Lady Godiva – An Early Tax Reformer

Posted: 2/22/2012

One Wishes Tax Reform Was

Sweet As Chocolate Or Appealing As Brazilian Carnival

At the 2011 Brazilian carnival, one of the Samba schools reenacted the famous legend of Lady Godiva. Belgian Godiva Chocolatier founded in the 1920s went global over the past several decades.

A Beautiful Legend

According to the legend, Lady Godiva (1040 – 1080 AD) after many pleas and entreaties made a deal with her husband and ruler of British Coventry to lower the oppressive taxes. Her husband agreed, but she had to ride naked on a horse through town. Lady Godiva in a clever move issued a proclamation that all persons were ordered to stay indoors and shut their windows, while she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. One man could not resist it was Peeping Tom, who was punished for his disobedience with blindness. In the end, Godiva's husband kept his word and abolishes the onerous taxes.

Unbeknownst To Most Chocolate Lovers & Economists

Lady Godiva was a tax reformer or better a tax repealer. How many economists know about it? In our times, one wishes many of those politicians who advocate higher taxes were married to a spouse like Lady Godiva. Having finally discovered the sweet story of Lady Godiva my fondness of chocolate has grown.

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam: Strictly voluntary taxation is the way to go! Nobody should be compelled to pay taxes.

Robots Made By Kids

Children Of The World Develop Robots

It appears that children and teenagers are more and more fascinated with the possibilities afforded by robots of all kinds. This could be a major reawakening of young people to explore technology and engineering.

The Evolution Of Robots Will Accelerate

It would be conceivable that the coming generations of young people will produce armies of robots to help humans with everyday chores etc.

One Man’s Trash, Is Another Man’s Treasure

To Trash Is Human

With the industrial age came large scale landfills. Total avoidance of human waste is nearly impossible given current technologies and for the foreseeable future. Environmentalists hate them. People do not want them in their neighborhood. And so on …

Mining For Trash

Not only future archeologists will be delighted about landfills, but landfills have the potential to become a major resource for future resource mining operations.

A Feast For Microbes Or Robots

It is quite conceivable that in the not so distant future, bioengineered microbes and/or robots will convert anthropogenic trash into something useful.

My Next Pet Could Be A Humanoid Robot

Part Of Our Daily Lifes

With the advances in humanoid robotics accelerating it may be only a few years hence before we can expect to see such robots being part of our daily lifes.

Connected To The Cloud

This robot could be connected to the computing cloud and download any instructions etc. necessary for the task at hand.

How Many Personal Robots?

How many robots would one need or are necessary? How many robots would rich people acquire, an army?

Any Specialization Or Allround?

Home schooling would become possible for everyone. Will my robot be a four star chef serving me the most delicious meals from any cuisine of the world I can imagine? Would my robot be my personal doctor? I could go on and on …

The Ten Commandments And Economics

Fundamental To Economics

The Ten Commandments, which are perhaps as old as 16^th century BC, are fundamental to economics. First of all they are the supreme law reportedly written by the fingers of god. No less important, they allow for the greatest possible individual freedom except for violating the Ten Commandments.

Absence Of Government

Most amazingly, nowhere in the Ten Commandments is government mentioned. Not only that, one can infer that government may not even be necessary. Does God understand that government is evil, but necessary or what is god’s position on government anyway? Or why would god need a government?

The Basics Of Free Markets & Free Enterprise

The basics of free market economics are promulgated: Do not kill, steal, or bear false witness, nor covet thy neighbors’ property. Even toxic/corrosive envy and greed are covered by the Ten Commandments. Thus, e.g. honesty in your daily affairs and freedom of contract is naturally implied.

Taxation Is A Violation Of The Ten Commandments

Was the tithe not originally a voluntary religious duty for the benefit of the poor, pilgrims, and churches before it was made compulsory? Is not taxation a legalized confiscation or dare we say theft of private property? No taxation without representation is tyranny. Taxation with representation is not much better.

No Rest

They also stipulate to be productive six days of the week and to get rest on the seventh day. Even servants and animals are allowed to rest on the seventh day. Thus, the Ten Commandments imply to treat fairly all of god’s creatures even slaves and animals.

Abandoning the US Embassy In Damascus Is A Sign of A Spineless In the White House

Not only is he spineless he also likes to bow to monarchs.

How in the world could a US President decide to completely vacate the US embassy in a country where another, very bloody Arab struggle for more freedom is going on is beyond belief. Obama is another US President who thinks wars can be fought on an expedited withdrawal schedule.

Obama opened the US embassy in Damascus again for his diplomatic approach to the Middle East peace process and he closed it when it is need most as a beacon of hope or as a shelter.

Some things in this world cannot be done by drones, cruise missiles, or special forces alone.

With the current US President the Cuban Missile Crisis would have turned into a hot war, the Berlin Airlift would have never taken off.

Three Globe Sailing Teenage Girls Rewrite Maritime History

Sweet 16

In January of 2012, recently the 16 year old Dutch teenager Laura Dekker finished successfully her 500 plus days sailing trip of 27,000 nautical miles circumnavigating the world. Not long before Laura there, were two other teenage girls who attempted similar feats.

Some Ramifications Of Daring Teenagers

This feat also reminds all humans that teenagers are not children anymore. For too long, in western Societies there was a popular belief that children should enjoy the blessings of childhood for as long as possible, because life as an adult is not desirable or just tough or so the argument went.

Does this not also fly in the face of juvenile crime adjudication in the western world? Adolescent teenagers are believed to be less culpable than adults.

In western societies, the pendulum with respect to teenagers has swung from forced child labor in the opposite direction. Will the pendulum swing back towards the center?

Remember Thor Heyerdahl And The Kon-Tiki Expedition

Heyerdahl is not only remembered for the Kon-Tiki but also for the Ra and Ra II expeditions. With the former one he tried to prove that people from Polynesia long ago could have reached the shores of South America with a raft made from balsa wood and other native materials. With the Ra and Ra II expeditions, Heyerdahl demonstrated that the ancient Egyptians could have used a typical boat made of papyrus to reach North America.

To The Many Unknown Maritime Explorers And Merchants In History

What Laura Dekker and the other girls as well as researchers like Thor Heyerdahl have shown is that there probably were many more explorers and cross ocean contacts between humans on all continents than we know about.

Perhaps one day genetic analysis will tell us more about long distance contacts between people in ancient times.

1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery Leading To A Soviet Union Run By Thugs

The Godfathers Of This Crime

This is my third blog about pre-revolution Russia. In the Summer of 1907 a several high level Bolsheviks (i.e. Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov) planned and committed a major, very bloody robbery of a money transport on a central square in the city of Tiflis, Georgia.

Revolutionaries’ Greed For Money

This heinous crime involved bombs and grenades. It left 40 people dead and 50 injured. The perpetrators of this crime got away with the then incredible amount of 341,000 rubles (worth several million US dollars today).

Loot The Looters

These kinds of crimes were justified by Lenin and Stalin as Expropriations of the Expropriators or Loot the Looters. Lenin and Stalin acted secretly and contravening an explicit prohibition of such acts by the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party of which these gentlemen were also members of.

The only convicted criminal (Kamo) of this crime successfully feigned twice insanity in captivity to avoid conviction in Berlin, Germany and back in Russia. He is rumored to have been killed later by Stalin.

There Is More To The Story

There are more details about this particular crime that are interesting, but for sake of brevity, I will stop here.

However, I would be remiss not to mention that it was asserted that Stalin at the time was acting as an informant of the Russian secret police and that he informed his contact about the pending robbery, but without giving away details.

Climate Change/Global Warming – An Outdated Scientific Theory

Deadends Of Science

The list of outdated/superseded scientific theories in the history of science is long (see Wikipedia). In the not so distant future Climate Change/Global Warming will be added to it. This is a very probable outcome. How much did Climate Change/Global Warming contribute to scientific progress? In my opinion it is more an impediment than a promoter.

Superstition Dressed As Science

More probable, Climate Change/Global Warming does not make it into the list of outdated/superseded scientific theories, but in the future will be properly classified as a pseudo science.