Sniffaround @peakwealth - Tumblr Blog

ADDICTION A, ADDICTION B

Advertising sign in the departures area of the Vienna airport. The small print at the bottom reads (in translation): This product contains nicotine: a substance that produces very strong addiction. (May 2026).

Not long ago I walked into a local estanco ( as licensed cigarette outlets are known in Spain) to recharge my bus pass. Inside the shop I was surprised to find a pop-up stall with a young hostess - for that seemed the appropriate word - who was offering Chesterfield cigarettes. It felt like 1950 all over again. (Chesterfield is an old brand owned today by the American Altria group, previously known as Philip Morris.)

The tobacco industry never sleeps. It is increasingly liberating itself from the agricultural side of the business, the actual farming and processing, cumbersome by nature, and shifting to simpler 'nicotine delivery systems'. It even manages to promote some of these legal drugs as 'Natural Health Products' to wean tobacco smokers off their addiction. In this wonderworld the same company enables a life-threatening dependency and offers a solution at the same time, like vaping which is peddled as a “less harmful alternative to cigarettes”. Of course, they make big money off both.

One marketing step beyond vaping, and targeted at young people, are oral nicotine pouches. ZYN, one of the leading brands, is also owned by Altria. While nicotine itself is not directly carcinogenic, it is addictive and unequivocally harmful. On the internet, flavoured nicotine pouches are advertised almost as if they were candy (Blueberry, Red Bull, Tropical Punch, Cinnamon, etc.). As there is no combustion or inhalation involved, the pouches can be concealed and their use is more or less invisible. Like on the plane, or in school.

The World Health Organization reminds us that tobacco addiction is killing seven million people a year. In the United States 9 out of 10 lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking cigarettes or inhaling second hand smoke. I have witnessed tobacco addiction in its final stages. It is a very bad way to go and it is preventable.

Online ad.

Funny Money

(Loads of it)

Going somewhere, anywhere. (April 2026. Malta AIr is part of the Ryanair airline group.)

One of the small but enduring pleasures of visiting Istanbul is a quick trip to the money changer, one of the many döviz counters around the city (1). In most countries the bureau de change (as they still call it in the Britain) has become an anachronism, but not in Turkey. The exchange rate always seems favourable and it is fun to walk off with a little stack of banknotes in lira.

There is a reason for this.

Back in 2018 I made a note to myself about the value of the Turkish currency. It had dropped to 6,50 lira to the US dollar, which was shocking because I remembered it being more like two-for-one only a few years earlier.

Yesterday the rate was hovering above 45 lira to the USD.

Periodically the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pleads with his citizens to dump their foreign money and sell their gold, blaming outsiders for waging economic war on his country. "They may have their dollars but we have our righteousness, our God", Erdoğan has said.

It hasn't worked.

* * *

The fate of the Turkish lira is a daily reminder that fiat money is just that, something that is willed into existence and remains intrinsically artificial and symbolic: today it is a bunch of numbers on a screen, or, for drug traffickers and the holdouts of times gone by, paper notes issued by some invisible central bank. Take away the screen or the fibre optic link, and there's nothing. Or the central bank blinks and it is back to the Reichsmark and wheelbarrows thereof to buy a loaf of bread. Or a kebab.

Fiat money: a Vietnamese bank note from the French colonial era. A 'piastre' was a dollar.

I was thinking of Turkey and its ever-slipping currency but there is a bigger issue at stake here: the creeping debt stress that is manifesting itself across the rich, industrialized world.

Governments have been adding to their debt burden for one reason or another, to offset the 2008-12 financial meltdown, to cushion the COVID pandemic, and now to counter the various wars and their economic side effects. Stupendous amounts of money borrowed and handed around, often on the basis of whatever-it-takes, which is to say to prevent panic. Hence the growing worry about repayment, with interest. In two words: debt stress.

* * *

Much of this fiscal laissez-aller is political opportunism, the desire not to rock the boat and to shield ageing voters from reality, never mind the consequences. And so ever more funny money gets created out of nowhere and the unspeakable prospect of eventual sovereign default inches nearer. Even the mighty US dollar is wobbling - as Donald Trump indeed wants it to, mainly to annoy the Chinese and the Europeans. But if the dollar starts to look iffy, then so does global financial stability beginning with the value of American government bonds themselves, the all important Treasuries.

* * *

A few years ago I could only admire Japan for being such a well run and pleasant country while piling up more and more debt: its exercise in fiscal irresponsibility seemed to be going well. What else could they do in Tokyo? The lights had to stay on, the Toyota factories had to keep going, etc. They could not just throw the switch and say: Money's up, we're closing shop and you can go home. Or walk home. So Japan keeps turning on the money tap.

But this habit of running large annual deficits as a matter of course, even when the economy is zipping along (as has been the case in Spain, for example), has spread. At around 6 % of GDP, America's current budget deficit goes on top of the existing government debt of USD 31 trillion. If that looks bad, Japan is worse. Although its budget shortfall is relatively moderate right now, Japanese outstanding debt, proportional to the American one, is at least twice as big.

* * *

How can increasingly elderly, slowing societies hope to reimburse their creditors? Can they go on pretending or is there a tipping point beyond which their collective credit runs out and they're really broke?

There are alternatives to the doomsday scenario of defaulting on the national debt, but they are painful. One of them is to let inflation rip through the economy. With runaway or hyper-inflation, the numbers of the outstanding debt remain the same but their real value evaporates. Of course, so do people's savings and their bank deposits. Pooof. Worthless. It has happened before and it could happen again.

* * *

For now, though, it is not as if those ageing consumers had run out of disposable income or were living in fear of being dispossessed by inflation. A lot of them are retired, yes, but still sitting on a pile of leftover money. Disposable income has also accrued because of fundamental shifts in society, like the falling birth rate. What you don't have to spend on family, you can use for for other things, for leisure, like flying somewhere for a little holiday.

I was struck by this recent quote from a 26 year old American tourist visiting Japan:

"I saw this gorgeous photo on social media, and I was like, 'How can I get myself here as fast as possible'?" (2)

This is how mass tourism works now, in Japan or anywhere else. It also confirms my suspicion that the time between the urge (must-have) and its fulfilment is continually getting shorter.

Living in Málaga, I can see this reflexive desire for instant gratification at work every day of the year. It makes sense if you think of Málaga not as a city, but as a consumer product, something that is for sale or, more accurately, for rent and can be acquired on impulse. It is within reach of a vast number of people across Europe who decide, for whatever reason, this is where they urgently want to go. As long as they have that disposable money (or the equivalent credit = funny money) and as long as airlines like Ryanair keep flying, people will come, spurred on by something, anything, they have seen or heard on the internet. (3)

They wouldn't take kindly to it if their Ryanair toy was taken away from them, let alone their credit cards.

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(1) From the French devises (foreign currency).

(2) Quoted in the New York Times, April 29, 2026.

(3) Ryanair currently operates to and from more than 230 destinations, with a few exceptions all within Europe.

Mister Speaker

Turning a page of electro-acoustic history.

Before (AKG)*

I used to be something of an innocent Anglophile when I was young and even today I like to listen to snippets of debate from the House of Commons, especially from the so-called despatch box (or lectern) where British Prime Ministers, Leaders of the Opposition and front benchers hold forth. With the exception of the front door of No. 10 Downing Street, it is the top spot for political visibility in the UK.

Now there is a small detail that will be of no interest to 99,99999 % of those who occasionally watch the proceedings of Parliament from London. Like almost everything else, microphones are subject to changing fashion - as can be observed in countless podcasts today - and to the periodic urge to replace everything. Except for the microphones at the despatch box. They never changed. One on the Government side, another for His Majesty's Opposition. They were the venerable AKG D 202 and its follow-up version, the slightly smaller D 222, models from the sixties and seventies, made by the Austrian company whose full name is AKUSTISCHE UND KINO-GERÄTE (founded in Vienna in 1947 and now a small part of the South-Korean Samsung conglomerate).

The AKG adorned the despatch box like the winged statuette called Spirit of Ecstasy adorned the radiator grille of a classic Rolls-Royce. Being a robust, dynamic-type microphone, it proved impervious to the passing of time and provided crisp sound reproduction with just the right directionality for the location. You never had to strain to hear what Boris Johnson was saying.

Generations of opposition leaders and prime ministers addressed the right honourable members and Mister Speaker, all via the same ancient but distinctive microphone. Look around the web and you can find footage of Margaret Thatcher and even Harold Wilson or Edward Heath, clutching the despatch box, or leaning on it, while speaking into the AKG 202.

Of course, in truly ancient days, there were no microphones and there was no broadcasting from parliament.

After (Schoeps)

Imagine my shock when I noticed the AKG had been replaced with a new and unfamiliar microphone, apparently from the German manufacturer Schoeps. It looks kind of unsubstantial not to say cheap (although Schoeps microphones are anything but), with a flimsy cable protruding from the back rather than the standard-issue detachable XLR cable. The front end resembles the Schoeps broadcast mics widely used in the studios of French public radio.

The choice of Schoeps for this august purpose is not entirely surprising since the many suspended mics in the House of Commons, those used by ordinary MPs, are all small capacitor models from Schoeps and they all sound perfect.

But a page of electro-acoustic history has been turned and I still blink as I adjust to this new reality. Am I the only one?

===========================

(*) Screenshots from parliamentlive.tv.

Easter 2026

Visit Original Link

Yes, the week-long fiesta of Easter came and went and here are my brief sound impressions for 2026.

Recorded March 31 and April 1 and 2 (Maundy Thursday), in the central district of Málaga, with two cardioid Oktava microphones mostly between 3 and 4 meters above street level, angled at 90 degrees for the sake of practicality, capturing both crowds and processions as they approach and pass. The largely unbroken facades on either side of the narrow streets reflect and blend the sound, yielding a vivid and coherent stereo image (I think).

Stereo, compressed, MP 3 @192 kbps. Edited and mixed on Audacity. Runs 3:41 - Headphones recommended.

The band of the Spanish Legion gathering in my street.

Swan Lake

The shore of lac Léman, Switzerland (March 2026)

I do not often set foot in Geneva but when I do, that foot feels a little hesitant, a touch unsteady. There is something not quite right here and it isn't difficult to figure out what it might be.

In many ways Geneva belongs to yesterday's world, a manicured time warp of the multilateral world order that is now wasting away. The Trump era must be the worst possible news for a city whose many international organizations underpinned the old order for so long.

Nor are the fabled Swiss banks what they used to be (or perceived to be), especially after the iconic and 166 year old Credit Suisse went belly up one night in 2023.

And yet Switzerland keeps moving right along. I know of few other places where the unctuous benefits of money are as obvious as in Geneva. It seems self-evident somehow: order, perfection, cleanliness, wealth. How could it be otherwise? It is a place where affluence signals virtue, where privilege is so taken for granted you stop noticing it.

Look around and notice the elegance of the surroundings. Zero chaos. Look up and watch a steady stream of private jets flying in and out. The airport itself is like one big business class lounge, although the drinks are far from free.

Geneva represents the sunny side of global kleptocracy, a perfect bubble of unimpeded, unquestioned affluence. You can call it suffocating wealth if you want, but where would you rather be, Havana or Geneva? Those who live here call it an exceptionally well run city. As long as you have what it takes.

A Second Note From Bangkok

Advertisement (February 2026)

Cher Louis,

Talking about malls, I have watched Asia's infatuation with wealth, its acquisition and its display, gain traction over the decades. I used to look down my nose at the nouveaux-riches Chinese falling for the expensive trinkets that brought them status and the frisson of self-importance. Besotted as they were with the brands that spoke of European sophistication, they stood in line to enter the well guarded emporia of Cartier, Hermès and Prada. The high-end shopping was good in Hong Kong but Paris and Milan were gold.

There is a derisive name for this pathology, affluenza, but it has taken me time to admit that the Asian veneration of fresh money is in fact not particularly Asian at all. I may be naive, but the more I look around now, the more I notice how far the intoxication with newly minted wealth had spread.

The lure of easy money has become more lurid as people everywhere look for opportunistic ways to game the system and get rich quick. It is not so much about outright corruption and kleptocracy (as currently practised by the American president and his entourage) but about the growing belief that if you position yourself well enough - on social media or in virtual "assets" like crypto - you can rake in the money with negligible effort. If you can trade on your looks, on your glib chatter, on your notoriety, on knowing the right people, on making the right bets (on just about anything, including tomorrow's weather), then you are ahead of the game.

Play it right and wait for the money to emerge ex nihilo. Then cash in. When chatty influencers are rumoured to make 100 000 euros a month, heads start spinning downstream on the internet. When Elon Musk gets offered a trillion dollar pay deal, you can hear plutocracy shifting gear.

Such grotesque wealth is not just about privilege, hype and ostentation, it does to society what obesity does to individuals. It is like sugar, fat and salt rolled into one. It has also become confiscatory in nature, laying claim to the good things in life simply by making them unaffordable to everyone else. Make sure no hotel room goes for less than a thousand euros and the lower classes, whoever they may be, are simply priced out. Winner takes all.

One last thing. I mentioned Cartier and Prada. It could have been Fendi, Armani or Rolex. The list is long and getting longer. But if one brand stands out in today's tidal wave of greed, if one global name says it all, I think it must be that of Louis Vuitton. No name seems to resonate quite as much with those seeking proof of their financial status. It is the lighthouse, as it were, that illuminates the shore of aspirational lust and envy.

Bangkok, seen from the left bank of the Chao Phraya river. (2024)

A note from Bangkok

Morning commute in Bangkok. (February 2026)

Inside Out.

What you can see from the air doesn't take long to confirm once you have your feet on the ground: there is something seriously wrong with the air in Bangkok. Your eyes hurt, your throat feels funny, the hazy heat is exhausting. The next thing you notice is that no one is walking. Not only are the sidewalks empty, you get the feeling they have not been used for some time. Not that this is specific to Bangkok, far from it. The sidewalks are as deserted and the air just as miserable, or worse, in other Asian megacities, from Jakarta to Guangzhou or Saigon, etc. The smog is way off the scale for much of the year and stretches ever further into the surrounding "countryside".

Why walk in this soupy smog when you can be in an air conditioned car with a nice HEPA filtered interior? Think about it. Why suffer outside when you can breathe more easily inside?

Back in early 2023, when I reconnected with South-East Asia after the hiatus of the COVID pandemic, I was surprised by the lack of existential angst. Coming from the 'West', Asia seemed curiously carefree. They did not appear to spend their days worrying about the war in Ukraine, about rising populism and certainly not about climate failure or its eventual outcome, species extinction. Never heard of.

Little has changed. Economic growth may have gone a bit soft in the last few years, and the first ripples of population decline are showing up in the statistics (and, if you watch carefully, in daily life as well), but, as they say, the music is still playing.

As for the awareness of climate change, we had better get used to the inverted world of South-East Asia. If conventional wisdom tells you to go outside when you need a breath of fresh air, to go for a walk, well, think again. In this upside down reality of urban Asia, if you want a breath of fresh air, you go inside. And nowhere is that inside better than inside a mall - or I might as well conceptualize it as "the mall". The air is cool and filtered - and malls being sealed off by definition from the real world, you can forget about the CO2, the NOx, the PM 2,5 particles and the entire climate unpleasantness outside.

Sometimes I think: this is what economic development is really about, above all else now on our overheating planet: air conditioning, 24 / 7, everywhere, but most of all in the mall.

Thus it should come as no surprise that ever more splendid malls are being built all the time, in Bangkok as elsewhere, havens of unperturbed escapism, some bordering on the pharaonic. Their banality and massive waste of energy are forgiven because of the aircon.

Seeking refuge inside air conditioned spaces is of course nothing new, but the air pollution of Asian megacities has made it more urgent. It is a reversal of reality so fundamental that it takes some getting used to.

You also don't have to be a hard nosed environmentalist to see what might be wrong with this approach. A few years ago I thought the climate emergency had reached the point where it could no longer be ignored. But that is exactly what many Asian countries have continued to do. And now that Donald Trump has basically pulled the plug on the climate crisis, declaring the science of global warming to be fictitious, they may feel vindicated in their denialism and foot-dragging on clean energy (China presumably excepted).

So relax everyone and let economic development take its natural course, environmental consequences be damned.

The Year 2025

When things start to happen.

"We are gifted to live in a moment of time where there are multiple golden ages going on." (Jeff Bezos, former CEO of Amazon, speaking in Turin, Oct 3 2025)

"Humans believe the kind of nonsense that no chimpanzee or elephant or rat would ever believe." (Yuval Noah Hariri, philosopher, writing in the Guardian, Oct 4 2025)

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Looking back at 2025 in nine little steps and no particular order.

Portugal First! (Azulejos above a doorway (Rossio ao Sul do Tejo, Abrantes, Portugal, August 2025)

*** *** ***

America First! Luxemburg First! Hungary First! Tajikistan First! Thailand First! Norway First! Brazil First! China First! Poland First! Central African Republic First! Malaysia First! Turkey First! Uruguay First! Philippines First! Honduras First! Ecuador First! Mauritius First! Austria First! Rwanda First! Venezuela First! Greece First! Canada First! Madagascar First! Iceland First! Chile First! Belgium First! São Tomé e Principe First! Vietnam First! France first! Russia First! Croatia First! Indonesia First! Cook Islands First! Kazakhstan First! India First! Cambodia First! Argentina First! Papua New Guinea First!

Good luck.

*** *** ***

2. It's early November. I shift nervously on my chair as I read a horror story about soldiers being hunted by killer drones on the Ukrainian front. Doom, gore, amputated limbs, despair, body bags with only bits inside. This has been going on for almost four years now. By now we have forgotten about the everyday heroism but it's death all the same.

Looking up from the screen, everything is different outside. Christmas is already in the air. People are shopping, going out, stopping for coffee. Ukraine, what, where? I look down again and move on to the next topic, a monochrome panorama of the rubble that used to be Gaza city, so thoroughly levelled it has been compared to Hiroshima. The message it is meant to convey is indeed conveyed: we will stop at nothing, your life is cheap.

What can I say? What can I say that I haven't said before? We've been through all this in previous years, we've heard it all before: the twilight of democracy, Putin's war and Trump's acquiescence, the slide into regressive populism, the climate apathy, the indecent exhibition of inequality, the anxiety about migration (stoked every minute of the day on social media), the impunity everywhere and the vendetta against reason and knowledge. I could go on. Did I mention homelessness? Government by the rich for the rich?

It is getting harder to turn the page and move on.

*** *** ***

Around the corner, August 2020

3. Málaga used to have a brilliant graffiti artist. Actually, the word graffiti doesn't begin to do justice to the mural painter who signed his work as Dreucol. His tableaux were whimsical, smart, accomplished, politically astute and they added a layer of street intelligence and unpredictability which the inner city lacked. They were transformative, quite unlike anything else. It was a pleasure to turn a corner and discover a crisp new message from Dreucol.

One day he decided that the city he loved to illustrate was going to the dogs. He gave up. From one day to the next the murals vanished. He had painted them over.

A challenging backstreet canvas. (The rubbish bin has since been removed, the mural is long gone, painted over.) August 2020

It was shocking, but he had a point. Not only had Málaga become a prime exhibit of indiscriminate party tourism, it was getting more ambitious as well. Anxious to go up-market, rebranded as the new California, the city went looking for high-net-worth individuals, megayacht owners and other big game.

Not the sort of gritty, cool city Dreucol had in mind. He saw it coming and pulled the plug. The intervening years have proved him right.

For an selection of Dreucol's street creations, see: https://100daysandnights.com/100-days-of-malaga-street-art-dadi-dreucol/

Málaga in October 2025. Mega-yachts lined up in the harbour.

*** *** ***

4. In earlier, quieter days I sometimes stayed at a pleasant guest house across from the miradouro of São Pedro de Alcântara, the lookout on the edge of Lisbon's Bairro Alto. The lookout, its garden, the view and the guest house are still there. What is missing is the funicular, the elevador da Glória that used to go up there.

I hardly ever took it, preferring the underground escalators of the Chiado before turning right along the gentle slope of rua da Misericórdia. Only when I felt particularly energetic did I hike along the tracks of the funicular itself, up the calçada da Glória. But not recently: over the years, or decades, the elevador went from being public transport to being a must-do tourist trap. And I got older.

The elevador crashed when the main cable snapped on September 3, 2025. Accidents happen but this one seemed particularly shocking. It was unthinkable in the same way the Morandi viaduct had collapsed in Genoa, Italy, back in 2018. Hundreds of meters of suspended motorway gave way during a rainstorm and simply fell to the ground, killing 43 people.

Perhaps the second law of thermodynamics (implying that all organized systems must eventually break down) applies more acutely to funiculars, cable cars and suspension bridges, but still, such accidents should never happen.

Three graphic details, reported by eyewitnesses, haunt me:

the screaming of the forty passengers as the unmoored carriage careened downhill towards certain death.

the silence after it had come to rest at the bottom of the street (actually a Subway fast food outlet), dark grey dust billowing from the wreckage.

one woman was reported to have staggered out of the heap of twisted steel, made a few steps towards a rescuer and dropped dead.

In all sixteen people died and 23 were wounded.

A snapped cable, a collapsed motorway, it is sloppiness that somehow suggests countries like Portugal and Italy cannot quite manage the essentials? Are they emblematic of a Europe in decline, a preview of things to come? Or simply fate lurking around every corner?

Rural Europe in decline. Shuttered one-euro shop in Abrantes, Portugal (August 2025)

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"Without the distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil." (Professor Marci Shore, Yale University)

5. It is no secret that (some) human beings enjoy making others feel miserable. If one picture defined the year 2025, it was that of Trump and his VP JD Vance berating and belittling the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval office (below). If it was breathtaking to watch, it was also reminiscent of that other historic photograph, taken at a G7 summit in Québec in 2018, where Trump faced down a stunned Angela Merkel, the then German chancellor, and other assembled politicians, all equally speechless. A lot has been written about the demise of the old, Eurocentric world order, but those pictures tell the story.

It's over.

Back in 2016, I thought the world had fallen off a cliff when Donald Trump was first elected. He had tapped into a deep well of American victimhood and alienation. Once installed in the White House, he loomed over every day of the year like an evil eye hanging over the world’s door frame. Runaway from celebrity TV one day, psychopath the next. But it was nothing compared to 2025.

The Trump circus dominated the news nonstop, day after distopian day, having moved from buffoonery and ignorance to hatred, indecency and corruption. If at first Trump was erratic and arbitrary, now he had become malevolent. He was everywhere this year, he owned the political narrative (in newsspeak) like few in living memory, often because of the sheer shock value, the meanness of what he had to say. Asked recently about the premeditated assassination of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi 'operatives', he dismissed it as "things happen". Talk about moral collapse, in plain view, also while officiating in the Oval Office.

Excerpted from the New York Times, quoting Trump's tweet on Truth Social, his own social network. ("War ravaged Portland" refers to the biggest city in the state of Oregon, USA. Needless to say, no war was being waged in Portland.)

What do you do when an American president talks and tweets nonsense day in day out? What's wrong with this man? The possibilities are endless but one American federal judge put it like this. Trump's words, she wrote, were "disconnected from reality". Precisely. Much of America is like that now. And much of the federal government has become "untethered to the facts", as someone else put it, beginning with US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

You can make the point that the US is currently being run by the very 'deplorables', that Hilary Clinton so infamously (and fatefully) singled out during her failed election campaign in 2015. Christian fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists and alumni of Fox News have taken over and set government policy. To put it differently, QAnon won and reason lost.

But there's one reality that Trump is well connected to: his own self interest. Under his second presidential term, the White House has started to function more like an organized crime family, bullying, threatening, blackmailing, extorting, boasting of extrajudicial killings (in the Caribbean) while enriching the family at every turn and getting his friends out of prison. What shall we call it? Political gangsterism or post-democratic realpolitik, cynical by definition?

See no evil.

More ominous yet, the disconnect is contagious. As the eminent British environmentalist George Monbiot has pointed out, the climate crisis is being compounded by an epistemic crisis: the political discourse increasingly deviates from observable fact, the denial of reality is spreading, also beyond the United States. (2)

We laughed, sort of, when the notion of post-truth or liquid reality gained traction a decade ago. Not any more. Respect for basic facts would seem like a prerequisite for any society to function, but no: society now stumbles along, one foot in reality and the other in fantasy.

You might say: what else is new? Ever heard of religion?

Post-truthism is today's euphemism for 21st century obscurantism, for the closing of the mind and the hostility to reason. Children, enslaved to their mobile devices, are 'disengaged' from school and from learning. "Attention deficit" is no longer a teenage disorder, it has become a way of life.

*** *** ***

Hello freedom of speech (for nicotine).

6. Among the side effects of the second Trump administration is the return of unshackled, wild-west capitalism. Elon Musk's trillion dollar pay deal at Tesla moved the dial of the plutocratic order. (Or shall we just think of it as inflation?) Corporate practices that were assumed to be extinct are making a comeback. Take for instance Philip Morris. The tobacco company has come out of hiding so to speak, claiming to act for the public good by pushing "less harmful alternatives to cigarettes", i.e. vaping (which is of course addictive).

Banks are feeling liberated as well. I spotted a slogan by a Spanish bank that stated (my translation): "WE ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY MONEY. WE CARE ABOUT YOUR WELLBEING." Good to know (1).

While on the subject of commercials, it may seem pointless by now but sometimes I still try and disable cookies to avoid 'targeted' online advertising experiences. In years gone by I used to wonder why I received specific ads for industrial power transformers or women's summer dresses. In 2025 the algorithms sent me more interesting stuff, like this.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is a key player in Israel's military industry - think missiles, think Iron Dome, think critical technology. "Smart and to the Point", as the ad says. (Above) I thank them very kindly for thinking of me and my possible needs for precision-interceptor SPYDER missiles. The narrow street where I live might be a bit of a squeeze for the launch vehicle but with a range of 160 kilometers I could inflict some nasty surprises up and down the Costa del Sol, apply 'tailor-made solutions' to the cities of Granada and Cordoba and even reach some industrial estates on the coast of Africa.

*** *** ***

7. For sixty years BBC World Service radio ran a weekly science programme called Science in Action. While it clearly didn't cost a lot to produce (mostly made up of telephone interviews), it was killed off at the end of October for budget reasons. I was a devoted listener. In some ways Science in Action was like a convenient audio version of prime content from the reference journals Nature and Science. It often dealt with complex matters, expertly explained by a knowledgeable and probing host, Roland Pease. The show also made a point of inviting women scientists whenever possible. Its demise follows that of other long-running BBC factual radio shows with a worldwide following, including Hard Talk, axed in 2024.

No media organization is without flaws. Mistakes get made. But the BBC, global in reach and as venerable as they come, is getting squeezed and squeezed. Its pursuit of factual information is a source of irritation to many of today's ruling class: too woke for its own good, too serious to be left alone. Donald Trump is the latest to try and put the Beeb out of business. Despots and oligarchs tend to believe their own disinformation and it gets worse when several despots align and validate each other's nonsense. It gives their malicious fantasy, their lies critical mass and pretty soon any contrarian views are labelled 'fake news' and the purveyors thereof are called evil people and eventually terrorists. These are tricky days for the BBC, among other public broadcasters whose budgets are getting slashed with glee.

*** *** ***

8. Did you notice all the hatespeak floating around in 2025? How could you not? Two MAGA terms have emerged from the so-called culture wars that stand out in my mind: 'gender ideology' and 'globalism'. I am not certain what gender ideology really is, but globalism is in essence a half-baked xenophobic term meaning globalization gone bad, presumably against the common interest. It refers to disorderly open borders through which all manner of undesirable goods and people enter: imports from China or non-white, non-Christian migrants. Even perfectly American cars assembled in Canada or Mexico were too global for Donald Trump. He bluntly told Canadian prime minister Mark Carney: "We don't really want cars from Canada."

By extension globalists are bad, misguided people in general, including liberals, coastal elites, gender benders, Haitian refugees who eat their neighbours' pets, unbelievers, French wine drinkers, EV drivers, etc.

Not so fast. I refuse to believe that globalization is a thing of the past, that retribalization and autarky are set to take its place.

Globalization isn't just about trade, about corporate supply lines and container ships, about smartphones and plastic Christmas trees made in China or Vietnam. Forgive me for being naive, but I prefer to think it is primarily about the cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge that have shaped our world for the last two or three thousand years, about boundary-crossing cultures, about the opening of minds, kaleidoscopic populations and the human desire to roam and mix.

On a less naive level, it is about unstoppable changes in demography and technology, and about the wheels of history churning. Whichever level you look at, raising the drawbridge and turning back the clock won't work.

*** *** ***

9. (One more thing.) I lead a sheltered life. I have very little exposure to social media and haven't watched television at home for more than twenty years. Sometimes, in hotel rooms, it occurs to me that it would be fun to watch TV - after all I spent much of my working life producing television programming - but I cannot figure out the remote control or the screen settings. Netflix remains a mystery to me. As for YouTube I treat it with the utmost suspicion. While I obviously may have missed out on a few things, I think I live in a gentler, more analogue world with less noise of every kind. Most people are evidently not like me, their days are screen-and-picture-driven from morning till night.

It took a lot of ingenuity to invent the moving image. Photography was one thing, but making the pictures move was quite another. The system that prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century was a succession of static images on plastic film (celluloid), exposed and projected at a rate of 24 frames per second, enough to recreate the optical illusion of motion. This worked well for a hundred years until it was replaced with digital imagery.

As for television, it came to be the mother of all Trojan horses, channeling modernity, materialism and conformity into every home. All resistance was in vain.

Today I notice that even basic internet messaging is accompanied not only by emojis (which I also hold out against) but by moving images, memes or short videos. They are taking over from the written word. TikTok et al are a major step in that direction, which is the direction of illiteracy. In Italy there is even a symbol for simplified language.

Of television it was said that the only thing that truly mattered was that the screen flickered. That is what the brain craved and retina registered, the constant optical stimulus of motion, thousands of times per minute. Digital technology has gone much further, making it possible to create images ex nihilo and modify, twist and manipulate everything at will. As we are now discovering, reality gets confusing, and suspect, when you cannot trust your eyes.

But digital or not, I have come to think that the very nature of the moving, flickering image contributes to the neurosis of our age. It may be more than we can handle.

The Irish writer James O’Sullivan whose work explores the intersection of technology and culture, puts it more broadly like this (3):

"The problem is not just the rise of fake material, but the collapse of context and the acceptance that truth no longer matters as long as our cravings for colors and noise are satisfied. (my emphasis) Contemporary social media content is more often rootless, detached from cultural memory, interpersonal exchange or shared conversation. It arrives fully formed, optimized for attention rather than meaning, producing a kind of semantic sludge, posts that look like language yet say almost nothing. We’re drowning in this nothingness."

Enough said. Come to think of it, the imagery of old (below), devoid of any motion or digital artifice, could be pretty awful as well.

Bad news from the garden. (Anton Koberger, Biblia Germanica, Nürnberg 1478, on display at the Archiepiscopal Palace, Eger, Hungary. June 2025)

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NOTE: strange typographical errors as may occur on this platform are usually beyond my control. The Tumblr setup and layout are very basic and not bug free, particularly for longer texts.

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(1) Ibercaja

(2) The Guardian Nov. 14 2025

(3) https://www.noemamag.com (search: the last days of social media)

Turn right

Except for the faithful headed for Mecca or Medina, Saudi Arabia used to be strictly off limits to foreign tourists. They had no business there. Not that many people were anxious to visit a country primarily famous for its oil wealth, the mistreatment of migrant workers, frequent judicial beheadings or, a few short years ago, the cold-blooded liquidation of the Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pro memoria: one afternoon in early October of 2018, Khashoggi vanished without a trace at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul while his girlfriend was patiently waiting outside. His remains are presumed to have been dissolved in acid by a team of pros flown in from the Kingdom on two private jets.

Never mind.

In the new world order, such things are but a blip on the flickering radar of the irrelevant past. Today's Saudi is a country reborn, an assertive player in global affairs with ambitions unmatched in the Gulf (a part of the world not exactly lacking in ambition).

Hello tourists! If you liked Dubai, you'll go wild in Saudi. The sandy wastes of the Empty Quarter never looked more appealing, or the shopping in the malls of Riyadh. The country promises a mix of desert adventures and hyper-futuristic urban experiences (although still under construction and reportedly not going too well.).

Saudi is now open to visitors, the principal requirement being money. Just make sure you follow the instructions and do not make a wrong turn.

Approaching Mecca.

Colonial Relics

In the heyday of print, travelling around South-East Asia came with a charming bonus. Wherever you went, from Manila to Jakarta, you were likely to find at least one English language newspaper. For decades, perusing the pages of the Bangkok Post was part of the late morning ritual of British bonvivants who had elected winter domicile in Thailand. It helped them transition from eggs and bacon to the first drink of the day.

The very name of the Singapore Straits Times still evokes its colonial roots. But like the city state itself, the newspaper has long been resolutely no-nonsense, overflowing with content that is at once meaningless and cheerful. Given the paternalistic business credo of Singapore, it should come as no surprise that the paper is dull beyond dull, though perhaps not quite as dull as its penchant in Kuala Lumpur, The New Straits Times, another government mouthpiece full of excellent news from the World of Commerce.(*) Reading these papers is not always straightforward, though. Many of the articles require serious background knowledge to figure out the real story behind the veiled writing and the plentiful acronyms.

Elsewhere in Malaysia, the state of Sarawak has the Borneo Post, still available on paper the last time I checked, a quirky if irrelevant colonial relic, like all the others really.

One newspaper used to stand out, the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's paper of record (as they used to say). Although it too carried a great deal ra-ra corporate news, it came with a measure of British legitimacy, even some Fleet Street flair - enough to make it readable.

It sold from big stacks on the sidewalks of Central and from corner stores in Kowloon. I used to pick up a copy on the way to morning coffee at McDonalds, another Hong Kong institution. I remember struggling with the unwieldy broadsheet format, but at least the front section was decent. It made me feel part of the historical landscape of the southern tip of China, if only temporarily.

It didn't last. The paper started to wobble, gently at first, after Britain agreed to a timetable for Hong Kong's return to the People's Republic, the so-called Joint Declaration of 1984. The clock was ticking. Gradually, caution and self-censorship crept into the reporting. After the actual handover of sovereignty in 1997, it was only a matter of time for the Post's independence to be gutted. Owned at one point by News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch), it was later sold to the Chinese Alibaba group.

Today, its coverage of Hong Kong politics is severely limited, sometimes descending into awkward Communist party-speak that would have seemed farcical in earlier, more freewheeling days.

_______________________________________

(*) Prior to the separation of Singapore and Malaysia in 1965, there was only one paper called The Straits Times and it was based in KL.

THE SHOCK OF THE OLD (2)

(Updated Nov. 20 2025)

Preamble: Back in February when Elon Musk was still a welcome visitor at the Trump White House, he showed up in the Oval Office with his four-year old son called X. Although Musk apparently had a habit of 'bringing the kids along', to many it looked like a product placement in a pronatalist commercial.

Pronatalism is in the air. In the US: white pronatalism.

________________________________________

A few weeks ago I unburdened myself of a long post dealing with the underlying issue - and one of my favourite subjects: demography and, more specifically, demographic decline. Using statistical age pyramids (shapeshifting over time as they do) I tried to illustrate the rising and falling population trends in various parts of the world (1).

It is not surprising that these trends cause much anxiety right now. Demographic change is the music, or the noise, if you prefer, playing in the background of today's political regression, of the upheavals and conflicts of the 21st century.

Depending on where you live, the new demographic reality is like a coin with two faces: ageing and declining populations on one side; the overdue correction of global overpopulation on the other.

That is, needless to say, a … one-sided view of things. In some parts of the world, like in sub-Saharan Africa, the population is neither shrinking nor ageing, while the idea that the planet is overpopulated is not shared by everyone. (2)

Whatever the case may be, it seems worth reviewing how we got here. (3)

_______________________

Family life in the remote coastal village of Anse d'Hainault, Haiti, 2008

Although the link between progress and declining birth rates has long been established, it still gets ignored. In poor, largely illiterate societies, people have limited control over their lives and their reproduction. Children are considered a family's primary asset, a source of happiness, wealth and support in old age (should it occur).

With lifespans short and child mortality high, survival of the family is the first priority. Patriarchy is a given in most societies and women's fate is sealed from birth. In such a context, marriage is central to the social order, fenced off to insure orderly reproduction and child rearing, sanctified by religion and sanctioned by law.

______________________

But as soon as literacy and development take hold, people gain agency over their lives. When childbirth becomes less risky and survival rates improve, large families cease to be a biological necessity. Over time, female emancipation, more equal rights, education, contraception, etc. trigger ever greater transformations in society. As the theocentric order starts to fade, the heavy weight of tradition and repression is lifted. Little by little, rigid norms bend and marriage (and therefore childbearing) loses its overriding importance in more people's lives. They live solo, marry later, or not at all, they get divorced more easily, etc.

Birth rates drop predictably when entire societies shift gear like this. Rising incomes, however modest at first, usher in health care, running water and electricity. Further economic growth brings more appliances, two-wheelers, indoor sanitation, smartphones, followed by the broader pursuit of prosperity and, eventually, runaway materialism. Everyone gets hooked. To put it perhaps more accurately: resources are re-allocated to meet the material needs of modern life, rather than those of a bigger family. (It has also been observed that the number of marriages and births also tracks digital addiction, now universal: more screen-time, fewer offspring.)

Progress in action: more scooters, fewer babies. (Bogor, Java, Indonesia, Dec. 2024)

With procreation no longer the all-consuming focus of life, children end up being financial burdens rather than assets, and large families, so common only two or three generations ago, become undesirable or unaffordable, or both (4). It happens even in countries with deep religious roots such as Indonesia and Bangladesh, or in repressive patriarchal places like Iran.

To sum up, the underlying driver of declining fertility is individual freedom (to choose how to live one's life, to have fewer children or none at all) which is the inevitable result of literacy, education and economic progress.

_____________________

Clearly, this is political hot-potato territory. Take Turkey, for instance.

For many years the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been urging his citizens to have more children. To little avail as Turkey's net fertility dropped to around 1,5 per woman in 2024, half of what the president had called for and well below replacement level (2,1).

Erdoğan has pointed out (accurately) that economic hardship or the cost of living cannot be blamed for the declining birth rate. Indeed, Turks used to have far more children when they were poorer. Instead he has put the blame on what he has called the "organized (…) ideological denial of human creation", including non-traditional lifestyles that undermine the existing social order.

To quote Erdoğan: “The LGBT perversion is encouraged and promoted in many areas by the barons of global culture. In many Western countries, it is almost impossible to object to this perversion, which has become so brazen as to legitimize child abuse. It is imperative that we keep our nation away from this insanity that is wanted to be imposed on our lives in a wide range of areas from cinema to fashion, from digital media to literature, from politics to civil society,” (SOURCE: Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, Directorate of Communications.)

What president Erdoğan doesn't seem to get is that it isn't ideological "perversion" or global culture wars that stop Turks from having more children. Nor is it economic hardship. It is the opposite, it is rising affluence, no matter how relative, that weighs on fertility in Turkey, as it does everywhere else.

All over the world, economic growth triggers a reset of material expectations. It makes people think twice about what they really can get out of life, what their priorities are. When all the bills and pleasures of the good life are paid for, there is little inclination left to have (more) babies. As standards of living improve and parenting gets expensive, more people end up facing the same symbolic dilemma: a child or an air-conditioner? Or a new smartphone. Or Netflix...

Smaller families or childlessness, once considered a misfortune if not a curse, now make practical sense to many young adults.

And there goes the birth rate.

______________________

Turkey's population, currently around 85 million, is projected to decline by about 20 million at the end of the century. More importantly, as can be seen from the inverted shape of this statistical "pyramid", the country is ageing rapidly. By 2100, Turks over 65 would outnumber those under 20 by a factor of two to one. Today it is the other way round, by factor of three to one. (SOURCE: www.populationpyramid.net)

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(1) https://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/790933581385154560/the-shock-of-the-old

(2) The Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ethiopia have among the fastest growing populations anywhere.

(3) For a particularly wide ranging and well researched assessment of population collapse, youth scarcity, fiscal deficits, migration etc. see: https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality

(4) Middle-class families in Western countries like Germany struggle to get by on 10,000 euros a month. (SOURCE: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Intimidation

Bomb-by-number. (Screenshot. China Central TV)

Did you watch the military parade in Beijing? Made-for-TV, it looked archaic and at the same time so over the top it might have been generated by AI. But it wasn't. The humanoids had moving limbs, and machine guns, and hypersonic missiles to play with. I remember the previous parade, almost six years ago, in the same spot, under Mao's gaze. The staging was so similar at times it looked like cut and paste: the same unsmiling, boorish looking Xi Jinping wearing a grey Mao outfit, being driven around - strongman style - standing expressionless in the same Chinese limousine reviewing the same eerily synchronized troops.

Except that the show was even bigger than last time, the goose-stepping message more calculated. It seems to have worked. Two days later the US rebranded its Department of Defense as the Department of War.(1)

If the Chinese choreography of war, or the threat thereof, gets more precise with every opportunity, so does the arsenal on display. All the latest missiles and bombs were conveniently identified with numbers and letters. Get nervous, Western experts.

It seemed futile to think, however briefly, that Taiwan could resist such lethal force, or that anyone would be foolish enough to come to Taiwan's aid if attacked by the People's Liberation Army. It would be absurd, beyond suicidal - that was the message.(2)

But then the message has in essence been the same for a very long time and nothing has happened.

China has demonstrated it can encircle and choke off Taiwan at will, but it hasn't gone beyond that demonstration, not even when Nancy Pelosi taunted Beijing by famously visiting the island in 2022. Does it mean Beijing still hopes to recapture Taiwan by sheer intimidation, though ever more explicit?

Or is Xi telling the world: What part of this warning do you not understand?

The precedent of Putin's invasion of Ukraine adds chill to the warning. In the grand rearrangement of global power, as visible on the reviewing stand on Tiananmen, Xi ruled supreme while Vladimir was the useful fool doing the dirty work and Kim served as backup. They both looked only too pleased to have been invited to the big day. If this is what the embryonic new world order looks like, it is not good.

________________________________

(1) Pending approval by Congress.

(2) Notably absent was the amphibious hardware and the floating docks the People's Liberation Army has developed to facilitate a landing on Taiwanese shores without getting their feet wet.

See also: https://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/190039326947

What goes in

It should have come as no surprise but somehow it did. While visiting an unassuming wine-making coop in Portugal I came across the following tables of chemicals used at various stages (14 are listed) of grape cultivation. The suppliers were well known, Bayer (headquartered as ever in Leverkusen, Germany) and Syngenta (based in Basel, Switzerland but Chinese owned now).

It starts with herbicides including ROUNDUP (ex-Monsanto), goes on to products used to kill or control infestations, parasites, pests, beetles, mold and mildew, various kinds of leafhoppers, rot, etc.

Bayer's own website lists 73 different products it sells to winegrowers.

I reproduce the lists here.

A CLOISTERED LIFE

(The following information is in addition to the audio postcard that precedes.)

A foggy early morning at the church of São Martinho in Oliveira de Amezéis, Portugal. (August 2025)

After staying at the monastery of Cucujães for several days, the thing I kept noticing was this: by far the busiest part was not the church or the missionary convent or the other parts of the complex. It was the large cemetery next to the church of São Martinho (visible in the photograph above). Open from early until late, it was alive with people tending the graves, socializing, putting in fresh flowers and slow-burning candles. That is were the action was. The church wasn't all that busy and the monastery even less. (*)

Going down to the cloister.

Deep inside the convent, in the claustro, was another, less visible graveyard. Under the colonnaded gallery lay the heavy tombstones of friars long departed. Some of the graves were simply numbered, making me wonder if they were empty or anonymous. Others had names and dates cut in the stone, as was the case for grave number 29: Fr. António de Santa Teresa, died August 26, 1754.

Built on a rise overlooking what is now an old railway line, the Benedictine monastery actually goes back to the Middle Ages. The oldest prior recorded was D. Martinho in the year 1139. The current building dates from the 17th or 18th century.

One section has recently been turned over to use by paying guests (few so far) but less than half of the vast space has been converted. In other words, if you end up staying there you will be quite comfortable and likely to have the place to yourself.

Some devotional objects as well as relics of sacerdotal presence have been left behind, rather strategically. The bibles come with all the necessary authorizations from the Catholic censors, NIHIL OBSTAT cens, dep. followed by a proper IMPRIMI POTEST issued by a Provincial Superior STI.PAULI, dated 21-III-1971 plus an earlier IMPRIMATUR by 'Carolus, Card. Archiep.' in 1957.

The monastery used to have its own printing workshop.

So it went in the days when archbishops and cardinals put their stamp all over southern Europe.

_____________________________

(*) In English a convent is usually meant for women while a monastery is for men. In Portuguese this distinction doesn't seem to hold. Hence Cucujães is referred to as either, although the religious order is or was for men.

Visit Original Link

The wedding next door, or is that a funeral?

Sound impressions of life at the ancient monastery of Cucujães, Oliveira de Amezéis, in the south of the greater urban area of Porto, Portugal. August 2025.

Stereo MP 3 @192 kbps. Runs 3:12 - Headphones recommended.

Equipment used: Zoom H1n, Audio-Technica suspension, Sony MDR 7506 (field); SD MixPre 3 + Sennheiser MD21.U (post).

Recording the fountain in the cloister.

THE SHOCK OF THE OLD

A tale of many pyramids

Few statistical devices are as easy to grasp as the demographic pyramid. One look and you can figure it out, at least the basics. So I will use it here to explore the current panic over falling or diverging birth rates and population trends. To those who are statistically inclined, these graphs are endlessly instructive in what they can say about societies, their fertility, health, longevity or productivity today, yesterday and - especially - tomorrow.

But first, the concept itself. The classic population pyramid is the shape of a Christmas tree: many infants at the bottom, few elderly people at the top. However, in many if not most societies the "pyramids" have morphed into something else. They have slimmed down and turned into top-heavy columns with a narrowing base, pointing ominously towards greying populations, fiscal strangulation and, eventually, looming extinction if nothing is done (like increased migration from regions with a surplus of young people.)

Hence the growing panic.

WORLD

1951

Population: 2,53 BILLION

World population per age group , in percentages.

The world's population is still rising, growing by about seventy million people a year. That's like adding of a city the size of Madrid or Toronto every month. By 2050 it will have nearly quadrupled in just a hundred years.

But the growth has been on a slowing trajectory for a long time. Europe crossed the line of low fertility (meaning below replacement level: 2,1 children) fifty years ago. India reached that point only recently. South Korea, Hong Kong and Macau now have the lowest fertility anywhere (around 0.70 child per woman), but China (1), Thailand (1,2) and Italy (1,2) aren't far behind. When rates drop below half of replacement level, the population declines very quickly, all else being equal. (Of course the opposite scenario holds as well: sub-Saharan Africa is set to triple its population to three billion by the end of the century.)

The only other regions of the world expected to have populations larger in 2100 than today are Central Asia and the Middle-East-and-North-Africa (MENA).

Most countries, however, are on the way down, so much so that, demographically speaking, things no longer add up. Part of the problem is that birth rates have dropped faster than was expected. More young adults in more countries are no longer interested in having babies. Or fewer, or none.

While individualism, anxiety and the cost of raising children have been blamed for this, the pyramids hint at something even more fundamental, something that suggests systemic failure in some societies.

* * *

If we start with the year I was born, 1951, as a reference, the first pyramid (above) shows up as a classic Christmas tree: lots of infants, few grandparents - a situation almost unthinkable today. Of the global population of 2,5 billion, by far the largest single group are those under the age of five, 14 % of the total. Almost 44 % are under twenty and 60 % are under thirty. Only 5 % of people are sixty-five or over. The combined overall life expectancy is only 47 years, but with huge differences between rich and poor countries, male and female. (It is 73 years now.)

If we look at the same global pyramid today (2024, total population 8,2 billion), it is beginning to resemble a pointy skyscraper. By now persons under the age of five make up only 8 % of the total. They are outnumbered by those sixty-five and over (just over 10 %).

2024: look more closely and you can see the numerical deficit of females in all age groups up to 50-54. The actual numbers can be seen on PopulationPyramid.net.

The next step is the projection to the year 2075, when the world population is expected to exceed ten billion: the ageing is visible across all the steps of the pyramid. Even so, the population under the age of twenty still works out at 24 % but the overall picture would be very different if it weren't for the persistent high birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa (though slowing there as well). As can be seen in some of the pyramids below, many countries will be in demographic free-fall.

* * *

Let's examine some of the big demographic weather makers, beginning with China. In 1951 China was the only country with more than half a billion people, fully 45 % of whom were under twenty. (It is tempting to use exclamation marks here.)

Infants and babies under the age of five total more than 83 million Chinese in 1951.

Although the population has jumped to 1.4 billion by 2024, the base of the pyramid has just about disappeared, partly due to the effects of the nominal one-child policy (in effect from 1979 until 2015), now bitterly regretted in Beijing. Something significant changed in those thirty-five years: by the time the policy was reversed, Chinese couples had apparently lost their interest in offspring.

Although the overall population has almost tripled since 1951, the number of those under five has shrunk to 52 million. The less productive age group over sixty-four number 208 million in 2024. The cohort of those approaching retirement age (50-64) number 319 million.

The trend seems unstoppable as can be seen in the 2075 projection. By then China is expected to lose half a billion people. The group under fifty-five is set to shrink dramatically and the bulk of the population would be between sixty and ninety years old - an economic catastrophe as the country runs out of working-age citizens. In this scenario, only 11 % of Chinese would be under twenty. By the end of the century, approximately 600 million Chinese would be left. No wonder China is investing in robotization and AI.

The young ones are gone. Also note the sizeable deficit of women between 54 and 74. It works out to millions.

Having lost its "youth bulge", China is now ageing faster than the United States. Median age in the US topped 39 years in 2024, six months less than in China; it was all of 18 years during Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1968.

It is also worth noting that while China has started to lose people at a rapid rate, the US is expected to hold up better later in the century. It would still be adding people through 2075, reaching over 400 million with a more balanced age profile than China, as is obvious in the pyramid below. (Caveat: with the current erratic and xenophobic administration in place, America's future has become trickier to figure out.)

* * *

Next demographic champion: India. Its future looks extraordinarily different from China's. Although the fertility rate has dropped steadily from five in the early sixties to around two today, the country is projected to top 1,7 billion people around 2060 , gently declining afterwards.

Indians under twenty would still total 20,3 % of the population in 2075, double that of China but about the same as Western Europe. Those over sixty-four would make up a quarter of all Indians. The corresponding percentage in China is much higher, almost 40 %. It makes for a vast and still youthful Indian labour force towards the end of the century. Compare both pyramids for 2075, the differences and consequences in the age structure are obvious.

As for neighbouring Pakistan, it too will keep growing after approaching half a billion people in 2075 (almost double what it is today). What about Bangladesh, the third country of the subcontinent? It will be peaking around 250 million people by 2075 with an age profile similar to India.

* * *

One country that has been gripped by demographic anxiety is the Republic of South Korea, also a manufacturing hub of global importance, home of Samsung, Hyundai, LG and other household names.

Poor and youthful in 1951, the percentage of South-Koreans under twenty is even bigger than in China: almost 53 %. But as it reaches rich-country status in 2024, the youth is vanishing and workers are in short supply. The pyramid now looks more like a zeppelin standing on its head.

By 2075 the relative childlessness has worked its way up the age ladder. It then looks more like an upside down pyramid of empty schools and overflowing elderly care homes. Similar to China, the population shrinks from 52 million in 2024 to 32 million in 2075, down 39 %.

* * *

The dwindling numbers in South Korea or Japan (which is the granddaddy of the geriatric nations) seem negligible compared to the opposite demographic bump in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that, to some extent, holds the future of humanity in its hands.

Consider Nigeria, the world's up-and-coming population heavyweight. Nigeria's economy has been in a slump for the last few years, resulting in one of the lowest per-person incomes anywhere; life expectancy is only 54 years; there is a long running Islamist insurgency - and the fertility rate still stands at around 5.

This is clearly visible when comparing the pyramids for 1951 (above) and 2024 (below). The base has barely shrunk. Although the top remains narrow, meaning low life expectancy, the population increase is massive, from 38 to over 230 million. The percentage under twenty has actually increased a little, from 51.7 to 52.2.

By 2075 the population is set to double again, rising towards half a billion, just a little short of Pakistan's projected total. Although longevity will improve with many more people making it into old age, the percentage of Nigerians under twenty would hardly change in half a century, at 52 %.

Nigeria is not an outlier in sub-Saharan Africa. Chad, Niger, Uganda, Zambia and others have similar numbers. Old people are an uncommon sight in the Central African Republic: only two percent of people are over sixty-four. By comparison, that percentage is almost 25 in Italy today, rising quickly.

* * *

A distant past. ('The Perfect Family', a portrait of the idealized family of Ferdinand Bergmüller by the painter Franz Schrotzberg dated 1837, Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria.)

* * *

When I was born I joined the 693,744 infants and babies registered that year in Belgium, my country of origin and the home of the European Union (to be). Statistically I was part of the wide base of the postwar pyramid. Total population was about 8,6 million (today 11,8 milion).

Seventy years later the pyramid has turned into a column, typical of rich, ageing countries. Most of the "fat" is in the age groups between fifty and sixty-five, on their way to retirement and becoming a growing burden on the public purse. Twenty-five years ago, that core group, generating income and taxes, was still between 30 and 40 years of age.

If you take the time to spin through the pyramids year by year, you can clearly see the median age creeping up. The pyramid contracts, slimming down at the bottom as the bulge in the middle inches higher. Longevity goes up but as the tax base shrinks, economies lose their self-sustaining ability, caught in a doom loop of stalling growth, labour shortages, unfunded pensions and suffocating public debt (largely ignored as a matter of political necessity.)

By 2075 there will be more Belgians between eighty and eighty-four (588 000) than children under five (495 000).

* * *

The alarm bells started ringing a long time ago, first in Japan after its population peaked in 2008. But many countries took a long time to figure out that they were no better off, like Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal or, especially, South Korea, where youth culture is still part of the national brand. They are becoming every bit as child-deprived and geriatric as Japan is.

The greying of societies isn't always predictable. North-Korea has roughly the same birth rate as New Zealand or Iceland. Broadly speaking, though, demography tracks rising wealth, better and more equal education, improved health care, falling infant mortality, nutrition, etc. I have witnessed this myself over the last half century as poor countries moved up the escalator of income, spending, acquisition of mobile phones, appliances, vehicles, progressing from tiny corner shops to supermarkets, credit cards, overconsumption, etc. As they followed this dotted line, they also chose to have fewer children. They had to. In other words: economic development rapidly impacts fertility as materialism overtakes the values of family and tradition.

Suddenly having a family is no longer so desirable. And the pyramids start to shrink at the bottom until, over time, they risk falling over.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

PS: In a world of disinformation and magical thinking, the pyramids are solid. Of course the projections into the future are only that, and thus subject to change.

All the pyramids here refer to countries or regions. Given sufficient statistical firepower it is possible to create statistical models that reflect quantifiable realities other than age and gender: income, education, origin, employment, language, beliefs, political leanings, conflicts. A hornet's nest of data...

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Sources: PopulationPyramid.net, Statista, UN, World Bank. See also: There goes old Europe - https://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/624511103563595777

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext

The Switch

At its most basic, the nature of capitalism has been summarized as the replacement of trees with real estate and cars. If that is indeed the idea, the People's Republic of China has done very well.

Let's look at cars first.

It takes an effort of the imagination, but when I first went to China in the early eighties, it was a country almost without private cars. Everyone used bicycles. I repeat: life was synonymous with bicycles. And China wasn't unique that way. I remember Vientiane, the Lao capital, being car free as well.

Of course there were some vehicles in post-Maoist China, like the bumpy little trucks manufactured by the Second Automobile Works under the brand name Dongfeng. The trucks were iconic in their way, they figured on tiny banknotes printed without serial numbers, worth one fen (one hundredth of a renminbi). They were symbols of Chinese revolutionary pride.

One fen banknote, with truck. Slightly larger fen denominations featured a cargo ship or a twin-engined aeroplane.

All that was about to change. A different car maker, Shanghai Automotive (today: SAIC), owned by the municipal government, had established links with Volkswagen. A joint venture was set up and by 1985 the Volkswagen Santanas rolled off the Chinese assembly line. Millions were built and for a long time the Volkswagen group remained the key player in the Chinese car business. Audis were so beloved of party apparatchiks they were like furniture of upscale officialdom.

Fast forward forty years and the picture has changed. China is the biggest car maker in the world and it no longer needs technology transfers from Europe or anywhere else. The flow is going the other way: China has figured out how to design and make cars and buses cheaper and faster than anyone else. Nowhere is Chinese automotive expertise more prevalent than in electric vehicles. It is so far ahead in battery technology that their EVs are quickly conquering the world. Even Volkswagen itself is now struggling in China, sideswiped by the home-grown brands.

* * *

Dongfeng: epiphany in the suburbs. (Malaga July 2025)

All this was going through my head when I popped into a local Dongfeng dealership near the airport last week. To me it was a historic moment, forty years in the making. While Dongfeng isn't exactly a European household name yet, it is part of the flood of Chinese cars showing up all over Spain. The speed at which this is happening is such that it is an obvious threat to Europe's domestic car industry.

You could throw your hands up in the air and accept it as the inevitable redistribution of the industrial pie around the world. The looming meltdown of Europe's old car industry would then just be a footnote of economic history. Our days are over. Their time has come.

Sticker shock in reverse: pricing for a plug-in BYD Dolphin from China, after a EUR 7000 EV subsidy. (Malaga July 2025),

Many other industries have already gone that way. Seen any French air conditioners recently? Remember what happened to Nokia? As for cars, the native British motor industry went belly up almost fifty years ago (*). Austin, Morris, Ford Anglia, British Leyland - all vanished and not fondly remembered.

Curiously - distressingly - the old brand name MG (originally for Morris Garage) is now Chinese owned. It used to stand for some of the most illustrious little sports cars ever made in England. Now there are Chinese MGs on every street corner, made by SAIC. Not the same.

Before: British MG circa 1970

After: Chinese MG now

* * *

But it is not as simple as that. As I have noted in the past, the sudden export push of Chinese cars is related to a slowdown of the broader Chinese economy. This in turn is due to a long-running overhang in real estate. For decades China has been overbuilding. The dizzying economic growth and the still ongoing shift from rural to urban life were supposed to absorb all the new housing. Except that it wasn't true. Even when it was obvious that the country overflowed with unfinished, unsold or unsellable real estate, more was being added.

It was a pyramid scheme of sorts that kept going as long as fresh money was poured into construction. It ended in 2021 when one of the biggest developers, Evergrande, finally got crushed under its own debt, convulsing the entire economy. Many people lost their savings. (**)

Something had to give.

The comeuppance in real estate had a temporary domino effect on the demand for cars, but more significantly, it highlighted the sheer weight of the automotive industry as a pillar of China's economy. With an output of thirty million cars a year, it had become too big to fail or even wobble, especially after the real estate mess. Political legitimacy, already weakened by Beijing's mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, was at stake.

Cheaper, faster in China.

Fast forward a few years and Europe is being targeted with irresistibly cheap Chinese cars, many of them advanced electric models. The brand names are still unfamiliar, the designs often copycat, but the price is right. Makers such as SAIC, Geely and especially BYD are building momentum. BYD already outsells Tesla in pure electricals. Beijing has the financial clout to make this happen.

Meanwhile Europe's attempt to keep up with Chinese EV technology hasn't gone well, especially after the failure of the giant Northvolt battery maker in Sweden earlier this year, a major embarrassment.

* * *

BMW EV plant nearing completion near Debrecen, Hungary (2025).

Car design and manufacturing are still central to Europe's industrial know-how. This was brought home to me again when I recently passed BMW's vast new factory outside the Hungarian city of Debrecen. Designed for the production of next generation EVs, it sprawls across the puszta almost as far as the eye can see. Clearly it constitutes an enormous commitment to electrification.

Should anything go wrong with this multi-billion euro bet, like large-scale Chinese dumping or populist animosity towards electric cars (as pushed by Donald Trump), the consequences could be calamitous, and not only for BMW, or Germany. It would compromise Europe's industrial base, but also its standing and viability.

* * *

If Germany remains the heartland of automotive expertise, the actual manufacturing has been 'near-shored' for decades, notably to Czechia, Poland or Hungary. All have benefited. Nowadays 'Made in Germany' often means 'Made in Hungary'.

It is not just the big names such as Mercedes-Benz that have moved, but also the largely unknown suppliers, the nuts-and-bolts people. They too are significant employers and players in European industry. Take for instance MUBEA, a supplier of advanced lightweight components to car makers (as well as to Airbus). Never heard of. It turns out to be a company based in the German Ruhrgebiet, east of Cologne. Although family owned, it not exactly small, employing 17 500 workers worldwide, including in Hungary and ten other countries in Europe. There are countless Mubeas out there.

All of this hangs in the balance now, the many millions of good jobs, the promise of continued prosperity, the enormous political capital if Chinese car makers are allowed free rein across Europe.

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(*) UK car production was reported to be at a seventy-six year low this spring. And whatever remains (like Mini, Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley, Rolls Royce) is almost all foreign owned.

(**)https://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/150851877057

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