Nah that’s cutting the story short. Britain started taxing the fuck out of tea in the American colonies. This pissed people off and gave birth to a thriving tea smuggling trade. A thriving smuggling trade that founding fathers like Samuel Adams and John Hancock were in on. The original tea tax was then repealed with the Indemnity Act of 1767 because ah fuck now there’s a thriving smuggling trade. This appeases the tea drinking masses but pisses off the smugglers. *Later that same year* Britain passes the Townshend Revenue act which slaps big fucking taxes on a wide range of commodities, including tea. Colonists are enraged and the tea smugglers are rich as fuck again. Mass protests hit, the Brits repeal most of the Townshend act, but leave the tax on Tea. In 1773, the Tea act is passed, giving the British East India Company a monopoly on the American tea market. Think of it as Walmart coming in and selling tea at wholesale prices. Wrecked the American tea industry. Wrecks the smugglers because even they can’t compete. And all this shit was done without anyone having a say in anything. Now *everyone’s* fuckin pissed, and they’re throwing a tea party.

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A fact people don’t often remember is that the Boston tea party was because of taxes were lowered for British East India Company making it more competitive. Ironic, right? The whole revolution was started because of an act lowering taxes.

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Jeez Canada. Can’t breath here on the East coast wtf

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Honestly... I think your university rankings are a bit... shall we say inflated? Not that it isn't also the case for certain US universities (e.g. I'm not sold on Harvard being all they're talked up as either). Juggernaut companies aren't just a matter of a strong education pipeline though... I suspect it has more to do with the regulatory environment. The US is far more tolerant of monopolies than they really should be (compare how the US and the EU treated Microsoft's browser shenanigans, the UK was in the EU at the time). They also let them get away with more legal damage for much longer... to the point where it runs away from them and they couldn't put the cat back in the bag even if they wanted to. Often by exploiting seemingly grey areas like Uber does with whether someone is a contractor or an employee. This is something that I was seeing rulings on in the UK maybe even a decade earlier and those rulings were generally coming down on the side of them being employees. And as far as I can tell from a quick search, that was upheld when it came to Uber as well: "**Uber now treats all 70,000 of its drivers in Britain as “workers”** entitled to a minimum wage, holiday pay and pension plans. It comes weeks after the country's Supreme Court upheld a ruling that its drivers were workers, not independent contractors.Mar 18, 2021" --quoted from my Google search results, Google implies it comes from this article: [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/uber-is-reclassifying-uk-drivers-as-workers-heres-what-happens-next.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/uber-is-reclassifying-uk-drivers-as-workers-heres-what-happens-next.html) It's probably for the best that the UK doesn't produce mega companies (at least in the interest of the average UK citizen). In the US, people still suffer heavily even from monopolies that were supposedly broken up at the time. Even after Bell System was smashed in 1984, the separated companies operated regionally, effectively leaving local monopolies. And to this day the US appears to be fairly unique in the cooperation between device manufacturers and retailers with phone companies to lock customers into long term phone contracts at purchase with strange financing options. E.g. you cannot buy an iPhone at Best Buy without signing a cell phone contract. You have to go direct to the Apple store to get one without contract in the US (or slightly shady methods, unlocked imports on Amazon, eBay phones that who knows..., etc.). This level of anti-competitive operation is mostly not legal in the UK and EU. Likewise, when these companies go overseas, they often have US government support even when they operate in ways that aren't normally locally legal. Less egregiously (maybe?) these days, but the term Banana Republic refers to governments beholden to US firms operating in South America (Honduras, Costa Rica,...). Of course British companies were able to operate that way back in the days of the British Empire, but these days the UK has less political and economic weight to throw around in that respect. The British and Dutch East India companies started as local monopolies and again, benefited from the projection of power globally. Mega companies require political buy in to have favorable policies and procedures through regulatory capture. More robust political involvement and stronger regulatory authority and independence would be expected to put a damper on such massive enterprises.

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In Cambridge? Christ, no wonder you're not making any money. See what happens when you just give all your money to all the indolent fourth sons of Dukes and Viscounts? Give 'em a million dollars and they'll spend it all on tea and crumpets and then wonder why they have nothing left over to pay the butler to clean up the dishes. The coddled have no drive, no chip on their shoulders, are uncreative and worst of all have no sense of humor. Move your tech hubs to Glasgow, staff the VCs with middle class East Enders and don't look back. This post exhausts all the words I know in 'British'.

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Eastbound and Down?! Dude… just watch it… you know righteous gemstones? Same guy did east bound and down before righteous gemstones…

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600-700k in the city (Denver). And that too an old POS or a townhome. New builds way out east of the city going for 400-450k but feels more like Kansas than CO.

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>U.S. PASSENGER RAILROAD AMTRAK SEEKS $7.3 BILLION IN GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR KEY EAST COAST CORRIDOR INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS, EXPANDING SERVICE -STATEMENT ^First ^Squawk ^[@FirstSquawk](http://twitter.com/FirstSquawk) ^at ^2023-06-05 ^14:12:47 ^EDT-0400

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Middle East going rate.... (Cheap, by western standards)

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Move east problem solved

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