Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Can we fix the suburbs?" video.

  1.  @angelsy1975  the 'evil bad king' wasn't even all that evil and bad... just sufficiently incompetent that the democratically (for the day) elected parliament mostly bypassed him and did stuff without his input. The colonsists actually revolted against taxation in general (no, not lack of representation, that was propaganda that came later). Twice, actually. First was a one off levy to cover the portion of the cost of a war incured by the troops stationed to defend the colonies it was being levied against (note: they were only being charged a fraction of the amount it cost to maintain those troops, and only for the time the war was actually happening). ... it is worth noting that that war, despite being global in scale between the British and French empires... started over the very american colonists who were revolting over this tax raiding their french neighbours for their own enrichment. (ok, probably not the exact same individuals, but certainly people in their social circles). Organized refusal to pay tax is a revolt, but that tax was only instituted because the British govenrment was kinda broke due to the war. So when the First revolt happend, they didn't do the usual (expensive) thing of sending troops to round the revolters and execute/buy off the leaderships and otherwise break the revolt... they cancled the levy that was being protested against... and instead implemented the stamp tax. Which was a tax on imports and exports, collected at the ports, that they could actually enforce. It was high enough to be punative, too... which STILL left the colonists paying the lowest taxes of basically anyone worth the effort of taxing in the British Empire of the day (and, for that matter, most other European Empires as well.) That was what the revolutionary war was fought over. (and, in fact, that was what a whole lot of arson, murder, and general terrorism was commited over, resulting in most of the surviving loyalists (loyalists being about a third of the population) fleeing to what became Canada. The idea of represenation came up later when someone realised that parliament was never going to agree to 'no taxes, ever, under any circumstances' without actual MPs in parliament making deals on the colonists' behalf to get that. (in reality it Still wouldn't have worked, becuase it was Idiotic), and the first time it was written down was AFTER the fighting had already started, and only entered the public eye as recruitment propaganda for the rebels. The king's only contribution to the whole mess was a letter that basicaly amounted to 'revolts and not paying taxes are bad. Don't do that.' He otherwise trusted his advisors (members of parliament) when they said they had things handled.
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