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Politics

2019

·77 words
Okay, pause for a moment. If you are Pete Buttigieg, at this point in your life you have the ability to take almost any job you want. These schools open doors, and you pick which one you go through. (Ask yourself: If I could do anything I wanted for a living, what would I do?) Pete Buttigieg looked inside himself and decided he belonged at… the world’s most sinister and amoral management consulting company.

·70 words
Wir üben keinen Druck auf unsere Mieter aus. Kein Mieter wird bei uns verdrängt. Das würde gegen unsere Werte verstoßen.

·17 words
Good on people to opt-out of imposed citizenship and engage on their own piece of statecraft.

·37 words
My colleague Jiro Minier is featured in the Dahrendorf Foresight Project on European Security with a scenario that is both dystopian and scarily prescient. I read it as a call for more European collaboration and investment.

·45 words
Piketty is back with a new book but his policy proposals are already there and should be implemented immediately and in full. The only reason we will have to fight for them to pass is because our governments do not work for the people.

·60 words
I don’t really know why we have this debate, but the following is a thorough and definitive argument against technocracy by Glen Weyl: “Technocracy divorced from the need for public communication and accountability is thus a dangerous ideology that distracts technical experts from the valuable role they can play by tempting them to assume undue, independent power and influence.”

·45 words
De PvdA is om en wil weer een basisbeurs voor studenten. De partij maakt een draai van 180 graden en trekt de handen af van het leenstelsel, dat het zelf nota bene heeft ingevoerd.

·16 words
A thorough and humane treatment of alt-right memetic history and 8chan with its associated chans.

·45 words
This lament on SF does not sound that far off from where Berlin is. The city is a lot bigger and less boring, but without measures, it could go the same way when it comes to property prices and hollowing out of public services.

·28 words
I also love this proposed government based on sortition and ostracism. It seems like it could be a lot better than what we have right now.

·50 words
With some minor adjustments, this entire piece about the systematic advantaging of the automobile is applicable to Germany as well.

·27 words
A more than useful read of how the CEO of Ogilvy tries to worm out of the fact that they are doing work selling concentration camps.

·27 words
My foray into local politics showed me that more than anything the Grüne are a party of yuppies without much or any social face behind it.

·21 words
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the media will go to any lengths to ignore Bernie.

·63 words
Ende Gelände is the radical environmentalist movement against climate change and here they are blocking a strip mine.

·29 words
AOC is correct. America is running concentration camps filled with kids.

·119 words
As the blisters develop and his feet start to bleed, Walton asks the right questions. What are the human and environmental costs of Singapore’s success, and are they sustainable?

·66 words
Leave it to the Netherlands to have a Green party that is right-wing just like every other party. Their leader, Jesse Klaver, styled himself after Trudeau during his campaign but after that, the result has been a bit lackluster without a seat in government.

·30 words
Ik dacht dat Arjen van Veelen één van de beste schrijvers op de Correspondent was. Dat is hij misschien nog steeds, maar dan shrijft hij wel dit soort onzin.

·25 words
Swisher is doing good work here on Facebook/Fakebook but her handling of the worst of technology is still astonishingly softball given what is happening.

The future of social democracy

·80 words
The play: SPD goes populist-nationalist to catch all of the right-wing worker votes and nibble off from AfD/CDU. They leave the open society social-democratic policies to the Greens.

·30 words
Berlin will also regularly call on McKinsey to ‘fix’ its problems. As this description of them giving Puerto Rico the Greece-treatment shows, where they come nothing good will follow.

·28 words
Of de Nederlandse omroepen en kranten nou extreem-rechts zijn of niet, het effect is hetzelfde. Ze ondersteunen systematisch politiek en politici die rechts of heel rechts zijn.

·44 words
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1128726771942219781

·38 words
It’s exciting to see the Emirates government put design front and center. Unfortunately though in a closed context such as that, it is more than likely that design will be instrumentalized and deployed only for material gain.

Usually it’s not for a good reason but still, it’s nice to see my grand-boss Dror on television regularly explaining cybersecurity to the German public.

·14 words
Not a word wrong in this piece, landlords are the original rent-seeking leeches.

·32 words
Innisfil, Ontario’s troubles filling in their public transit with Uber is a great example of how governments should not outsource things to private contractors whose unit economics do not make sense.

·116 words
I can’t really get enough of Haidt takedowns like this one in the Guardian.

·45 words
“Really, though, it was the same liberal fantasy, where everyone could laugh together because they were all on the right side of history.”

If Berlin votes to expropriate Deutsche Wohnen, it will be a welcome step towards decommodification of housing. Not to mention the long overdue correction that it will give the local housing market.

·30 words
Here is the sad recounting how the Dutch media fueled the rise of a white nationalist politician to the point where he’s polling as the second largest party now.

·38 words
The best thing about ContraPoints is that she gives the most charitable possible treatment to in this case Gender Critical people (the other time it was Incels) and then still rips them for all that they are.

·66 words
I’ll be proud to live in Berlin when the home owner expropriations are passed and the real estate madness is curtailed.

·8 words
Eggboy speaks: “This egg has united people.”

·23 words
De Nederlandse huizenmarkt is kapot (net zoals de huizenmarkt bijna overal) en de mensen blijven maar VVD stemmen. Wat klopt hier niet?

·26 words
AOC deserves every bit of support for the amazing work that she is doing and for the huge job that she has taken upon herself.

·19 words
Confiscatory fines for people who abuse the housing market like here in Barcelona are the way to go.

·19 words
Everybody can thank Facebook for the techlash that is happening now. Elizabeth Warren: “I’m sick of freeloading billionaires.”

·61 words
Ilhan Omar is maybe even better than AOC. She definitely is more fearless.