Oddbean

The American Revolution was a simple tax revolt. The British Crown simply overplayed its ability to tax people living on another continent. The Crown had other enemies that helped the revolvers win, but nothing helped them more than the physical distance. The parallels to today are meaningful. Just as colonists asked why a tyrant an ocean away should extract value from the labor they did here, today I wonder why work I do entirely in cyberspace for people all over the world should be taxed by a group of tyrants in Washington D.C. Just like those colonists rejected the idea that agents of that tyrant should be allowed to suppress their speech and seize their property, I too wonder why agents of that tyrant should be allowed to surveil and censor all of my communications. Revolution was the only answer then. A severance of the governing relationship. A new government. A new set of rules and rights. Years later, on the basis that tyrants sought to dispossess them of their property rights, slaveholders in the American South sought the same solution to their problems. They lost, because they lacked the advantages their predecessors had of physical distance and opportunistic allies. History tells you the good guys won both times (what are the odds) but a more sober analysis would point to the mega-political - technology + geography (+ climate + microbiology). So the question, bitcoiners - are we going to win like the Colonies or lose like the South? Either way, I can’t imagine we will escape this decade without war.

I have been reading different things about the culture divide in border states in the lead up to the Civil War. Churches splitting into two and such. I agree with you, I think we are living through that period now - the lead up to a Civil War.

Perhaps The permissiveness of leftist street gangs & crackdown on rightist street gangs strikes me as very similar to Weimar Germany (but with left & right reversed) which would suggest a lead up to revolution

I think a very overlooked aspect in all of written history on revolutions is the opportunism of outsiders who turn the tide I bet it would correlate with 99% of outcomes if someone smarter than me did an analysis

The way to win is explained by the sovereign individual thesis. It’s always distance (physical and digital). Always better to avoid a fight if possible. The people that died for this country to be free would not be proud of what America has become.

There are a couple things that got him in trouble. The first is that he is very wealthy. When you have that much money, more eyes are looking at you so cutting corners is less worth it. The second is that, if the information is accurate, he “owed” money and paid less. I don’t know if they would’ve caught him if he didn’t sell any of his bitcoin on a KYC exchange. But of course they don’t like it because they want more people to pay taxes. And what happens in mandibles is clearly going to happen here.