Elitocracy is more unstable then democracy. Don't restrict voting based on literacy

Although it sounds fancy (elitist), elitocracy is much more unstable than democracy, as a form of government. 

The main reasons for which we support democracy: 

• more equitable distribution of wealth, privileges and justice; 
• more stable on the long term (less prone to atrocities or war).

But a lot of intellectuals believe that elites would make a better government, and would take better decisions.

Some elitists believe that government should be formed directly from elites (usually intellectual elites). 

Some moderates believe that only elites should have the right to vote. 

Some even more moderates want minimum thresholds for voter rights, e.g. literacy tests.

I should note, there are studies that show that intelligent people are not necessarily better leaders. A good leader has a mix of social skills (EQ), IQ, network, and even compassion.

But the bigger problem is that all forms of elitocracy are easier to abuse.

Elitocracy tends to turn into oligarchy (which almost always then becomes a dictatorship). 

Because the question is: who decides who has the right to vote? 

And this question becomes: how do we make sure "our people" have the right to vote? 

Where “our people” means our relatives, our children, our friends, those with the same background, who live on our street, went to the same schools, work with us, invest in the same companies, our investors, suppliers and clients.

And then, it's a simple recipe to allow only "our people"  to vote: you use your initial political majority to pass favorable laws (for large groups), and apply exceptions (for small groups).

And your majority becomes stronger and stronger, and you eliminate more and more voters from participating.

In the past, they used voter registration based on property ownership. This sounds obsolete, so we'll just skip it.

But a significant number of smart people want to implement voter registration by literacy. Which might sound reasonable, right? 

Well, first of all, you just excluded poor and isolated communities from voting. Which in democracies is typically considered discrimination. 

Then, you need to apply exceptions. So you apply criteria such as proof of birth, or proof of residence, and at the same time, you make it much more difficult for certain categories to register, or obtain papers. 

And then, you apply even stronger exceptions. So you can implement grandfather laws.

So, although it sounds fancy (elitist), elitocracy is much more unstable than democracy. 

It tends to be abused, becomes oligarchy, and then autocracy.

Belief in God is nothing like belief in science

Many believers think that believing in a god or a divine force is the same as believing in a scientific theory.

Obviously, this is a fallacy - a clever but misleading play on words. Belief in a scientific theory has absolutely nothing to do with belief in a deity. In fact, even using the word “belief” in a scientific context is inaccurate.

I suspect this is a way for some believers to logically justify their faith - by playing with language and framing things in a way that equates science with belief.

On the opposite extreme, equally unfounded, are those who claim they can prove the existence of a god or the supernatural.

Personally, I find these attempts - both to equate faith with science and to “prove” faith - unnecessary. Believers should embrace the reality that their faith has nothing to do with science, that it isn’t proven, and that it doesn’t need to be.

After all, it’s easy to “believe” when you have proof. At that point, it’s no longer belief - you simply know. The real challenge is to have faith without guarantees or evidence.

And perhaps that’s exactly what believers should take pride in.

Notes

1. In science, the word "belief" is rarely suitable. We prefer hypothesis, model, "we propose".

2. We all know that science is not absolute. Scepticism is built-in. There is no absolute scientific truth. All scientific theories are evolving. Some theories are proven simply wrong. Some evolve into better theories.

The concept of falsifiability is worth mentioning. Religious or supernatural belief is not falsifiable.

3. Science produces provisional, evidence-based truths.

Some theories are extremely stable. Some not.

4. So here's the interesting question, it's the meta: what is truth in science?

The theory that I particularly love is utilitarian/pragmatic. It is very suitable in engineering, and in social sciences (management, sociology), but also applicable in all sciences.

"A theory is true if it works."

5. Mathematics is probably the weirdest science, btw. It is at the same time very practical, and also very abstract, both in language and concepts. It is full of paradoxes - it even negates itself (it proves that it cannot be complete, it is limited by design - Gödel's incompleteness theorems). 

And mathematics also works: we use it exceptionally well to cook food, to build houses, generate fake photos, discuss on Facebook, and to put people on the moon. 

7. So no, we don't "believe" in science, or scientific theories. We build it, we discover it, we invent it, we demonstrate and prove it, we challenge and evolve it, we apply it in practice.

8. No matter what theory of science we use, the idea that we "believe" in a scientific theory is, in principle, inappropriate.

The EU Inc. new type of company: Expectations vs. Reality

REALITY CHECK. The new EU Inc. type of company is a great initiative, but you will STILL need to apply all the local, national and regional reporting, taxes and authorisations, including taxes at all levels, employment taxes, GDPR, etc etc etc, and all other regulations that all administrations and the EU will continue to invent and enforce. 

These initiatives are VERY political and sound nice, but the reality is that there are a lot of things yet to be done.

"Today, the European Commission presented its proposal for EU Inc., a new single set of corporate rules, building the cornerstone and starting point for the EU's 28th regime. EU Inc. is an optional, digital-by-default European corporate framework. It will make it easier for businesses to start, operate and grow across the EU – incentivising them to stay in Europe, and encourage those who once looked elsewhere to return." 

The biggest innovation of the EU Inc. initiative is the definition and facilities for innovative startups and scale-ups.

But opening a new company was anyway the easiest thing to do in a lot of countries (with a few exceptions).

Then, the operation of the company remains pretty much the same as today. All the local, regional and national taxes, rules and regulations remain applicable.

AS AN EXAMPLE,

If you are a French citizen, with Romanian fiscal residency, with a personal property in Belgium, and own a company in Bulgaria, with customers in Poland and employees in Greece, you will pay:

* Tax on personal property (and rent) in Belgium.

* Profit tax in Bulgaria (depending on the type of business, also possibly in Poland - depending on local/national regulations and type of service. Most national fiscal authorities tax you depending on where you earned your profit, or effectively operate, not necessarily on the place of incorporation).

* Tax on income from dividends: in Romania.

* VAT in all countries where the company operates, mostly Bulgaria, but maybe also Poland (depending on the delivery location, type of product/service, and type of clients, e.g. if the client is registered for VAT purposes or not)

* Employee and employment taxes in Greece (and most probably also something in Bulgaria).

I am not joking.

EU creates regulations that kill European businesses and innovation, and then makes reports and recommendations to ease the regulations (such as the Draghi report, or all recent declarations of Mme Leyen, or of most politicians).

For instance, one of the biggest barriers for cross-national businesses are the banking and financial regulations, imposed mostly by the EU and ECB. Opening a new bank account for a new business is probably THE MOST DIFFICULT operation in most European countries.

Another barrier to startups is the GDPR. And the AI Act will be hitting us soon.

IN CONCLUSION, these initiatives are VERY political and sound nice, but the reality is that there are a lot of things yet to be done. 

The press release is here.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_614

Inflation is a proven method to tax the poor and middle-class.

Inflation is an ancient-proven method to tax the poor and middle-class.

Inflation was not invented in 1971, when Richard Nixon formally abandoned the gold standard. The UK had already stopped internal convertibility in 1931, US in 1933.

Gold and silver were theoretically also “convertible” during the hyperinflation of the 3rd-century crisis of the Roman Empire, or in Ptolemaic Egypt. 

The inflation of 16th-century imperial Spain had nothing to do with convertibility. 

Governments have generated inflation both with and without gold and silver.

Of course, it’s remarkable that nobody understands what inflation actually is. 

Inflation is a hidden tax on the entire money supply, including bank deposits.

Plus a reduction of domestic production costs, to increase competitiveness in foreign markets in the short term. 

It’s remarkable what governments do with this. And it’s remarkable that almost no one understands it.

Inflation is a massive, hidden tax.

AI is MAGIC in procurement. Or is it?

AI is MAGIC. Or is it?

At least, that's what everyone seems to believe right now.

✨ I've been building AI into Hermix for years. Using it daily. Testing it across dozens of real procurement scenarios with real companies. And I can tell you: Arthur C. Clarke had it right. Sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic.

The problem is when people stop there.

Because AI is also not magic. And in public procurement, confusing the two is expensive.

✔️ Here's what I've actually seen work. GPT models reading 300-page tender documents and producing structured summaries in minutes. Machine learning cleaning up years of fragmented procurement data across 250,000+ European authorities. AI Chat answering "which experts are required?" or "what's the minimum turnover?" directly from the document, in seconds. GraphRAG and Deep Reasoning handling the complex multi-hop analysis that standard models get wrong. SearchGPT building buyer profiles that would take a junior analyst two days to assemble manually.

This is real. The numbers back it up. 87% reduction in market research time. 75% reduction in tender analysis time. 60% less time writing proposals. Our users at Capgemini, Accenture, Unisys, Fujitsu, and 50+ other companies work this way every day.

❌ But here's what I've also seen fail.

Relying on AI to generating "original" ideas. AI missing cultural, technical or commercial subtext - that changes the entire meaning of evaluation criteria. Non-supervised AI producing output confident enough to submit and wrong enough to lose a bid. These failures are real too. And they happen more often when teams treat AI as a black box rather than a tool that requires judgment and supervision. Then comes disillusionment.

AI in procurement compresses effort dramatically. It does not replace strategic thinking.

The companies winning consistently in public sector are not the ones using the most AI. They are the ones using AI for the right tasks, at the right stages, with human judgment at the decision points that matter.

Finding the right tenders. Understanding buyers before the RFP drops. Qualifying opportunities with real competitive data. Reducing the manual burden of documentation. These are the jobs AI does well.

Deciding whether to bid. Understanding what the buyer actually wants versus what they wrote. Building a differentiated technical approach. These remain human work.

❓ There is also a question worth sitting with. If AI writes the procurement. Writes the proposal. Evaluates the submission. What exactly are we measuring? I don't have a clean answer. But I think it matters that we're asking it.

I've written a longer piece on this. What works, what doesn't, the specific techniques we use at Hermix (GraphRAG, Deep Reasoning, SearchGPT, citation support), and the adoption barriers nobody talks about honestly.

https://hermix.com/ai-is-magic-or-is-it/