> "Imagine:

Raw JSON

{
  "kind": 1,
  "id": "3098bc1b6c7a1ae706ff723d3da8bb30eaddd426da7ff15921aadc1b1ae4b723",
  "pubkey": "dace63b00c42e6e017d00dd190a9328386002ff597b841eb5ef91de4f1ce8491",
  "created_at": 1781794830,
  "tags": [
    [
      "alt",
      "A short note: \u003e \"Imagine:\n\u003e\n\u003e No income tax or IRS. Americans we..."
    ],
    [
      "r",
      "https://www.fff.org/2026/06/15/a-great-documentary-on-the-gilded-age/#:~:text=Imagine%3A,had%20ever%20seen"
    ],
    [
      "client",
      "Amethyst"
    ]
  ],
  "content": "\u003e \"Imagine:\n\u003e\n\u003e No income tax or IRS. Americans were free to keep 100 percent of their income, and there was nothing the federal government could do about it.\n\u003e\n\u003e No Social Security or welfare state. People took care of their own retirements out of the money they saved over their lifetimes from not having to pay income taxes. Those seniors who were unable to take care of themselves relied on children or voluntary charity.\n\u003e\n\u003e No Medicare or Medicaid. No government provision of healthcare.\n\u003e\n\u003e No Federal Reserve or paper money. Gold coins and silver coins were the official money, as established by the Constitution. Thus, no government-induced inflation or debasement of the currency.\n\u003e\n\u003e Minimal immigration controls. Millions of immigrants flooded into the United States, adding to the enormous surge in economic prosperity.\n\u003e\n\u003e No national-security state — i.e., no Pentagon, CIA, or NSA. No state-sponsored assassinations, coups, or regime-change operations. Instead, a limited-government republic with a minimally sized army.\n\u003e\n\u003e No foreign wars, except the Spanish American War that statists foisted onto America in 1898.\n\u003e\n\u003e No sanctions, embargoes, or blockades.\n\u003e\n\u003e No drug laws or drug war and therefore, no drug lords, drug cartels, or drug-war violence.\n\u003e\n\u003e No regulation of economic activity, including minimum-wage laws.\n\u003e\n\u003e Virtually no occupational-licensure laws.\n\u003e\n\u003e Hardly any public-school systems and mandatory-attendance laws. Education was mostly a voluntary seeking process rather than a mandatory cramming process.\n\u003e\n\u003e One fact is undeniable: This was the most unusual and the freest — from an economic standpoint — period of time in the history of man. It was also the most prosperous and the most charitable period that mankind had ever seen.\"\n\nWhat America was like, ca. 1870-1910\nhttps://www.fff.org/2026/06/15/a-great-documentary-on-the-gilded-age/#:~:text=Imagine%3A,had%20ever%20seen.",
  "sig": "5212830633dcbd6da2900af45bc005e71e992ac527e9b788d5733321d8392246413b315b77563ddfdf80a43181e70594e1871666a7a67c063e3ae5a490dc76da"
}