🦾 Taxing the rich = what you might not expect
If the government can print money out of thin air, why do any of us have to pay taxes?
Fellow human,
There’s plenty below, so let’s get right to it.
What to expect today:
Taxing the rich backfires… every. single. time.
How Nixon haunts us to this day
A few new sections and links
📰 News 🚨
Architects of Elizabeth Warren wealth tax say we're in new Gilded Age
The "tax the rich" narrative is easy to debunk if you spend a few minutes thinking about it.
It’s hard to understand because most people can’t see past their human bias—and their human bias is designed to believe that all humans should be as equal as possible because that is what kept our ancestors safe–fierce egalitarianism.
In a hunter-gatherer community, this is precisely how it should be. Everyone shares. No one restricts access to food or mates, or anything. Life was cooperation, like one big family, and it worked for our species for hundreds of thousands of years.
Then our species turned to farming, which led to specialization, money, commerce, and eventually, large consolidated populations in one area—the city.
And in that world, things had to change.
You can't have equality because a market is not something you can control, no matter how hard you try. It is like trying to control nature. Humans always lose.
The irony here is the market, like nature, always finds the best way to bring the most prosperity.
Nature is the Darwinian process of optimizing energy and reproduction. Free markets are Darwinian, and when left alone, they flourish.
When egotistical humans intervene in markets in an attempt to control the outcome, they fail.
Based on this, we can easily surmise that taxing the rich will create the opposite of the intended effect—generating more tax revenue—because human intervention is always a violation of natural law, and natural law is the foundation of the market.
Atlas Shrugged is 500+ pages explaining what happens when you go after the producers:
They leave and take their innovations, current and future investments, and their accumulated wealth elsewhere.
OMG, isn't that so groundbreaking?
So you tax the rich, and they either stop investing entirely, thus starving future tax revenues, or they take it to another jurisdiction with more favorable tax laws designed to attract the rich.
And that's just the financial side. What about the cultural implications of showing the young, ambitious, and creative that their success will be shunned and eventually taken from them.
What incentive do they have to shine?
What you get is the next Einstein or Steve Jobs staying at some dead-end job because the society around him (or her) doesn't reward those that take entrepreneurial risks.
Hopefully, these individuals will go somewhere else and give their gift to the world. But how many will get caught up in the system's inertia and fail to realize their dreams and potential?
I bet it's a lot.
Just think about how much wealth Steve Jobs, one man, has created within his own company and the millions upon millions of others that have unlocked their potential through his products and services.
It's unquantifiable. We are talking TRILLIONS of dollars in value that can be traced back to one man's accomplishments.
To say that billionaires are evil or don't "pay their fair share" is a complete misunderstanding of how money and the economy work. It is nothing more than a liberal talking point that appeals to the primal, unthinking parts of the human mind.
🔥 Useful $HIT CORNER 🔥
🗓 On this day in 1973: President Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings ← This is the guy that took us off the gold standard. Why are we still living with the decisions of one corrupt politician? It’s insane when you consider it. This is why gov always declines into death… because it can’t correct itself.
🦾 How to be dangerous → Learn how to build a fire, fix a tire, use a hammer and drill, chop wood, cook, speak up, take no shit from anyone, and be a confident, straight-shooting human.
🌞 It takes between 10-30 minutes in the sun to maintain healthy vitamin D levels. Ditch the sunglasses to improve uptake and keep your eyes healthy.
🍳 Cooking: Add a dash of sour cream to your scrambled eggs… omg
🍟 McDonald's fries were cooked in beef fat until 1990… then a campaign from a rich dude against animal fats (thanks to the Ancel Keys dogma at the time linking animal fats to heart disease) successfully convinced McDonald’s to stop using beef. What they use today is likely soybean oil or some other seed oil.
🏕 Being Prepared: This is the same one from last week… it’s that important → Buy Bitcoin. Buy a few 1oz silver rounds. Buy Ammo. Buy knives. Buy a hatchet. Buy paracord. Buy a portable cooking stove. Buy fire starters. Buy matches. Buy extra water and food.
Something I’m working on
I’m looking for 10 acres somewhere in Texas as a backup property for the fam.
This will be our weekend spot and our Plan B if we have Snowmageddon again or if one of 10,000 things goes wrong in Austin/Texas/The US.
Next newsletter, I’ll tell you about our house flooding experience earlier this year.
🎙 Better Human Podcast 🎙
🎙 #2 - Why The World Needs Bitcoin (And So Do You) → If hyperinflation makes you even a little bit afraid (as it should), then here’s a primer for getting into Bitcoin.
💲 Bitcoin Corner → Money
🎙 #232 - ❤️ Your Haters → No really… love them because they help you soooo damn much.
䷼ Truth Seeker 🧘
For today, here are a few posts to mull around:
The Free Market
Deflation → Doing more with less
I started watching Dune last night on HBO Max.
Did you know that most of the graphic visuals you see in movies like this are created with video game graphic engines? Unreal Engine is one of the biggest.
I then thought about how deflation was going to hit entertainment. We’ve seen this a little bit with YouTube and the rise of the independent creator class, though that’s still a niche market compared to Hollywood.
But as the technology to create amazing hyper-realistic scenes becomes cheaper and more accessible (which is what deflation is—get more done for less), more will be able to develop Hollywood-grade movie effects and scenes.
The same with animation.
I foresee a complete revolution in entertainment as these technologies become cheaper and more powerful. This will give more individuals the ability to compete with mainstream entertainment.
This is one more example of the decentralization nature of technology.
Government
"Questions about liberty have, of course, long been most notably neglected by those who have called themselves liberals in America."
The weak embrace tyranny from government because they aren't strong enough to do the theft themselves… so they hire a third party to steal for themselves while pretending it's about morality or freedom.
All laws are written by men from a position of mafia-like power. Government is coercion through violence… period.
Unfortunately, the masses cannot see the water they were born into, so they accept it as fact.
🤑 Corruption and money: This is what’s wrong with America…
💬 A Quote To Ponder:
“To me, the masses seem to be worth a glance only in three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, presented on bad paper with worn-out printing plates, then as the resistance against the great men, and finally as working implements of the great. For the rest, let the devil and statistics carry them off!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
📘 Book I’m reading: The Agorist Primer → This is turning out to be one of the best books I’ve ever read. I didn’t think I could say that after reading over a thousand of the best books ever written. It covers economics, law, taxes, government, counter-economies, white/black/gray markets, and how to organize life for citizens without the coercive and destructive institution of government.
🙋🏻The Power of Questions: You’re walking down the street and you see other people doing the same. You are prone to judge them based on their appearance. That’s your primal brain doing its thing to keep you safe. Now consider how fair that is.
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Recommended Products Area
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About Me & Better Human
I’m Colin. I’m Pro-Humanity. I believe in Free Humans, Free Markets, and limited (if any) government. I’m also a CEO, Entrepreneur, Father, Podcaster, and Thinker. Read my story.
My goal is to help you opt out of the system. To escape the Matrix that profits from your confusion and oppression.
When you opt-out and start living and thinking for yourself, everything changes for the better. Everything.
Send feedback or get in touch via this link.
My thought of the day
When you realize how the world works, it goes something like this:
Angry → How could they lie to me and why are things so broken?
Self-reliance → How do I better live with this newfound information?
Slow acceptance → Ok, that’s just the way the world and humans are.
Transcendence → I’m so far above the muck that it’s hard to even care about it anymore.
Mastery → Pursuing my own life and mission.
Giving back → Now that I’ve done that, I want to help others find a similar path.
Past Newsletters you may have missed
🦾 States that give you free money to move
🦾 How we pay $15b a year for junk food
Resources
The Better Human Podcast → A daily show covering every conceivable topic you might need to become a Better Human.
Bitcoin Will Save Us Podcast → A website and podcast to help you understand Bitcoin from first principles.
🏔 SovereignHumans.org (website coming soon) → A Better Human Land & Community Project outside Austin, Texas. The goal is to build our own completely self-sufficient sovereign town/city. If you want to join that list, go here. We are documenting and sharing the entire process.
📲 Instagram → I post some stuff sometimes.
🐦 Twitter → I post ideas daily.