Stidmatt

King Charles has extended a potential offer of Commonwealth of Nations membership to the United States.

I oppose it for many reasons.

Limited benefits

What exactly is the Commonwealth of Nations? It’s a loose forum of former British colonies and the United Kingdom.

There are no travel benefits to being a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Everyone except Americans needs a visa to travel to Canada; Australians and Kiwis are the only nationalities that do not need a visa to travel to Australia and New Zealand. It is not an open border treaty or even a visa-free travel zone. There is no travel benefit to commonwealth membership.

It is not a free trade area.

Commonwealth citizens who live in the United Kingdom can vote in British elections and in a few other countries.

A few commonwealth nations offer preferential citizenship acquisition.

If we don’t have an embassy in a country but the British do, we could then use the British embassy. This is not an issue for Americans since we have relations with almost every country on Earth.

So, unless you are actively traveling in a country where the US does not have an embassy and the UK does, or if you live in a country that allows other Commonwealth citizens to vote, you likely will see no benefit from Commonwealth membership.

Optics

Keir Starmer has supported Brexit from the beginning. Over the last decade, it has become clear that the lauded “Brexit benefits” Labour and the Tories were going on about have never transpired. Instead, like every other third country, the United Kingdom now has tariffs with the European Union. They have lost the ability to travel freely around the European Union and the Schengen Area. It is no longer possible for a British citizen to live in Greece or Spain without bureaucratic paperwork.

I hope you enjoy cold rain if you supported Brexit!

Starmer, UKIP, and the Tories are grasping for some big story to make Brexit “worth it,” and they are failing. Staying out of the European Union has not led in the polls since 2023, and that one poll was a fluke. The last time staying out of the European Union consistently got 50% of the respondents in a poll was in 2022, and as time goes on, the trend is clear. Rejoining has a consistent 10-point gap in the polls. If the United Kingdom had a vote to rejoin the European Union today, it would vote in favor.

Brexit is a scam.

So Starmer is trying yet again to prove that he can “make a deal” just like his buddy Donald Trump. The King is breaking tradition now and stepping into British politics by offering Trump membership in the Commonwealth. This is a distraction meant to demonstrate some sort of “Brexit benefit” in order to push down support for rejoining the European Union. It’s utterly unacceptable.

Nothing precludes the United States from joining the Commonwealth of Nations even once the United Kingdom rejoins the European Union.

While Trump is creating trade wars with every commonwealth member, this is a reward for his unacceptable behavior. It strengthens Trump in a meaningless way by giving him a “victory” in a “deal” which is the only thing he cares about. It teaches a lesson that you will be rewarded if you bully the United Kingdom. This is the wrong message and will weaken Britain substantially.

Not only that, but the Trump Administration is pressuring Starmer to repeal hate speech laws that protect LGBT people in exchange for a “deal”.

It also looks like Keir Starmer agrees with Trump on LGBT rights.

It benefits all the wrong people. This “deal” is a bludgeon by the Trump administration to force the United Kingdom further away from the European Union, to make rejoining more difficult. They are pushing laws that will harm British citizens. The laws being pushed by Labour push Britain closer to Russia and further from the European Union.

If you are English or Welsh, I implore you to vote for the Liberal Democrats and protect your democracy.

A realistic proposal

I support deepening America’s ties with other countries in meaningful ways, and the Commonwealth of Nations is just not that meaningful.

Here is a chronological list of ways to meaningfully improve the foreign relations of Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

1.  Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States should drop eVisa/ETA requirements for each other. Go back to visa-free travel. The way to get to this is to drop the obsession with visa reciprocity and do the right thing. Perhaps implement extra screening for high-profile figures and politicians if visas are in place. I would love to see Donald Trump and Keir Starmer receive pat-downs at customs until they drop their nonsense!
2. The United Kingdom needs to rejoin the European Union or at least the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area.
3. The United States and Canada should implement an open border treaty.
4. The United States and Canada should join the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area.

Then maybe the United States will join the Commonwealth of Nations, but no one will care.

This is an actual plan that will accomplish my goals:

• Weaken Putin. The United Kingdom’s rejoining the European Union will harm Russian money laundering in London.
• Improve trade in ways that create jobs.
• Improve the relationship between North America and Europe.
• Free flow of labor between the United States, Canada, and the European Union. This improves the economy for everyone involved.
• Free movement of people seriously weakens authoritarians like Trump.
• Save money on the United States/Canada border. Lay off customs agents at our border, we don’t need them. Let’s save taxpayers money by cutting out wasteful spending, instead of this DOGE shit.
• Implement eGates at airports, saving taxpayer money by laying off unnecessary customs agents, not this DOGE shit.

These policies will actually improve the lives of American citizens instead of meaningless optics.

News Stories

https://www.newsweek.com/us-joining-king-charles-commonwealth-2049916

https://www.thesun.co.uk/royals/33954809/charles-trump-secret-offer-kier/

• Adopt best practices so your citizens stay and you attract young talent to boost your economy.
• Do not adopt best practices and do the opposite. Your best and brightest will leave, your budget will be harmed, you will not attract high-skilled foreigners, and you will become a pariah state.
• Leave the European Union. This will create tariffs and many other trade barriers with the largest economy in the world. You become less attractive for foreign skilled workers, who would rather go somewhere in the bloc. Importing and exporting become more complex, as we saw with Brexit.

Through the power of trade alone, the European Union ensures best practices.

It sounds good to liberal minded people like me that we should send aid down to states which are worse off, and the federal government should help states when they have budget problems. While I think there are very good reasons that everyone should have access to health care and education regardless of what state they live in, along with things like natural disaster insurance which we all pay into, there also is a part of me which wants to ensure every state in the United States and every member state in the European Union adopts best practices.

I am concerned that if a state has a budget deficit due to its own dumb decisions, you should let it see the consequences. Otherwise, you run the risk that states will engage in bad practices, draining money from states that observe best practices. This can create a cycle of dependency with no way out. Health care is necessary for life, and education is necessary for a modern economy; those must be available to everyone. But if your state runs out of money to keep roads paved, has to lay off public sector workers because of bad policies, then you should let them slide while preventing as much damage to children in school. Once they improve their policies, they will be more vibrant and contribute more to the national budget. I also don’t think low-income citizens should need to die from lack of health care because their state government is made up of idiots, though. I draw a line there. But if your roads are full of potholes because your governor is an idiot? So be it.

It has become clear to me that the American system of siphoning money from productive states to corrupt states is a way to enforce worst practices and can be counterproductive, outside of health care and education.

So I believe the best action is not to expel Hungary from the EU. Instead, they should end subsidies to Orban’s government. I have no problem with that. Let the market speak.

This is how you deal with leaders like Orban in the fairest way possible while minimizing damage to his dissidents.

While I know this is unlikely to happen as long as Donald Trump is in office, here are some fairly obvious AMTRAK expansions which should happen based solely off airport traffic data.

I might do a more thorough analysis later, but just pulling data off of Wikipedia which is from the FAA (because I’m lazy) here are obvious routes for AMTRAK to improve service.

In order to be on this list the two cities need to be closer than 1000 km and be in the top ten destinations from one of the two cities in the pair.

Vancouver – Seattle, WA. With over 600,000 passengers flying between Vancouver and Seattle with only two roundtrip trains per day, this route should really have hourly service on AMTRAK Cascades. But really we should have hourly service between Ashland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia on Cascades someday. It’s not a crazy idea.

Los Angeles – Las Vegas, with over a million passengers last year. Brightline will someday serve this route. It is the top destination for Burbank and Long Beach, the third highest for LAX, the third highest for Ontario, and the fourth highest from John Wayne.

Los Angeles – San Francisco has over a million passengers. Only one train per day and it takes almost 10 hours compared to 5 hours driving. This is ridiculous. This is why California HSR needs to exist, and I should write another post clearly outlining why building HSR in the United States is impossible. This is the 2nd most traveled destination for LAX, the 2nd, 6th, and 7th highest destination for Burbank, the 3rd and 7th most traveled destination from Long Beach, the 8th and 9th highest destination from Ontario, the 6th, 8th, and 9th busiest destination from John Wayne.

Los Angeles – Phoenix is the third highest destination for Burbank, the 4th most popular destination from Long Beach, the 3rd most popular destination from Ontario, and the busiest route from John Wayne.

Los Angeles – Sacramento is the 4th busiest destination for Burbank, the 2nd busiest from Long Beach, and the 10th busiest destination from John Wayne.

Over 7 million passengers flew from Los Angeles to these 5 airports in 2024. For comparison, Portland, Oregon served 8 million passengers in 2023. Moving these passengers from LA over to rail would have an equivalent carbon footprint to shutting down Portland International Airport. This is why building rail in California is so important for the climate.

Atlanta – Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and Miami would cut out 4.6 million passengers.

Denver – Phoenix has over a million passengers.

Denver – Las Vegas has over a million passengers.

Denver – Salt Lake City has over 900,000 passengers.

Denver – Dallas has around 900,000 passengers.

Chicago O’Hare – Toronto has over 700,000 passengers.

Las Vegas – Phoenix serves over 800,000 passengers.

Las Vegas – San Francisco serves around 800,000 passengers.

Las Vegas – San Diego has over 700,000 passengers.

Las Vegas – Sacramento has over 600,000 passengers.

Charlotte – Orlando, Miami, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale has millions of passengers.

Charlotte – New York has over 600,000 passengers.

Charlotte – Raleigh has over 500,000 passengers. Driving is faster than taking the train, and this is unacceptable. With only 5 trains per day, this service clearly needs hourly service and to increase until the time taken is under 2 hours.Then passengers will move from flying to taking the train.

New York – Toronto serves over 800,000 passengers a year. We need more frequent and faster service to Toronto.

Phoenix – Salt Lake City serves over 700,000 passengers per year.

Phoenix – San Diego serves over 600,000 passengers per year.

Houston – Dallas serves over 600,000 passengers per year.

Houston – Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico serves over 400,000 passengers per year. We finally have our first Mexican city on this list.

Boston – Toronto serves over 200,000 passengers per year.

Minneapolis – Chicago serves over 600,000 passengers per year. AMTRAK just beefed up service on this route a few years ago and it was an instant success. This shows how expanding AMTRAK service where we have high air traffic between two cities which are not too far apart is a good strategy for establishing more routes. Now we just need to increase frequency on the route.

These 25 routes are from my brief overview of readily available statistics the best routes for expanding AMTRAK service by improving rail lines up to high speed standards across the country while increasing frequency.

We have already seen recognition of this, from California HSR, Brightline West and Brightline East, and the creation of a new AMTRAK route between Chicago and Minneapolis. It is clear that using existing market data to plan new train service is a good strategy which works.

This is what the map looks like in practice. The Southwest and improving the East Coast corridor south of DC are the obvious places to increase AMTRAK services, including improving connectivity to Toronto, while beefing up AMTRAK Cascades.

This is an easy way to reduce emissions while making our airports less congested.

There is no downside. Let’s do it.

Some people still think the Department of Justice is independent of the president. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the American system of government works. The Department of Justice works for the President as part of the cabinet. It is not an independent agency. It is no more independent than the Department of State or the Department of Energy.

Congress writes laws, and the President signs them, though vetoes can be overridden. The President’s primary job is to enforce the law. Through this the President has departments, the original 4 secretaries are the Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Department of Defense, and the Attorney General. These four departments and 11 more report directly to the President in cabinet meetings.

There are also a few other agencies and departments separate from these departments, and there are also some agencies which do not report directly to the President, such as the Federal Reserve. Some agencies like the Congressional Budget Office and the Library of Congress report directly to Congress. But the Department of Justice is part of the cabinet.

The Attorney General is the principal legal advisor to the President. Always has been, always will be. We need to not pretend she is independent. The Attorney General has never been independent. The word independent does not appear even once in the office’s Wikipedia page, but president appears 8 times. Given how the Department of Justice is part of the cabinet it is unreasonable to expect the Department of Justice to investigate the President. The Attorney General would literally be investigating her own boss. That is unreasonable, so that is not how our government has ever worked.

If you read into the Watergate Scandal you will quickly realize that it was not the Department of Justice which investigated Watergate, but a select committee appointed by the Senate. The Attorney General was one of the people being investigated, he was not part of the investigative team. In fact, Attorney General John N. Mitchell served 19 months in prison as a result of the scandal.

The Attorney General office was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789 to be the government’s chief lawyer. So when the Government goes to court, the Attorney General or an attorney in her department will generally represent the government. The entire role of the office is to defend the executive branch in court and provide legal advice to the president.

Point is, this idea that the Department of Justice will investigate the Executive Department is laughable and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how our government works.

The way the law is enforced in the United States is the courts determine guilt. The President has no say in this matter. So the courts have the ability to limit the President’s power, telling the President what act he can and cannot do. The President is required to follow the courts. This is the foundation of our system of government.

But what happens when the President violates the law, is found guilty by the courts, and decides that he will just continue his corrupt actions? Well, that’s an impeachable offense. This is where the American system of government has a clever solution to solve the problem.

Since the President appoints judges who are approved by congress, our founding fathers realized that the court system could not be trusted to do an impartial investigation of the President, neither could they be trusted to be impartial in determining the President’s guilt. If they had done it that way, Presidents would deliberately pick corrupt judges who would be the least likely to rule against him. It would be too prone to corruption, so we don’t do it that way. Instead, only Congress has the power to remove the President from office before his time is up. The President has no say in who is elected to Congress, and everyone is represented in that branch, so it is the most fair way to do it. Congress has the right to setup committees to investigate the President’s behavior, they even have the power to impeach justices, even though this has only happened once. In some ways Congress is the most powerful branch of government except for how the President has the military behind him. This keeps the system balanced so no one person has too much power.

We are in multiple constitutional crises right now. I am keeping a tally of Trump’s most egregious impeachable offenses here. Congress needs to impeach and remove the President, and they will not do so, so we are down to our next check on power which comes down to the states.

There has been a long-established precedent that federal law trumps state law. This is rooted in the supremacy clause of the fourth article of the constitution. There are many court cases reinforcing this interpretation.

But here’s where we get into an interesting question. If the President instructs a federal officer to do something illegal within a state, does the state have the right to enforce federal law over a federal agent within that state’s borders?

So if a federal ICE officer who is under the executive branch abducts a US citizen from the streets of Jersey City, New Jersey, does the state government of New Jersey have the right to sue that officer on behalf of the citizen who was abducted? Not suing the executive branch deliberately, but instead suing the individual officer who has violated the law.

We should not charge the federal government directly, that will go straight to the federal courts, but if Democratic state governments directly charged federal agents for violating state law within their borders, could they issue a summons for those officers and charge them under state courts for violating the rights of the state’s citizens? The only possible reason they should not is qualified immunity, but qualified immunity should not exist. If you don’t want to do the time, you shouldn’t have done the crime, right?

So then if the federal officer then appealed to federal court and the federal court ruled the officer did violate the law, then they could be arrested in a state prison where the President has little to no power.

With stacked federal courts, a corrupt president, and a congress which is unwilling to do any oversight over the executive branch, our last remaining check on the president’s power is to enforce the law through the state courts.

It’s just a thought, but I think this is a realistic strategy, while expecting the Attorney General to investigate her boss is fantasy land even under the cleanest administration.

Geographical determinism is a theory which gets thrown around sometimes in amateur political science circles, but ultimately it doesn’t make a lot of sense, neither does it have significant predictive power.

No one geographic feature does a good job at describing any one political factor. However, political factors do a good job at describing economic factors.

When testing geographic determinism, its important to include political factors which overpower the relatively small impact geography makes in quality of government.

I just wrote How Democrats and Republicans Win, read that first.

So we have 7 keys to win control of the House of Representatives, along with my projection:

• Strong short-term economy: False
• Strong long-term economy: False
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, alienating NATO and tariff policy
• Major foreign or military success: False, Trump is not going to be responsible for what happens in Ukraine
• Charismatic president: False, Trump is highly unpopular
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: Irrelevant

As long as Democrats campaign everywhere in the Midterms, 2026 is going to be a blood bath for Republicans.

Before reading this, read 2024 Was Lost On Turnout if you haven’t already.

The secret to winning elections is turning out your base.

Republicans won in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2010, and 2014 because of a collapse in turnout for the Democrats. Republicans consistently see more consistent voting in House elections in Presidential election years vs midterms compared to Democrats.

From 2008 to 2016 Democrats saw wild swings of over 20 million votes between presidential and midterm elections. Republicans only saw a swing that large in 2006 and 2016. This is what led to Republicans winning every midterm when Obama was President. During that era the Democrats had stopped using the 50-state strategy, trying to pick races, instead of investing everywhere while Republicans were invested everywhere. The inevitable consequence is the Republicans performed well in districts Democrats did not invest in. Picking districts is like picking stocks. Sometimes you get lucky, most of the time you don’t.

The 2010 “red wave” was not so much of a red wave but a collapse of the Democratic party’s strategy.

In 2022 Democrats lost 25 million votes compared to 2020, their second largest drop in the modern party system, second only to 2010. That is why Republicans won the midterms under Biden. I need to do further investigation into the 2022 exit polls to see exactly which issues voters were unhappy with at the time and disagreed with Biden. That’s another post for the future.

In 2018 for comparison Democrats saw their vote count drop by only a million votes which gave them victory. The challenge for Biden and the DNC was how could they have governed in a way which would have led Americans to continue to keep a consistent vote for the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. That’s what it’s all about. Govern in a way that people want to keep you in office, and then communicate about it.

I define our modern party system as 1994 to present when the Southern Democrats finally defected to the Republican Party, leading to more clear ideological distinctions between parties.

A challenge for Democrats however is due to how the demographics of Democratic voters are concentrated in cities, and given our voting system we need to win by a margin of at least 2% in order to have a chance of winning the most seats in the House. If Democrats win less than 51% of the vote (excluding third parties), Republicans will win the House. This is due primarily to urban districts being heavily democratic which leads to a lot of wasted votes. So overall Democrats need to perform well in suburban swing districts which pushes our vote total over 51% of the vote.

But ultimately, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, they key to winning elections is to stay popular. Democrats have a slight disadvantage in our election system because we have so many voters in large urban areas, but it’s not impossible to overcome. The ingredients are simply a modified Keys to the White House, plus a few more. Let’s call it Keys to the House. Let’s test the following keys:

• Strong short-term economy
• Strong long-term economy
• Major policy change
• No foreign or military failure
• Major foreign or military success
• Charismatic president
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition

All of this is compared to the president’s party.

So we can now use this system to look at recent elections.

2002 Midterms

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: True, PATRIOT Act
• No foreign or military failure, True
• Major foreign or military success, True, we removed Al Qaeda
• Charismatic president: True, Rally around the flag after 9/11
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition

From this the other two keys don’t matter which makes it clear why Bush was able to be the first Republican to win a trifecta in his first midterm since Calvin Coolidge.

The system accurately predicts the 2002 midterms.

2004 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: True, it was a very productive congress
• No foreign or military failure: True
• Major foreign or military success: True, removed Saddam Hussein
• Charismatic president: True, Bush’s approval was still over 50%
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition

Unsurprisingly, Republicans won the 2004 election.

2006 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: True, Real ID, tax cuts
• No foreign or military failure: False, Iraq was collapsing
• Major foreign or military success: False, Neither wars had concluded
• Charismatic president: False, Bush’s popularity had tanked
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False, Howard Dean won this election with the 50 state strategy

The system correctly predicts the 2006 election.

2008 election

• Strong short-term economy: False
• Strong long-term economy: False
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, Iraq was seeing increasing terrorism, Invasion of Georgia
• Major foreign or military success: False, Both Iraq and Afghanistan were failing
• Charismatic president: False, Bush was horribly unpopular
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False, Howard Dean was very successful

It is no wonder Obama won a trifecta in 2008.

2010 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: True
• No foreign or military failure: True
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: True
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False

This is what this system is hiding. There is only one key which matters in how well you perform in the midterms. Are you campaigning more than your opponent, and does your strategy work. If that key is false, you will lose the election.

That’s not the only thing the election comes down to. There is only one key to the House of Representatives. Do a better job getting more ethical and qualified people nominated, support them to victory, and win.

The Fifty State Strategy is the dominant strategy to win the House of Representatives. If one party uses it, and the other party does not, the Fifty State Strategy will win. If both parties use it, look at the other keys.

2012 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False
• Major foreign or military success: True
• Charismatic president: True
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False

The Democrats almost won the 2012 election, but since the Republicans were using the 50 state strategy and Democrats were not, the Republicans won a razor thin majority. But Democrats won more votes, as the system predicts.

2014 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, Ukraine war
• Major foreign or military success: True
• Charismatic president:
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False

Republicans were using the 50 state strategy but Democrats were not. I suppose Obama was no longer seen as charismatic by enough Americans at this point, making the system accurate to the result. Having to deal with 4 years of a Republican House will do that.

2016 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: True
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: False
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False

The system accurately predicts the Republicans would win the 2016 election.

2018 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, Russian campaigning for Donald Trump was coming to light.
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: False
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False

Unsurprisingly, Democrats won the 2018 midterm.

2020 election

• Strong short-term economy: False
• Strong long-term economy: False
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, inability to contain coronavirus in China, Taliban “deal”
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: False, Trump was extremely unpopular
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: False, Democrats were using the 50 state strategy

With 51% of the two-party vote Democrats won a small majority in the House.

2022 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, Afghanistan, Ukraine
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: False
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: True

Looking at it this way, it is not surprising Republicans won the 2022 midterm. Both parties now use the 50 state strategy, as we can see with record turnout.

2024 election

• Strong short-term economy: True
• Strong long-term economy: True
• Major policy change: False
• No foreign or military failure: False, Ukraine, Israel
• Major foreign or military success: False
• Charismatic president: False, Biden was unpopular
• Campaigning in more districts than the opposition: True

Identical to the 2022 election. Biden failed to learn from losing the midterms, failed to correct his mistakes, and kept too many keys False.

Conclusion

Just like how the Keys to the White House is a recipe for winning the Presidency, we can easily take a subset of those keys, and adding in one more regarding internal party functions, we can accurately predict how Americans vote in House of Representatives elections.

Voters are not stupid. In order to keep power you have to govern well, communicate well, and have a functional party policy. This is why in other countries if a party loses the election their leader is immediately booted from office. This is a good custom which the Democratic Party should adopt. You get one shot to win an election, and if you lose, you are replaced. If you win, you may choose to stay on as long as you bring on good results.

As a trained political scientist, this is so obvious to me.

I have recorded historical congressional data beyond what Wikipedia has in this spreadsheet. Enjoy.

Brexit is shrinking crowds at Britain’s biggest art galleries

This paper from iNews in the UK has proved that visitor numbers to UK galleries have collapsed 20-50 percent compared to 2019 while art galleries in the European Union have seen no such decline.

All of this is from Brexit. Brexit has been devastating to the United Kingdom, as I have talked about repeatedly here. But one thing Brexit has not done is implement visas to the UK for EU and US visitors. Democracies did not need an ETA to travel to the United Kingdom until 8 January 2025, up to that date anyone with a democratic non-EU passport could travel to the United Kingdom and just show up. But starting 3 days ago this visa has been extended to European Union nationals.

Not only that, but the UK and EU have scrapped visa-free travel with the implementation of eVisas for most third party nationals. This puts an unnecessary burden on tourists from safe countries, incentivizing them to stay home or travel to other countries over yours.

Just leaving the European Union was enough to see tourism to the UK crash. Now they are going even further and implementing unnecessary paperwork and taxes on tourists. Tourists have already shown that leaving the EU was enough to convince them to not travel to the United Kingdom. Now that they have to pay for a visa their incentive to travel to the UK is going to be even lower, so you should expect even fewer tourists visiting the United Kingdom, draining money from small towns across the country, taking money from mom and pop hotels. There is no reason for this madness.

The proof is becoming clearer everyday. Whether it is Starmer’s rantings about Eurocrats, Biden’s hesitating to help Ukrainians as their children are killed or kidnapped by Russians, Stephen Harper implementing visas on NATO allies, or Trump’s radical spreading of taxes to every country except Belarus, Russia and North Korea, we have been seeing the Anglosphere falling down the wrong path for 25 years now.

When we finally get a president or a prime minister who is actually decent they are overwhelmed by other issues they need to fix before voters focus on the price of eggs, “wokeness” or some other nonsense which means they don’t get down to these tourist taxes being implemented by the far-right.

The European Union is not immune to this either. They are following in George Bush’s footsteps in implementing their own visas this year with ETIAS. But we have already seen through Brexit the impact such a system will have. If Brexit is enough to reduce tourism without implementing any sort of tourist visa, the ETIAS is going to be devastating to the European Union. There is no reason to go through with it. I hope politicians in the European Union will see the evidence soon before they go on this perilous economic death march like the Anglosphere has done.

Do not follow our lead. You will regret it. Resist Trumpism.

The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand need to reverse course and implement visa-free travel. There is no reason to keep our current self-harming tourist tariffs. I don’t care how much it costs, it should not exist. Terrorism between democracies is not a problem. We should spend our resources targeting real threats, not socks and sandals.

The verdict is out, just leaving a free trade bloc is enough to significantly harm tourism, draining revenues from important cultural institutions. Canadians are rightfully refusing to travel to the United States under our current regime. Europeans are avoiding the United Kingdom.

Visas make the situation significantly worse. This must be reversed and in order to protect the freedom and wealth of nations, we need to abolish visas between democracies and re-implement visa-free travel between democracies.

What’s the probability that a candidate will have exactly your tech stack at their previous job for a web developer position?

Assuming an even distribution: (I know, a horrible assumption)

• Let’s say you are looking at only three options: AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. There are more options than this.
• Your web server likely runs either Apache or Nginx.
• The 5 most popular JavaScript frameworks: React, Express, Angular, Vue, and Next.js. There are many more.
• You have multiple choices for your database. Let’s stick with Oracle, Microsoft, MySQL, Postgres, and MongoDB. There are many more.
• Your server is either Windows or Linux.
• Your server has a 50% chance of using Python for automation.

3*2*5*2*2*5=600

Hence, the probability that two companies share identical web infrastructure is less than 0.5%!

So don’t obsess over specifics. Doing so almost guarantees you won’t find your candidate.

Let’s recalculate on popularity, since this assumes an even distribution, which is a terrible assumption.

Calculation 2

Even if you used the most common JavaScript framework, ReactJS is at 35.9%, and numbers vary widely on whether Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL are the most used frameworks. Let’s say whatever the most popular framework is, it also has a 30% market share. 30% squared is 9%, so out of 100 candidates, only 9 will have used your database infrastructure and JavaScript framework at their last position!

Then divide by four, assuming an even distribution of Amazon vs. Microsoft vs. Google vs. other, giving us 2.5%.

Then divide by two on whether they are more experienced with Apache vs. Nginx, meaning only 1.25% of candidates will have your particular stack.

Divide that by 4 for Windows vs. Linux and Python vs. no Python. We are down to 0.3125%.

But this is not realistic. Linux controls 90% of the server market, and since you are not a technical person, you have insisted that your company uses Windows as its server because it’s familiar to you. So 1.25% / 10 = 0.125%. Linux puts you at 1.125%.

If you are running the most popular choice, you will need at least 355 candidates to have a chance to find only one candidate who used an identical tech stack to yours at their last job.

Stack Overflow data

Stack Overflow runs a survey every year asking about the stacks used by each developer. Let’s do one final calculation.

• 64.6% of developers have used JavaScript
• 54.1% of developers have used SQL
• 46.9% of developers have used Python.

Assuming these are independent (I excluded HTML because if you use JavaScript, you will have to use HTML), we are looking at 16% of professional developers who have used all three in the last year.

Of the 54.1% of developers who have used SQL, 48.7% use PostgreSQL, bringing us down to only 8% of developers.

52% of these developers use AWS, bringing us down to 4% of developers.

40% of those developers use Node.js as their JavaScript framework, bringing us down to 1.6% of developers.

53% of those developers use Docker, bringing us down to 0.8% of developers

Only 51% of those developers use Jira, bringing us down to 0.4% of developers.

Only 59% of those developers use Windows on their personal computer, bringing us down to 0.2% of developers.

So, in order to find this web developer who uses JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Python, AWS, Node.js, Docker, Jira, and Windows (because I’ve seen job descriptions, they literally ask if you have experience in Jira and Windows FML), you will need to interview around 500 developers.

Finding a candidate who matched your current tech stack at their last company is unrealistic. Let alone the years of experience requirements for every skill! If you require many years of experience in every tech your company uses, you will never find your candidate.

Focus on transferable skills for success.

A reasonable search

As we have explored, there are many tech stacks, and it’s highly unlikely that any two applicants to your job used exactly the same tech stack at their last company.

Pick no more than 3 technologies as must-haves. You need to have these three skills to be hired. For these three, find the ones that take the most time to learn and have few close alternatives.

So if I were hiring for a web developer position:

• JavaScript (64%)
• Linux (21%)
• SQL (54%)

You need knowledge of these three technologies otherwise, we will not hire you. We are running a web application, we use JavaScript, Linux, and SQL, which is the most common web stack. 7% of developers likely have these three skills according to StackOverflow’s data. 93% of professional developers who responded to Stack Overflow’s survey are out of the scope for our position.

Now for the nice-to-haves. Pick up to three of these.

• AWS (52%)
• Node.js (40%)
• Docker (53%)

So we are already down to only 7% of our applicants from our must-haves. In order to find someone with these three skills as well we are now down to around 0.8% of candidates.

With only 6 skills, we will now likely have to interview over 100 candidates to find our candidate, all of whom will accept the job if offered. Otherwise the number of necessary interviews increases rapidly.

If I had to drop one of these requirements, I would drop AWS. The technical difference between AWS vs. other server positions is far smaller than someone who used a different JavaScript framework, and someone who does not know docker. Now we have a chance of finding a candidate out of fewer than 100 candidates. The learning curve for AWS is shallow compared to the others, and as long as you have experience deploying servers in the past, which you do because you have experience with Linux, AWS is the least important of these three nice-to-haves.

If I had to pick prioritization between Node.js and Docker, I would prioritize Docker and ensure the person has experience using virtualization, either Docker or Kubernetes. So, adding only Docker to our list of three essential skills as our top priority of nice to haves, we now have a chance of finding our candidate out of 30 candidates.

Now we are looking at a realistic job search with 30 interviews, where one of our candidates will likely have experience in JavaScript, Linux, SQL, and virtualization.

Also, this is the tech stack where you will have the most qualified applicants. Any other stack you design will have fewer matches!

We haven’t even gotten into the years of experience requirements.

This is why you will never find your candidate by using typical hiring practices.

This is how tech hiring needs to change.

It’s quite simple… we switched away from tariffs because the tax burden fell mostly on the working-class while the robber barons got away with paying almost nothing.

In a pre-industrial feudal system, this was to be expected for a few main reasons:

1. Life expectancy was very low, around 40 years as of 1900.
2. The average person had only a few years of education.
3. Infant mortality was around 30% before the industrial revolution.

Productivity and income were so low that it’s hard to get data on how much we were actually making, but when you consider that the US GDP per capita was $3000 in 1960 versus over $80,000 now, it is easy to see that productivity and quality of life was much lower before the income tax was implemented.

The reality is that people lived short lives, had very little schooling, a third of children died before they turned 1, and the quality of life was not even that good. By any metric you look at, the quality of life in this “golden age” before the income tax wasn’t that golden.

Income taxes are a better tax system, though if your main goal is to make billions of dollars and not pay anything, you would generally look back at the Gilded Age as a golden era.

But not so much for the rest of us.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-has-touted-gilded-age-tariffs-an-era-which-saw-industrial-growth-together-with-poverty