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I'm impressed with your intuitively rapid response to this "emerging" situation, Mathew. My father was born in Guyana (British Guiana at that time) in 1930, so I've had an interest in it, although I've never visited, and my father never returned after leaving for schooling in the UK at 14. After Cambridge and engineering he turned down a test-pilot role with Rolls Royce and worked in computer science from 1957.

But from his multi-cultural childhood he became passionate about global economics, the problems with third-world aid, and was deeply influenced by the work of Henry George and theories land value taxation; tax reform by reducing labour and capital tax and increasing land and natural resource tax. I suspect it is still relevant but relies on some amount of moral fortitude which is sadly lacking:

"More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Failing these, civilization must pass into destruction."

-Henry George

Albert Einstein said of George’s writing that “one cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice.”

Anyway my father eventually married an Australian and moved to Sydney where he discovered surfing. I'll include an excerpt from his memoirs (he died 2 years ago) on his childhood in Guyana which you may find interesting:

"We grew up under a number of cultural influences. The ancestry of my classmates included African, Bengali, Chinese, Portuguese, American and English. In my class room da Silva on my left is reading a Superman comic under his French grammar. “Matty” Matthews, a powerful black on my right, is arm wrestling me. Prasad, in the row behind, suddenly whispers “Look out man, here come de teacher” and we all stand up as Forbes Burnham, our black teacher of French, enters. They were my friends and only later did I learn of their diverse cultures and what brought their families together here. Miller, a small, quiet black boy, complained one day “Me Mum done always hitting me head with de roti roller.” Next week he was not there, kicked by a donkey over the weekend and we all attended the funeral. We filed past the open coffin. The relatives were loudly distraught, but Miller was inscrutable as ever. We miss him. Some of my father’s colleagues on Legislative Council were lawyers of Bengali ancestry. Our dentist, Doctor Wong, studied in America, as did Cheddi Jagan who later became Guyana’s first elected president.

On hot, lazy afternoons we played cricket in a field lined with paperbarks and eucalypts. In the Boy Scouts we were learning bush survival skills developed in Africa by the English general Baden Powell. After the Boer War he started the Boy Scouts movement while his wife started the Girl Guides. There was an Open Day at the Scout hall and Dad had been invited. We erected our bell tent, tied our reef knots, and demonstrated first aid on each other. Dad approved in a rare display of enthusiasm, and agreed to my going on scout camp. So, four weeks later we sat round the camp fire in the bush, watching shooting stars and singing a song about something called a kookaburra in a gum tree. Across the lake was an Amerindian camp which we reached next day in dugout canoes. They were rough-hewn and narrow so balancing, paddling and steering at the same time was a new skill we were learning. In the middle of their camp was a wild pig called a Peccarie lying on the dirt. Shot with a bow and arrow, it was about to be roasted on an open fire, none too soon as it was now covered in flies. Though missionaries built houses for tribes like this one, hammocks slung between trees under matting shelters better provided for the flexible life style more appropriate to nomadic survival in the bush. Later I will travel to the countries of Superman, cricket, and kookaburras. There I will find less tolerant cultures than the one I was fortunate to grow up in. But I will also read about some of the political turbulence created by my high school French teacher.

While I was still at school I knew Forbes had been away for two years at the London School of Economics and I think he must have acquired skills there that anticipated Stalin, for he later assassinated at least two of his opponents. Dr Walter Rodney was blown up by a car bomb, while a cult called The House of Israel was paid to dispose of a troublesome Jesuit priest, Fr. Morrison, who had been preaching what today we would call human rights. But the hit gang made a mistake, and a different priest, Fr. Bernard Drake, was beaten to death. Morrison later forgave the man who killed Drake, and wrote a modern history of Guyana. Morrison also tipped off Ryan, the American congressman, about Americans imprisoned in Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult settlement in the bush. My brother Tim once met a distant relative of ours, Guy Spence, who was Burnham’s pilot and who had flown up to Jonestown to bring Congressman Ryan back to Georgetown. As they were about to board the plane to come back there was a gunfight, the plane was shot up, Ryan was killed and Guy was lucky enough to be able to take off and carry a wounded woman back to Georgetown. Subsequently, 914 people died in the mass suicide.

Multinationals. ‘Bookers Guiana’ was the name given to the multinational Booker Bros, which had previously reformed and modernised a run-down plantocracy. Bookers then found itself in the position of a sugar monopoly. They were unsuccessfully targeted first by Jagan’s land redistribution programs on behalf of the people, and then by Burnham’s nationalisation programs very much on behalf of himself. Another multinational, a subsidiary of ALCOA, had also attained monopoly status, over the extraction of aluminium ore. A further gold mining subsidiary, with links to the Australian BHP company, was involved in a mining disaster when some three million litres of cyanide and heavy-metal waste were dumped into the Essequibo, a river upon which the livelihoods of some 23,000 people depend. As far as I know, Cheddi Jagan’s land reform programs, that might have curbed these resource-hungry multinationals and lifted that poverty-stricken society out of stagnation, continued to be resisted by the self-seeking cronies Forbes’ left behind him. But, unfortunately, land reform died with Cheddi. When Burnham died, his body was embalmed in Moscow, finally coming to rest in a mausoleum in the Botanic Gardens, where we used to play hide and seek as children.

On the names of places. Someone once wrote “Nothing is more tedious than a landscape without names”. Quite wrong. The “unknown region” is exciting precisely because we think it contains no names. And then when we slowly find that it does, nothing is more beautiful than the poetry of Amerindian names: Demerara, Essequibo, Mazaruni, Cuyuni, Arakaka, Pakaraima, Kaieteur, and Roraima. And then nothing is more fascinating than the origins of European settler’s names: the Dutch names for land reclamation, stellings and kokas, and the European names recording nostalgia, success and failure: New Amsterdam, Chateaux Margot, La Repentier, La Penitance, Good Intent, Better Luck, Success, Perseverance, and Adventure.

On growing up in Guyana. Tim and I grew up at the intersection of quite diverse cultural and political influences. Our family life was English traditional but, as far as conversation was concerned, virtually silent within which Tim and I built our own individual activities and hobbies. Our school life in contrast was multicultural, noisy and vibrant in which we learned to speak in a patois which our parents understood but pretended not to. My gang of six school friends was a kind of mild paramilitary in which we played out the characters in the Foreign Legion movie we had seen. The Boy Scouts was fun, with exciting camps in the bush, while the earning of proficiency badges was not taken all that seriously. All in all, our lives were pleasant and relaxed in a lazy, tropical country where nothing much seemed to happen. Even my French teacher, Forbes Burnham, was affable, sitting on the front of the teacher’s desk chatting instead of dictating from behind it.

On politics in Guyana. But I had no idea then that Burnham would become a president who would collaborate with CIA covert operations, murder his political opponents, and bankrupt the country. When the US finally tumbled to what had been going on, Kennedy’s special assistant, Arthur Schlesinger was to describe Burnham as “an opportunist and demagogue intent only on personal power”. Reading an obituary in 2009 for someone called Janet Jagan has reminded me of all this. Cheddi Jagan’s father had arrived from Bengal as an indentured labourer. Somehow he managed to send Cheddi to Queens College from where he studied dentistry in the US and where he married Janet, a white Marxist. Back in Guyana, they won the first free elections in 1953 in a landslide victory on a land reform platform. This displeased the British government which sent in troops and warships, and jailed the Jagans until 1957. Their return to power then displeased the Americans, and JF Kennedy ordered the CIA to destabilise the government. This was so successful that my old teacher Forbes Burnham, backed by the US, seized control. When he died in 1985, he had run up a debt five times the size of the GDP, bankrupting the economy. Guyana, rich in natural resources, became one of the Western hemisphere’s poorest nations."

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Kate,

Thank you for your generous...I'll call it co-authorship of this article.

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Ilhan Omar (D-MN) i Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) tenen tot el dret a dir el que vulguin sobre Israel i el genocidi dels palestins com a membres electes de la Cambra de Representants dels EUA; mai van jurar servir Israel . . .

Vaig votar perquè Ron Desantis (R-FL) fos governador de Florida, no ambaixador a Israel.

El recentment destituït president de la Cambra de Representants dels Estats Units, el congressista Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), que va requerir almenys una dotzena de vots de la Cambra per ser elegit president, va visitar Israel immediatament després de la seva elecció, dient a la Knesset israeliana que els Estats Units estan fermament compromesos per donar suport a Ucraïna en la seva guerra contra Rússia.

També era candidat a president de la Knesset israeliana?

Després de la seva expulsió . . . McCarthy (R-CA) va tornar a viatjar a l'estranger, aquesta vegada a Anglaterra, i va expressar un obert menyspreu pels republicans blancs que formen la majoria del GOP i va elogiar els demòcrates per la seva diversitat durant un debat a Oxford després de la seva expulsió.

Ara és candidat a primer ministre del Regne Unit?

Malgrat tot, és lliure d'anar a visites mediàtiques atacant els blancs i fent pressió per Israel, ja que ara ha dimitit de la Cambra de Representants dels Estats Units . . . Només puc concloure que la ira col·lectiva de RINO contra l'expresident McCarthy es tracta dels israelians que van segrestar la màquina de guerra de l'estat profund nord-americà.

Això s'ha fet tan dolorosament obvi, sobretot quan algú com Nikki Haley ones el dit i li crida per sobre a Vivek Ramaswamy durant un debat presidencial a la televisió nacional en directe quan les preguntes sobre aquesta guerra d'Ucraïna contra Rússia i qualsevol menció d'Israel estan preocupades pel fet que el govern dels Estats Units ha esdevingut una subsidiària de propietat total del Comitè d'Acció Política Americano-Israelí.

https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/fight-your-own-wars-you-kikesucking-zionist-ass-whores

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That was a griping 'tale'. Thank you.

Globally most of us only hear what we are allowed to hear unless we dig deep. Yet locally many of the secrets are known but people are unable to fix them against powerful external influences.

Henry George seems like my kind of guy, I will have to look up what he wrote. I have been trying to figure out ways and means that a UBI might happen. I call it the ARCD for Adult Resident Citizen Dividend, to make it clear what it is and who it is for. The most important think is that it is not charity, social service or unemployment benefits, it is a dividend from the largess or bounty of nature (lumber), the land (minerals), corporate profits and human ingenuity (university patents) that is DUE to every citizen who has agreed to the social contract in a country. This contract should be as fair and balanced as possible with as few rules (laws) as possible but it should only favour citizens and not corporations. Let them compete with economies of scale and finance. I believe that ALL income that a country makes should be distributed through the resident adult citizens. All residents and then taxes on a flat percentage on ALL income to cover the costs of running the country. This makes the resident citizens benefit and all residents pay for the good running of the country. An Open Source Government would be best suited for this as it would allow people to criticise waste and corruption easily.

I will save your father's memoir extract as a data point in what sort of shenanigans are perpetrated by outsiders to control countries.

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Thank you! It sounds like you already align with Henry George's philosophies. Here's an article:

https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/geoism-as-part-of-the-left-libertarian

A dividend paid for our data might provide a kind of UBI, but UBI in general has become less palatable recently with the idea of programmable CBDCs

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I had to invent them again while looking for sustainable methods of managing national budgets in an equitable manner. I am happy I am not alone.

Wow, a lot of words. Much of it seems credible but a lot of terms that are not immediately clear or actionable hide the truths behind the ideas. A good primer and I will read further though feel it may turn out to be basic reinforcement as you I seem to have similar leanings already.

I think some such words are deliberately made many to confuse and make finding a solution close to impossible. Also I do believe that sometimes policies that appear beneficial to the poor are in reality means of accessing loopholes that benefit the corporations. I am strongly in the less-laws camp. People should beg to get a new law and then everyone should agree that it is needed, that would limit them a lot. :-)

Many people also quote someone who said that big problems are usually complex and multifaceted. Perhaps, however I counter with fundamental problems often have a rood cause and this is the one we should address first and foremost.

This section rings true but is hard to fix with lots of legislation. This is why my proposal is simply to cut the problem in two halves with the minimum of legislation. Income that is due is distributed to the citizens (who live there) who have agreed to the social contract (are adults), period. Expenses from the residents who benefit from the social services (roads, police, rail, sewers, deeds office, judiciary).

"It is this underlying assumption which left-libertarians reject. According to these left-libertarians, existing social problems such as systematic inequalities, social domination, and wage slavery should not be attributed to free market interactions, but rather to economic privileges that benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the poor. Thus, they don’t see restrictions on the market as the solution to systematic inequalities, but rather as its cause."

The problem with the real and present danger from CBDCs cannot be curbed until EVERYONE is receiving a DIVIDEND that the state has no rights to. At this point tampering with the DVIDEND using CBDC or any other means will be an affront to everyone. As it stands now only the poor will be included in the UBI in practice and the rich will keep trading in bitcoin and investment art. We have very difficult times ahead of us.

I don't like the acronym UBI because some want us to have a UNIVERSAL Basic Income which will work as you fear while others including me want what is an UNCONDITIONAL Basic Income. This is why I promote my ARCD to make clear it is a dividend due to everyone and not some trifle for the state to manipulate.

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Appalling concept. Did we learn nothing from the last three years about the extent to which governments and powerful interests are happy to increase population dependency on them? Couple social credit scores with UBI and one can easily imagine the degree of control (and compliance) entailed. Guyana is as poor as it is because of Marxist policies and racial politics, with nationalization of industries and redistribution of wealth (more than 10% for the Big Guy, no doubt). I don't see how UBI moves us in a positive direction. After reading the fascinating post by Kate, I read the interesting Wikipedia article on Forbes Burnham. One wonders how Guyana would be today if it hadn't been led in that socialist direction.

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When you do look up Henry George you'll find that he wouldn't endorse "All residents and then taxes on a flat percentage on ALL income to cover the costs of running the country."

Regarding a (graduated) tax on incomes, he wrote:

"The object at which it aims, the reduction or prevention of immense concentrations of wealth, is good; but this means involves the employment of a large number of officials clothed with inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and perjury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a demoralization of opinion, and put a premium upon unscrupulousness and a tax upon conscience; and, finally, just in proportion as the tax accomplishes its effect, a lessening in the incentive to the accumulation of wealth, which is one of the strong forces of industrial progress. "

(George did not specifically address a flat tax, but I don't see that he'd see it as much of an improvement. He might consider it even worse, as low-income folks would be especially burdened)

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Flat tax: For a fairly recent real-life example, take the Thatcher poll tax, and what a "success" it was. It serves as a vivid illustration of your "low-income folks would be especially burdened".

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A basic dividend for everyone makes the tax progressive without having to make it complicated.

If the dividend is 1000 and the tax is 25% then the unemployed are left with their 750 share of nature same as they would get in unimployment, housing, social service benefits or any of the other current means tested benefits which would fall away. For someone earning 3000 they would pay the tax on 4000 and keep 3000 and effectively have a zero rate. If you earn 7000 you would pay on 8000 or just 14.3%. If you are earning 19000 you would now be at 21% and so on.

A flat tax makes it FAIR for everyone. The bounty of nature/earth is due to EVERY citizen in equal measure so let us divide it that way. The cost of running a society is a community effort so everyone pays their share. Less if they cannot earn and more if they are bountiful.

Politically motivated complex tax schemes are destined to fail and be inequitable so what Thatcher or others have done is expected to fail if it wants to support the rich while pretending to support the middleclass voters. The voiceless ones will always be the victims in politics.

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JFK ordering the CIA to destabilize the country would be out of character. It’s more likely that Dulles ordered it on his own initiative keeping JFK in the dark.

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Yes, this was a slightly out of character but there could be things we don't know that made it a lesser evil. I reserve judgement until later due to limited information.

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Dec 8, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford

A little history.

Guyana: THE FACES BEHIND THE MASKS

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/cia-rdp90-00845r000100190003-4-pages-18-25.pdf

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Dec 8, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford

=== This would pit Boligarchs against Baligarchs

The author missed a trick: Boligarchs is ok for the indigenous LatAm rootless cosmopolitans, but BOLLYgarchs would be be a better term for the pajeet camp-followers who formed the baggage trains for Perfidious Albion (and now have several of their own at the tippy-top or Albion's ruling vermin).

Let's hope Connor Macgregor reverses "Bharat's Revenge" in Eire: Ireland did nothing wrong during the Raj, it was as much a victim as Bharat.

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You are correct. I will edit tomorrow.

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This whole thing feels like a developing movie script. If this continue on its current course, this will have proven to be Maduro’s Kuwait.

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In what the late Saddam Hussein once dubbed “the great Satan,” roughly two-thirds of the United States enlisted military corps is white . . . The fat, bulbous, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once confirmed in a 93-2 vote of the U.S. Senate, immediately embarked on a whirlwind media tour of duty, telling the pseudo-secular sycophants in the state-controlled tabloid press and state-controlled television talk show circuit about how the U.S. Army is full of bad racist white men.

Senior Defense Department leaders celebrating yet another Pride Month at the Pentagon sounding the alarm about the rising number of state laws they say target the LGBTQ+ community, warned the trend is hurting the feelings of the armed forces . . . “LGBTQ plus and other diverse communities are under attack, just because they are different. Hate for hate’s sake,” said Gil Cisneros, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness, who also serves as DoD’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.

And now the U.S. Army is doing ads begging for more young white males?

What happened?

Even with a full-on declaration of war from Congress, and even if Gavin Newsome could be cheated into the Oval Office by ZOG somehow, while Globohomo diversity brigades go door-to-door looking to impress American children into military service, they will be met with armed, well-trained opposition, the invasion at the Southern border is going full tilt, and the drugs are flowing in like never before . . .

With the borders of Europe and the USA wide open, civil warfare within the USA, Britain, and most of Europe is a certainty if foreign wars are initiated. Nobody is going to fight a war for Biden, he is dumber than Bush . . . Nobody is going to fight a war for that kikesucking Zionist ass-whore Nikki Haley, and I mean nobody.

Get ready for it . . . the fat old devil worshipping fags on Capitol Hill, on Wall Street, in Whitehall, and in Brussels are in no shape to fight a war themselves, and most Americans are armed to the teeth with their own guns . . . NATO hates heterosexual white men . . . they said so themselves . . .

https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/nato-an-anti-white-and-anti-family-institution

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Dec 9, 2023·edited Dec 9, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford

Off topic but I thought you'd be interesting in this exchange if you hadn't heard of it yet. From the comments section:

https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/shocking-report-us-government-data

Daniel Nagase MD Writes Logical Surprises 14 hrs ago

This is a terrible thing to say I told you so... but I did on November 3, 2021. https://rumble.com/v1nqjqw-dr.-nagase-nov-3-2021-genetic-damage-mrna.html But the worst part is 5 days later, Robert Malone got on a Canadian zoom call to tell me to stop talking about genetic alterations from mRNA shots. https://danielnagase.substack.com/p/discrepancy-analysis The video with his actual words is linked.

-----------------------------------------

Hmmm. Why would he say to stop talking about it?

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From the 1985 movie 'The Emerald Forest'.

Bill Markham: Why did you take my son?

Wanadi: One day, i was hunting at the Edge of The World when Tomme appeared and he smiled; and even though you were a Termite Child, I had not the heart to send you back to The Dead World.

Tomme: Why are they called The Termite People?

Wanadi: They come into The World and chew down all the grandfather trees. Just like termites.-

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Mathew, BRICS is just as much a BIS controlled entity as are all of the world's national central banks and there has been much already written about this to include a high-level BRICS bank executive who shifted over directly from the IMF. This explains why the BRICS nations, and supposed western nemeses such as Iran, have been rapidly privatizing public assets in lock step with all other nations going into hyperdrive around 2015/2016. The pyramid cap model of control morphed from nation states to globalism and now is shifting to regional rule (think EU and GCC Gulf Cooperation Council) for the next phase where 'localism' is championed but not for the sake of freedom. Venezuela has been privatizing its oil through back doors as reported in industry and academic papers. Around 2015 Venezuelan officials met with Bolivian government officials to openly discuss collaboration for regional rule for UN Agendas 21 and 2030. In that meeting officials from Venezuela said the government intends to relocate 40% of its population into dense urban corridors. BTW, several years ago there was an outing of Zero Hedge (by Business Insider?) that was quickly hidden essentially revealing ZH is another intelligence deep state front.

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I'm aware.

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Hi Matthew, off topic, but would you consider doing an article on analysis of the leaked NZ jab data? This analysis suggests it's an overhyped nothingburger: https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/new-zealand-vaccine-data-possible but I'm not competent to analyse the data myself.

My hunch is that:

- it will show the NZ Ministry of Health are in possession of data showing clearly the jabs are useless (despite continuing to promote them)

- though there will be evidence of some vax injuries, the overhype by Kirsch and Gunn will be a strong validation of your Chaos Agent proposition around Kirsch

- combining these two points demonstrates well the Chaos Agent role within the information ecosystem. If the data validates my hunch then the real story is hard evidence from the Petrie dish of NZ that the jabs were neither effective nor as safe as promoted. That itself is a gynormous but unsexy story that is being buried by the Chaos Agent overhype of expectations and the inevitable recoil from attention when the expectations are disproven.

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Taking a page from the Western imperialism paradigm - all your resources are mine.

It's a cinch none of this happening without help from the Deep State and the U.S./UK empire, which is all about resource exploitation. Pity the citizens of Guyana.

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