A newspaper about thinking without blinkers
NEW · ANALYSIS · 11 OCTOBER 2026
GDP is growing, but real spending room is shrinking. What the cabinet's decisions cost an average household in real goods, including the second and third order and the American blockade of ASML: of €13,678, €8,515 remains.
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NEW · PLAN · 10 OCTOBER 2026
Earn first, then distribute. A small government, a simple tax system, work that always pays and entrepreneurs who stay: the course in six steps, with the eleven holes that must be closed at once.
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NEW · PLAN · 5 OCTOBER 2026
Less government, lower taxes, freedom to do business. Six steps to make the Netherlands competitive again, including with China.
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NEW · ANALYSIS · 5 OCTOBER 2026
The small inventor pays. The multinational cashes in. And the factory ends up abroad. How the Netherlands’ largest innovation scheme is making the country poorer.
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NEW · FORECAST · 30 SEPTEMBER 2026
How the Netherlands and Europe are losing their productive core, what is needed for their own bank and their own Marshall Plan, and what is happening to tourism
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★ DOSSIER · EMOTIONAL BASE OF EUROPE · 13 SEPTEMBER 2026
While the Netherlands counts itself among the happiest countries in the world, it ranks last on a 35-country emotional-base scale. Switzerland: 61.3. Netherlands: 3.4. Here is what that means.
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★ RESEARCH · FULL REPORT · 12 SEPTEMBER 2026
Body, feeling, attention, language and sensory blindness. Integrated analysis of four loss episodes — parenting crisis, AI labour market transition, industrial decline and talent outflow — with 114 graphs, full documentation and source list.
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★ ENERGIE · VOL-LCA v7 · 28 AUGUSTUS 2026
Why energy via the plant world is the only route that can actually reduce CO₂ emissions — and why it is the skeleton to which the other routes attach wherever they fit.
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★ KLIMAAT · JUNCAO-GRASSEN · 28 AUGUSTUS 2026
A tropical grass provides the same tonne of avoided CO₂ at a fraction of the cost of offshore wind, hydrogen or CO₂ storage. And it remains available when the oil runs out.
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★ KLIMAAT · DE ECHTE ANALYSE · 18 AUGUSTUS 2026
Why current climate policy will not work, what will work, and why it nevertheless does not happen. Reference date: August 2026.
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★ NEW · ANALYSE · 12 AUGUSTUS 2026
How the UK worker meets tax at work, at the till and at home — while overseas investors own much of quoted UK equity
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★ NEW · FILOSOFIE · 11 AUGUSTUS 2026
European innovation cannot but withdraw — in defence, in order to survive
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★ NEW · WAT OPKOMT · 25 JULI 2026
How to raise an AI through the evolutionary layers — from feeling to reason, and why the industry does it in reverse
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★ ANALYSIS · VOTE IMPACT CASE · 3 JULY 2026
A record number of millionaires is leaving Western Europe; Germany runs the steepest curve in the world. NZZ delivers the picture today — the Vote Impact model delivers the explanation. Party × Person × Baseline = an aircraft seat.
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★ MANIFESTO · PHILOSOPHY · JUNE 2026
A way out of the oldest dilemma in political theory. Sovereignty is not a position — sovereignty is a cycle. A new manifesto reconsidering the foundations laid by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.
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★ NEW DISCUSSION PIECE · JUNE 2026
An observation by Jacobus van Merksteijn. Western Europe speaks about justice as if it stood alone in the world — while each country is a drop in the great pan of water called the world. A piece meant to open eyes.
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★ OPEN PROPOSAL · TWENTE REGION
An open and honest proposal — for whoever dares. Ten municipalities calculated through. For a Twente-region city, the order of € 50 million per year is on the table. Who takes the first step?
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★ ANALYSIS · TEN MUNICIPALITIES
What happens to a city when half of its city hall disappears? Ten municipalities worked through, from Amsterdam to Borne — order of € 5.4 billion per year.
Read the analysis →★ Explore
★ What surfaces
Irregularly and when something surfaces. Shorter pieces alongside the editions.
New thematic edition
Energy. Mobility. Heating. Food. Migration. CO₂ removal. A broad edition on the climate choice Europe faces today — with the central triptych 'On the box or the luggage rack' as the steering frame.
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Discussion piece · June 2026
An observation by Jacobus van Merksteijn. Western Europe speaks about justice as if it stood alone in the world — while each country is in reality a drop in the great pan of water called the world. A piece meant to open eyes.
Read the discussion piece →Recommended to reread
Leadership edition · June 2026
Twelve articles that work out the sharpest organisational question of our time. The reason-led leadership now in fashion paralyses the organism it governs. Feeling-led leadership — primal feeling, courage, knowledge of people — is what truly moves.
Read the Leadership edition →Child & Career edition · June 2026
Sixteen articles on what we give the child in primal feeling, schooling and career perspective. An edition that bridges the first years of life and the career of a lifetime — with the human as starting point and society as consequence.
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Europe edition · June 2026
Two million hectares of Carbon-Alert NL on European rapeseed area. A quarter to a third of EU agricultural climate emissions solved. Full protein sovereignty. EUDR compliance. Farm income factor four to eight. For less than half a percent of the CAP budget. The political gift no one has yet placed on the table.
Read the steering article →Germany edition · June 2026
285,000 hectares of winter rapeseed in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Falling yields, falling direct payments, falling biofuel quotas. The Carbon-Alert architecture offers these farms a real multiplier of four to eight on farm income — embedded in the CAP Strategic Plan 2023–2027.
Read the steering article →Nitrogen edition · June 2026
Nitrogen, methane, soy dependence and farm income — four crisis points the Dutch government treats as three separate dossiers. One production architecture solves them at once, preserves the grassland, and brings the farmer a realistic €7,500 to €12,000 per hectare — factor two to three higher than today.
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Steering article · Mallorca, June 2026
A Socratic confrontation with the Dutch and European energy route. Five blinkers off. One route that does work. And Europe back on the leadership throne — not through domination, but through partnership.
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Follow-up article · Mallorca, June 2026
Drive seeks ground. What chafes here can build there. An open invitation to Greenpeace and to everyone who is looking for ground where their energy can build something.
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Research & analysis · Mallorca, June 2026
Electric. Hydrogen. Fossil. Ethanol. Heat pump. All energy forms for transport and heating compared side by side — without a single cent of subsidy. One route wins.
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Five-part series · Malta, June 2026
A five-part series on how Europe is stripping its productive citizens before the lights go out
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Consequence Map III · Netherlands
For those who vote PRO, GroenLinks-PvdA or D66 — twenty positions, one matrix
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Konsequenzkarte · Germany
The same model, calculated for the Bundestag of February 2025
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Manifesto · Consequence Map I
Why the StemWijzer will never tell you what you are actually voting for — and what must take its place
Read the manifesto →The diagnosis — at the end
At the bottom of this page is a calm prologue explaining the medical metaphor, followed by two articles that apply the image concretely to the Brussels reality.
Prologue · the image
An image to think with, not to strike with. Calmly explained, followable in one read — the metaphor with which the two Brussels pieces can be understood.
Read the prologue →★★★ Lead Brussels · 19 June 2026 · Europe is becoming poor
CBAM, ETS and Pillar Two — three attacks at once. The BiCRS route is ignored.
Read the Brussels diagnosis →★★ Diagnosis Brussels · underlying article
The diagnosis in its full breadth: six sectors, one leadership, one anti-immune disease.
Read the sector diagnosis →↓
Longer work in numbered editions, each with its own topic and treatment.
An open account — why an inventor, entrepreneur and thinker feels called to write for the public.
Why control systems that govern every household do not exist at the level of the cabinet.
Net Economic Production Cost — a new metric that unites GDP and the climate bill in a single formula.
Manifesto. Three tracks — craftsmanship, broad knowledge, classical pre-education — to restore Dutch education.
What it costs to restore Dutch education — in money, convenience and electoral reward. And why delay is more expensive.
The conclusion. What we can still save, what we can no longer save, and why you must speak out now.
The foundation for Democracy 2.0 — ten core fields, goal-based governance instead of procedural rules.
A conceptual framework that unites physics, biology, mind and society in one model.
Neural prediction of exchange rates based on the NEPK formula. With concrete trading signals at 12 and 24 months.
The Netherlands levies away what it should be keeping in. A concrete plan to attract capital, talent and businesses.
Why a society that removes all friction undermines its own strength. On the logic of resilient selection.
An inventor who also writes about democracy — that sounds strange, until you realise it is all the same thing.
A model with seven dimensions for viewing the world, the universe and society.
See the complete edition of 23 May 2026, including Education, Nuclear Fusion, Flow Theory and the conclusion of Edition 1.
The writer
What I do is see connections. Between physics and public administration, between education and economics, between ship coatings and democracy. Not as a specialist in one field, but as someone who moves between fields that rarely read one another.
The Open Visor is my attempt to share this way of seeing with others. Not because I want to be right — because I believe that the child who lives in each of us, also in the banker and the regulator, cannot in the long run survive in a world that promises only what can be measured.
Jacobus van Merksteijn · Malta
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