December 2019. While federal agencies buried Verizon and AT&T in environmental reviews for every cell tower (because apparently radio waves might disturb the migration patterns of suburban squirrels), South Korea's SK Telecom flipped on commercial 5G service nationwide. Korean consumers downloaded 4K movies in seconds while Americans waited eighteen months for the FCC to approve a single tower placement in downtown Cleveland. The pattern repeats like a broken record player. In 1844, Samuel Morse begged Congress to fund his telegraph expansion after proving the technology worked between Washington and Baltimore. Congressmen spent six months debating whether instant communication violated God's plan for humanity (seriously, check the Congressional Record). Private investors said screw it, funded the lines themselves, and connected every major American city within a decade. Private capital, not government involvement, built the fastest communication network on Earth. Fast-forward to today's 5G circus. T-Mobile spent $78 billion acquiring Sprint, partly to bypass the federal spectrum auction racket that makes Las Vegas look transparent. Meanwhile, the Defense Department sits on massive chunks of unused 5G spectrum "for national security" while blocking private companies from accessing frequencies they'd actually use. Chinese companies roll out 5G infrastructure across Asia and Africa while American telecoms fight zoning boards in Palo Alto for six months to install equipment on existing poles. You want to know why America leads in software but lags in physical infrastructure? Software doesn't require government permission to exist. Every 5G tower needs approval from seventeen different agencies, three environmental impact studies, and a public hearing where your neighbor Karen explains why faster internet will give her cat cancer. #economy #libertarian

The real enemy? Progressive taxation. One intervention creates problems that demand five more interventions, each generating revenue for the system. Start with a 15% top rate "just on the wealthy." Within decades, you get bracket creep pushing middle-class earners into those top rates. Politicians respond by creating new deductions and credits to "help families." Tax code balloons from 400 pages to 75,000 pages. Compliance costs hit $400 billion annually in the US alone. Small businesses hire accountants instead of workers. Entrepreneurs relocate to Singapore or Dubai. Each complication spawns three new bureaucracies. The Alternative Minimum Tax arrives to catch "tax avoiders" (translation: people following the law). Then comes the Earned Income Tax Credit to help low earners crushed by payroll taxes. Estate tax planning creates entire industries. Corporate inversions trigger anti-inversion rules that trigger new loopholes that trigger more rules. Sweden tried this experiment in the 1970s and 80s. Top rates hit 87%. Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking author) paid 102% marginal rates. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad fled to Switzerland. Tennis star Björn Borg moved to Monaco. Tax revenues as percentage of GDP actually fell. Sweden eventually slashed rates and simplified the system. The original promise was to soak the rich. The result: middle class paying 40%+ effective rates while billionaires hire armies of lawyers to pay 15%. Each new "fix" creates ten new distortions, ten new lobbying opportunities, ten new ways for connected insiders to game the system. Modern taxation, working as designed. #economy #libertarian

Picture this: October 2010, a black Toyota Prius pulls up to some venture capitalists in San Francisco. Two guys named Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp just pitched an app that lets you summon rides with your phone. The VCs probably thought "cute tech toy for rich millennials." Meanwhile, across the country in New York City, taxi medallions were trading for $1.3 million each. These little metal plates had appreciated faster than Manhattan real estate for decades (because the city artificially capped them at 13,237 medallions since the 1930s). Immigrant drivers mortgaged their entire lives to buy these things, treating them like retirement accounts. Fleet owners sat on medallion portfolios worth hundreds of millions. The medallion system started during the Great Depression when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia decided too many taxis were "flooding" the streets. Classic government solution: create artificial scarcity, call it public safety. For eighty years, this cartel enriched medallion owners while screwing over riders who couldn't hail cabs in outer boroughs and drivers who paid usurious lease fees. Then Uber scaled. By 2014, medallion values crashed to $870,000. By 2018? Try $200,000. Hundreds of drivers declared bankruptcy. The Taxi Workers Alliance started organizing suicide prevention workshops because medallion debt was literally killing people. Meanwhile, you could finally get a ride in Brooklyn at 2 AM without bribing a dispatcher. #bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

In light of the new #Epstein scandal, Islamic preachers have become increasingly active on social media, exploiting the topic of child molestation and attempting to portray the #Muslim ummah as a paragon of morality. In this regard, I would like to cite some Islamic sources to clarify this. In an authentic tradition from Imam al-Bukhari in his Sahih (Hadith 5133), Aisha reports that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and began living with her when she was nine (Photo 1). In a true Islamic society, based on the Quran and Sunnah, such sexual behavior is not reprehensible—it is the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah. The Hanafi work "al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya" speaks quite eloquently about this: "Most sheikhs are of the opinion that age is irrelevant, but physical ability is. If a girl is large and healthy, capable of supporting a man, and is not susceptible to illness, then the husband is permitted to penetrate her, even if she has not yet reached the age of nine." (Photo 2)