Definitely caused some controversy in recent years aswell, like recommending Orban for the peace nobel prize. Literally the man that turned Hungary into the poorest and most illiberal EU country. But again, Baumgartner prefers dictatorships to democracy.

I remember Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize not even a year into his first term, with no concrete peace-related achievements under his belt. There are also Kissinger, Abiy Ahmed and Yasser Arafat on the list of laureates. Overall, it might be the weakest of the Prizes, in the "too dependent on momental popularity and political pressure" sense.

The scientific Nobels + Literature are usually awarded with a decent time gap after the relevant achievement, which helps. Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize should only be awarded to professionally retired people over 70. That would prevent it from being too politicized.

(Shimon Peres too in list of questionable peace laureates)

The over 70 criteria wouldn't help much nowadays, with basically every leader being in his 70s+ (Trump, Biden, Xi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Khomeini, Putin, etc.)

op said

> professionally retired people over 70

*preferred…

At least they maintained communism, even if officially it stopped being communist, it was still de facto communist and that's why it became so poor. Don't think of them as poor but as equal outcome.

Yeah I starved to death, but at least we all died equally starved!

Equality of outcome is the cruelest lie the untalented, lazy, and comfortable tell each other. They assume it means raising the bar to their level instead of drawing it on the ground. It's enforced mediocrity, peddled by those who fear effort and resent excellence.

If for you outcome is the same why you would prefer capitalism over socialism or communism? only because small group of rich people will be in more good? But if it doesn't affect you in any way, and maybe it will make it worse, there will be no point in it.

Equal outcome? Like 99% of power in Hungary is split between Orban and his uni dorm buddies. The guy doesn't even have any ideology, just loves power, money and football. Used to be bearded liberal left wing, turned gelled hair far right after the first thing didn't pull any voters. Didn't care about immigrants until the far far right party got some votes on the issue and then started leaning in heavily.

What on Earth are you talking about?

Communism in Hungary was introduced and kept up by Soviets after the 2nd ww. The very considerable difference between Orban and Kadar (the longest serving communist leader) is that Kadar paid attention not to make his direct family and direct friend the most exorbitantly rich guys in 15 years, which probably also made lots of mid-income people poorer in Hungary. And despite very strong democratic backsliding in many areas, it is still more democratic than during Soviet-led times. But that's probably not due to Mr Orban's character or self-restraint. Baumgartner's idea is probably related to fashionable libertarian ideas of those rich people who never had the patience to feel sympathy for other people, nor to study history or humanities, but feel like they should have a say.

You have your information from the corporate media.

As far as Hungary's development of the GDP per capita is concerned your statement is wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...