Picture a baker in Rome around 100 BC. He joins a collegium of fellow bakers, pays his dues, shares recipes, buys grain in bulk, and settles disputes with his peers over a cup of wine. Nobody forced him. He walked in because it paid to, and he could walk out the same way. That is a voluntary association, and it worked precisely because it was voluntary.
Then the state arrived.
By the reign of Trajan, and hardening under Diocletian and Constantine, the collegia stopped being clubs and became conscription lists. The emperors discovered something every ruler eventually discovers: a private guild is an inconvenient thing to tax and command, but a licensed monopoly is a beautiful thing to milk. So they licensed them. The pistores (the bakers) received legal privileges, guaranteed grain supplies, even exemptions from certain public duties. Generous, no?
The price came due fast. Membership turned hereditary. Your father baked bread for the annona, so you would bake bread for the annona, and your son after you. The collegium became a caste. Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices in 301 AD then fixed what you could charge, which meant you produced at a loss or you didn't produce at all. Bakers fled their ovens. Shippers abandoned their vessels. The emperors responded by chaining men to their trades by law.
Watch the mechanism, because it repeats across every century. The state grants a privilege. The privilege comes with a leash. The leash tightens until the "beneficiary" is a serf holding a charter.
Free market thinkers have a name for the exchange the emperors offered: protection from competition in return for obedience. The baker who once set his own prices and hired whom he pleased now answered to a prefect. His guild, born to serve him, now served Rome.
The bread got worse.
The moral argument against a wealth tax is simple:
Your wealth is not a public resource simply because other people are envious of it.
If it was earned voluntarily and without violating anyone's rights, others have no moral claim to it.
“The perfect crime isn’t the one nobody suspects — it’s the one nobody can prove.”
The West appears to be in an era of rampant, political murder. Some consequential deaths will be just what they appear. Many will not. Unfortunately, we don’t have an independent press or a real FBI, nor do we have reliable courts.
In such an era, “proof” is effectively impossible.
There needs to be a FULL investigation into the death of Lindsey Graham.
That's all I'm going to say.
Furthermore, it's also VERY suspicious to me that so many Leftists are absolutely GIDDY about his passing, celebrating almost as much as they did Charlie Kirk's.
Did Russia just poison Lindsey Graham?
There seriously needs to be an investigation. Russia just sent a delegation to Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran where the IRGC and funeral organizers was calling for myself, President Trump and Senator Graham to be assassinated.
Lindsey Graham was in Ukraine one day ago calling for a Russian sanctions bill that he claimed the White House supports.
Now he is suddenly dead from a random illness according to his staff.
Did Russia just murder a US Senator?
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suffered chest pain at his Washington, D.C., home after returning from Ukraine, then went into cardiac arrest and died, The Washington Post reports.
@_Billy_Beck_@elonmusk
I've been watching Billy go through this nonsense repeatedly (account locks, etc) since the Twitter files fiasco.
At *no* time has he ever deserved the treatment.
Why?
Met Police were chased out of London last night by hordes of Muslims.
One officer in hospital with serious injuries.
No Keir Starmer addressing the nation?
Telling they'll face the full force of the law?
Sadiq Khan not saying how "welcoming" London is?
Rich World Net Zero has a tiny impact
Even if the US, EU, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, and the rest of the rich world go Net Zero by 2050
it will only reduce global temperatures by 0.10°C (0.18°F) in 2100
Still, it will cost $100s of trillions
https://t.co/88qhA6UIcp, https://t.co/1ey8ZacGPB, https://t.co/FwQYq8ri6H
Doing everything the government tells you to do unquestioningly = "considering others", to leftist fagserfs like this clown.
If I'm paying $6,000 a month to live in a fucking Manhattan shoebox, and the filthy Communist wretch of a mayor tells me that I have to roast at 78° in my $6,000/month apartment INSTEAD OF FIXING THE FUCKING ELECTRIC GRID, that's letting the officials I elect get away with malfeasance.
YOU are a bitch who worships the State as God.
Scientist testifies that he was asked to erase the Medieval warm period data, a significant part of our history of human beings. It didn’t suit the narrative that “This warming is unprecedented”. I don’t think there’s much else to say really… https://t.co/G9XSMYGgez