Most people know Elon Musk because he left South Africa.
That should bother anyone who cares about Africa’s future.
His drive was already there. America gave him a better place to use it.
Now imagine the same person, with the same ambition and the same obsession with building impossible things, trying to do all of this where capital is hard to find, paperwork is slow, imports get stuck, regulators can change the rules overnight, and a bribe can decide whether your business moves or dies.
Bad systems destroy the future quietly.
They make the builder waste years on licenses, customs, electricity, financing, and people with stamps who can stop everything.
By the time he is finally allowed to build, the best years of his energy may be gone.
This is why I fight for economic freedom in Africa.
I want Africans to build at home. I want our entrepreneurs to spend their lives creating, hiring, selling, exporting, and solving real problems instead of begging broken systems to let them move.
The next Elon should not have to leave Africa before the world can see what he can do.
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The Swedish government told her she owed 102% of her income in taxes. She was 68 years old, a children's book author, and had no political power. So she wrote a fairy tale—and toppled a government that had ruled for 44 years.
Stockholm, 1976.
Astrid Lindgren opened her mail and found a tax assessment that didn't make sense.
She was Sweden's most beloved author—the creator of Pippi Longstocking, the woman whose books had taught generations of children about courage, independence, and standing up to bullies.
She read the document carefully. Then she did the math.
The Swedish Tax Agency was demanding she pay 102% of her income in taxes.
Not a typo. Not a rounding error.
One hundred and two percent.
If she paid what they were demanding, she would owe more than she earned. She would go into debt for the privilege of working.
She was 68 years old. She could have hired accountants and fought it quietly. She could have restructured her finances and stayed silent. She could have done what powerful people typically do when systems overreach—find the loopholes, protect her position, and leave everyone else to figure it out alone.
Instead, she picked up her pen.
In March 1976, she published a satirical fairy tale in a major Stockholm newspaper.
It was called "Pomperipossa in Monismania."
It told the story of Pomperipossa—a successful author in the land of Monismania, meaning "Money-mania"—who worked hard and loved her country, until she discovered that the tax system was designed to punish success and reward political connections.
The story was funny. It was precise. It was impossible to misread.
Pomperipossa was Astrid. Monismania was Sweden.
The ruling Social Democratic Party—which had governed Sweden for over forty years—was furious.
Prime Minister Olof Palme personally attacked her in the press, accusing her of selfishness, of not understanding how society worked, of betraying Swedish values.
Astrid Lindgren, the grandmother who had written Pippi Longstocking, was being called unpatriotic by her own government.
She didn't back down.
She wrote more. She appeared on television. She spoke publicly and pointed out—calmly, clearly, with the specific patience of someone who has spent a lifetime explaining things to people who aren't listening—that a tax system demanding 102% of income wasn't progressive. It was absurd.
The government dismissed her. They said she didn't understand economics. They said a children's book author had no business commenting on tax policy.
Then, in September 1976, Sweden held elections.
For the first time in forty-four years, the Social Democratic Party lost power.
Political analysts pointed to multiple factors—economic stagnation, inflation, policy failures. But every one of them acknowledged that Astrid Lindgren's tax revolt had shifted the national conversation. She had made it acceptable to question a system that had seemed beyond questioning. She had given language to frustrations millions of people felt but hadn't known how to articulate.
One woman, armed with a fairy tale and a pen, had helped topple a government that had seemed unshakeable.
The new coalition reformed the tax code. The most egregious rates were reduced.
Astrid went back to writing children's books.
But she didn't stop paying attention.
In the 1980s, when Sweden's Animal Protection Act was being debated, she noticed it contained loopholes that would allow factory farming practices she considered cruel. She wrote articles. She lobbied. She gave speeches. She showed up at Parliament in her eighties and testified.
In 1988, Sweden passed one of the strongest animal welfare laws in the world.
It was nicknamed "Lex Lindgren"—Lindgren's Law—because everyone knew who had made it happen.
Astrid Lindgren died in January 2002, at the age of ninety-four.
Sweden held a state funeral. The Prime Minister spoke. The Royal Family attended. Thousands lined the streets.
But here is what matters more than the ceremony.
Every child in Sweden still reads her books. Every conversation about fair taxation still references "Pomperipossa." Every animal welfare advocate in Europe still points to Lex Lindgren as proof that strong protections are possible.
She never ran for office. She never built a formal political movement. She never had credentials in economics or policy or anything except storytelling.
But she had created Pippi Longstocking—a girl who didn't follow rules that didn't make sense, who stood up to bullies without flinching, who refused to shrink herself to make others comfortable.
And then Astrid spent the rest of her life being exactly that person.
The government told her she didn't understand what she was seeing.
She was sixty-eight years old. She had written over thirty books. She had raised two children. She had lived through two World Wars.
She understood perfectly.
The math didn't work. The system was broken. The powerful were lying with confidence because no one had called it out plainly.
So she picked up her pen. She wrote a fairy tale about an overtaxed author in a land called Money-mania. She signed her name to it.
And Sweden listened.
Because sometimes the most powerful thing a person can do is simply refuse to pretend that nonsense makes sense—even when everyone in authority insists it does.
Especially then.
#AstridLindgren #PippiLongstocking
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Social justice is always and everywhere a SCAM.
LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DAMN IT...!!!
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CONHECE DESENHOS RAIZ? 🏆
As manhãs na frente da TV de tubo deixaram marcas na nossa memória. O cenário esconde referências literais a cinco clássicos absolutos da nossa infância. Você consegue decifrar todas as animações espalhadas pelo quintal?
A Pantera Cor-de-Rosa: O felino gigante em tons de rosa sentado em destaque no primeiro plano. 🐾
Pica-Pau: O pássaro clássico bicando o tronco da árvore do lado esquerdo. 🪵
Scooby-Doo: O rapaz de camisa verde devorando um sanduíche gigante ao lado do seu cachorro marrom, recriando Salsicha e Scooby. 🥪
X-Men: O casal central vestindo camisetas pretas idênticas com o icônico "X" branco estampado no peito. ✖️
Dragon Ball: O imponente dragão vermelho no fundo da cena segurando a clássica esfera alaranjada. 🐉
E para você? Qual dessas animações não podia faltar nas suas manhãs na frente da televisão de tubo?
#nostalgia #desenhosantigos #anos90
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I cherish my neighbors and respect their liberties. The State doesn’t respect us or our freedoms.
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No debate sobre o artigo 19 do Marco Civil, Flávio Dino disse que a liberdade não pode servir de argumento para proteger vícios.
Rui Costa Pimenta, pré-candidato à presidência da República, comenta na Análise de 3ª, na Rádio Causa Operária:
Quer dizer, você tem a liberdade de ser viciado, não é? Ele não concede.
Eles vão acabar proibindo o fumo também. Agora você vê a malandragem, né? Eles não proíbem o álcool; porque eles sabem que isso aí vai dar muito errado, muito rapidamente.
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(comic) Adding more people to a project
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The Biggest Public Attack British Economists Ever Made on a Sitting Government
On 30 March 1981, 364 economists from across British universities signed an open letter to The Times declaring that the government's anti-inflation strategy had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence." It was drafted by Frank Hahn and Robert Neild at Cambridge after Howe's March budget. The signatories included a future Governor of the Bank of England.
What They Demanded
The letter said Thatcher's policy would deepen the recession and threaten Britain's social and political stability. It called for the rejection of monetarism in favor of "alternative policies." In 1981, that meant the postwar Keynesian formula: more public borrowing, looser money, and state support for failing industry. Thatcher refused to reflate.
Britain Was the Sick Man of Europe
By 1979 Britain had spent a decade falling behind every major European economy. Inflation hit 24 percent in 1975. The Callaghan government took a $3.9 billion IMF bailout in 1976, the largest in the Fund's history at that point. The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79 left rubbish uncollected and the dead unburied as public sector strikes paralyzed the country. The top marginal tax rate stood at 83 percent on earned income and 98 percent on investment income. The 364 wrote no letter against this.
What Thatcher Actually Did
She rejected the Keynesian demand that Britain borrow and spend its way out of the recession. The top marginal income tax rate fell from 83 percent to 60 percent in 1979 and to 40 percent by 1988. The basic rate fell from 33 percent to 25 percent. Exchange controls were abolished in October 1979. British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, and British Steel were sold to the public. The Employment Acts of 1980, 1982, and 1984 broke the unions' power to shut the country down.
Britain Began Recovering in 1982
GDP turned positive in 1982 and grew for the rest of the decade, peaking at 5 percent a year by 1988. British GDP per capita was growing faster than France's, Germany's, or Italy's, reversing decades of relative decline. The recession the 364 said would deepen ended within twelve months of their letter.
The Productivity Gap with Germany Closed for the First Time in a Generation
In 1979, West German output per hour worked stood 40 percent above Britain's. By 1989 that advantage had fallen to 17 percent. UK manufacturing output per worker rose roughly 78 percent over the broader period. Britain stopped losing ground to Europe and started catching up.
The Industries the Economists Said Couldn't Survive Were Replaced by Something Larger
On 27 October 1986 the Big Bang deregulated the London Stock Exchange. Fixed commissions ended and electronic trading began. Within a decade London had reclaimed its position as a top-tier global financial center. The capital the 364 said would vanish reorganized itself around higher-value activity.
They Never Retracted. They Were Promoted.
No collective retraction was ever issued. The signatories who later addressed the letter defended it as substantively correct, arguing the recovery happened despite the policy rather than because of it. Mervyn King, one of the 364, became Governor of the Bank of England. Stephen Nickell joined the Monetary Policy Committee.
The most prominent failed forecast in postwar British economics produced no professional consequences.
The Same Pattern Repeated in 2023
In October 2023, 108 economists including Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman signed an open letter warning that a Milei victory would cause "devastation" in Argentina.
He won. Monthly inflation fell from 25.5 percent in December 2023 to roughly 2 percent by mid-2025. Poverty dropped from 52.9 percent in early 2024 to 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025.
The Mechanism Repeats Because Nobody Pays for Being Wrong
A credentialed body issues a collective denunciation. Major outlets treat the letter as expert consensus. The policy succeeds anyway. No retraction follows, because the professional cost of being publicly wrong about a major economic prediction inside academic economics is approximately zero.
Thatcher Is Hated Because She Was Right
The results vindicated her and condemned her critics. People who build their identity around a vision of the world do not abandon that vision when the data contradicts it. They attack whoever the data vindicates. Her record is what their careers were built against. That is why the hatred has not faded in forty years.
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