Al ∞/21M

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@PeterMcCormack Great idea @PeterMcCormack and @SteveBakerFRSA We need some Austrians in the room.

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

This post has exposed who should not be in politics or anywhere near the ballot box.

The minimum wage is a sticking plaster for the failure of the state. It was rebranded "The Living Wage" because inflation (the fault of government), has made life too expensive.

It should not be illegal for someone to want to work at a wage they are happy to accept.

Business is hard and It is the state which is killing business is right now:
1. Taxes up (state theft)
2. Energy costs up (mad energy policy)
3. Product costs up (shadow state theft)
4. Less customers (cost of living - inflation)

This is all backdoor socialism, control of the company and individual through law and taxation.

People should be rightly angry at both the Conservatives and Labour, but to think any left-wing party can solve this, I am sad to tell you, you could not be further from the truth, things will get much much worse. We are heading towards Venezuelan / Argentinian style collapse.

No nation has a divine right to be prosperous. Prosperity comes from hard work and good political leadership. We do not have good political leadership and we are killing the incentives of prosperity.

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@freddienew https://t.co/Oh25OLgkxW

[Zynx @ZynxBTC]

The UK Government capping interest rates on student loans was the sign that rampant inflation is coming.

They always start somewhere innocuous. Then Reeves floats freezing private rents for a year. Then Starmer tells people to reconsider their holidays and what they buy at the supermarket.

This is what governments do when inflation spirals and they have no real solutions. They control prices, suppress symptoms and make everything worse.

Years of catastrophic energy policy are coming home to roost.

Life in the UK is about to get significantly more expensive.

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@freddienew Couldn't agree more.

[Freddie New @freddienew]

Reminder - this is how civilisations typically collapse.

There's usually no dramatic 'fall of Rome' or cataclysmic event.

Just a slow grind downwards as you gradually notice potholes aren't filled in, roads collapse and are washed away, you can never see a doctor or a dentist and eventually muddle on with a missing tooth or held together with painkillers and tubigrips...

Where casual petty theft becomes normalised and is unpunished, and everything goes up and in price (except your wages, so you can't keep up). Where an asset-owning elite is largely immune to all this, but gradually retreats behind walls, gates and private security.

Next step might be rolling blackouts, which you'll get used to as well, as your children do their homework by paraffin lamps and candlelight.

And you suddenly realise quite how far we have fallen.

[Anglo Futurism Capital LP 🇬🇧🐿️ @RollingHedge]

At £2 a litre, the Treasury takes 86p of it.
Fuel duty is 52.95p.

Then VAT at 20% is charged on the full pump price, including the duty.

The government levies VAT on its own tax. On a 55-litre tank that is £5.82 of tax charged on a tax.

Prices are rising. No vote is required. Receipts climb automatically because VAT is a percentage, and a percentage of a bigger number is a bigger number. The 5p duty “cut” in March 2022 was overtaken within a fortnight by the VAT lift on the same litre.

From September the duty freeze ends in three stages. By March 2027 the rate returns to 57.95p, precisely where it stood before the 2022 relief was announced. At £2 that is 91p a litre to the Exchequer, the highest combined take since the freeze began.

A Spanish driver at the same pump pays the Madrid government 62p.

The wholesale cost is broadly the same across northwest Europe.

The gap is policy. Shit policy. Eat it up.

https://t.co/z0O6dOMNCe

[Cole Walmsley @Cole_Walmsley]

I've never seen anyone make this Bitcoin argument before:

People see Bitcoin as a replacement for fiat.

But what if you flipped it around? What if fiat was the replacement for Bitcoin?

Imagine Bitcoin is the monetary standard. It’s the money that’s been normal since birth.

Decentralized. No one controls it. Can't be inflated. Runs on math and energy. Same rules for everyone, no exceptions.

Now someone walks in and pitches you a replacement:

"We're going to let a small group of bankers and politicians control the money supply. They can print as much as they want, whenever they want. It'll lose purchasing power every single year. And if you don’t play by their rules, they’ll fine you, penalize you, or throw you in jail.”

Would you opt in?

Would anyone?

The only people that would opt in are the bankers and politicians, the same people who decided that fiat would be money in the first place.

Think about that. You never had a choice. You were never given a vote. It was only up to them. Fiat — by decree.

The fiat system goes back over 100 years — and central banking goes back even further.

That system has entrenched itself into society. It’s created economic schools around its ideas. It’s built entire industries around profiting from it. And it’s made itself the default so no one thinks to question it.

Bitcoin is not the crazy idea. Fiat is. It’s just been running so long that people have normalized it, so when an alternative monetary system pops up, people call it crazy.

When you flip the script and view the world from the Bitcoin lens, the ridiculousness of fiat becomes obvious.

Simply stated...

If Bitcoin had come first, nobody would agree to fiat.

[Firas Modad @firasmodad]

A serious government in Britain would be coming out with plans to rapidly expand energy, chemicals, food, and fertilizer production right now.

Coal, natural gas, and nuclear projects would be getting rubber stamped. North Sea projects would be hiring engineers and workers from shut down fields in the Persian Gulf. Drill, baby drill would be the only game in town.

Abattoirs would be getting opened up and down the country. Taxes on farmers would be slashed. Supermarkets would be told to prioritise British production or else.

Bureaucracy and red tape would be getting cut.

Welfare would be getting obliterated to avert a debt crisis.

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

So the UK's 10-year gilt yield - the cost of government borrowing - is now up at 2008 levels.

An 18-year high

The difference is that, back then, UK national debt was 48pc of GDP, and now it's the best part of 100pc.

So the debt service costs are much MUCH heavier.

Of the £14.3bn the UK government borrowed in February alone, no less than £13bn of that was spent on interest on existing debts - a situation which is not only unsustainable, but very close to provoking a disastrous financial collapse.

Yet still, our national discourse is all about more spending, more borrowing, more "state intervention".

When is the Labour party – and much of the listless, unthinking rump of the UK's political and media class – going to start acknowledging reality?

WHEN ....?

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@PeterMcCormack The gang and the government, no different.

[Freddie New @freddienew]

If the UK government really thinks it can ban VPN use for under 18s, I really hope they don't google what an 'apk' is, or actually get some advice on technology for a change on how to install this without age verification of any kind.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Politicians openly admit that taxing cigarettes, gas, or alcohol is meant to reduce consumption. They understand perfectly well that higher costs discourage behavior.

But when it comes to taxing income, that basic logic suddenly disappears. They pretend people will keep working, investing, and taking risks at the same rate while receiving less of the reward.

You can’t have it both ways.
If taxes discourage behavior, income taxes discourage earning.
If incentives matter for consumption, they matter for production.

This isn’t ignorance. It’s convenience.
They understand incentives when it supports control, and deny them when it exposes the cost of punishing work and success.

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@MOSSADil Gf

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@freddienew Agreed, VPNs on standby!

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

One of the most important posts if you value X for whatever it brings into your life. Thank you @freddienew

[Freddie New @freddienew]

Here we go again.

If you’re reading this on @X, it’s likely that you want to continue using the app and the site. They’re both currently under threat from an increasingly authoritarian UK government, which is using the laudable aim of restricting non-consensual AI generated images as an excuse to throttle access for an entire nation to one of the few platforms where its policies are challenged and its authoritarianism questioned.

What can we do? As ever, protest and prepare.

Simple acts of protest (such as writing to your MP with your views) may seem ineffective, and I concede there are good arguments for why this is a waste of time. But although MPs may not ultimately care about you or your views, they do care about getting re-elected, and if a large majority of their constituents contact them on an issue, they may hesitate to support it in Parliament.

There’s an example of a letter in the thread, which you can adapt and send, and a link to a site that will let you find your MP’s contact details. This government has already shown it will bow to pressure – whether on Winter Fuel payments, the Farmers’ Tax, or most recently on mandatory Digital ID. We can make them bow again.

And to prepare, I strongly recommend that you download X and @grok while you still can, and then install a good VPN on your phone and computer. Just in case the UK attempts to geoblock the site, you can then still bypass these paltry efforts with relative ease. @mullvadnet and @ProtonVPN are both good options. Be ready before you need them, just in case.

In 1984, the Party systematically reduced the number of words in the language in order to narrow the range of possible thought. If a word to express a concept like ‘freedom’ did not exist, then it was thought that it would no longer be possible to conceive of the idea itself.

Free speech is, therefore, fundamentally important to free thought. And without either, none of us can truly live free lives. It is hard to comprehend that the nation which produced Orwell and Huxley has come to this point, where statements and even thoughts are becoming crimes, but here we are.

And we must do what we can to fight back, whether with the help of @elonmusk or alone.

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@freddienew @BBCNews It speaks volumes!

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@fredsirieix1 You too!!

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@PeterMcCormack Time for a new documentary??

[Al ∞/21M @algreen23]

@PeterMcCormack Government is like salt. We need a little to thrive, but just a bit too much will quickly kill you.

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

The thing that sucks about capitalists is that most of us don’t get involved in politics.

We are busy running businesses, we don’t like politics or the state, we don’t typically like to “organise” politically. We have a live-and-let-live philosophy hoping that everyone can just get on with their own lives and not bother anyone.

Sadly the socialists are the opposite. They love politics and see the state as their vehicle for change. They love getting organised politically and they want to control the way other people live.

Every so often, those of us that are individualistic and capitalist need to make a bit of noise politically. We need to remember that there are millions of people who are not live-and-let-live types - they want to take away our resources and our freedoms to fuel a bloated state. Unless we can push back on it, we eventually have to up and leave until things collapse and reset.