Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.
https://t.co/VdWe9uhi8p
This is one of those ideas that bugged me ever since I was a kid - conquest is a human universal, so why didn't any conquest before ~1750 produce great wealth? Why didn't the Mughals kick off modern economic growth by conquering India, if that did it for the British?
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West.
The United States sends our condolences to the family of Henry Nowak and the people of the United Kingdom at this troubling time.
In 1696, the British government decided to tax sunlight. Under the Window Tax, households were charged according to the number of windows in their homes. To avoid paying, many people simply bricked up or boarded over their windows, choosing to live in darkness rather than hand money to the state for daylight.
The tax was presented as a fair way of taxing wealth, since larger houses tended to have more windows. In practice, it proved crude and damaging. Tax inspectors were given the power to enter homes and count the windows, which was widely resented as an invasion of privacy.
The consequences were severe. Poorer families, in particular, bricked up windows to reduce their liability, leaving homes darker, damper and poorly ventilated. This contributed to higher rates of disease, including tuberculosis and rickets. Architects began designing houses with fewer windows to minimise the tax, resulting in buildings that were less healthy and less pleasant to live in.
Far from being an efficient revenue raiser, the Window Tax distorted behaviour, harmed public health and became increasingly unpopular over time. Yet it remained in place for 155 years until it was finally abolished in 1851. The Window Tax required invasive enforcement and created more resentment, hardship and economic distortion than revenue. It is a classic example of the unintended consequences of taxation.
“We should have a communist area and a capitalist area beside each other to see who wins.”
North Korea vs South Korea
East Germany vs West Germany
South America vs North American
We’ve already run this test.
Communism always loses.