A newspaper about thinking without blinkers
★ RESEARCH & ANALYSIS · NITROGEN EDITION · 9 JULY 2026 · EXPANDED
From "fewer cows means less income" to four scenarios — including the radical cow-free buffer zone that gives Natura 2000 fifteen years to breathe, yields thirty tons of dry matter per hectare, and captures 21 to 27 tons of CO₂ per hectare. Business plan at the end: € 1.17 bn national versus € 20 bn buffer-zone buyout.
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★ PHILOSOPHY · SCIENCE · JULY 2026
Three steps, twenty-four hundred years, one movement. Plato pointed at the wall, Copernicus shifted the centre. The 7D framework adds three dimensions where today's science piles on epicycles.
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★ MANIFESTO · EUROPE · JULY 2026
Why a continent that led the world for five hundred years gave up its position in fifty — and how it can rise again. Four parts: vision, diagnosis, evidence, way forward.
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★ NEW · CLIMATE & FISCAL · JULY 2026
The Netherlands pays € 235 million to Brussels for non-recycled plastic — while the same stream, stored in German lignite pits, could yield € 99 million in carbon credits. A fiscal reversal of € 433 million per year.
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★ POLITICAL-ECONOMIC ANALYSIS · TAX POLICY EDITION · 5 JULY 2026
GDP lies by €419 billion. The Dutch debt ratio is not 43%. It is 69% — well above the EU alarm threshold. The same €492 billion of debt. A different yardstick. And parliament votes with its eyes closed.
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★ RESEARCH & ANALYSIS · NITROGEN EDITION · 5 JULY 2026
Why three plants see what three thousand four hundred buffer-zone maps no longer perceive. €20 billion for buffer zones — while white clover, Giant Juncao and stinging nettle are already solving the nitrogen problem.
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★ RESEARCH & ANALYSIS · CLIMATE EDITION · 5 JULY 2026
Zuidwending, HyStock, and the anatomy of a political waste. The Dutch cabinet has released €450 million for hydrogen storage — for a molecule that costs seventeen times more at the Dutch pump than the best alternative. Not market failure. Physics.
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★ ANALYSIS · TAX POLICY CASE · 3 JULY 2026
Germany is cutting €10 billion of tax a year, loosening the labour market and slashing bureaucracy. The Netherlands is doing the opposite. Chancellor Merz said "heute ist ein guter Tag" — and measured against the matrix, that is accurate. Whoever ignores the matrix lets his industry sink.
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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.
Read the Climate Edition →
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.
Read the Child & Career edition →
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
Read the series →
Consequence Map III · Netherlands
For those who vote PRO, GroenLinks-PvdA or D66 — twenty positions, one matrix
Read the Dutch analysis →
Konsequenzkarte · Germany
The same model, calculated for the Bundestag of February 2025
Read the German mirror →
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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