What is Britain?

In 1930s Britain, each ton of oil burned required 2.5 tons of coal to produce the supporting steel and infrastructure, meaning coal and oil consumption grew together rather than oil replacing coal.

“For each tone of oil burnt in Britain, two point five tons of coal were needed to produce all the steel, infrastructure and the automobile that allowed the combustion of this oil.”

The US administration is simultaneously pushing to allow more advanced chip exports to China while blocking top American AI models from allies such as Britain, a contradictory posture on AI competitiveness.

“This same administration has been pushing to allow the export of more and more advanced ships to China, which will allow China to train more powerful models over time. And they're doing that at the same time as they are preventing good models from being used by our allies like Britain and other countries.”

Gardening leave harms UK startups because a six-month delayed hire start date can consume most of a nine-month funding runway, blocking execution at the most critical growth stage.

“When you raise a new round, a series B say, and you've got like nine months of runway to build to the next stage from your company, and you identify the three key talent that you're going to bring into the company and make it happen, and then they turn around to you and say, 'Well, I can come in 6 months.' That's a death sentence, right? That's horrible. We call it gardening leave in Britain. That is an appalling idea.”

According to Putnam's 1953 global energy history, India was the world's biggest energy producer until the 1830s, not Britain.

“Putnam shows that the biggest producer of energy until the eighteen thirties was India, not Britain, and then it was replaced not by Britain, of the coal and the steam power by the us of food.”

Sebastian Mallaby on gardening leave as a startup killer in the UK.

“When you raise a new round, a series B say, and you've got like nine months of runway to build to the next stage from your company, and you identify the three key talent that you're going to bring into the company and make it happen, and then they turn around to you and say, 'Well, I can come in 6 months.' That's a death sentence, right? That's horrible. We call it gardening leave in Britain. That is an appalling idea.”

The American Revolution was triggered by taxes levied on colonists to finance Britain's costly colonization of Bengal, not simply by the abstract principle of taxation without representation.

“Bengal was a colony of subjugation and that required tremendous expenditures to maintain and that's the reason we had the American revolution was because we were taxed to finance Bengal.”