Hot Take On the Boston Tea Party

They are from East India Company.

Psychopathic colonist mentality.

And yes, there is different types of colonist mentality. The EIC was among the worst ever colonialism to.come out of Britain.

The problem many protests have [maybe most of them] is that protest that includes violence, destruction of property, or as extreme as loss of life to justify their protest because, they claim, the Constitution allows protest is nonsense. The constitutional allowance of protest is conditional because the wording in the 1A clause is "...or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." There is nothing of about "peaceably to assemble" that would justify violence, destruction of property, or loss of life by protest. Words mean things, particularly those that are actually there, and not just interpreted as content, even by the Supreme Court.

Social evolution was and is, and currently there are no butterflies to effect.

In fact, I doubt that time travel will ever be a realistic proposition.

Whenever terrorists or rioters are criticized for destroying property

Destroying any property is economical damage to whole society, because society must use resources to fix it, which reduces supply of resources for things society needs.

Now, protests are one thing. Going around breaking windows and burning cars is a crime, not a legal protest.

The most cogent defense imo is that the tea belonged to the EIC, which was granted a monopoly by the Crown, so destroying the tea was a protest against extractive economic practices by destroying the property of a corrupt monopoly. A good moral parallel would be attempts by the Chinese to destroy the Sassoon Opium empire, which also had the military protection of Britain and was openly extractive and exploitative, leveraging their druglord money to invest heavily in Shanghai real estate.

destroying the tea was a protest against extractive economic practices by destroying the property of a corrupt monopoly

Sure, but the effects of the protests were bad for the colonists, and I don't see what positive effects they could have been anticipating. So it was still needless destruction of property.

attempts by the Chinese to destroy the Sassoon Opium empire, which also had the military protection of Britain and was openly extractive and exploitative

A lot of morally questionable decisions were made by China there, like preventing the sale of food to the British, leading to the Opium Wars (which were bad for China). So I accept it as a parallel but it largely proves my point.

destroying the tea was a protest against extractive economic practices by destroying the property of a corrupt monopoly

Sure, but the effects of the protests were bad for the colonists, and I don't see what positive effects they could have been anticipating. So it was still needless destruction of property.

attempts by the Chinese to destroy the Sassoon Opium empire, which also had the military protection of Britain and was openly extractive and exploitative

A lot of morally questionable decisions were made by China there, like preventing the sale of food to the British, leading to the Opium Wars (which were bad for China). So I accept it as a parallel but it largely proves my point.

This is the trouble with consequentialist ethics - it assumes rationality. But pushed to a certain point, people behave irrationally, and it's not rational to ignore that possibility to make the way the world works fit into a nice, neat, easily understandable system. In my view, the revolt of the colonies was a predictable possible consequence of the post-French-Indian war taxation scheme. This meant that implementing this taxation scheme had a chance to result in the revolt of the colonies and a significant loss of British power on the world stage. In my view, it was the responsibility of the British to recognize that and adjust action accordingly, not to plow ahead and assume that the colonists would remain meek and acquiescent because it was 'rational'. Once the more powerful party neglects their duty as rulers and fails to comprehend or acknowledge the dangers of squeezing their own people too far, it's on them.

The same logic applied to Gaza and October 7th. It was the responsibility of the Israelis to recognize that if they kept squeezing incessantly on the Palestinians there would be a dire backlash. Any population behaves in a way which seems irrational when backed into a corner because, to the people being backed into the corner, there is no rational escape, there is only fight a hopeless battle or be destroyed. This is why in military strategy it is considered a dire error to back your enemy into a corner with no escape, what Sun Tzu called 'putting them on death-ground'. On the other side of this coin, a general who was outnumbered and was intent on holding off a superior force would intentionally back his own forces against a river or some other natural obstacle to trigger this suicidal aggression response. Not to derail the issue, but it's my personal opinion that the current hardline government of Israel is trying to put both the Palestinians locally and Jews globally on 'death ground' simultaneously, and that both eliciting the October 7 attacks as a predictable backlash and then allowing it to happen uncontested served this purpose, as does the ongoing, incredibly public genocide which is causing an absolute groundswell of global antisemitism.

Once again, the same argument also applies to the British/Sassoon alliance and China. They just kept squeezing, and the end result was the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the rise of Communist China, which solved the opium epidemic in short order - one of Mao's greatest public relation coups was framing the Nationalists as allies with drug lords and foreign powers due to their ties with opium traders in the south of China. The Opium Wars weren't about the Chinese denying food to the British any more than the American Civil War was about the Confederates firing on Fort Sumpter. The Opium wars were about the fact that you cannot survive as a country with the majority of your population addicted to narcotics, and Britian as a foreign power was putting their finger to the scale to prevent China from addressing this serious internal problem, along with bleeding silver back into British coffers. China did not have a choice to sit quietly - it was either fight or be destroyed. Most people when given that choice will choose to fight even if the chances of winning are vanishingly small.

None of that makes the irrational response justified, it just means that Britain did a greater share of unjustified things.

This is the trouble with consequentialist ethics - it assumes rationality.

No, consequentialist ethics says you ought to anticipate the consequences of your actions, it does not assume people will. Is and ought are different things. If anything, a consequentialist would condemn the Tea Party precisely because it provoked an irrational response from Britain.

it was either fight or be destroyed

I think I've been clear that not all forms of fighting back are bad, just certain poor decisions that were made. Once the Intolerable Acts happened, the colonists were pushed into a tighter corner, but those could have been avoided without the Tea Party.

None of that makes the irrational response justified, it just means that Britain did a greater share of unjustified things.

This is the trouble with consequentialist ethics - it assumes rationality.

No, consequentialist ethics says you ought to anticipate the consequences of your actions, it does not assume people will. Is and ought are different things. If anything, a consequentialist would condemn the Tea Party precisely because it provoked an irrational response from Britain

That's the problem with it - because it's about predicting the actions of other people, you eventually get into game theory/wifom. The logic no longer becomes clear and knowable, it becomes in a sense fractal, like a game of go. In a system in which a powerful operator is attempting to operate in a consequentialist framework, becoming unpredictable suddenly gains great utility. And the more operators within a system adopt consequentialism, the more predictable they become to one another, and the more 'breaking the rules' and acting in an illogical matter presents a way to upset opponents. The logic of the system detaches from the logic of the real world. I did an earlier post on Deleuze and Guattari's Treatise on Nomadology and this framework is what they were grappling with - 'royal science' (governed by known rules and consequences, rigid, predictable, stable - eventually becomes self-referential to a degree) vs. 'nomad science' (governed by reaction, fluid, flexible, unpredictable - more grounded to outside reality).

the 

Boston Tea Party was illegal as it involved destroying private property (342 chests of tea) and defying British authority, leading Parliament to pass the punitive Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts) to punish Massachusetts for this act of rebellion and destruction of goods. While colonists saw it as principled civil disobedience against unjust taxation and monopoly, Britain viewed it as treasonous destruction of property, triggering harsh retaliatory laws. 

Why it was illegal (British Perspective):

1. Destruction of Property: The core act involved destroying valuable cargo belonging to the British East India Company, a clear violation of property rights and laws.
2. Defiance of Law: It was a direct challenge to Parliament's authority to legislate for the colonies, particularly the Tea Act of 1773, which granted the company a monopoly. 

Why colonists saw it as justified:

1. "No Taxation Without Representation": Colonists believed they shouldn't be taxed by a Parliament where they had no elected representatives.
2. Protest Against Monopoly: The Tea Act, while lowering tea prices, was seen as a trick to force colonists to accept Parliament's right to tax them and to support a monopoly. 

Consequences:

1. Britain passed the Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts), which closed Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for, altered Massachusetts' government, and allowed British officials to be tried elsewhere, further uniting the colonies against Britain and pushing them toward revolution. 

That's the problem with it - because it's about predicting the actions of other people, you eventually get into game theory/wifom

Yeah but there are still "optimal moves" even in game theory, just like a really complicated game of chess. And even though chess itself is complicated, it is possible to identify obviously bad moves. And I don't think we need to understand all of game theory to identify that the Boston Tea Party was strategically bad.

the more predictable they become to one another

Predictability is actually pretty useful if we want stable international relations. Hard to trade or plan for the future if the government is gonna act in a totally random way.

the more 'breaking the rules' and acting in an illogical matter presents a way to upset opponents

Except in the examples we're discussing, breaking the rules was counterproductive.

The Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) did not "liberate" 

America

 on its own, but it is historically recognized as the pivotal spark that led to the American Revolution and eventual independence. 

Role in American Independence

1. Catalyst for Revolution: While the protest occurred years before the war began in 1775, it was the first major organized act of rebellion against British rule. It transformed colonial frustration over "taxation without representation" into direct, radical action.
2. Provoking the British: In response to the destruction of 342 chests of tea, the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts (known in America as the Intolerable Acts) in 1774. These acts closed Boston Harbor and stripped Massachusetts of its right to self-government.
3. Unifying the Colonies: Rather than crushing the rebellion, these harsh punishments united the thirteen colonies. This unity led to the convening of the First Continental Congress in September 1774, where leaders began coordinating a collective resistance that culminated in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 

Historical Context

1. Date: December 16, 1773.
2. Action: Members of the Sons of Liberty, some disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded three British East India Company ships and dumped approximately 46 tons of tea into Boston Harbor.

Yeah but there are still "optimal moves" even in game theory, just like a really complicated game of chess. And even though chess itself is complicated, it is possible to identify obviously bad moves. And I don't think we need to understand all of game theory to identify that the Boston Tea Party was strategically bad.

In a simple, on-paper game theory situation, sure. In the real world, with so many operators within so many systems, and such complex rules, I don't think we really can understand that absolutely. Game theory is in the end a model meant to simplify an infinitely complex world and make one aspect of it digestible. Manipulating/understanding a model =/= manipulating/understanding that which it models.

Predictability is actually pretty useful if we want stable international relations. Hard to trade or plan for the future if the government is gonna act in a totally random way.

But the international system isn't something that we can fiddle with and set the rules for to optimize it. It's an anarchic environment with multiple actors pursuing their own interests. And even within each actor within that larger system, there are other forces at play, going down and down several levels. The state is an emergent phenomenon acting at odds with other emergent phenomena towards ever-shifting goals and targets.

Except in the examples we're discussing, breaking the rules was counterproductive.

Was it? America eventually became the greatest empire the world has ever seen, for better or worse. Britain slowly rolled into the dustbin of history and is now being colonized itself. This is what I meant by fractal complexity - I don't think even the greatest supercomputer could predict the counterfactuals surround the Boston Tea Party rolling out several centuries to any degree of accuracy.

the international system isn't something that we can fiddle with and set the rules for to optimize it. It's an anarchic environment with multiple actors pursuing their own interests

But you can still make good decisions and bad decisions. Like, if I go shoot 100 people that will probably have bad consequences, no? The fact that you can identify bad decisions means that some decisions are better than others.

I don't think even the greatest supercomputer could predict the counterfactuals surround the Boston Tea Party rolling out several centuries to any degree of accuracy

Well then look at what the people doing the protest could have logically anticipated. Something like the Intolerable Acts? Possibly. America becoming an empire? Pretty hard to predict, and the power structure of the world could easily have been set up better without a war most people didn't want.

Well then look at what the people doing the protest could have logically anticipated. Something like the Intolerable Acts? Possibly. America becoming an empire? Pretty hard to predict, and the power structure of the world could easily have been set up better without a war most people didn't want.

Better for whom? Many of the Boston mercantile & professional classes who participated in the riot eventually came to occupy prominent positions. Their participation in the riots and their fomenting of revolution paid off very well for them. Boston became an important harbor - the Siege of Boston was rough, but human history is rife with cities and principalities gladly suffering through less than a year of privation to secure independence and remove the yoke of foreign taxation. If that sort of sacrifice wasn't 'worth it' in the long run everyone would surrender rather than go to war.

Better for whom?

For the colonists as a whole, including the teens who were sent to die because of the war.

Many of the Boston mercantile & professional classes who participated in the riot eventually came to occupy prominent positions.

So they were self-interested, that doesn't equate to being justified.

If that sort of sacrifice wasn't 'worth it' in the long run everyone would surrender rather than go to war.

No, there are plenty of good reasons to go to war. Like the Intolerable Acts. But the taxes issue could have been worked out without war.

yes I made a mistake here. BTP was against EIC, not from EIC.

Mb.

America benefited from the revolution.

On the night of 16 December 1773, 340 chests of tea were destroyed in Boston Harbour, an event that has gone down in history as the Boston Tea Party. This political and mercantile protest was one of the key events in the lead up to the American Revolutionary War and, ultimately, American independence.

For the colonists as a whole, including the teens who were sent to die because of the war.

But while the decision eventually came to impact the colonists as a whole, the original impact was local and so they weren't taken into consideration. Besides, the colonies at this point were basically independent countries, they would be first confederated and then federated once the war was over. Why would a Boston merchant take into consideration the interests of a Virginian teenager bleeding out at Yorktown almost a decade later? Especially when choosing to participate in the rebellion was a decision later independently made by all the other colonies. The Tea Party may have forced the issue to a head, but each state who rebelled chose to do so independently.

So they were self-interested, that doesn't equate to being justified.

For the vast, vast majority of people, being self-interested is all the justification they need. You can't ignore human nature. This is why Machiavelli says you have to make laws assuming that men are as morally corrupt as possible, because if you don't, they will inevitably rise to the occasion.

No, there are plenty of good reasons to go to war. Like the Intolerable Acts. But the taxes issue could have been worked out without war.

I think that England had no intention to do so, and that granting the EIC a monopoly on tea imports was a clear signal of this. The economic ramifications of this were that the EIC could undercut any American merchant selling English tea or even smuggled Dutch tea, and this was done to save the EIC from bankruptcy - to the detriment of both American merchants and consumers. You could play this game with any decision (who would have budged/negotiated), but the central complaint of the colonies was 'taxation without representation' - that this pattern of completely ignoring the interests of colonists when making decisions would continue until they could express their grievances and exercise political power in Parliament. Even if the Crown had acquiesced on some small point, as long as they had no voice in Parliament they would renege on this as soon as they felt that they had the upper hand or felt that some problem (like the EIC facing bankruptcy) overrode the concerns of the colonists.

Americans turned to coffee after the 

Boston Tea Partyas a patriotic act, making tea drinking seem un-American and British, while coffee, grown in the New World, symbolized rebellion against British taxation and economic control, becoming a political statement of independence and a staple drink. 

Political & Patriotic Reasons

1. Symbol of Rebellion: Tea was associated with British taxes and the East India Company, so boycotting tea and choosing coffee was a clear sign of support for the revolutionary cause.
2. Unpatriotic to Drink Tea: After the Tea Party, drinking tea was seen as disloyal, while coffee became the patriotic choice, representing American identity and resistance. 

Economic & Practical Reasons

1. Economic Alternative: The Tea Act of 1773 was designed to help the struggling British East India Company, further angering colonists who felt cut out of trade.
2. Availability & Cost: Coffee, imported from the Caribbean and South America, was often cheaper and more readily available than tea, especially during embargoes or trade disruptions. 

Cultural Shift

1. New Morning Ritual: Coffee quickly replaced beer as the popular morning drink, establishing itself as a fixture in colonial life.
2. Enduring Popularity: Though many Americans returned to tea after the Revolution, coffee's deep roots as a symbol of liberty and its practicality ensured its lasting popularity, solidifying its place in American culture. 

while the decision eventually came to impact the colonists as a whole, the original impact was local and so they weren't taken into consideration

So if they weren't anticipating a full scale war that affected all the colonies, how could they expect to occupy prominent positions? It only had positive effects for them because of the war.

For the vast, vast majority of people, being self-interested is all the justification they need

Then they're no better than King George.

Even if the Crown had acquiesced on some small point, as long as they had no voice in Parliament they would renege on this as soon as they felt that they had the upper hand or felt that some problem

Yeah but there were advantages to living in the colonies despite lack of representation, and most colonists were fine with the arrangement minus some small grievances. Taxation was not unique in being without representation, a big complaint was on internal vs external taxation which Britain actually acquiesced to to some extent. Most of the colonists preferred to work their grievances out without war until the Intolerable Acts. Note that Canada got its independence without war.

For the vast, vast majority of people, being self-interested is all the justification they need

Then they're no better than King George.

People seldom reach the heights of political power through virtue. The devil is the prince of this world. The only metric to compare one ruler to another is competence. King George was lacking in that department, to put it lightly.

So if they weren't anticipating a full scale war that affected all the colonies, how could they expect to occupy prominent positions? It only had positive effects for them because of the war.

Yeah but there were advantages to living in the colonies despite lack of representation, and most colonists were fine with the arrangement minus some small grievances. Taxation was not unique in being without representation, a big complaint was on internal vs external taxation which Britain actually acquiesced to to some extent. Most of the colonists preferred to work their grievances out without war until the Intolerable Acts. Note that Canada got its independence without war.

If that was true that just makes the Intolerable Acts even more of a blunder. The message sent by the Tea Party (and there were other incidents - I recall a ship in Rhode Island?) was that there were interested, influential, and competent parties in the colonies willing to draw the line on this issue and risk any backlash that might come. Reticence on the part of the wider citizenry meant that a measured response and more concessions from England could have successfully tamped down the embers of revolution. Instead, the Brits poured gasoline on the fire and burnt their own eyebrows off. The people organizing these events also would have benefitted from British capitulation. The only thing they wouldn't benefit from would be surgical British retaliation which didn't enrage enough of the colonists to risk all-out revolt. I imagine they correctly assumed that the Empire was incapable of carrying that out due to a mix of incompetence and arrogance.

What is the unsafest state to live in?

WASHINGTON – Wallethub has released its 2025 list of the safest states in the U.S., placing Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire at the top of the list. Maine and Utah were the fourth and fifth safest states. The least safe states were Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Arkansas.