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.