Episode 114 · 2021-12-23 · 39:29 · Original in Finnish
The Great Reset 2.0 | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 114
Originally published as “The Great Reset 2.0 | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 114”
A sequel to the previous year's Great Reset episode, watched more than a hundred and twenty thousand times, in which Tuomas Malinen goes back over which of his forecasts came true. The frame is the same: Acemoglu and Robinson's narrow corridor, in which democracy emerges from a balance between a despotic state and civil society, and Malinen's assessment is that 2021 slipped towards the state. He names the recovery fund debate as a sign of a turn: a long-serving MP told him he had never seen such a flood of citizen feedback. The carrying argument is constitutional rather than medical — if a level can be placed above the constitution by decree, on which the population is then sorted, Malinen's view is that it will certainly be used again in another context. The host says openly that omicron changed his own position two weeks earlier, but disputes that vaccination is purely political, and on the economy he disagrees that central banks cannot raise rates; Malinen's answer is that the Fed's weak point is leveraged financial markets and the euro area's is its government bond market.
Core theses
- The argument is about constitutional precedent rather than about any health measure: in Malinen's words, a sorting level placed above the constitution 'will quite certainly be used again in some other context'.
- Returning to score last year's forecasts is the episode's most defensible move, and Malinen's own scorecard is mixed — the recovery fund passed, central bank digital money and Bretton Woods II did not advance as he expected.
- The host disagrees with the guest on air twice — on whether vaccination is purely political and on whether central banks can raise rates — and says when he changed his own mind; that is what keeps this from being a platform.
- Malinen's rate argument is an asymmetry: rising rates threaten leveraged financial markets in the United States but government bond markets in the euro area, which is why he expects the euro area to be the one that cannot withstand them.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — A sorting level placed above the constitution
- 01:41 — Was 2021 a year of fighting for freedoms
- 03:21 — The recovery fund passed, but it was close
- 04:58 — Why the debate mattered at all
- 06:21 — Where a good civil society comes from
- 08:13 — The state's role through central banks and investment
- 10:48 — Is the state any good at making investments
- 12:16 — Why vagueness in measures is dangerous
- 14:07 — The Spanish flu and its waves a century ago
- 16:33 — South Korea and India as comparisons
- 17:56 — Miettinen's dissenting view and the limits of the pass debate
- 19:36 — Magna Carta and the purpose of a constitution
- 22:13 — Concentration of power in the Great Reset analysis
- 23:35 — The bankers did not know about the project
- 25:07 — Gosbankisation and the shift of the financial system
- 27:01 — Low rates and high inflation as a gift in loan form
- 29:14 — Why unstable inflation is unsustainable
- 30:46 — The euro area as a house of cards
- 32:38 — Bretton Woods II and the IMF's position
- 34:30 — Free speech, woke ideology and civil disobedience
- 36:47 — Smokescreen operations as attention management
- 38:20 — Exclusion from mainstream media as a badge of honour
- 39:19 — Closing words
Summary
A sequel to the previous year’s Great Reset episode, watched more than a hundred and twenty thousand times, in which Tuomas Malinen goes back over which of his forecasts came true. The frame is the same: Acemoglu and Robinson’s narrow corridor, in which democracy emerges from a balance between a despotic state and civil society, and Malinen’s assessment is that 2021 slipped towards the state. He names the recovery fund debate as a sign of a turn: a long-serving MP told him he had never seen such a flood of citizen feedback. The carrying argument is constitutional rather than medical — if a level can be placed above the constitution by decree, on which the population is then sorted, Malinen’s view is that it will certainly be used again in another context. The host says openly that omicron changed his own position two weeks earlier, but disputes that vaccination is purely political, and on the economy he disagrees that central banks cannot raise rates; Malinen’s answer is that the Fed’s weak point is leveraged financial markets and the euro area’s is its government bond market.
Constitutional, not medical
The distinction Malinen insists on is the one worth holding onto while reading: his case is not about whether a measure worked but about what it establishes as available. Viewed in purely constitutional terms, he argues, a pass sorts the population above a constitution that forbids it, and a precedent for doing that by decree does not stay confined to the emergency that produced it. He reaches back to Magna Carta to make the point that a constitution exists to protect people from their rulers.
Scoring the previous forecast
The episode opens by going back to what was predicted a year earlier. Malinen counts the recovery fund vote as a defeat that was also a partial victory, because it activated civil society; he concedes that central bank digital money has moved faster in China than in the West, and the host notes that a Bretton Woods II arrangement did not materialise. Malinen’s forecast is that digital money will come through a financial crisis rather than an announcement.
The disagreement stays in
The host had changed his own position two weeks before recording, after early omicron data, and says so. His objection is narrower than his guest’s: a bureaucrat choosing approved vaccine combinations centrally. When Malinen calls vaccination purely political, the host says he disagrees, and later he disputes Malinen’s view that central banks cannot raise rates, citing market pricing for a US rise before March. On a subject this contested that is the difference between an interview and a platform.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: The Great Reset 2.0 | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 114. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
Go deeper
Explore the ideas in depth
Guides connected to this conversation, with frameworks and further reading.
Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have
A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.
People and topics
Guests: Tuomas Malinen
Topics: Free Speech & Society Geopolitics