HumilityTruth

@Caeser30609049 @haugejostein Forget the labels, you rightly point out they are subject to interpretation. Norway can afford a lot more free-stuff per person because they have a lot more natural-resources per person.

@HumilityTruth @haugejostein Norway is not a socialist country. It's a capitalist democratic one. Its corrupt politicians like Waltz & Newson that we don't have better programs to serve only those who truly need help. They are corrup & inept.

The things rich people in the US spend a huge chunk of their money on — good healthcare, education for their kids, and more leisure time — are provided free of charge in Norway.

@Marxist_Pony @Sharkeys_ghost @VoCommunism Greater equity means curtailing freedom, robbing Peter to pay Paul. So why would Peter not say, I will be just like Paul, then I can just live on what is stolen from others. And then society collapses into tyranny and poverty. But everyone gets to be equal.

@HumilityTruth @Sharkeys_ghost @VoCommunism I want to see greater equity in society for all. The areas that communist societies do well in, are the areas we lack in.

Communism has always been and will always be incompatible with liberty, prosperity, and the dignity of life.

@bubblinflava @JohnCleese What are you referring to? Does Islam not call for these things? I am not saying they are right or wrong, just or unjust. But Britain does need to be clear on what it is choosing.

@HumilityTruth @JohnCleese I don’t think you understand what you’ve read

Labour's blatant favouritism of Islam is a disservice to all the other religions that are assimilating well with British traditions Much better than the Muslims, of course

@OliDugmore @RoryStewartUK Rory, Your definition of proof seems to be: believing xxx makes me feel good, therefore it is true.

Rory Stewart tells me that the Brexit right and far right have been proven “catastrophically wrong” about Brexit, Trump, and immigration. “But their brilliant trick is to say the liberal centre has no judgement.”

@Sreehari_1992 @Handre ... but they don't have an open door immigration policy, a person must contribute somehow to get residency, and once there a person must pay their own way. Private health insurance, private education for children, and of course no welfare for immigrants.

@Sreehari_1992 @Handre Which nation did you have in mind? It is very unlikely that nation could afford to provide the public services needed to grow its population on a very low, almost zero tax rate. Look around the world, such nations don't exist. The UAE might be an example of low tax...

Tax havens exist because capital flows where governments treat it best, and no amount of OECD finger-wagging changes this iron law of economics. When Switzerland offers bank secrecy and low corporate rates, when Singapore creates business-friendly regulatory environments, when Dubai builds free trade zones with minimal taxation—they're not "cheating" the global system. They're competing for capital the same way Walmart competes for customers. The difference? Politicians hate admitting their high-tax jurisdictions face real competition. Look at the numbers. Corporate inversions cost the US Treasury billions annually as companies relocate to Ireland's 12.5% corporate rate versus America's federal rate of 21% (plus state taxes). Individual wealthy Americans renounced citizenship in record numbers—5,411 in 2016 alone—rather than face worldwide taxation on income they never earned in America. These aren't abstract policy debates. Real people make real decisions with real money. The reaction tells you everything. Instead of competing by lowering rates and reducing regulatory burden, high-tax nations coordinate through the OECD to establish global minimum tax rates. They lobby for "information sharing agreements" that eliminate financial privacy. They brand tax competition as "harmful" and "unfair"—the same language failing businesses use when efficient competitors threaten their market share. Capital mobility creates the only meaningful constraint on government power that politicians actually fear. You can vote them out of office, but they know most people won't relocate over tax policy. When your capital can move to competing jurisdictions overnight, suddenly those bloated budgets and redistributive schemes face real market discipline.

@FinnieRoss @ArchRose90 @JohnCleese @waitrose That does not make it okay to sack a person after 17 years.

@ArchRose90 @JohnCleese @waitrose Seems he was sacked for not following instructions by Waitrose to not approach shoplifters. They have that instruction in place to protect its staff. They have had staff hospitalised previously. It was pretty easy to get that info on the internet.

This is Walker Smith. After dedicating 17 years to Waitrose, he was recently dismissed. The reason? For attempting to stop a shoplifter nicking Easter eggs. Yes you read that right. He should be applauded, not sacked. Shameful @waitrose. Re-employ Walker Smith!

@s8mb Truly dreadful, hive pods for assimilation into the Borg. I would guess there are serious unacknowledged negative psychological effects for people living in these hives.

The new build estates on the outskirts of Cambridge are truly shocking. Is it any wonder that people there hate the thought of expanding the city when this is what they can expect will be built?

@Dykeocletian Most young people desperately want a future. The future is looking very bleak for them, and turning Green, although seductive, will not make it better. Perhaps Polanski can smile warmly, and dance on a street corner, but he wont create security, opportunity or societal harmony

Interesting angle for Restore to take towards young people, but they're going to run into the minor issue of young people near-universally despising their politics, and Lowe's personal brand being entirely designed to appeal to pensioners.

@Caeser30609049 @haugejostein The only solution is for you to move there. Norway's natural wealth per capita far exceeds the USA. Of course, they probably also don't have the level of fraud that the US has. Thanks to champagne socialists such as Tim Walz and Gavin Newsome.

@haugejostein Norway delivers quality services they have very little corruption, run very well managed & efficient programs with little to no fraud, waste & abuse. We get poor service, majority children failing to reach grade level, overpriced Healthcare, billions lost to fraud, waste & abuse.

@geezpeaceu @RupertLowe10 Gotta respect Rupert's forthright speaking. When obvious sincerity is allied with good heart, many will follow.

@HumilityTruth @RupertLowe10 Thats probably the point though. Why care what other say. He probably knows fine well the demographics. But has zero care what others think.

Restore Britain is being attacked for a lack of ‘diversity’ at our local branch meetings. I really cannot put in words how little I care.

@haugejostein Oh come on, it was basically all because of bountiful natural resources. Norway could almost not have gone wrong. Culture mattered too, it could have all been squandered away by the ruling elite. You have Protestant Christian values to thank for that.

It’s a myth that the state doesn’t create wealth. While a thriving private sector was important, Norway became rich through state ownership in strategic sectors, strong public education, coordinated wage bargaining, universal healthcare, and productive tax rates.

@haugejostein Well yes, free stuff from Norway's wonderful endowment of hydrocarbons.

@haugejostein Quality of Life is subjective. It all depends who you are, what you are looking for, what your individual circumstances are. BTW, given Norway's extremely favorable natural resources to population ratio, we might expect it to have particularly good QoL.

I’d probably go for the OECD Better Life Index for the most detailed comparison. Under equal weighting across all well-being topics, Norway ranks 1st while the US ranks 10th.

I have indeed been to Norway — I am Norwegian and lived there for 23 years before moving abroad. I have also lived in the US. And I can tell you that the quality of life is *far* better in Norway than in the US. Any quality of life index would tell you the same.

@haugejostein You are using the right buzzwords I suppose, to conform to the academic dogma of your day. But don't you care that one day you will look back at your legacy and ask 'why didn't I try to develop something genuinely insightful'.

I'm excited to share this paper we've just published on the new age of economic nationalism. In the paper, we analyse the convergence of industrial policy and national security in three global superpowers: the US, China, and the EU. The US has adopted a hawkish stance with extensive trade policies and subsidies. China has pursued ambitious growth across a range of sectors through long-term planning and strong government control. The EU has balanced autonomy with trade openness and somewhat less state intervention. The convergence of industrial policy and national security in these three regions has triggered a fundamental shift in the world economy towards greater economic nationalism. This new economic nationalism reshapes the world economy in ways that may disadvantage less powerful nations. However, “connector” countries in the Global South are benefiting by forging strategic ties with several superpowers. Additionally, the rise of China gives hope for South-South development cooperation that upends existing imperial arrangements often characterised by North-South relations.

@elonmusk This is a depiction of beauty without narrative. It is purely sensory, therefore does not connect or inspire. I cannot project myself into the image, I cannot emotionally resonate with the underlying promise. AI still has not achieved the ability to connect with us deeply.

The new Imagine model will be even more beautiful

@JohnCleese @RupertLowe10 I am hoping under a Restore government we can go after officers such as these and remove them from the police. This officer in particular should be arrested for causing offense to many, many British people-of-faith.

What a load of old rubbish

@TheRealJamieKay Appreciate your posts. I guess to understand 'the far right' you need to understand it is not one single blob, it is a lot of different people who basically worry about a future in which Britain is governed by the kind of people that all these immigrants have been running from.

Far-right rhetoric: ‘They’re taking over.’ Reality: Britain thrives because of immigration, culture, and people from everywhere building it together. The real threat isn’t migrants - it’s the division being sown by Reform and their extremists.

@BillAckman @X The moral of these events: - be very careful what you say in the corporate world (it is the 2020s so you'd think a young man would have more sense) - don't ever think you can outsource 'core' and not maintain direct periodic oversight (meeting a CEO once a year is never enough)

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?