Stidmatt

If you look at the Russian population pyramid, there are several important places to remember which are clear in this population pyramid as I have clearly marked.

Russia didn’t have to have its current baby bust. If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine and focused on upskilling Russians, growing their domestic economy, and improving the quality of life for average Russians they would have continued to grow. But Vladimir Putin made a massive miscalculation when he invaded Ukraine.

source: tradingeconomics.com

Following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine the Russian economy went in a 3 year decline, at exactly the same point when the Russian economy declined. The Russian economy started to grow finally in 2018, and they had 2 years of growth until the COVID epidemic in 2020, followed by a massive recovery in 2021.

But this year Russia is on track to see its economy decline, according to internal sources.

source: tradingeconomics.com

Putin has led Russia into a depression with his war in Ukraine.

There are only a few ways this can end.

1. The Russian people finally get fed up with their economy having regular severe recessions which correspond almost perfectly to Putin’s foreign invasions. There is a revolution and he is replaced with a democracy.
2. Enough soldiers die in Ukraine that the baby bust becomes even more severe and it causes further economic hardship that a revolution comes in the next 10 years.
3. Putin is replaced by another oligarch, but this won’t end the sanctions from the West, and there will be a revolution of the people.
4. Russia continues to stagnate for the foreseeable future, with millions of young men killed by vodka, and their people will continue to be poor.

If you don’t think Russians will revolt in the face of economic hardship… you really need to learn about Russian history.

Putin had one job. If he had just kept Russia to itself, kept trading with other countries, and developed local industry and developed Russian brands, Russia could have been an emerging tech power. Russia has a literacy rate of 99.7%, and 54% of Russians have a tertiary degree, the highest in the world, on par with only Canada, 10% higher than the United States. By these metrics, Russia should be a tech super power with global brands based in their country.

But the government of Russia has continuously decided that invading foreign powers is more important than building domestic companies. They have prioritized the coddling of local oligarchs who make shoddy off-brand copies of foreign countries. Their government have decided that their only strategy is to dominate other countries and kill people instead of building up the Russian people. It’s an absolute tragedy.

If Russia were to be able to develop in a way which developed their economy and start to deal with their horrible vodka addiction which is literally killing their people, it would become a major power which could trade with other countries instead of seeing the domination and enslavement of people as their only way forward. But the Russian government is stupid and unable to learn this.

So the Russian people will continue to suffer until they stop being led by extreme racist, homophobic leaders who destroy their economy and their people.

So, for the people of Russia, you have a choice between being a poor people with laws which persecute against LGBT people and are outcasts from the rest of the world, or being a country fully integrated with the rest of the world with a vibrant economy.

It’s your choice.

Going from smallest to largest…

We’ll use the Capitol Building of the United States of America as our reference point, because a large percentage of Americans have visited it at least once in their lives, and if you haven’t, you need to.

LEVEL 0: Private cars

First of all, we will always have cars. 20% of Americans live in rural areas, and sometimes a car really is the only way to get around. Cars create traffic and take a lot of room to store in cities. If they use an internal combustion engine they are noisy at any speed and always polluting. Cities should be designed in ways that make car usage the least convenient way to travel, and frankly unnecessary as much as possible. Neighborhoods should be built in ways that allow people to live, work, play, and shop, within a 1-mile radius of their home as much as possible. This builds community, and also encourages healthy activities like walking, which is the best form of transit. Car usage is a necessary evil for some trips and should be generally discouraged by making car trips unnecessary.

LEVEL 1: Walking

The best way to travel is walking. Walking takes practically no space, it is healthy, and it’s better than free because of its health benefits. You should do it. Cities should be built to encourage walking, and it should be the obvious and best way to get around as much as possible in as many places as possible. Walking is great for trips under 2 miles.

Example route:

Walking from the US Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial is a reasonable walk.

LEVEL 2: Biking

Biking is fantastic. Practically no space is needed in order to store a bike, they don’t pollute, they are extremely quiet, and they are reasonably fast. When I bike around my city I can sometimes go up to 50 KM/h anyways, so biking is frequently just as fast as driving. Biking also can be just plain fun. For trips of up to 40 KM bikes really should be the preferred method of travel. Our cities need to be designed so that for every arterial there should be a convenient path that can serve bikes and pedestrians so they can safely travel around the city. This eliminates congestion, saves space in the city which doesn’t need to be used for parking, and helps generate livable, walkable cities.

Example route:

Anywhere in the District of Columbia or Arlington.

LEVEL 3: Buses

Buses are the best form of travel for routes that are either low demand or extremely local. Frequency, price, and speed all impact ridership. Running buses on local routes is their best use case. Buses start to fall apart when the route is in very high demand and go a longer distance. Bus lanes cost about the same amount to build as tracks, for lower speeds, less capacity, and less frequency. They should always be avoided. When buses are frequently backing up in the downtown of your city (Seattle)… your system is failing, and it’s time to move to level 4.

Example route:

Capitol building to Mount Vernon, relatively low demand, and too far to reasonably bike. Take the blue line first, and then take the bus the rest of the way.

LEVEL 4: Local trains

Local trains are critical to the infrastructure of any city greater than 500,000 people. Trains are best used on high-demand, medium to long-distance routes. Local trains should provide easy, fast, frequent, and high-capacity access to all large areas of the city. Buses will bring people from the train stations to their local neighborhoods. Working together, buses and trains create a powerful system that efficiently moves people around their city. Local trains focus on the entire metropolitan region.

Example routes from our capitol building:

• Dulles international airport
• Downtown Baltimore

LEVEL 5: Regional/high-speed rail

You will have trains which bring people to other cities around your city. There will be limited stops inside of a metropolitan area, and those stops will be transit hubs for local rail (in big cities) or bus terminals (in medium-sized cities with fewer than a million people). Regional rail connects both large and small cities. Rail works best for distances under 1000 km.

High-speed rail should be built when the capacity of the line requires lots of trains to be moving in order to fulfill demand. These are easy to spot because there is a lot of competition for flights on these routes. The faster the train, the longer the distance can be served until flights become more time economical. Estimate that each trip takes 2 additional hours when sitting for a plane compared to a train when a high-speed rail line should already be around 500 km away by the time the plane takes off.

When initially building regional rail (which is where the US is today) it makes sense to focus originally on the high-demand routes, but in the long run, it should be connecting the whole country.

Example routes from the capitol building:

• Boston
• New York
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Richmond
• Charlotte
• Atlanta
• Chicago

LEVEL 6: Flying

Flying will always be part of our system. It should be limited to overseas flights and extreme coast-to-coast routes. Flying should be discouraged as much as possible since it is more expensive, carries fewer people compared to a train per vehicle, and is worse for the environment.

Example routes:

• Seattle
• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Denver
• Miami

The Network effect

There are several critical parts of any transit system. Speed, fares, and delays impact ridership because there will always be competition from cars and airlines. But by building a strong network, we can end up with a solid system that works as a single organism.

Local governments have the responsibility to set up a transit network that works for them. Overcrowding will be minimized. A good city is where the wealthy use transit. Once people arrive in your city, there needs to be an easy way to move around it without using a car.

But local governments can only do so much. How do you get to your main city? After I move to North Carolina this month, how am I going to visit Washington, DC? This is where having great regional rail is critical to a functioning system. People are more likely to use transit after they reach their destinations if it was easy to get there using transit in the first place.

State governments can only do so much as well. California is building HSR, and someday it will be completed. But California is unusual in terms of how many people it has, and how it has two major cities just the right distance away to make a highly valuable high-speed rail route. Almost every other high-quality route (outside of Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio) requires interstate cooperation in order to be feasible.

The Federal government has a critical role to play in ensuring our infrastructure serves both freight and passenger mobility. Federal money is and should continue to be used to improve local transit links. Federal money can be used to densify and improve neighborhoods, but just densifying neighborhoods and making them walkable isn’t enough. We also need to look at it in a holistic fashion, and this means we must build good transit so moving around cities is convenient, fast, affordable, safe, and environmentally friendly. This needs to be a national priority. We cannot have good local neighborhoods without good transit, because without good transit, everyone will still have a car, and that jams our cities up with unnecessary cars, making densification difficult. In order to build the best transit system, we need to have neighborhoods that are built in a way that makes it easy to serve them to get around their cities. It needs to be easy for people to get to their closest bus stop in order to increase ridership.

Americans love false choices, it seems to be a national sport.

We can have both walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and good transit at every level, or we can have neither.

That is our choice.

The presidency of Donald Trump was one of the worst America ever had. Even though he had few legislative accomplishments, America won’t be safe until the courts are unstacked from what he did.

Donald Trump didn’t even win the popular vote, but reduced turnout and a lack of campaigning in three states gave him a victory which came down to fewer than 100,000 votes. If more people who had voted for Obama had simply voted for Clinton in 2016 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump could have become president.

The courts didn’t have to become stacked. That was not inevitable. It became stacked because Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell denied President Obama his court pick after Antonin Scalia died.

Mitch McConnell became senate majority leader despite the Democrats winning the popular vote for the Senate in 2012 and 2014, but due to how the votes were spread out they didn’t win the Senate.

A major part of how the Republicans were able to win was due to voter discrimination being passed in many states around the country. This was due to Republicans picking up a large number of governorships in 2010.

The reason why Republicans did so well in 2010 was the DNC under Tim Kaine’s leadership did not invest in a large number of swing states. This is the core reason which directly led to Trump being elected. The democrats decided local areas were mostly on their own, while republicans supported local party organizations. That mismatch led to reduced democratic turnout and a victory for the GOP.

The abandonment of the 50-state strategy in 2010 is the reason why Donald Trump became President.

On the surface, to someone who doesn’t understand macroeconomics, sending surplus money back to taxpayers sounds like a great idea. It sounds like a benefit to taxpayers to give them relief and helps people out. Right?

But in reality, it is not a good policy.

This creates a pro-cyclical fiscal policy which means people pay more taxes and get fewer services during recessions, as well as pay a lower tax rate and get more services during times of economic growth. During times of economic growth, this will exacerbate inflation, and create significantly higher growth rates during boom times.

During recessions, however, this means state governments have to rely on federal government spending in order to keep their economies afloat, and if the federal government is someday unwilling to stabilize the economy by not subscribing to Keynesian economics, this will exacerbate recessions.

There are decent arguments for using rainy day funds to help pull people out of poverty during times of significant economic growth, but the more prudent answer would be to save that money so that states have money to use during times of recession to help the economy keep an even keel.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/08/25/states-have-historic-amounts-of-leftover-cash

• Vaccine mandates everywhere we can, no vaccine, no fly.
• If someone forges a vaccine card, that’s a forgery of a government document. That’s a felony. Prosecute this crime, take it seriously.
• No insurance coverage if you are unvaccinated and catch COVID. Let’s use economics here for once.
• Mask mandates, let’s nip this virus in the butt.

We need to take care of this virus. This is serious. It’s costing us too many lives. Let’s eliminate it, and the sooner we eliminate it, the sooner we can go back to our lives as they were in 2015.

But pretending a problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. We have wishful thinking as federal policy, and I’m sick of it.

Despite all of these rollbacks with COVID because people are tired of them, the NSA still peruses our communications without a warrant, there are still body scans at airports, and many other things which are relatively new and have dubious if any evidence that they actually protect lives. But here with COVID we had rules which actually DO save real people’s lives today, far more than any rule passed in the first term of George Bush’s presidency has saved over the last 20 years. I highly doubt the PATRIOT ACT has saved over 1,000,000 lives, but that’s what we are looking at in terms of the number of people who have died from COVID.

People are going to die from this decision, and that’s unethical.

Here’s a useful calculator which you can use to understand how COVID policies impact public health: https://www.microcovid.org

I just wrote a post examining which countries are democratic enough that we should seriously consider extending visa-free travel to them. I identified 27 different countries where there is no good reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to travel to the US and Canada without a visa, and I think we need to update our visa policy to reflect the reality of the modern world.

There are some countries that came close to joining my list but have some issues which left them off. Here are the honorable mentions which if things go well should be democratic enough for visa-free access to North America by the end of the decade. Senegal and Malaysia scored high enough on the three indicators they performed well on that they only missed one metric (and by a significant margin) of the indicators I tested. 7 other countries performed well on half of the indicators I tested while failing on two of them, those countries are Georgia, Tunisia, Montenegro, Peru, Armenia, Dominican Republic, and India.

So for these 9 countries which almost get to the qualifications of being very democratic, having low corruption, and a lot of freedom, what barriers are in the way?

Armenia

Armenia scores poorly on Freedom in the World and the Democracy Index.

The functioning of Government, Political Culture, and Civil Liberties are components of the Democracy Index which need to be improved.

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic scores poorly on Corruption Perceptions and Freedom in the World.

The functioning of Government and Political Culture are the two main components of the Democracy Index which need to be improved.

Georgia

Georgia scores poorly on Freedom in the World and the Democracy Index. One of the major issues in Georgia is the abuse of prisoners. There are also cases of police attacking the free press.

The functioning of Government and Political Culture are the two main components of the Democracy Index which need to be improved. Voter intimidation is a serious problem among other barriers to a free and fair election. The surveillance of journalists needs to end. Georgia would benefit from implementing jury trials to help counteract corruption in the judiciary.

India

India scores poorly on corruption and press freedom. Bribery runs rampant, and money that is supposed to help people is stolen by corrupt officials. Corruption is an endemic problem that is going to take years to fix.

Political Culture and Civil Liberties need to be improved. Issues of intimidation of professors, demonstrators, and the limitation of strikes are worrying trends.

Malaysia

Malaysia scores poorly on the Freedom in the World Index. Part of this is probably due to Sharia Law being enshrined in the constitution.

Political Culture and Civil Liberties need to be improved.

The most obvious fix for Malaysia’s issues is ending Sharia law. They need to improve the freedom of the press, particularly regarding legal constraints. The monarch needs to no longer be allowed to suspend parliament. Freedom of religion is non-existent.

Despite these barriers, Malaysia scores well on other indexes.

Montenegro

Montenegro scores poorly on Freedom in the World and the Democracy Index. Djukanovic abused his power as President. he has been removed from power and hopefully corruption will decrease over time, and Dukanovic will be democratically removed from office soon.

The Political Culture of Montenegro is abysmal. They need new pro-Western leadership to end a culture of corruption.

Peru

Peru scores poorly in the Democracy Index and the Corruption Perceptions Index. Nonetheless, it scores high on social freedom and has a high growth rate. There are serious issues with public officials taking bribes, which will be a barrier to visa-free travel.

The political culture of Peru is abysmal. They need increased transparency in government contracts, and other legal tools to hold politicians accountable.

Senegal

Senegal has an average Democracy Score. Homosexuality is illegal in Senegal, and from this, we can see there are serious human rights violations. They have an anti-corruption office who are appointed by the President.

Political participation in Senegal is low. There are barriers to freedom of assembly, the judiciary is not independent, and major barriers exist in the justice system. These hold Senegal back, and hopefully, there can be reforms in these two major areas. Freedom House

Tunisia

Tunisia scores poorly on Freedom in the World and the Democracy Index.

Tunisia scores poorly on the functioning of government. Their president suspended parliament last year and consolidated power. Tunisia would benefit from a separation of powers in its federal government.

These barriers these 9 countries face are not unique to these countries. The establishment of a transparent open government, a fair judiciary, and a secular state can be a real challenge, but through reforms and hard work, I believe these 9 countries are the most promising in the world to emerge as functioning democracies in the next 10 years.

All of these changes have to come from the ground up in these countries by the people. Foreign experts can help advise, but ultimately, democracy can only come from within.

References:

Freedom in the World 2022

Democracy Index

Corruption Perceptions Index

Press Freedom Index