I don’t disagree, what I am saying is Poland is not unique. There are 200 countries in this world and only a handful of those have a robust and reasonable system of economic and political management that you seem to be using as an aspirational benchmark. In the rest of the world there is massive economic mismanagement, corruption and misery. Actually relative to the WHOLE world Poland is not that bad.

In my opinion though the countries that are doing well in terms of standard of living have gotten to this point with some massive boosts from the exploitation of it’s colonies and subservant countries, but that’s another topic…

I am sorry I disagree. For me there is a significant difference between cultures which are toxic and these which are less toxic. I count Polish culture as one of the most toxic together with some conservative Islamic cultures. There is no single factor what makes life truly miserable even if you are relatively rich. It is the combination of multiple issues.

Would any normal Western society quietly accept 20% unemployment rate not because of any external factor but just because the Central Bank has estimated NAIRU to be 14% and the dizinflation policy was implemented a bit too vigorously?

Has anyone ever questioned there the b…t economic theory which led prof Balcerowicz to strangle the economy and the society (supposedly in order to get ready to join the EU) and push it into the loving arms of the Catholic Church? Only extreme Marxists dared to criticise Balcerowicz – but Marxism is virtually extinct so they didn’t get any traction.

If you do really care about the Poles (I probably don’t care enough and don’t have time) I may ask kindly you to do one very important thing. Translate a few posts from Steve’s blog into Polish and also add a few more posts from prof Mitchell’s Chartalist blog – for example the explanation of the vertical flows and role of the budget deficits.

These ideas are virtually non-existent in the Polish language space. Pretty much all the economics taught is neoclassical. People there (circa 37 mln minus migrants) have no slightest idea that the theories used to manage the economy are not based on sound science but they are just political tools implanted there by the neoliberals during the struggle to get rid of the communism.

every country has a story, every country has good and bad, we are all human beings and are all subject to the same strengths and weaknesses. If anything the Poles are a little prone to dramatising their existence and should chill out a bit…

Alan,

I know that you (and at least one blog member TTINT who admitted yesterday to be born there) may find my post outrageous but I found the whole culture of an Eastern European country (I mean Poland) based to some extent on a kind-of dissociative identity disorder.

It has nothing to do with sexual abuse but with the domination of one religious group (Catholic Church), traditional Slavonic culture and long term effects of Stalinist communism.

People constantly fight for everything and generally hate each other. This is well manifested in the public life:
http://news.stv.tv/world/128521-polish-pm-to-reshuffle-govt-after-scandal/
(One may say – this is normal, the sacking of Whitlam’s government looked similar. But this is going on and on all the time)

The witch hunt involves going after people involved with the communist government more than 20 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildstein_list

These catholic journos champion the art of spitting at any opponents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Maryja

I could find hundreds of even more compelling examples but not all of them have been leaked to the English language domain and I have no time to translate these stories.

This is what RSJ wrote some time ago – in this case I think he was spot-on:

“But I would suggest that the trouble with Eastern Europe, and Slavs in general, is a very sick culture. I say this as a Slav myself. There are all sorts of jokes about the slavic farmer who is granted a wish, and uses his wish to send a curse on his neighbor for having a prize winning sow, instead of wishing for his own prize-winning sow. It is a very fatalistic and envious place, filled with hate for anyone who paints their apartment, or gets a new car. That makes it very hard to have a modern credit-based economy. Hell, it makes it hard to have public bathrooms in which everything nailed down isn’t stolen. Social capital is important.”

(OK this wasn’t about Poland – nobody steals from public toilets any more – but you have to pay for using them everywhere or go to the bushes…)

On the other hand you have a proud nation of martyrs happy to spill their own blood on any occasion. You have “Solidarity” and the Pope. The greatest nation on the Earth.

This sick culture also affects life of the people in the micro scale. If you are active there is no way to isolate yourself – because it is generally much harder to change anything there, people still have jobs for life and constantly fret about losing them. You spend time in the office constantly playing politics with your co-workers, most of them you hate – or join one of the networks and keep doing the sam. I was told by one of my colleagues “why do you constantly find problems, you should simply accept the reality, give up your constant struggle for nothing, then you will fit in”. I was supposed to accept my “karma” and be happy – according to his definition of happiness.

Once I discovered that the system works as described above I was instantly cured. I applied for a skilled visa to Australia and simply walked away free. I don’t have to fit into the network any more. All I need is to earn some money and buy whatever I want.

Was general Jaruzelski a traitor or a hero? Should in-vitro be banned because it kills human life?
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4422236,00.html
This is not my problem any more. BTW my kids simply don’t speak Polish, I never pushed them to do that after our arrival, we speak English. This is how much I treat the great Polish culture with contempt. And I was not instantly killed by the nostalgia for the the motherland what was predicted by my Polish friends. I am not affected by the Polish culture any more, I only spend a few minutes a day calling my family there.

The prosecutor, judge and executioner – they all were supposed to sit in my head and do the job. Nothing like that happened. They don’t exist unless I invite them to be there.

So I think that there is one common denominator there – the enslavement by relationship with other people which affects my mind. The struggle can take the whole life. I would never be able to win because the enemy would sit inside my head.

The only way this can be solved is by simply walking away from the toxic environment and leaving these people alone – regardless of the the circumstances. But I had to learn all of these in a very hard way. And yes – I am to some extent an anarchist. Not in the sense that I see any chance to dispose of the institution of the state or the global corporate order but in the sense that I hate the enslavement of people by the toxic and alienated culture – whatever it is.

Just walk away and do simple things one at a time.

Alan – is this all pure rubbish?

I am sorry for your pain.

My “anger” was because in a previous thread you called me an exploiter.

“I do not believe in large scale conspiracies. Maybe at my peril. I am comfortable if you believe in conspiracies though. This belief is quite common and equally hard to disprove as by definition conspiracies must remain secret to be maintained.”

I have mentioned some large scale conspiracy theories but when I mentioned some truthful facts about history concerning the Mormons and the Freemasons you came back at me with anger.

I live and care for someone that implicates certain conspiracies. In conspiracy circles, I am a loner since I question many of them. I question them since they are based on Biblical prophecy. I base my theories on observable facts.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/sexual-abuse-hides-behind-the-broken-masks-of-shame-20091028-hl1x.html

This is the tip of a massive Iceberg. The article is written by Dr Middleton, the director of the trauma and dissociation unit at Belmont Hospital in Brisbane. I just may know much more about the disorder than Dr Middleton. As I have previously stated on this blog, I had to wade through many outrageous conspiracy theories to just get to the information that made sense of what I was witnessing firsthand. Yes, I had to make sense of what I was wading through. While you may be living comfortably (if not, hopefully soon), I am living in poverty and I don’t get any help. The reason for this is DID is (or was) a well hidden secret.

Thanks for the references. I know the Mark Blaug and Joseph McCauley’s papers. But those of E.K. Hunt I will certainly look up in the future.

My remark about heterodoxy is a lament of the fragmentation of economics due to a forced and failed orthodoxy. Mainstream economics cannot possibly answer important questions on economics, simply because it has defined all relevant questions as “externalities”, things which are uncontrollable, unpredictable and not worth studying. Very sad.

Debtwatch, mish shedlock, zero hedge, housepricecrash.co.uk, all have different general bias in terms of economic and political thought and all welcome assenting and dissenting comment. The ranting at TAE had begun long before I began posting there and it began because dissenters to the main view there were either banned or pushed out.

The end game of following that kind of policy is that only cheerleaders are allowed to post, which kills the credibility of the message IMO. This is where TAE now finds itself, and why I predict ilargi will not debate the issues with us here.