Buffett is portrayed as being virtuous for this "I never wanted to found a dynasty" attitude but it's actually quite anti-civilizational, and is the opposite of how the men who built the West thought

The thing is, it's only dynastic thinking that leads to lont-term thinking🧵👇 This is, frankly, the difference between a Lord and a modern CEO:

One cares about what will be happening 6 quarters from now, if he thinks even that far ahead. The other thinks six generations from now, as it is his duty to do so

While Buffett is undoubtedly a longer-term thinker than most of his peer group, he still faces the modern problem of assuming that what is most moral is for things to be (mostly) reset at each generation. He (and many others like him) see inheritance of a vast fortune as wrong because it is "unearned"

So, instead of keeping the fortune intact so that it can be used for great ends, it's wasted away on vague "philanthropy" that does little, in the end, to actually help anyone, at least compared to what could be done with a vast estate

This was somewhat accurate around the early 20th century and is becoming true again, at least for some swathes of people in some jobs

But it was fixed then and could be fixed with similar policies now

Fortunately, it was McKinely who fixed it and Trump wants to emulate him🧵👇 McKinley's main problem, as a governer and then as president, was that labor and capital were at each other's throats, seeing each other as the enemy

Both had fair points

On one hand, labor was underpaid compared to its basic life expenses, though things were better for our industrial laborers than in England

But, on the other, capital noted that stiff competition from abroad via imports meant that higher wages weren't economically feasible. It's profits were generally thin, thanks to imports, so higher wages would sink companies and lead to higher unemployment

And, both sides had valid complaints of violence directed at them; tempers were reaching a boiling point

I get that this is supposed to be a positive image showing American continuity, but really it shows how devastating to the national psyche the Depression and FDR were

A quick 🧵👇 This is observable in attire: three men on the right all have some degree of continuity to them

The colonial era, early republican era, and latter 19th century all were somewhat different, as attire shows, but there was no great breakdown

So breeches turned to trousers, tricorns to top hats, cravats to ties, and so on, but the progression was understandable in response to the changing environment and nature of life; life as a gentleman in Mrs. Astor's New York is different than that of a planter in 1720, so clothing changed

A great challenge for America is that it's become a twisted version of England in the early 20th century

This is best seen in land and elite social life, but is present everywhere; in all cases, we must overcome the change or we'll face the fate of our English cousins🧵👇
First, what was going on with England?

The years that followed the beginning of the Agricultural Depression and preceded WW1 saw immense change of a bad sort

For one, free trade was eating away the country. Its now uneconomic farms were lying fallow, its factories facing unbeatable competition from the much larger markets abroad with industrial innovation and prosperity slowing as a result, and its trade deficit widening dramatically

Similarly problematic was how social changes were going. King Edward famously surrounding himself with various sorts of disreputable characters, from banksters to actresses, rather than the old-blooded Lords. That presaged similar changes, with Churchill taxing away the wealth of those Lords with his People's Budget and Lloyd George destroying their power with his Parliament Bill. Alongside their loss of the prestige and political position of the old families came a change in social mores: gone were the old, Christian values and in was the free-living "fast set" with its rampant infidelity and eyebrow-raising lifestyle.

And, of course, those changes brought with them immense upheaval in the basic life of the land. A great example is foxhunting: whereas in the past the activity was a country sport enjoyed by locals of all stripes, from the sons of small farmers to the local magnate, railroads turned it into something the new elite felt compelled to engage in for reasons of status. So the farmers were screened out, the magnates saw their fields full of new men, and what had been a jovial activity that created bonds between the rural classes became something decidedly otherwise; the new elites lacked concern or care for their inferiors, being ruled by money rather than tradition and noblesse oblige

This is the most imbecilic tax proposal, given what it means for society and tradition

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit," as the proverb goes

This forces them to cut trees down, and England's decline shows where that goes🧵👇 First off, the obvious problem with this, regardless of tradition, is that it makes it essentially illegal to build anything that matters

All great projects, whether a farm or kingdom, JP Morgan-style bank or SpaceX-style goal to settle Mars, are multi-generational. It takes time to build, decades of investment and work, and so on

All the jobs, all the advancements, all the achievements that come from those multi-generation projects are great things for society but they don't occur in a vacuum. They require that willingness to invest in the future that only really comes when one knows that the future will be their through heirs

Often, those heirs are children, but sometimes, as in the case of the Antonines or later Morgans, they are chosen successors. Regardless, what matters is that it can be passed on so that the future can be thought of and invested in, that once the boy earns his spurs he can be trusted with the kingdom

Is there an antidote to egalitarianism and its ill effects that doesn't require some sort of autocracy?

This is a question I was recently asked, and it's an interesting one

The answer is yes. That antidote is pairing a landed, tradition-minded elite with propertied voting🧵👇 The problem is that egalitarianism, or the idea that 1) all outcomes must be equal and 2) it is the regime's duty to destroy any differences that exist, leads to immense civilizational problems that are as varied as they are caustic

A good example is "disparate impact" prohibition. This is the idea that if any test for employment, schooling, punishment of unruly students, etc. is failed by a certain group (e.g. black women) at a higher rate than others, it's illegal and must be illegal because it's discriminatory, even if no intentional discrimination was involved in the creation of the test. This is why failed candidates for police/fire departments will routinely win millions of dollars for not being able to do push-ups or basic reasoning questions (this happened twice recently), why a woman won millions of dollars from Equinox when fired for failing to show up to work on time dozens of times, and so on

Of course, that sort of thinking and its various step-children (affirmative action for schooling, DEI for hiring, and so on) make it impossible to get anything done. Semiconductors can't be created when employees behave erratically, rockets don't work when the math isn't exactly correct, water can't have just a little bit of cholera in it

One of the few true improvements in the West of now over, say 1910, is conservation:

We now have a much healthier mindset, being willing to defend irreplaceable species from extinction, seeing God’s glory in nature more clearly despite this atheistic age

Very short 🧵👇 Species like the Galapagos tortoise and Seychelles giant tortoises - large, slow, and eatable - were on the verge of extinction, and would probably be gone for good, at least in nature

Sailors ate them, governments didn’t care about protecting them, and so on. Truly awful near-obliteration of magnificent species

There are occasional, rare exceptions: Jonathan was brought to St Helena in the 1880s. Still, even the , and for decades hence, the worry amongst those who cared was that his species would disappear and there was nothing the government could do to stop it

They were mostly right. 2/3 of the Seychelles giant tortoise species died out

What's the mindset difference between a Boeing CEO and a Lord?

That difference is an underexplored aspect of modernity: perceptions of wealth

The fight between agrarian and industrial wealth is known, but far more interesting is the income v. capital appreciation upheaval🧵👇 For most of modern history, wealth was measured in terms of the income generated by an estate rather than the capital value of the estate itself

This is excellently shown in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Darcy is never described in terms of the value of his acres and home. Rather, he's considered notably wealthy because his estate is "worth" 10,000 pounds a year, meaning that's how much it generated in income

This time of year, with holidays off and cold weather making indoors appealing, is great for reading, and there's much reading that must be done to wake up to why we are where we are

Here are 5 books that show why the 20th century was such a disaster, a critical subject 🧵👇 The first, as you might expect, is "The Great Betrayal" by former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Douglas Smith

This one is fabulous for two reasons

One is that Smith clearly describes the perfidy of the West, particularly the Americans and British, that led to Rhodesia's destruction. Lies, more lies, and utter savagery

The other is that he demolishes most of the lies about Rhodesia and its world. It was prosperous, not some basket case and backwater. It was free, not some fascist dictatorship. It had no apartheid, and Smith's government had good relationships with the tribal chiefs. Portugal's Salazar was an effective leader and gentleman, not some horrid dictator. And so on: much of what we were told is an utter lie, and Smith exposes those lies and the rot lying at the root of them in a very effective way

Adding to the good aspects of this book is that Smith was a well-adjusted gentleman and good writer, so though he's bitter about what happened to his country it reads as a truthful history rather than bitter conspiracy

I missed it yesterday, but this is around the anniversary of when Sir Napier ended India’s widow burning practice, sati, and threatened those who tried burning widows alive with hanging

It’s a great story of English civilizational confidence, and so is of course hated now🧵👇 The background is that sati seems to have been relatively rare, though still mentioned even in Greek sources of Alexander’s day, until the late medieval period, at which point it increased somewhat

It then became all the more prevalent amongst certain Hindu groups under the Mughals

Did you know murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's company is the most predatory company in the insurance market, turning down 32% of patient claims?

Even corporate elites have duties to the commons, and Thompson's UH was acting in the opposite fashion

A short 🧵👇 This is something that has been forgotten in the age of managerial capitalism

Because there are an indefinite number of managers, board members and officers in charge rather than an obvious lordly landowner or Henry Ford-style CEO, it's seemingly thought companies have no duty

They're expected to screw people over. Expected to be impossible to deal with. Expected to be awful in every imaginable way other than in terms of delivering shareholder return, all thanks to that Dodge v. Ford case that ruled a company's only duty is to deliver returns to its shareholders

What Mr. Kennedy explains here is a critical thing we must understand when considering globalized corporations and the demolition of age-old communities and cultures

Our regimes and their corporate lackeys are waging total economic war on farmers

Here's why they're dong it🧵👇 Take what he says:

“A state senator here called Wendell Murphy … went into business with Smithfield, they built a new slaughterhouse in this state, and he used his position in the state senate to pass 28 laws that made it almost impossible to sue somebody who calls themself a hog farm, even if it has nothing to do with farming. By raising hogs in factories, they dropped the price of pork, in about a two-year period, from $0.60/lb to $0.02/lb.

"There were 28,000 independent hog farmers in this state, and it put all of them out of business and left hog production in the hands of 2,000 industrial outfits, all of them either owned, or operated by, or had contracts with one company: Smithfield. They made North Carolina the hog production capital of the world, and this business plan spread to every other state because they had to adopt it.

"And then Smithfield, which own now 80% of the hog production in this state, 40% nationally, and was controlling our landscapes, sold itself to China. Now, China has a colonial model in the rural parts of this state where … they’re poisoning the groundwater.”

This is a very interesting, important video because it shows why Rhodesia was, despite being free and prosperous, not allowed to survive:

Its voting system was inegalitarian in a way Western regimes couldn't allow to survive; it emphasized stewardship, not just existence🧵👇 Ignore the awful haircuts of the '70s and take what the young man who speaks the most is saying:

It makes no sense to allow someone who lives in a hut in the bush with no conception of the past, present, or future other than his immediate surroundings to have the same amount of control as someone who knows what's going on and has been educated in how to be a steward of the national wealth

That's not to say the bushman should have fewer rights than the educated stewards. Equal property rights, ordered liberty, etc. are the foundation of Western success and prosperity and ought be available to all, including those outside the expected group, so that the competent slice of society can rise like cream to the top. That avoids the pitfalls of despotism of the king or mob and provides a pressure valve for those who want to be in the elite and are competent enough to join it

That's what the Rhodesian system emphasized and why it was hated

The governments of The West have waged a brutal war on their history, tradition, and culture in the name of egalitarianism, of the total leveling of everyone and everything in the name of equality

But it's not just about egalitarianism, it's also about control

A short 🧵👇 First, the egalitarian argument is accurate, though as I'll discus below, not complete

But it is important to understand: they believe that the only moral society is one in which everyone is "equal," meaning outcomes (wealth, criminal records, etc.) are evenly distributed across race, gender, family background, etc

Of course, that's impossible and non-sensical. Groups act differently and have for all time, having adapted to their different environments with different cultures, strengths and weaknesses, etc. A relatively small example is that which I spoke about with @JohannKurtz in Episode 1 of my The Old World podcast. Even today, it is largely the old Norman families who hold onto England's wealth. That makes sense given that dozens of generations of alliances and breeding were involved in their obtaining it and holding onto it in the first place, but it shows the lie that is egalitarianism.

That truth, the fact they want to hide with their egalitarian lies, is that outcomes are never equal, and ever can be, no matter what the level of state intrusion is.

But the quest for equalizing them is what gives the state its power to punitively tax, to regulate, and so on. That amounts to the power of life and death over the successful and competent.

"This is just sickening," said a family member I convinced to read The Great Betrayal by Rhodesian PM Ian Smith

Why? Because Smith lays bare the sickening murder of Rhodesia at the West's perfidious hands, showing what the West destroyed in the name of egalitarian democracy🧵👇 Particularly sickening is one issue that shines through the book at nearly every page: a former Spitfire pilot who served bravely in WW2, Smith and his countrymen were treated as the height of evil by backstabbing governments, treated poorly so that the communists might win

As Smith put it:

“But most important, and above all else, was the treatment to which we had been subjected: the breaches of agreements, the double standards, the blatant deception and blackmail with which we were confronted. To put it crudely, we had had an absolute bellyful. Rhodesians simply wished to be left to lead their own lives. And in all honesty it had to be admitted that the Conservatives were as much to blame as Labour.”

Are labor unions all-American institutions, or definitively the opposite? Many on the right and left insist they're all-American allies of the common man

The truth is quite the opposite, given what America was meant to be and what they imply about life, work, and ownership 🧵👇 Remember, America was never meant to be a nation of "workers"

Many came as indentured servants, but the point of that was to eventually escape servitude by becoming a yeoman in the vast American continent

So, whether the second sons of Jamestown, Puritans of New England. Scots-Irish of the backcountry, or stolid German farmers of Pennsylvania, no one arriving on these untamed shored did so out of a desire to be an eternal employee. Even if they initially worked as one in anything from a drygoods store to fledgling farm, early factory or colonial iron forge, the point of doing so was to acquire enough capital to become independent

The exception, of course, is slavery, but that is a somewhat separate issue other than that it reinforced the notion that any free man should be independent, when it comes to life and work, with ownership of the means of earning one's bread rather than eternal employment being the goal

An interesting aspect of the Old South from Jamestown to Appomattox is the chivalric garb in which it clothed itself

Namely, they saw themselves as cavaliers, descendants of Norman knights in the New World

But their societal purpose was very different, hence their downfall🧵👇 What do I mean by that?

Well, slavery aside, the gentlemen of the South in the 1640s, 1740s, and 1840s were somewhat more entrepreneurial than England, but otherwise attempting to mimic the English gentry and aristocracy from which some of them came and part of which the others wanted to be

So there were fox hunts, stately country homes, and a great many imports of English luxury goods, from frock coats to silver candelabras

One other point, related to the quote-tweeted 🧵, is the difference in how each government treated the group out of power

Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front was characterized by effective paternalist policies toward the natives

Mugabe's rule was characterized by outright tyranny
🧵👇

https://twitter.com/Will_Tanner_1/status/1862616888934641879

What sort of paternalist policies?

For one, Smith's government worked with the village chiefs to provide the villagers with cost effective improvements that greatly improved their standard of living, such as plumbing

As even TIME admitted: "Since 1965, [Ian Smith's] government has underwritten a program of public works in African villages, and won enough approval from Rhodesia’s blacks for nationalist guerrillas to be regularly turned in by their own people."

Politically motivated? In many ways, yes. But still, it was effective at making their lives better and encouraging them to be committed to the government. It was, in short, effective and paternalistic

Was Rhodesia a better place than Zimbabwe?

Yes, by every metric imaginable other than nominal dedication to egalitarianism

But, while obvious, it's worth exploring some of the many ways in which Rhodesia was a far better place for all involved, black and white alike

A 🧵👇 As a bit of background for those who haven't read my threads on Rhodesia before: it was a successful, prosperous, and relatively free Anglo country in Africa that declared its independence rather than give into Congo-style decolonization at the hands of England

It then fought a decade-and-a-half-long war against communist insurgents who were aided not just by the USSR and Red China, but also America and the UK; the West sanctioned and embargoed Rhodesia while the communists provided training, weapons, and funding to the communists

Together, they turned a free country without apartheid from a prosperous land of plenty into a hellish land ruled by Mugabe the tyrant

Why? Because Rhodesia rejected egalitarianism and maintained its propertied voting system rather than give in to Western-style mass democracy

So, it got turned into Zimbabwe and became poor and ruined in every way

Well, Thanksgiving is over. As you consider the end of your Thanksgiving celebration, do wonder what followed the First Thanksgiving?

That aftermath was the bloodiest war, in percentage of population terms, in American history

A short 🧵👇 on the post-Thanksgiving fallout
First, the groups involved:

The English stood on one side. They, mainly Puritans, had landed in the late fall of 1620 and were nearly starved to death, saved only by the Indians. They quickly spread across the New England region, building settlements and towns up the Connecticut River Valley

On the other were the Wampanoag people, part of a broader language group in the reason. They, under their "king," Ousamequin, saved the English and struck a deal with them. They, after being saved and gotten on their feet with farming the New England soil, would be able to settle in the region in exchange for an alliance with the Wampanoag people. That was a huge benefit to the Wampanoag given the military technology and familiarity with it of the English

It was a harvest celebration in 1621 between those two groups that is remembered as the "First Thanksgiving," though the Virginians had had similar festivals with their Indian neighbors

Many don't know or understand this, but it's probably the biggest change compared to when America was a happy and healthy place

So, who brought this utterly disastrous change to America?

Ronald "the Gipper" Reagan, who mimicked the Soviets in his divorce law change 🧵👇 Like @wil_da_beast630 mentioned in the above tweet, marriage was quite different

Namely, a wife couldn't cheat on her husband and then steal half his property when leaving him, taking the kids in the process. Nor could a husband do so, though that's less common

Instead, the spouse at "fault," whether for cheating, abuse, neglect, not having sex with the other spouse, etc., was held financially responsible for it upon the divorce. That limited the highway robbery that is modern divorce court

This was the state of things from roughly the 1920s until the 60s, with divorce before the '20s being (rightly) much harder to obtain because marriage is supposed to be a sacred institution