 wake up, find a way, get your own life sustainable, make a job on your own, make real money on your own, even if it's nothing but chocolate as you do in your cheap kitchen. And then we will handle, if you don't do it, you will end as a rooster in 1990. Okay? Thank you. So we're here at the Copenhagen TEDx, and who are you? I'm a Danish economist, and I'm making research on stocks every day, but today I'm discussing how our Danish welfare state is performing, and I think it's not performing that well. So it actually might be a shock to some way. So Bernie Sanders, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, there's a lot of people in the USA that talk about the Danish model, right? Yeah, yeah. And you know, they are desperate to find another way for something new. The big problem is that in Denmark we are running a small nation, so we are very kind of a tribe. So it's quite easy to be Prime Minister in Denmark. It's quite easy. Yeah, it is, because we are not that many problems, so you can keep us together. And that's a big problem. The situation we have in Denmark, you cannot take it and put it into the US. And in fact, we have been on this road for a long, long time. So it's not something you can do for our next election. So is it not just impossible for the US to copy? You were talking about the Denmark right here, and we have the highest taxes. Can we also have the best society on it? Yeah, that's a question of how you feel it, but I wouldn't say it, because the big problem is that we have a very nice place to be. There is a calm place and so on, but we are no tensions. But the big problem is that we are actually running down on our economy. In the end, we are just using up resources and up going bankrupt. That's a big problem. Big problem. Yeah, it is. If the economy is not performing that well, then we will be left behind. If you take Denmark and compare it to South Korea, they were crossed in 1953, started from scratch. They have industrial production, which is 30% higher than Denmark today. And we came out to see the world war in a fairly good shape. So are we doing it well? No, we haven't. And that's a big problem. You might do whatever you want, but if you are running out of cash, the show stops. Norway, at one point, to work our oil, right? Yeah. So they don't have a decision? Yeah, evidently that Norway has a much better position. It is the richest people in all of Europe. And I suggested that we should make a merger, you know? With the Indians, so we can hold all their money. So we can hold our money? Yeah, we can get hold of their money if we make a merger. Moving to Denmark and Norway together, you know? How about Sweden? No, no, Sweden is running the same way as Denmark. You see, there's one big difference from Sweden to Denmark. In Denmark, we are able to discuss the basic problems on our welfare state, the accumulated problems and how we perhaps can handle this one way or the other to kind of rescue, to turn it back. But in Sweden, it's out of discussion. They haven't even come to that point yet. And it's a great problem. You have to face problems, then you're going to handle problems. But if you deny the situation, you can't. So do we have the best healthcare and the best education or not? No, we are not having it. Denmark is top 15 to 25 on economics, always. But if you go and look for schools, healthcare and so on, we have a position around number 10, I would guess, in general. We have a high standard in public services, no doubt. But we are placed around the position number 10. So there's elections soon. So what if you became the prime minister? What would you do? I would do one thing in the first place. I would say we will make no more laws. All existing laws have to be reviewed. And if they're not working, then we'll cancel it. They're not going to be used anymore. It is the largest problem. We are living in a jungle of paragraphs. And you can't run a nation this way around. We have to find a new way. And I haven't got the solution yet. We are going to go by some general instructions and principles. And then we take the rest as operational decisions on the way. And if you have a very large government sector, you of course have a lot of problems to handle. If you have a much smaller, then you could handle it in a much better way. So you have to split it up. Isn't that deregulation? Is it libertarian? Yes, it is. But you know, on the other hand, what we are going for the time being, if you are running a show by taxes, you are enforcing people to play and to use every kind of thing that the public sector tries to offer you. So today, the Danes are sub-optimizing their position against actually the society, the state, the government, all the other tax places. And this is cancer. That's what's going on. And therefore, the point is to cool it down. The big problem for Denmark is that we have this system that is so huge that you can't start making reform in one corner, then the other, and the third. And you go all for 100 years. I would tell you, kill the cat, start all over again. And we have a Danish politician that maybe is going to be the president of EU, right? What should the EU do, you think? There's a lot of regulations. Well, the big problem with EU is actually that EU is the repetition of what the national states are doing. They try to make regulation of everything. EU should be a union for foreign policy and for common market for goods and services. They should not regulate how you run on a bike or how big a motor can be or how much you are going to go to the air. If you do that, and that is actually a Brexit problem, don't go for details, go for the major issues in which we can handle in common some kind of cooperation, not the other way around. And that is the EU problem. So you don't like the idea of the United States of Europe? No. You don't want to have one big country? No, we're 28. And actually we have a lot of different languages, so it's quite difficult to do. But this is a replica of the national state, and that is the big problem. One funny thing I tell you is that the richest place you have in Europe is actually Brussels. Why? Because they have a nice industry, business life, no, they have none. It is money you pay. The next best place is Hamburg. Hamburg is a great city of trade, service, and whatever they do industry. That is in reality the best town. In old Russia, Moscow was the center of all and had all the benefits. Perhaps you should think a little bit about it. Where does the money come from? And that is the problem. And Brexit actually, as far as I can see, is the British people saying, in office it's not. We don't want to be regulated in every respect. In Denmark you have around, people say, I don't read them, 2,000, I think it's 2,300 new regulations a year from EU, and you have, these ones has to be implemented in Danish legislation, rules, regulations and everything. It is nonsense. Stop it. But it's trying to make a common market with common rules for everybody? Yeah, yeah. So that's important. Otherwise, if somebody is cheating in one side and they want to do trade, it wouldn't work, right? Everybody has to have the same rules. Now, when you look into goods and services, it's a little bit more simple to make some kind of regulation on it. But in principle, markets has to find a way itself. And then the big problem in western nations, all this stuff, is that the producer of something is not holding the responsibility. They hold limited responsibility. So you have a lot of tricks and poor quality moving on. That is the real problem as goes for this. You can take the story about Audi. They got a fine for 5 million euros for the exhaust problems. Now, they accepted to pay 900 voluntarily because it was nonsense. But there was a maximum for how much for size of a fine to authorities. It was nonsense. It might be effect for some small machine factory in Bavaria, but it was not for Audi. And they accepted to pay 180 times to stop it and let's move on. All right. So I'm looking forward to your TEDx talk. How many million people do you think are going to watch it? Well, I hope that a lot of people watching this, especially the idea I have that we are mature democracies, we are fading, so we are in a deep, deep trouble on our way forward. And I hope there will be some 20 million. Not only in Denmark. No, no, no. Everybody should be interested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the general problem we have about lawmaking, how to run a nation by laws, by democracy, by laws, laws that no one actually read and you don't know if you are complying into them or not. It is nonsense. You have to stop it and find a better place. It's something simple. Yeah, you have to find a better way. And it is difficult. And I do not have a solution. But I have the question. And I have to focus on it because we can't go on this way much longer. Maybe it's just something in an app. Yeah, perhaps. It could be an app? Yeah, you can take it to the city. No, it's forbidden. Let me stop. Cool. Thanks a lot. Okay.