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  "description": "It’s worth paying close attention, because Germany may be one of the worst offenders, but it isn’t the only Western nation making these choices.",
  "path": "/welcome-to-the-lowest-common-denominator-society/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-26T00:30:10.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "**James Hickman**",
    "Sovereign Man"
  ],
  "textContent": "**James Hickman**\n _James Hickman (aka Simon Black) is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man._\n\nFor decades, Germany operated its rail system on an honor model. There were no turnstiles, no barriers. Passengers bought tickets, boarded trains, and conductors performed random spot checks to make sure everyone had paid.\n\nIt was a system built on trust – and for a long time, it worked, because Germany was a fundamentally law-abiding society.\n\nThat system has been fraying over the last several years as Germany aggressively imported millions of migrants who don’t respect the law.\n\nThe most egregious example took place earlier this month, when a train conductor asked a passenger – a 26-year-old migrant – for his ticket.\n\nNot only did the passenger not have a ticket, but he beat the conductor so severely that the man died of his injuries the next morning.\n\nThe government’s response is extraordinary. Rather than establish law and order and rain holy hell upon the criminals, Deutsche Bahn – which is owned by the German government – has told conductors to NOT approach passengers who present a “high risk of escalation.”\n\nIn short, the new policy is – if someone looks dangerous, don’t bother checking their ticket.\n\nMeanwhile, ordinary passengers – the ones who actually follow the rules – will continue to be checked (and punished) if they’re caught without valid fare.\n\nThe same logic already governs retail theft across much of Germany.\n\nShoplifting hit record levels in 2024 – roughly €3 billion in losses – and according to industry data, 98 per cent of retail theft goes unreported to police. Retailers have largely given up because prosecutors rarely pursue the cases.\n\nMoreover, employees who do try to intervene face increasingly aggressive and violent offenders… which is why retail stores have instructed staff to not intervene.\n\nWe’ve seen the same type of policy in the US.\n\nLast August in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska was sitting on a light-rail train when a man behind her pulled out a knife and stabbed her to death.\n\nThe killer – DeCarlos Brown Jr – had 14 prior arrests including armed robbery and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His own mother had tried to have him involuntarily committed. Seven months earlier, a magistrate “judge” named Teresa Stokes released him without bond – on nothing more than a written promise to appear.\n\nI put “judge” in quotes because Ms Stokes had never graduated from law school, nor passed the bar in any state. She wasn’t qualified to adjudicate a traffic ticket, let alone violent crime.\n\nAt least there was outrage in America over Zarutska’s violent slaying. But in Germany, the response to a train conductor being beaten to death was to tell other train conductors to stop doing their jobs.\n\nAnd this isn’t some isolated lapse in judgment. It’s a pattern that runs through practically every layer of German governance.\n\nStart with free speech. The Alternative for Germany party (the AfD) won 20.8 per cent of the vote in last year’s federal election, and current polls put them at 25–27 per cent – neck and neck with the governing party.\n\nThe AfD’s surge in popularity is literally BECAUSE of the lawlessness and criminality that’s rampaging across the country.\n\nBut rather than admit their policies have been catastrophic failures… and reverse course… the German establishment’s response was to classify the entire AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor”. They even authorized the domestic intelligence agency to wiretap and spy on AfD members.\n\nPoliticians have also filed hundreds of criminal complaints against citizens who criticized them online. Robert Habeck, the former deputy chancellor from the Green Party, personally filed 805 complaints. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock filed 513.\n\nThe government frequently conducts early-morning raids on citizens’ homes over social media posts – they literally call them “Action Days Against Hate.” Ironically, one man received a suspended prison sentence for posting a meme that said a politician “hates freedom of speech.” You can’t make this stuff up.\n\nA 2024 study by The Future of Free Speech found that 99.7 per cent of content deleted on Facebook under Germany’s censorship law was perfectly legal speech.\n\nRather than asking why millions of Germans are angry – the economy in its longest downturn since reunification, 120,000 manufacturing jobs lost in a single year, rising violent crime – the government’s answer is to label them extremists, censor their speech, and try to ban the party they vote for.\n\nThen there’s German energy policy.\n\nRemember, this is the same government that lectured the entire world on climate change while shutting down all 17 of its nuclear power plants – the last three in April 2023, during an energy crisis.\n\nBefore Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany imported 55–65 per cent of its natural gas from Russia.\n\nWhen Russia cut the gas in 2022, Germany frantically restarted more than 20 **coal-fired** power plants and imported 42 million tonnes of coal, including a 278 per cent surge from southern Africa.\n\nThey bulldozed an entire village called Lutzerath (in South Africa) to expand a coal mine, dragging 6,000 protesters away.\n\nThe country that wagged its finger at the West over carbon emissions ended up with a dirtier power grid than China’s.\n\nAnd having shut down its own perfectly clean nuclear plants, Germany became a net electricity importer for the first time, buying power from France’s nuclear grid.\n\nUnder German law, if a bartender overserves a customer who then causes a fatal car crash, the bartender can be prosecuted for negligent homicide. Courts have ruled that by serving the alcohol, the bartender becomes legally responsible for the danger they created.\n\nBut a government that shuts down its own energy supply, censors its own citizens, and tells law enforcement to look the other way when criminals get aggressive? Apparently no such accountability applies.\n\nAnd the same goes for the US, where if there was any justice, Teresa Stokes would be in prison for the negligent homicide of Iryna Zarutska.\n\nIt’s worth paying close attention, because Germany may be one of the worst offenders, but it isn’t the only Western nation making these choices.\n\nThat’s how you build a lowest-common-denominator society – by catering every policy to benefit the worst people in it.\n\nThis article was originally published by Sovereign Man.",
  "title": "Welcome to the Lowest-Common-Denominator Society",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-26T00:30:10.000Z"
}