Hungarian Politics

[Zanza]

Our federal president appoints all federal employees. Of course he is allowed to delegate that authority.

[Valmy]

The article almost makes it sound like the big difference between Germany, the US, and Scandinavia is that women have jobs in Scandinavia.  I find that quite perplexing.  I could see that being brought up as something characteristic of the Western World but just for Scandinavia?  Besides that what do these big individualizing policies consist of and how do they manifest? 

[Tamas]

Also, a side issue, the Budapest mass transit company (owned by the city of course), BKV, has a lot of debt to repay this year, first one coming on the 27th of this month, around 29-30 million euros worth of money (the 27th of january one, it is just a portion of the whole).

They don't have a dime. They have even stopped buying replacement parts and materials since a few weeks.

So they need money. From the state. Which doesn't want to give. I don't say I don't understand, but supposedly, the legal chainreaction of BKV's default would basically bankrupt Budapest, because the cancelled contracts, and cancelled EU money on the subsequently cancelled 4th metro line building would amount to a whooping cost of about 1.5 billion euros.

I am near the point where I will just laugh on all of this, as decades of indecision, incompetence and corruption just collapse on the heads of everyone.

[garbon]

I would say family is still the basic unit of society except that family does no longer mean married couple with two children, but can take different forms too. It seems natural that humans have close emotional bonds to their relatives.

Our social system is geared towards that too. They will always make the family pay first and only then society at-large. My grandmother had to pay for the elderly care of her father for a year or two before he died despite not having seen him for decades before that.

Very few people try to maintain no associations.

[Sheilbh]

The article almost makes it sound like the big difference between Germany, the US, and Scandinavia is that women have jobs in Scandinavia.  I find that quite perplexing.  I could see that being brought up as something characteristic of the Western World but just for Scandinavia?  Besides that what do these big individualizing policies consist of and how do they manifest? 

I don't know.  It's a small part of a 15 page contribution to Davos.  It caused a stir and references a paper called 'Pippi Longstocking: The Autonomous Child and the Moral Logic of the Swedish Welfare State', which I can't find (edit:  can't find online, it's in an interesting sounding book), and in turn inspired a book called 'Is The Swede A Human?'

Pippi after all lives without parents, with a monkey and does whatever she wants.  You couldn't get much more radical individualism.  I found this post on the whole issue quite interesting:
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/283573/highly-abstract-post-left-and-right-reihan-salam

Having said that I believe female participation in Scandinavia does tend to be higher than everywhere else in the world, and has been for many years.  One of the things that would probably help Italy and Greece in the longterm is greater female participation in the economy.

[Martinus]

I think his argument is that modern people ought to cut ties of loyalty and love. Or something.

Ok.  For what purpose?

It's not my argument.

[Martinus]

My argument is that in modern societies people can survive and do well on their own with no family and offspring if they choose to do so (something impossible in less developed societies). A significant number of them makes that choice, which is responsible for less births to a greater degree than married people having less children is. So if, for whatever reason, you wanted more children to be born, telling married people to have more children is completely missing the target audience.

[Threviel]

Couldn't this be fixed by one good beet harvest?

The hungarian problem I mean, not the demographic problem.

[Martinus]

I would say family is still the basic unit of society except that family does no longer mean married couple with two children, but can take different forms too. It seems natural that humans have close emotional bonds to their relatives.

Our social system is geared towards that too. They will always make the family pay first and only then society at-large. My grandmother had to pay for the elderly care of her father for a year or two before he died despite not having seen him for decades before that.

Very few people try to maintain no associations.

But that's not the point of my argument. We started from talking about demographics, less births than in the past and how people don't breed, and how people used to rely on their offspring for their retirement - it should be clear from the context that if I responded to that by referring to starting/having a family, I meant one's spouse and children and not alternative families.

[Martinus]

The thing is, while the majority still prefers to have spouses and children, there is a significant minority in Western societies that makes more or less of a conscious choice not to - whether because they are rugged individualists like CdM, crazy like Raz or gay like me.

In the past people needed to form families because if they didn't they would either simply die, or if not would face significant hardships in their old age or at least significant level of social ostracism.

Now, the progress of the society has removed most, if not all, of these barriers in the West and it emerged that the people mentioned above (who, I'd dare say, form between 20% and 30% of the population) are simply not interested in breeding. This, imo, is the reason why the statistical birth rate is dropping - and hearing about demographic downturn that Valmy referred to is not going to change these people's minds.

[Razgovory]

How far back are we going here Marty?

[Sheilbh]

The thing is, while the majority still prefers to have spouses and children, there is a significant minority in Western societies that makes more or less of a conscious choice not to - whether because they are rugged individualists like CdM, crazy like Raz or gay like me.

Except the gay aren't making a conscious choice, though you may have.  We're in no position to know what'll happen with the gays because they were to a large extent excluded from family for a long time.  That's changed and I don't know where it'll end.  You could be right or we could be about to see the emergence of homo-families.

I also think that this isn't a 'Western' thing.  Significant parts of the 'West' don't have a demographic crisis: the Anglos, the Scandis and the French especially.  It's something that's been most sever in post-Communist countries and Southern Europe, with Germany also having problems.  I think you're as best looking at what's happened in those countries, or in the fecund countries rather than generalising about gays and rugged individualists opting out of family life in the West - not least because you actually make us sound like a danger to family, which isn't the case however much you'd like it to be so

Edit:  Also I do think couples choosing to have smaller families rather than opting out has been a big part of the shift.

[garbon]

20-30% of people are not interested in having kids?

[Tamas]

Okaaaay, let's put this polish gay self-confirmation seeking aside and return to the topic.

Reportedly, FIDESZ leadership debated these past days the necessity to hold a demonstration of their own, showing off that they still have big support. I was wondering if they would actually do it, since it does pose some risk.

Well, it looks like it is not coming by an official FIDESZ march, but rather by a "civilian organization", called "Peace March for Hungary".

"The Hungarian people already witnessed the horrible consequences of the abroad's disdain, in front of the judges of Trianon. We don't want this to repeat"

The right's most prominent "radical" journalist put it this way:
"The people stand and wait. They feel in their guts that this is their government, and that if this government can be overthrown by the IMF, the bastard Le Monde, and the stupid politicans of the West, then they [teh people] will also be overthrown. The magyar way of living will be overthrown. Then we will stay lotus-eating pigs [?], except that the lotus will be limited, because we have been too hedonist, and consumed too much"

[Tamas]

Also, Marty will love this: the rumours spreading around in the lowest lows of the rightish mob is that the IMF will grant the loan for "stopping the criminal investigation against Gyurcsany (former PM), and allowing gays to marry"