Why I See Socialism as the World’s Most Perfect Pyramid Scheme

For transparency and my own agenda: I am politically very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, the Green Party, the Left Party, and socialism in general.

After reading a post on X, I finally understood why I truly dislike socialism so strongly.

The author described socialism as the world’s most perfect pyramid scheme – and the more I think about it, the more accurate it feels.

Here’s the simple mechanism:You take money (through taxes) from one person who works (voter 1) and distribute it to four people who do not work but live on various subsidies (voters 2, 3, 4 and 5). In electoral terms, you lose one voter but gain four. The political payoff is enormous.

This is not a new idea. The Swedish Social Democrats understood this dynamic very early on and built much of their long-term power on it. By expanding the group of people dependent on the state, they also expanded their voter base.

It’s a system that rewards dependency and punishes productivity. And once enough people live off the system rather than contribute to it, the pyramid becomes almost impossible to dismantle democratically.

That is why I view socialism not just as an economic policy, but as a political strategy designed to create and maintain power.

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I Was Skeptical – And Then Russia Invaded

I’ve been skeptical for years about how much influence the environmental movement has had on European energy policy.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that skepticism turned into something much clearer: we had made ourselves vulnerable.

By aggressively phasing out nuclear power, countries like Germany and Sweden became heavily dependent on Russian gas. Russia saw the weakness and exploited it.

Here in Sweden we shut down perfectly working reactors, driven more by ideology and fear than by facts and long-term thinking. Now, only five years later, we’re already talking about building new nuclear power. The cost to Swedish taxpayers runs into many billions of kronor.

The bitter irony? Some in the environmental movement are now slowly admitting that nuclear power should be considered fossil-free. But this realization comes far too late. The damage – both economic and to our energy security – has already been done.

Hindsight is easy.

But some mistakes were foreseeable. When ideology wins over engineering and common sense, the bill always arrives – and it’s expensive.

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A Realistic Update on Our 2026 Dividend Goal

At the beginning of 2026, I confidently declared that this would be our best dividend year ever. Looking back, I probably jinxed the whole thing by being so certain about it.

After shifting part of the portfolio from pure dividend stocks to a combination of dividend and growth stocks (mainly AMZN and TSLA), the expected dividends for 2026 have now been revised down by 16% compared to the original forecast I made on January 1.

This means that all my charts will now show a clear deficit between the actual outcome and the forecast I set at the start of the year.

However, I’m still hopeful that the total value of the portfolio will increase over the full year. In the end, that’s really the only thing that matters.

Lesson learned: Maybe I shouldn’t announce “this will definitely be our best year ever” quite so loudly next time.

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Major portfolio shift

We have made major changes to our holdings.

We shifted from a 100% dividend-oriented strategy by selling some positions and concentrating more on growth stocks.Our portfolio now consists of 84% dividend stocks and 16% growth stocks — mainly Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) and Tesla, Inc. (TSLA).

One potential challenge with this shift will be knowing when to sell the growth stocks once they hit our targets. We have far more experience simply buying and holding dividend stocks as long as nothing major changes.Another challenge might be my own patience — which has never been one of my strongest traits.

I’ll need to give these growth stocks time to reach their full potential.

Exciting times ahead!

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