Andrew Gallagher

😂😂😂😂

There used to be art in everything

The state pension is not a random government favour, it’s the back end of a 35–40 year compulsory “contract” where people are forced to hand over National Insurance on the clear promise of a basic pension at the end. Politicians and think tanks helped design an unfunded, pay‑as‑you‑go system where today’s workers pay today’s pensioners, then have the gall to call it “unsustainable” as if the public dreamt it up. If a private firm sold you a retirement product on fixed terms, took your money for four decades, then announced at 66 that you “didn’t really need it” and would henceforth be means‑tested or frozen, they would be in court for mis‑selling and fraud. The crisis here is not pensioners “leeching off the young”, it’s a political class that built a Ponzi‑style NI system, diverted the proceeds for other spending, and now wants to default on the people who kept their side of the bargain. You do not blame the victims of a defective product for believing the brochure; you go after the people who wrote it.

I watch this every time my life starts falling apar

White British kids aren’t killing Jews Hindus aren’t killing Jews Sikhs aren’t killing Jews Black Christians aren’t killing Jews Rastafarians aren’t killing Jews Chinese and Japanese people aren’t killing Jews Romanian and Polish immigrants aren’t killing Jews It is muslims Muslims are killing Jews Britain doesnt have an “antisemitism” problem It doesn’t have a wayward youth problem It doesn’t have a knife problem with regard to attacks on Jews It has a muslim problem Britain has an emergency with lethal, racist, backwards, violent muslims

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital. Cette phrase change tout. L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ? Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible. Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur. Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé. Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire. L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants. Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution. Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain. Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée. Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien. La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose. Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins. Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires. La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

In 1900, John D. Rockefeller controlled approximately 90 percent of all petroleum refining in the United States. He was, by some calculations, the richest private individual who had ever lived. He had a problem. Scientists were discovering that compounds derived from coal tar, a petroleum byproduct, could be used as synthetic medicines. Aspirin, derived from coal tar, had been launched by Bayer in 1899. The petroleum waste stream Rockefeller had previously had to dispose of could now be sold back to the public as medicine at a markup of roughly 10,000 percent. He had another problem. American medicine in 1900 was a competitive ecosystem of homeopaths, herbalists, naturopaths, osteopaths, midwives, and traditional doctors who used food, plants, water, and lifestyle as the primary tools of healing. Approximately half of all American medical schools taught some form of natural or alternative medicine. Rockefeller bought into the German pharmaceutical industry, eventually taking a substantial stake in IG Farben, the conglomerate that included Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst. He then commissioned a report. The report was written by Abraham Flexner, an educator with no medical training, funded by the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, and published in 1910. It declared that natural and alternative medical schools were unscientific quackery. It recommended the closure of more than half of all American medical schools and the standardisation of the rest around medicine based on synthetic patented drugs. Congress acted. Half of American medical schools closed within a decade. The remainder accepted Rockefeller and Carnegie funding on the condition that their curricula be reorganised around pharmaceutical treatment. Nutrition was removed. Herbal medicine was removed. Lifestyle intervention was removed. The doctor's job was redefined: diagnose the symptom, prescribe the drug. The drugs were petroleum-derived. The petroleum was supplied by Rockefeller-controlled refineries. The medical schools were funded by Rockefeller. The journals were funded by Rockefeller. The AMA was supported by Rockefeller. The hospitals were funded by Rockefeller. By 1925, the American medical system was a vertically integrated extension of the petroleum industry, operating under the marketing slogan that it was scientific. This is the system that exists today. The pharmaceutical industry generates approximately $1.5 trillion in annual revenue. The American population, 4 percent of the global total, consumes approximately 50 percent of all pharmaceuticals manufactured. The system was not designed to make people healthy. The system was designed to manage symptoms in a way that produces lifetime customers. A healthy patient is a former customer. A managed patient, who takes the pill every day for the rest of their life, is an annuity. The objective has always been to keep you in that profitable corridor between healthy and dead. Long enough to keep buying. Not so well that you stop. The doctor who advises you to fix your metabolism by changing your diet is, from the point of view of the system that trained him, a defective product. The doctor who prescribes you a statin, a metformin, an antidepressant, and a blood pressure medication for life is performing exactly as designed. The system was designed by an oil baron who needed to sell the waste products of his refineries. It still functions, 116 years after the Flexner Report, exactly the way he designed it. You are the customer. The corridor is where you live.

Britain's Gifts To The World 🇬🇧 They taught you to be ashamed of this country. ⛓️ Here's what they left out. The steam engine. The telephone. The television. The world wide web. The computer you're reading this on. All of it Britain. Vaccination, given to the world for free. Over an estimated 200 million lives saved. 🇬🇧 Britain abolished the slave trad4e. Then spent sixty years on the open ocean making sure the rest of the world agreed. Over 800,000 people freed at once. Countless more saved from a life of slavery. The NHS. Free at the point of need. This is not a perfect country. No country is. But this is a country that looked at what was wrong with the world and tried to fix it. Repeatedly. For centuries. Britain's greatness didn't happen by accident. It happened because ordinary people worked together. That's what we're doing again. First it starts with us working together once more. Proud Of Us is a community of people who love Britain and want to help bring it back. Story by story. Name by name. If you want to be part of it: proudofus.co.uk/support 🇬🇧 Be Part Of Us. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Once upon a time, breakfast television was worth watching…

Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada spoke about the contradictions of human nature: “Some people dream of having a swimming pool at home, while those who have one hardly ever use it. Those who have lost a loved one feel a profound sense of loss, while others often complain about their living relatives. Those without a partner long for one, while those who have one often don't appreciate it. The hungry would give anything for a meal, while the satiated complain about the taste of their food. Those without a car dream of owning one, while those who have a car are always looking for a better one.” The key to happiness is gratitude: truly seeing and appreciating what we already have, and understanding that somewhere, someone would give anything for what we take for granted.

30 years ago today… The Prodigy unleashed this masterpiece…

@ProudofusUK Sierra Leone. Year 2000. Twenty-six operators from the secret British unit X Platoon were sent into combat against two thousand rebels. True Story. amzn.eu/d/07inwQqE

🇬🇧 Britain sent soldiers into Africa in the year 2000. The country they invaded CELEBRATES it. Every year. Sierra Leone. Eleven years of civil war. A rebel army called the RUF funded by blood diamonds. Their signature was amputation. Hands. Arms. Of children. The UN sent peacekeepers. 500 of them were taken hostage. The rebels advanced on Freetown. One million people. No one was coming to help. Then Britain picked up the phone. 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. The order came on a Friday. By Sunday, 300 paratroopers were in Freetown. 300 against thousands. But these were not peacekeepers. The rebels stopped. Not because of numbers. Because of REPUTATION. When rebels took British soldiers hostage, Britain sent the SAS. Every hostage came home. Eighteen months later, eleven years of horror was over. Sierra Leone didn't resent the British. They celebrate the anniversary of the day Britain arrived. Every year. Britain sent soldiers to Africa. And a country was saved. 🇬🇧

If your parents are age 80 and they do not want to go to a care home, do not force them. At that age, what they want the most is not luxury, it is familiarity. The walls they have lived with for decades, the neighbors they recognize, the chair they sit on every morning, the small routines that give their day meaning. When you take them away from all of that, you are not just moving them to a new place, you are uprooting the last pieces of the world they understand. Many elderly people are not afraid of discomfort, they are afraid of loneliness and unfamiliarity. A care home may look modern and convenient, but to them it can feel like being abandoned in a strange place where everything is different and no memory exists. Sometimes the greatest respect we can give our parents is to allow them age with dignity in the environment they know best. Visit them often, support them, make their home safer and more comfortable if you can, but remember that after 80, peace of mind matters more than convenience. They once built a world around you when you were helpless. In their final chapter, the least we can do is protect the small world they built for themselves.

Today's humans have won in technology but lost in art.

If a healthy individual on benefits consistently refuses work, they should be forced to clean this filth up. Do that, or lose your benefits. Tough love.

Sometimes old books have some cool things going on.

Life cannot just be about one sad thing after another. There must also be things that make us super excited and inspired about the future. This is one of things. Bigtime.

Money and pressure are how these cases usually get buried, drag it out, bankrupt people and exhaust them. That tactic stops working when someone on the outside is willing to fund it indefinitely. It’s about whether power can still silence truth by making it unaffordable. If that lever is gone, a lot of people suddenly look very nervous.

"Don't EVER go back to that person's house." Some good advice on visiting someone's home. 👇🏻