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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Friday, April 15, 2022

What if there is no taxation of the American Colonies?

Many British politicians, including Pitt the Elder, strongly opposed the idea of taxing the American colonists. They had been essentially tax free until the end of the French Indian War, and, following this war, they had no pariticular reason to feel they needed Britain, at all. With France removed as a serious threat, the Americans felt they could manage on their own. So, this was a particularly bad time to start taxing them. Many British politicians agreed with the Americans that taxation without representation was illegal. But, the problem went much deeper than this. With three thousand miles of open ocean separating Britain from America, and eighteenth century transportation technologies, it was actually quite impossible to tax the Americans. There was simply no way whatsoever for Britain to enforce the payment of taxes, period. The British revenue collectors might as well have sailed for France, and tried to collect British taxes by knocking on doors in Paris. The effect was the same. They were ridiculed, harassed, assaulted and jailed. Naturally, the British responded in kind, sending armed forces to defend their revenue collectors in America, but, all this did was provoke riots and escalating confrontations. It didn't raise any revenue, at all. Quite the contrary, it cost money. A lot of money. So, the stage for the American Revolution was set. But, the fact is, it really wasn't at all necessary to tax the Americans. This was simply an economizing measure, and a relatively modest one. The real issue of signficance was control of the American Western Frontier. And, comparatively speaking, this did not cause nearly as explosive a level of confrontation, although it was vastly more significant. After all "No taxation without representation!" is a much better slogan for rebellion than "We want to murder Indians and steal their lands!" So, suppose George III faces reality, and accepts that Americans will not pay for the British forces on their soil. However, he continues to control the American frontier with British troops. They discourage settlement, so, there are far fewer settlers. How likely is this to cause an American Revolution? I would suggest, at the very least, the American Revolution is delayed for decades. I suspect there might not be any American Revolution at all. After all, the British troops are making perfectly legitimate points. It is very dangerous to settle on these Indian lands, the settlers may well be killed. Or, they may simply starve to death or die of exposure, they'll be no one around to help them. So, why would simply discouraging dangerous pioneering enterprises cause violent confrontation with the American colonists? Instead, the Americans become comfortable following British advice, and become submissive and accommodating to it, rather like Canadians. So, we have a slower growing, less aggressive set of American colonies. And, all of British North America becomes a kind of supersized Canada.

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