can actually improve the situation and not make it worse.
LeSving wrote:
Flat earthers believe the world is flat because they only believe the stuff they themselves can experience with their own senses. They don’t believe in experts at all. If the eyes and ears tells them the earth is flat, then the earth is flat 100%. In itself it’s all according to the scientific method. Flat earthers are much more logical and scientific than every “Greta” out there.
Only that by far not all flat earthers are like this. I’d wagger most of them are people who are told by the type you describe that the world is flat and have themselves convinced of the fact even though they never even reach to the conclusion that it is because they never flew on Concorde or ISS to see the world round. Heck there are people who don’t even believe we ever went to space.
I guess this is the gross problem which brings the two together: Whether it is “experts” on whatever or “flat earthers” who only believe their senses, it all depends what platform they have and how many willing suckers they are able to reach. Add to that spin control by governments or rigid censorship and you get the situation you have now, where Russians abroad call their parents or relatives in Russia and learn to their amazement that they don’t know the first thing about the war that is happening. Sure, those with Internet and smartphones do know, but those who rely exclusively on state media don’t. And these are more than you might expect.
Or the opposite, where you get people here glued to CNN, BBC, Fox and what not all day seeing the pictures over and over again and Putin’s nuclear threat replayed 50 times per day. Do you wonder why many panic? I don’t and I had to actually switch off most of this now in order not to go bonkers, reducing my intake on once or twice updates by reputable TV news and finished.
Maybe experts should be paid after fact checking their comments only, respectively by checking how accurate their predictions were. That would take a lot of talking heads back to the little box where they belong.
Graham wrote:
@Esteban then there’s not much hope for freedom, is there.
a) Yes, there is (maybe, hopefully), you just have to be (way) smarter about it. The west had foolishly in its arrogance after the fall of Soviet Union wasted an opportunity to really engage Russia. Spreading democracy by force and special ops had also never really worked, only built resentment. Less hypocrisy and double standards, and less economic exploitation and domination might also help. REALLY be the shining beacon of righteousness. Its a really long term approach. Too bad it is in conflict with today’s instant gratification culture and omnipresent short-term economic interests. I am mostly skeptical – the west as it is now does not have the mojo anymore.
b) What we have in the ‘free’ west is to a large extend just an illusion of freedom, and it is eroded every day, mostly by mighty economic interests (all the surveillance economy, transition of so many things from ownership to renting, all the dependencies on big tech and cloud stuff) but also various wacky left and right wing policies (gender related stuff, pushes against abortion rights…), cancel culture, mainstream media brainwashing, you surely can come up to more than enough examples on your own (including all the unnecessary regulation related to flying). There is also all the stuff Snowden leaked, Pegasus/NSO group gems etc. Yes, elsewhere it is even worse.
It had been a nice dream that after the fall of communism, we (the former East block) would be able to join the west in this glorious and free world. Too bad this free world has been going down the drain for some time, eaten from inside by its own hubris. Many ex-communist people are now telling their western colleagues ‘we recognize this from the old times, you are on a path to totality’. Most people have blinders. Another big group intuitively feel they are being lied to … and as a response start to believe all sort of conspiracies. Rational/analytical/critical thinking is in downward spiral, probably too painful and slow for today’s world.
Maybe tomorrow I will feel better and have a more optimistic post. :-)
