Comments by "Halfdan Ingolfsson" (@Halli50) on "Wendover Productions" channel.

  1. Tourism saved Iceland after the 2008 financial crisis, but was about to drown us 10 years later. Then came the Coronavirus pandemic - we suddenly have our country back! True, a lot of investors went bananas, there was a gold rush in the hotel and tourism industry and many of them will go under. Well, if you fly high you have far to fall. The entire world is in for a rough and uncertain ride for the next couple of years. We will never go completely "back to normal" again, which will probably count as a good thing in a decade or so. Let's hope for a more moderate, well, everything, when the the storm blows over...
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  2. The exponential growth in tourism was not sustainable - now it just might stabilize and become sustainable.
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  3. Short-term profit priorities (greed) for over half a century has demolished 'Murican ground transport infrastructure. The railroads are near-useless, the bridges are collapsing and the roads are apparently in no better shape. European ground transport infrastructure may be riddled with problems, but at least they are being worked on and, most important, it is efficiently humming along like a well-oiled machine compared to similar 'Murican infrastructure. The reason? In Europe, even with it's many disparate countries, the public good has priority over profit.
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  4. It is actually a relief for us Icelanders to finally have a reduction in tourism. Things were getting totally out of hand, we were drowning in tourists, were not serving them well and a lot of "cowboys" were exploiting the situation by price-gouging tourists and exploiting employees. We can only hope that a downturn will weed out (bankrupt) the bad apples and that we will finally be able to do a good job of receiving and serving our visitors.
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  5.  @kevintroutt2633 , there is an old Icelandic saying: Sígandi lukka er best. This can be translated as "Gradual increases in fortune will serve us best"
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