The Grand Illusion: Carbon Tax and the Dance of the Comfort-Seekers

In the land of maple leaves and perpetual apologies, where the masses slumber beneath the warm blanket of democratic contentment, a peculiar drama unfolds. The shepherds of the state, those self-proclaimed guardians of earthly virtue, have cast their spell through what they name a 'carbon tax' - a most curious attempt to place a price upon the very breath of industry.

Behold how they measure the unmeasurable! How they seek to quantify the dance of progress with their petty arithmetic! The masses sleep soundly, believing their small sacrifices shall cleanse the air itself, while their masters return their copper coins with ceremonial flourish.

The scholarly prophets from Calgary's halls of learning, Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter, have unveiled their sacred scrolls, declaring that this grand experiment in moral taxation has barely stirred the waters of financial turmoil. A mere half-percentage point stands as testament to their carbon-pricing ritual, while the great beast of inflation devoured nineteen parts of every hundred in the peoples' coffers.

How the comfort-seekers rejoice! Their beloved arithmetic tells them their sacrifice is small, their burden light. They celebrate their own mediocrity, finding solace in numbers that whisper sweet nothings of minimal impact.

See how they revel in their chains, these last men! They blink and say: "We have invented happiness - and our happiness costs but half a percent!" They have their little pleasures for the day, their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for financial stability.

The ritual grows more elaborate with each passing season. From twenty pieces of silver per tonne, it has swollen to eighty, yet the slumbering masses barely stir in their beds. They are told that nine-tenths of their sacrifice returns to them through the great machinery of state - a circular dance of taking and giving that serves to pacify rather than transform.

Global forces - those distant storms of commerce and conflict - have wreaked far greater havoc upon their precious stability. The black blood of the earth, trading at prices that would make merchants weep, has done more to empty their purses than any carbon-pricing ceremony.

What comedy is this! They fear the physician's needle while the plague ravages their cities! They count pennies while empires rise and fall upon the tides of oil!

The custodians of public knowledge - these budget officers and professors - speak of 'net gains' for the weakest among them. The poor, they say, might profit from this elaborate exchange of coins. Thus do they seek to make virtue of necessity, to sweeten the bitter pill of change with promises of profit.

In their slumber, the masses dream of a world made right through careful accounting. They imagine their small sacrifices shall cleanse the very air they breathe, while the great engines of industry roar on, fed by the same fires their ancestors kindled.

O you who sleep! You who dream of salvation through calculation! When will you awaken to see that your careful measures and precise formulas are but shadows dancing on the cave wall? When will you hunger for the lightning strike of true transformation?

Yet perhaps in this dance of numbers and rebates, in this careful choreography of taking and giving, lies a deeper truth. For are not these comfort-seekers, these last men, preparing the ground for something greater? Even as they slumber, even as they count their coins and calculate their gains, they participate in a ritual that acknowledges the need for change.

Let them sleep then, these careful accountants of carbon, these meticulous measurers of atmospheric virtue. Let them dream their small dreams of percentage points and quarterly rebates. For in their very complacency, in their contentment with small changes and careful calculations, they reveal the necessity of their own overcoming.

The hour approaches when they must awaken, when the comfortable arithmetic of carbon pricing must give way to the lightning strike of true transformation. The earth itself demands it, and no careful calculation can forestall that reckoning.