By Douglas Kruger
BY all accounts, the man was a prize sod. But in 1215, when King John reluctantly consented to the terms of Magna Carta, he unwittingly advanced freedom for our species in ways no one could have foreseen. I’m hopeful its effects will reach Jersey by 2026, liberating entrepreneurs from the petty tyranny of parish administrations.
Take a tour with me.
The great document of 1215 worked like a slow-release pill.
The first time it did anything useful was when one of England’s Henries tried to levy taxes for a war. An early parliament reminded him: “Last time you taxed us, you agreed to extend our freedoms. But you didn’t. You took more of them away. So, take a running jump. We’re pulling a Magna Carta on you.”
Over several centuries, the document picked up steam. By the time people steeped in its legacy reached the New World, they had refined its spirit to such potent distillation that it formed the foundations of the greatest wealth-building experiment in all of history: the United States.
Given severe limitations on all forms of authority, Americans quickly became the most productive, wealth-generating people of all time. Their prosperity eclipsed the glories of past empires, and this time, it wasn’t held exclusively by Pharaohs. It was available to average people with names like Jeff, Bud or Beyoncé.
To the extent that US states limit authority, they prosper. When they forget, they backslide.
Take California. Formerly so wealthy that if it seceded from the United States, it would have been the world’s third wealthiest economy. Yet California is now experiencing negative growth.
Why? Because they permitted an explosion of regulation. Taxes. Surcharges. Registration fees. Stamp duties. Licences. All the mechanisms of business prevention so beloved by our own parishes.
Consider this: to paint houses commercially in California, you need:
- Four years’ experience in a related field
- Workers compensation for employees
- A surety bond for at least $15,000
- To pay for and pass a C-33 exam.
- In Texas, by contrast, you will need:
- A bucket of paint
- A brush.
Texas deems that if two entities wish to enter into an agreement, that is their business, not the state’s. Nor is it their prerogative to inject cost, by extracting permissions. They understand it is stupid to do so, since it prevents commerce, lessening their own revenues.
This mindset did not blossom in a vacuum. It began on an obscure English field at a place called Runnymede.
OK, so it’s easier to paint houses in Texas. So what?
Well, scale that up, and the outcome is brands like Space-X, Chevron, Oracle, Hewlett Packard and Tesla packing their bags and fleeing California for Texas, making Texas one of the fastest-rising economies in the world, and resulting in negative growth for California.
The formula is simple. More government interference equals less money all around.
Right! Back to Jersey.
It’s Liberation Day. We’re all out in the streets celebrating freedom. And an entrepreneur I speak to tells me about wanting to open their shop for three hours, to sell sandwiches: “I was forbidden from doing so. The council said no.”
They did this in the year 2025, on the day we celebrate freedom from tyranny.
“What would happen if you simply ignored this ridiculous overreach?”
“Can’t do that! Someone will tell on me. I’ll be fined. Possibly even shut down.”
Folks, I don’t know how else to say this. I think it’s wonderful that you celebrate liberty. I wish you also believed in it. Your institutions, as currently constituted, do not reflect any such belief.
Worse, your people have been conditioned to spy for the authorities if someone dares to vend a sandwich without having their passbook stamped. This is how you are behaving in the Year of our Lord 2025, over 800 years since Magna Carta, and with the example of American prosperity to show you why freedom is essential.
Today in Jersey, as in pre-Magna Carta England, the authorities still extract money from you, while removing your freedom to act, for no sensible reason. And there is no sensible reason. They’re not stopping you from doing crime. They’re stopping you from working.
And earning.
It gets worse. You pay them to do so. Their salaries are funded by your industriousness. It’s insane. Doubly so, given a cost-of-living crisis, in which every rein should be slackened for increased productivity. Yet for some reason, it endures, and you tolerate it, as though there were anything natural or normal about asking for permission to work.
How many times has the sauna guy been moved along? How many times have restaurants had to pay thousands of pounds to use a public pavement, which, as the name suggests, belongs to the public? How many times have veritable SWAT teams raided the pie shop for compliance, as though stocking something on the wrong side of a counter made any difference to anyone in the world other than a low-level politician?
That’s just the simple stuff, before we even get to more complex industries.
For a comprehensive dissection of how government makes property purchasing prohibitively expensive, watch the online videos by the director of Broadlands Jersey. He lists intrusions into the process so numerous and costly that all productive activity is throttled. He explains the economic knock-on effect with the memorable phrase: “The sum-total of f-all, is f-all.’ He is right.
Do we truly want this, Jersey? Do we want tin-pot dictators to extract money from us, while telling us how and when we may or may not work? Are we, or are we not, free?
Confront the perpetrators, and they say they operate from a desire to preserve tradition.
But that’s false. The greatest of British traditions is, in fact, freedom, stemming from Magna Carta. These people are not preserving what their ancestors handed down to them. They’re just backwards, that’s all. And greedy.
So, I’m making three proposals.
One: Given that Magna Carta hasn’t reached our Dark-Ages parish administrations, I propose we belatedly adopt one of our own. Give it a Latin name, for gravitas: Magnum documentum, quo minus impedimento a minimis dictatoribus. Like King John, we shall have to manoeuvre them into a corner and impose it upon them.
Two: I am openly petitioning any government minister with the stomach for confronting tyrannical obstinacy, to champion a direct revocation of whatever clause grants these people the right to forbid work. Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel, would that be you? We all know we need more entrepreneurship. Your people are trying, but petty ministers are holding them down. So, change it. Confront and overcome these pre-freedom Luddites. Remove their power to deny people the right to work. It is the morally correct thing to do.
Three: We should create a public wall of shame. On it, we post the faces of council tyrants, emblazoned with captions like: “This week, I used taxpayer money to stop a woman selling ‘the wrong kind of sandwich’. My mummy is very proud of me.” Post their salary beside it.
Douglas Kruger is a business speaker, and author of books such as, They’re Your Rules, Break Them! Meet him at douglaskruger.com.
