Right now, I only have a big street bike with over 70 hp. But I remember from back in the day how much fun small engines are, so I’m thinking about getting something with 125cc or even 50cc again for riding around town. A Honda CB125F, Super Cub, Skyteam Skymax 125, or Mash Fifty. 125cc is more than enough! 50cc is really quite small, but it still gets you from A to B with plenty of fun, and you avoid the mandatory vehicle inspection that’s otherwise required here for all vehicles every two years.

A year ago, my partner and I bought a small house a short distance (40 minutes by car) from the city, and I moved into a much smaller, cheaper, and less central apartment in the city. I still spend a large part of my time in the city, but I’m also at the house regularly, especially on weekends. I’ve been much more relaxed ever since, because I know that I can give the city’s rental market the middle finger at any time and retreat to our house.

The saddest part is that there are even many East Germans who don't see this at all, but instead attribute the economic stagnation of many regions in eastern Germany to the mindset of the people living there.

1) You’re misunderstanding the concept of magical thinking. It is not an umbrella term for false expectations. Magical thinking occurs when a person assumes that their thoughts, words, or actions can influence, cause, or prevent events that are not causally connected, thereby disregarding conventional rules of cause and effect. Or one could also say that a hidden causality is assumed where common sense would recognize that none exists.

2) You’re confusing the societal level with the individual level. The expectation that my own personal problem will be solved for me is different from the expectation that a society will get a handle on a widespread problem among its people. The first sounds like someone should take more personal responsibility. The second is a reasonable expectation.

3) You leave open what follows from this. If capitalism can’t deliver on this, what should be done? Should it be reformed or overcome? Should we simply accept that many people will be harmed and let things take their course? If so, I’d like to know why we don’t also turn off all traffic lights, remove all traffic signs, and abolish all traffic rules.

Racism here isn’t so severe that it leaves you with bruises, but you notice it in the little things. For example, this year I was looking for a new apartment with my partner, and when I first made contact, I used her German last name instead of my foreign one—just to be on the safe side. Whenever I do have to deal with the police—for example, because of a traffic accident or something similar—it seems like who gets blamed depends on skin color. If some guy named Hans Müller cuts me off, the police are still on his side. If I cut off someone named Achmed, strangely enough, they’re on my side. The last startup I worked for as a developer really played up its left-liberal, progressive image. Even so, the bosses were blond and blue-eyed, and the janitors were Black Africans. I could fill an entire book with impressions like these.

All the bureaucratic hurdles mentioned in the article are probably intentional. The aim is to make it difficult for foreigners to come here and stay, because these people are not wanted here. In recent years, even politicians deep within the left-liberal spectrum have touted the fact that the so-called migration problem has been brought under control. In other words, they have adopted the right-wing premise that migration itself is a problem, rather than the way migrants are treated and integrated.

The tragedy is that we’re running out of people of working age. We’re having too few children and are turning into an aging society. Over the next twenty years, this will hit us like a bus driving toward a cliff, while none of the passengers see the impending disaster. Immigration could be our salvation, but we just don’t want brown people.

At the same time, German society is tearing itself apart through policies that lack solidarity. Life is meant to be made as difficult and harsh as possible for people with average incomes. The last remnants of the welfare state are being gradually dismantled over successive legislative terms. Everything is being ruined by austerity measures. There is no longer any awareness that collective investments in education and public infrastructure are, in fact, investments that will yield a real return later on—for example, in the form of well-educated people, transportation networks that allow goods to be transported smoothly, or nationwide internet access when you need it. Instead, everything must be milked dry by the private sector, or it’s simply left to rot (or both).

Another comment here mentions that sclerotic forces are at work in Germany. I think that’s an apt description. It frustrates me immensely that society can’t pull itself together to take bold steps toward shaping a positive future. Instead, we have to watch as the country slowly withers away, while one idiot after another takes the reins of government to orchestrate the next round of bloodletting.

It's gotten to the point where I've now lost faith in democracy. Things aren't getting better—they're just getting worse and worse. And all I can do is try to position myself in my personal life in such a way that I can hopefully protect myself and a few people around me from the worst damage caused by this decline.

I wouldn't attribute this phenomenon to biology. But in a healthy world, there would have been an intervention by now—at the very least with pitchforks, but ideally through institutional channels. I'm curious to see if that will still happen, or if we'll simply hand the world over to our new feudal overlords without putting up a fight.

That’s not very nice. I can assure you that I read everything you write here with the same contempt and accuse you of at least the same intellectual dishonesty. I just wouldn’t have put it so bluntly.

If I’m hungry, I’ll just take a piece of your cake and eat it, no matter who it belongs to. Everyone should do that. And if you refuse to share the cake, you should (and will) receive a just punishment for it.

Genuine rights cannot be transferred. Everything else is just an attempt to somehow determine who is allowed to make money from what. You shouldn’t take this too seriously, and certainly shouldn’t turn it into a fetish. You should treat it like traffic rules: if no one is watching and it’s obvious that no one can get hurt, then you can basically do whatever you want. It’s very important to clearly distinguish true morality from this false morality, which is nothing more than the preservation of existing privileges. Those who fail to make this distinction tend to neglect true morality.

And to add my own message: first, it’s no one’s individual duty to worry about other people’s earned income. Second: the money paid for works often doesn’t go to the authors to any significant extent, but rather to some rights holders or middlemen. So this is just a smokescreen. The production of knowledge and art will not suffer because we download works from Anna’s Archive. If anything, it suffers because access to information is unnecessarily hindered. Third: ownership should be strictly limited to physical goods (if at all). Your article, book, or audio recording doesn’t disappear just because I’ve downloaded a copy of it. This is a deep-seated intuition that should be taken as an axiom rather than being questioned simply because people claim the right to profit from information asymmetry.