So… because it’s the Fourth of July, I am thinking about the American Revolution. And the Stamp Act really was such a perfect storm. Literally they could not have designed it better to piss off a lot of people who were gonna get rowdy about it.
The Stamp Act did not put a tax on postage stamps, in case that’s what you’re wondering. The stamps were actually little authenticating pieces of paper affixed to taxed items to prove the tax had been paid.
What they did decide to tax is just… Well, you’d think it was calculated for chaos:
Newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides: Imagine what would happen if you told a nation’s influencers that you were going to charge people to watch their videos, thus disincentivising people from watching them and threatening their livelihood. As with the list of publications above, every single one would start screaming that this is the worst thing in human history.
Legal documents: Surely lawyers, who are so famously docile and non-confrontational, won’t mind getting taxed extra!
Dice & playing cards: Ask not what we do with a drunken sailor, but what a drunken sailor will do to you when he can’t booze it up and enjoy his traditional hobbies. The sailor is instead now both drunk and angry. As are his gambling buddies and every other rough customer in the colonies. What could go wrong?
Can’t imagine how that backfired
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