the 3% tariff on Chinese tea was seen as oppressive

don't look at what has been imposed this year (without congressional approval)

Now gather a huge group of friends who are willing to fight for this cause (and for whose this cause is so important that they can accept ending in jail or even worse).

more likely, proving that this group of people never actually believed in anything.

"...the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_(critical_theory)

The fact that signposting "outgroup bad" is so psychologically rewarding, while nuanced discussions are more difficult, get less engagement from others, etc, is actually a critical reason we are where we are as a culture.

This isn't meant as a defense of or attack on GuinansEyebrows, more a self reflection of my own, similar behavior.

US consumers will be paying the bulk of the tariffs through price increases. We do have representatives in Congress, they just weren't the ones imposing tariffs.

edit: as fun as silent down votes are, it would be interesting to hear where you might disagree

Now, did they do that with the approval of the voters? Ostensibly, yes, but in reality, it's not that clear-cut.

This would be more like if the Thirteen Colonies had MPs and those MPs still voted in favor of the Stamp Act, or they voted to delegate the power to tariff to someone with a severe personality disorder.

For a long time now I've been banging the drum of "don't put power in the president's hands", because the downside has always been very clear to me: even if you trust the guy in office today, doesn't mean you will want the next guy to have that power. But people just don't care. They are quite happy to have unilateral power exercised by one man, because they don't bother to think through the consequences of such things.

It worked pretty well as long as the ruling class were all pretty much on the same page about most things, with some "social issues" differences between the parties that they used for campaigning but never quite acted on. It works less well if different factions start competing and going against the status quo for real.

There are a lot of lawsuits about the executive branch doing things it supposedly doesn't have the power to do.

Generally the mood seems to be that only a SCOTUS ruling will potentially be taken seriously.

edit: typo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_representation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

A coup was just good business.

We should probably not forget that France gave nearly everything they had to the US to fund its revolution, what was a global power ended up in such an impoverished situation that it led to the French Revolution and ended the monarchy.

Not a small amount of support, if you are at the receiving end - certainly smells like good business.

Look at Musk who tried to work with the US President vs Trump who is the US president. Which one of them is gaining more?

I looked it up, and it was a 3 pence tax per pound. When tea was selling for 2 to 3 pence per pound. So yeah, a 100-150% tax combined with the fact that the East India Company was allowed to sell without paying the tax. That is very unjust and threatens their business a lot more than the tax alone.

(But primarily done to protect colonial smugglers' and merchants' businesses which were being undercut by the English tea that was still cheaper than theirs, even with the small tax.)