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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in.

You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/control for benefit of themselves rather than for the benefit of that public.

It's not unique to the US, it's just that they look like they are speed running it from outside.

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You are using "believed" - past tense.

Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right.

The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.

I have a friend who works with american tourists visiting europe, mostly older folks, mostly to religious sights. They are, for the vast majority, indoctrinated beyond any chance of reasonable change of opinion.

Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.

The kind of older tourist visiting a foreign religious site is definitely going to be relatively indoctrinated regardless of their origin country. But yes, many Americans are indoctrinated. They also tend to be dominant in wide swaths of US geography and highly motivated by their indoctrinators to vote, thus maximizing their electoral impact.

Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.

In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.

> Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created.

I have long believed that being religious primes people to also lose the ability to think critically in other areas of their lives.

> In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake.

The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics.

Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?

Older relics can be tested, but the Catholic church won't really allow it, e.g. San Gennaro's blood in Naples is a flask of red clotted liquid which melts during some ceremonies, and is quite likely not blood at all. But there's a massive community of believers and thus it will not be challenged by the church.

For more modern miracles and relics the church does have a tight grip, and famously one pope threw a whole bag of Christ teeth in the Tiber river, but many older things have been "grandfathered".

DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).

"Consistency" whatever that might be.

Dave Allen's great joke about the relics concerns a doubter pressing on why there were two skulls of different sizes attributed to Saint Placeholder.

The answer was straightforward enough;

this one is his skull taken from his concecrated tomb in the Abbey of Overthere,

and this was his skull from when he was a child.

Soviets did this in 1918-20, without DNA analysis, of course.

https://ru-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0...

Yes well there are other things you could do with a DNA genotype than tag ethnicity or confirm it's human. Specifically related to a similarity metric between genotypes (which is how we go about arriving at an ethnicity estimate)

For example

if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic.

if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance.

of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake

Relics are only a way of advertising the religion.

We should ban advertisements of religions. If their gods are so powerful then they shouldn't need advertising. And if you are a believer AND god turns out to be real then banning advertising could lead to the return of Jesus. Win win.

> Relics are only a way of advertising the religion.

I can't follow you here. Relics only have a meaning when you already believe them to be relics and no just random bones. How is that advertising?

Imagine you have no religion, but are feeling spiritual and want to find something real. Do you go to the church of a religion that claims it has the actual remains of their saints, or the one that only has pictures and empty walls?

Actually, maybe that's a stupid question as people absolutely do both. But there is an element of "look how great we are because we have a splinter from the holy cross in our church".

No, you don't have to be religious to understand what religious symbols are about.

You can understand them, but there is no point for you, since they don't mean anything to you.

Depends on how much "supporting evidence" you give me.

I don't really think I got your point. All "evidence" that the bones in location X are really those of St. Y, won't have any effect on you, when you don't care about St. Y at all, because you don't believe in that religion.

You’re self-questioning and self-reflective. Totally not worried for you or by you. Keep it up.

The Americans visiting Europe are a sample very skewed towards sanity due to their socioeconomic situation and interest in history/culture. So this is either not true or highly troubling.

Agreed, though the "religious sights" part likely does a lot of work here.

> mostly to religious sights [sic]

Don't be so sure.

Sightseers see sights at sites? So perhaps not sic in this case?

> The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.

"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."

My pet theory, one that is borne out by some amount of anecdotal evidence, is that they don't honestly believe. Assuming they're not bots, they were bit by the 2025 cost of living increases just as much as anybody, they know what changed, they know in their gut that Trump is the reason for it.

They are just so caught up in their culture war that they believe that shouldering such a burden, at least for a time, is worth it for all of the "positives" of the regime - especially the part where people they don't like are suffering.

That's why trying to argue over tariffs is useless - not because they don't believe, but because that's not their underlying motivation. In fact, they would prefer to talk about tariffs, because they have a set of well-rehearsed talking points for arguing against that.

It's better to figure out what they actually care about, as well as their motivations for why.

Even the strongest believes eventually collide with the hard cold solid wall of reality.

But if you do believe hard enough, if you give it your all and exclude anything else than your believes, when you become one with it - then you can certainly increase the collision speed quite a bit! :-)

That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand without hours of study and thought. That is uncomfortable, so people rebel against intellectualism, because it's easier to be told lies through 30-second videos and feel well informed, rather than sitting through a 20-hour session that one might need to truly understand a niche of a niche. The more they read, the less they understand, so disengage from it altogether and go with their gut (designed for tribes of monkeys) because the cognitive overload is too much to bear.

It's so exhausting having the same conversation every time. A friend reads something on reddit, flips out about it. Asks in our signal chat "can anyone explain this" as bait. Occasionally I take the bait and explain the extreme thing through a centrist lens. Now I'm instantly on the side of whoever did the bad thing and spend the next 90 minutes explaining rationality until we arrive at the center. Things calm down. 3 days go by, and my friend visits reddit again...

You have a funny idea of what friend means.

Please don't reduce decades of friendship with a person to a couple dozen words I posted on a website and think you can judge what friendship means to me.

I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships.

Stop contributing to the problem.

Who said they’re contributing to the problem? Perhaps you are by constantly downplaying what sounds like wilful ignorance on the part of your friend? Some people’s ignorance does not deserve the same respect as others’ reasoning. Your friend sounds like they enjoy trolling you.

Playing the little devil on cheshire's shoulder, I see. Maybe it's not for the best to encourage people to stop being gracious in times of high political turmoil.

It's very sad, but this applies to what seems like everyone now. Required reading for internet users should be The Anatomy of Peace by the Harbinger Institute. I suppose you'd have to peel people away from their social algorithms though, which might be an impossibility due to the decreasing attention span. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that this seems like the new norm, and hate it. I grew up around a lot of great people with big hearts, and I just don't get it. I think John Coffey said it best when hes said "Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other."

I am still surrounded by people with big hearts, but I think they have separated themselves into a family/friends/acquaintances persona and a "political entity" persona which is increasingly hostile and more frequently exercised due to social media bubbles. People who are openly hostile (and sometimes outright homicidal) on social media are still cuddly teddy bears in person, but the more they access that anger and hate for people they'd normally foster relationships with, the more our ability to find commonality erodes.

I have an uncle that I've always been fond of who recently has spouted some mind-bending support of the current administration, and it was like talking to someone who lives in another dimension. My Dad too was indoctrinated by Fox News (because he was spending a lot of time with my grandparents) and some of his political views are irreconcilable with the man I knew growing up.

This is very well said. I've also noticed the jekyll and hyde thing - for several years now and I've seen people that act basically like extremists online be some of my favorite people in person. Both right and left leaning. Very bizarre and sad stuff. I'm fairly conservative, but we need to be able to call a spade a spade when it comes down to it.

>Corbyn

???

"Truth is not truth" - Rudy Giuliani

>The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.

Yes, this is what we call a "post truth era", for anyone who may still think this is some fringe conspiracy.

believers explanations necessary possible and all…

In fairness to this report, the report is about tariffs and their impact on...imported goods affected directly by tariffs isn't it?

From an overall economic policy standpoint, missing facts that provide context are pretty important especially when you're trying to paint an entire side of the isle as completely brainwashed. Nobody can have a conversation when we create straw men to argue with.

Other relevant context:

- The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts.

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lo...

- US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-g...

Q4 forecast https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

- US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.

https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-r...

- US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e...

- The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us

- And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:t...

There's a lot of economic doom and gloom in the comments section here that's simply not reflected in the overall economic numbers. It's not perfect, but it's trending in the right direction.

> - US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.

Because of the missing data from the shutdown, most financial people are putting the last inflation print closer to 3% which means it's continuing to rise.

Bringing up Biden is funny since that's so far in the rear view at this point. You going to also talk about how much stimulus Trump dropped into the economy during COVID? Regardless, Biden was POTUS when inflation spiked and was killed almost as fast as it went up. It was on a nice glide path back to target until Trump through a tariff grenade into the mix.

Did the price of eggs come down because of tariffs or because of increased imports?

Please provide this fact also.

How would raising the price of eggs lower the price of eggs?

> The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts.

Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.

> US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.

I can find no mention of Q4 gdp results in your linked source, it appears to be looking at annual gdp rates over years and focusing on the US compared to China and India

> US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.

Still above the feds target of 2% but it’s good to see it still trending down

> US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.

It’s winter, prices for gas always drop in winter. Your own source shows that we’re still above pre COVID prices

> The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.

I’m not sure if I’m reading your source correctly but it appears to be saying eggs are $0.45/ dozen

That seems implausibly low but I can’t find other sources to compare as every source I’m finding has conflicting information internally, and the price given doesn’t match up with the lowest prices even if I multiply it by 12 assuming I misunderstood price per dozen for price per egg

> And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.

Yea but over half of that is mag7 and only propped up by the AI bubble. It’s nice temporarily but all the context around the stock market doesn’t make it look particularly healthy atm.

The economy looks about as healthy as it did in 2024. I think a lot of people’s views on the health of the economy, whether it’s good or bad, are being more influenced by political leanings than by numbers. Fits with the zeitgeist of the era.

Added a link to the original post for the Q4 GDP forecast quickly.

> Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.

When would increased exports not be a good thing for any country? The tariff conversation was interesting for me in particular as more of an ideological free trade advocate because I didn't realize just how heavily other countries were applying tariffs goods from the US in some cases. The admin initially stated they were going to apply reciprocal tariff's but those numbers never fully lined up.

Anytime you can create an incentive to on-shore production, it's typically good for the country based on jobs, domestic production, supply chains following production, domestic industrial education and training, etc.

I never spent too much time thinking about it, but as a negotiation point the US is the worlds biggest importer. That does mean that cheap access to the US market is a valuable tool in those conversations.

"Trade deficit" is another word for "free stuff" and also another word for "being the world's reserve currency". America receives massive quantities of free stuff from other countries and gets to control the banking system of the entire world as a side effect (this is how it manages to collect taxes from non-resident citizens and how it makes sanctions meaningful). Why doesn't America want that to continue?

Is there any reason America can’t continue that without giving every critical manufacturing industry to China?

No there isn’t a reason to do that, but I want to call out that you asked about “critical” industries and this is a thread about tariffs which the admin put on all products, including inputs to industries.

Don’t compare apples to tennis balls.

And in regards to the trade deficit, everytime I look at it the numbers it only includes physical products and not services. We’re a heavily service based economy since producing a Facebook is several steps down the tech tree from producing screws.

So again I will ask why a trade deficit on products is bad. We’re just buying shit from less complex economies or ones where the comparative advantage of trade works out. We’re not getting ripped off.

> Is there any reason America can’t continue that without giving every critical manufacturing industry to China?

Totally. The two things are actually quite different. You (US & industrialised countries) removed capital controls and the cost of transport dropped by a lot (shipping containers etc) which meant that it became more profitable to make things in much cheaper countries and so the businesses did that, and now you're/we're screwed.

Reintroduce capital controls and only trade with people with comparable labour rights and wage levels, and this problem goes away. But ultimately, this change was driven by western economic interests, not China/other countries.

That being said, China played this hand very well (from a manufacturing/export perspective) but they didn't cause this. The US & European businesses did, because they could make more money/pollute with less issues this way.

To get free stuff you have to get free stuff. Why would you manufacture stuff, at great expense, when you're getting it for free? That makes no capitalistic sense.

Because ultimately humans are not homo econonimus, and many citizens of the west won't be able to get jobs in tech/finance/services. It's a societal issue rather than a capitalist issue.

We live in a capitalism. If something makes capitalistic sense it happens, otherwise it doesn't. Stuff will not be manufactured locally at great expense when it can instead be imported for free.

Which is why everyone in the US who wants an affordable EV is currently driving a Chinese car.

> We live in a capitalism

The absence of capital controls is a political choice that people appear to believe is just a law of the world.

If there were capital controls then local manufacturing makes more sense.

It would kill the US stock market so it's unlikely to happen, but personally I don't see how unrestricted capital and restricted labour is anything but a recipe for disaster (the consequences of which we've seen in the US and Europe since the financial crisis).

> A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in.

It's sad but true. Deep down, political thinking is influenced by tribal thinking, a rigid us versus them mentality.

This is, after all, how the "divide and conquer" method gets to be so effective. A house divided amongst itself and all that.

That’s a clever bothsiderism. However, these two tribes are not alike.

True, they're not alike, nor are the subtribes that are funneled into the two quasi-distinct groups.

But I think the methods by which they're being manipulated are quite alike, and ultimately forced to side with the current tribal figurehead simply because it's not the other tribe's figurehead, even if there are many, and legitimate, contentions.

>many, and legitimate, contentions.

When one chess player chooses to suddenly say that a pawn can move 3 spaces, and you insist on calling a ref to call out cheating, I don't think it's just "two tribes" anymore. You agreed on the rules of engagment at the beginning of the match and one side is objectively breaking them. Saying post haste that "well maybe a pawn should move 3 spaces" does not negate what you agreed upon.

That's why it's tiring to head the "but you're being manipulated" argument. Being manipulated by the very rules of your government is different from a bunch of war mongerers, billionaires, and corrupt politicians continually ignoring the rules and saying "no it's okay".

It is different, but it serves to elucidate that the rules we're living under aren't set in stone, they're only there because we, unlike the "no it's okay" bunch, can't or don't want to shirk them.

They operate under the "might is right" mentality, and by getting away with it prove in a sick and contorted way that the rules of social order aren't universal.

So you’re saying we should be more like them AND applying a bothsiderism. Maybe conservatives should just straighten up and fly right. In fact, what have they ever gotten right?

You're acting like Democrats are as deep in the cult of personality as Republicans are, yet outside of the most corporate liberal circles, Harris and Biden are heavily held in contempt by most of the Left.

No, Harris and Biden are not heavily held in contempt by most of the Left. I'm on the Left and voted for both of them. Indeed, as a Progressive, I was pleasantly surprised by Biden for his withdrawal from Afghanistan, student loan forgiveness, his canceling the Keystone Pipeline, etc.

> I was pleasantly surprised by Biden for his withdrawal from Afghanistan

You mean the one he postponed until months after the date Trump had already signed a deadline for?

If only Trump had 4 years to do anything other than kick the can down to road yet again like every prior president.

Biden took the political hit by doing the right thing and ending the war - No prior president did that.

Yawn. Trump wouldn’t even give the Biden transition team the terms of the agreement. Trump should have withdrawn his own withdrawal. He knew he was going to lose and like W created a minor debacle for his successor. Troll elsewhere.

Being pleasantly surprised by things that should be the bare minimum is not a sign you hold him in high regard. How do you feel about his attacks on Gaza?

Biden had a resupply pier constructed for Gaza when Israel attacked. He didn't attack Gaza at all. Troll elsewhere.

Biden sold more weapons to Israel than any president before him.

Well, you should hold them in contempt for their awful 2024 campaign, their staunch pro-Israel position in the face of internal polls begging them to at least acknowledge what was going on in Gaza. You should hold the Democratic establishment in contempt too for their continued efforts to keep the progressives down: Sanders, AOC, now Mamdani...

Harris in particular, led a weak and energy-less campaign, disappeared for 6 month after losing, didn't do or say anything about Trump's terrible start, then reappeared for her book promotion and pinned it all on progressives.

I'm not telling you to disregard whatever good policies has come out of Biden's term, I'm telling you that's the barest of bare minimums, and winning an election against an obviously retared manchild such as Trump shouldn't be that fucking hard. Yet they lost, having down nothing to counter-message his many obvious lies. This deserves scorn, nothing else.

I get what you mean, and agree that

> Harris and Biden are heavily held in contempt by most of the Left.

To be absolutely frank, I don't consider the Democrat party as "Left" in any (traditional?) sense at all, even though it may include Left and Left-leaning elements.

(But then again I don't consider Starmer's Labour as Left either, and one could argue that Labour is more Left than the Democrats.)

>To be absolutely frank, I don't consider the Democrat party as "Left" in any (traditional?) sense at all, even though it may include Left and Left-leaning elements.

The Democratic (not "Democrat", a member of that party is a Democrat, but the party is the "Democratic" Party), and calling it the "Democrat" party has its roots in Republicans deliberately misnaming the party as one of many attempts to devalue and dismiss the Democratic Party. If that's your goal, then please continue. Otherwise, it's like calling an Englishman a Limey or a Pommie just because you've heard others do so.

Otherwise, you're quite correct, in that the US Democratic Party is mostly a center-right party, with it's most progressive/left-wing elements being firmly center-left.

Things aren't perfect in a lot of countries, but what is happening in the US right now is absolutely unique. Things are careening out of control, and the political system seems completely incapable of getting a handle on it.

Most people I speak to in Canada, Europe and Central America seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

> Seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

It's because we live in the beginnings of a dual state:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/renee-good-ice-im...

Quoting the key point:

> The two components of the dual state are the normative state — the seemingly normal world that you and I inhabit, where, as Huq writes, the “ordinary legal system of rules, procedures and precedents” applies — and the prerogative state, which is marked (in Fraenkel’s words) by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”

> “The key here,” Huq writes, “is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state.”

> It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep. It makes you discount the warnings of others. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “things aren’t that bad. My life is pretty much what it was.”

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...

Excellent article, thanks.

It’s not that we’re not alarmed, it’s that voters are unable to do anything about it for the next several months (if even then).

They could peacefully protest

Protest only works if there’s someone to listen. The Republicans in Congress don’t care what their constituents want.

There have been peaceful protests all over the country for months. Have you not been paying attention?

And there will be more, and soon (tomorrow -- 20-Jan-2026 -- in fact)[0]

[0] https://www.freeameri.ca/

>Things aren't perfect in a lot of countries, but what is happening in the US right now is absolutely unique

It's not unique. If anything, it's inevitable regression to the mean. Entropy rises eventually and does this

> A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in.

"Feelings don't care about your facts." — not Ben Shapiro

Yeah I am not sure where I read the article recently, but there was a nice write-up about how all politics everywhere is turning into tribalism with little or no actual consideration for policy beyond ideology.

Not that it’s necessarily as bad everywhere, but time and time again I talk to people from various countries who say the current leader never could have been elected back when they were living there.

A lot of this, as in the case of Trump, seems like legitimate dissatisfaction that voters have which is funneled into finding alternatives to the people that are currently representing them, without deep thought about the outcomes of the policies the replacement is pushing for. In the case of Trump voters in particular people seem to very frequently be willing to overlook statements they would otherwise disagree with just because there are other statements that align with their thinking, or that seem like “change” that they are willing to support to see where it leads.

Funny how the Chinese general public is like so too. We call it 'accelerationism'. Trump... this ghoul is some .5c booster tho

Well when we look at rational economic policies take a look at top ~10 in terms of GDP, purchase parity adjusted, per capita:

   monaco, liechtenstein, singapore, luxembourg, ireland, macau, qatar, bermuda, norway, switzerland

Monarchy: monaco, liechtenstein, qatar

One party state w/ elections: singapore, macau

direct democracy: switzerland

represented democracy: Norway, Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg

Multi-party representative democracy is less than half. And none of the top 3. An interesting, but uncomfortable, fact. The people are not good at picking economically rational leaders in adversarial elections.

This is a perfect example of how to lie with statistics. All of these countries are either tax havens or oil-rich economies, apart from half of them having the population of a small city. The economic policy implemented by any of these countries cannot be implemented by a large economy with little or no natural resources, or would you recommend to Germany or Japan to just "HAVE" oil or open their banks as offshore foreign accounts?

> There are many natural economic reasons for GDP-per-capita to vary between jurisdictions (e.g. places rich in oil and gas tend to have high GDP-per-capita figures). However, it is increasingly being recognized that tax havens, or corporate tax havens, have distorted economic data which produces artificially high, or inflated, GDP-per-capita figures.

> ...

> In 2017, Ireland's economic data became so distorted by U.S. multinational tax avoidance strategies (see leprechaun economics), also known as BEPS actions, that Ireland effectively abandoned GDP (and GNP) statistics as credible measures of its economy, and created a replacement statistic called modified gross national income (or GNI*)

Source: Wikipedia on GDP per capita, PPP

I don't think your conclusion about governance is warranted, given the important other factors you aren't accounting for in your list (also presence of large oil & gas natural resources).

What are you saying then, that you wouldn't want to live in Monaco (assuming you had median Monaco income)? That you think large oil & gas resources is good (Venezuela)? I'm struggling to figure out which side you're on

I'm on the side of "looking at top 10 GDP per capita PPP countries is not good evidence for what type of government is better for a country's economy, at least not without far more analysis"

OK can you share more?

You called out per capita GDP as not a great metric but you didn't seem to deny that living in Monaco on a Monegasque income (for example, or any of these other monarchies) would be a bad thing, despite their type of government.

And you called out vast oil & gas resources as essential, or scale-tipping, for the goodness of a monarchy but I'm assuming you are against the US intervention in Venezuela for the purposes of securing such resources for American interest.

Did you have other factors in mind that you did not mention?

> OK can you share more?

No, I don't really care to. I feel like the two confounding factors I've given are sufficient to cast doubt in your attempted causal inference.

I'm also not interested in continuing with you since you don't actually seem interested in the truth, with things like "figuring out which side I'm on" and the absurd non-sequitur:

> but I'm assuming you are against the US intervention in Venezuela for the purposes of securing such resources for American interest.

like what the hell are you talking about.

Thinking there is a side to be on is evidence of the problem.

Those countries are rich in resources or tax-heavens with lax law. Most of them also have very few citizens (down to ~40k in some cases) which are usually also insanely rich. There is no rational economic policies at work here, except to accept all money and don't look at the bloodstains.

Also worth noticing the size of these countries. Mostly on the small/tiny side, besides Norway (an oil exporter) and Ireland (a corporate tax haven)

Perhaps making good economic decisions grows exponentially in difficulty with the population size, especially for “conventional” economies that do not have another cash cow.

I can’t help but notice the absence of a “how shitty is this country for the average person” dimension.

E.g. which of these countries has any kind of youth culture to speak of?

Ireland, but the worsening economic inequality is wearing away at the edges of it from what I could tell on my last visit.

If you're the outdoorsy type, Switzerland.

The reality is to you get way more benefit from attracting a multinational company to shift its revenue to you for tax purposes when you're a (very) small state. This strategy simply isn't available to you when you're the US (which already has major bases for all these companies, it's just not that big a deal compared with their population and govt budget)

I can only assyme that you meant something more akin to "absolute monarchy" but I still feel like pointing out that Norway, Bermuda, and Luxembourg are all monarchies. And of course out of all the monarchies listed Qatar is probably the closest to an absolute one.

And in the inverse Monaco is a multi-party representative (semi-)constitutional principality, so a monarchy as said.

So I don't necessarily disagree with your points, I'm mostly just adding thy these aspects of politics can and do coexist.

But a monarchy/autocracy hardly guarantees you success either. Isn't this Bill Gates and charter schools all over again?

Basically, the boring solution (democracy) gets you boring, middle-of-the-road results, while a monarchy is more likely to get you an outlier. The outlier might be at the top or the bottom of the pack, but because it's not democracy any more you don't have any say, so tough toenails if it's the wrong one.

There's no connection with monarchy at all - the only absolute monarchy is Qatar and we know their money comes from a lot of oil per capita. The other countries all have legislatures involving multiparty democracy with or without quirks/flaws (Switzerland has referenda, the microstates still give their constitutional monarch significant executive powers, Singapore's major party has completely dominated since the 1960s). The more obvious thing they have in common is low populations [relative to resources]

I agree that the top of the list is clearly small-population edge cases, but one could also make an argument that strong, consistent economic leadership yields more coordination and reduces waste and thrash in the market (boom/bust cycles, etc).

All of it still comes down to the competency of that leadership though.

Liechtenstein is as much a monarchy as Britain is. It probably falls more in the direct democracy bucket. Also, the GDP per capita figures for these tiny countries are very missleading because you can have a situation where more than half the work force is commuting into the country every day for work. They increase the GDP but don't count in the capita part.

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