When Civilization Reaches
BOILING POINT
Democracies without brakes destroy themselves.
Suddenly. Like water boiling at 100°C.
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Synopsis:
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Suddenly. Economies under unsustainable pressure collapse the same way.
We live in a system where the real tax burden approaches 70 percent. Where governments — beyond democratic oversight — systematically build infrastructure for digital control: bail-in legislation that can confiscate your savings, central bank digital currencies that can track and block every transaction.
When All Hell Breaks Loose reveals how only 20 percent of the population — the Productive Core — carries the system, while they have minimal voting power. It shows why taxation isn’t about percentages, but about time confiscation: an effective burden of 50 percent means you work more for the state than for yourself.
This is no crash porn. No conspiracy theory. It’s an analytical warning based on historical patterns — from Rome to Weimar, from Argentina to Greece. For Canada, this book outlines the possible scenario of 2030–2035. Systems don’t break gradually. They collapse suddenly.
This book is based on facts. The numbers are verifiable. The pattern is visible. But only if you’re willing to see the complete picture do you understand the severity of the situation.
The water is reaching BOILING POINT.
International: das gleiche Muster weltweit
It’s happening
in
Netherlands
It’s happening
in
Germany
It’s happening
in
France
and soon also:
- United Kingdom
- Spain
- Portugal
- Italy
and more …
That’s Why This Book
From the preface:
Foreword
Note on the Canadian Edition
This Canadian edition is not a simple translation but a complete re-contextualization for the Canadian reader. The mechanisms described are universal, but the examples, data, historical references, and cultural context are specifically Canadian.
Canada, with total government spending approaching 42% of GDP, federal debt at 42% of GDP, and provincial debts adding another 25-30%, presents a particularly instructive case. We’re not yet at France’s 57% spending or 112% debt. But the trajectory is clear, and the warning signs are visible.
What makes Canada’s situation especially revealing is the layered complexity: federal-provincial blame-shifting that obscures accountability, equalization payments that breed regional resentment, continental integration with the US that constrains sovereignty without formal structure, and international climate commitments that determine domestic spending. Add to this healthcare wait times averaging 27 weeks from GP to surgery, a housing crisis that’s locked out an entire generation, and net emigration of high earners up 40% since 2021.
The trucker convoy of February 2022 wasn’t just about vaccine mandates. It revealed something deeper: the moment when enough Canadians realized “I’m not as free as I thought I was.” Bank accounts frozen without charges. Financial exile from the system for donating $50 to a protest. That breakdown of trust doesn’t un-happen.
If Canada—with its reputation for moderation, its history of avoiding European and American extremes, its pride in “peace, order, and good government”—cannot reform before crisis forces it, then the warning of this book isn’t for Canada alone. It’s for all Western democracies following the same path.
The choice between sustainability and collapse isn’t about politics. It’s about arithmetic. And arithmetic doesn’t care about national myths.
A Note to French-Speaking Canadians / Note aux Canadiens Francophones
This book is written in English primarily for practical reach—most Canadian policy data, Parliamentary Budget Officer reports, and Statistics Canada analyses are published first in English, and the target audience of high-earning professionals operates largely in English-speaking economic sectors.
However, Quebec’s situation receives full treatment throughout the book. Quebec’s 53.3% top marginal rate (highest in North America), its $15 billion in annual equalization receipts, its distinct social model, and its complicated relationship with Canadian federalism are analyzed in detail. The French edition of this work exists separately for European readers and offers interesting comparative perspective.
For francophone readers in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario: your lived experience of this system may differ significantly from anglophone Canada’s. Quebec’s comprehensive provincial services (subsidized daycare, lowest tuition) represent a different social contract than Alberta’s lower taxes and greater self-reliance. These variations are not ignored but examined as part of Canada’s complex federal reality.
The economic mechanisms transcend language. The warning applies equally across both solitudes.
Why This Book
In 2023, the average Canadian family earning $105,000 paid $48,000 in total taxes—federal, provincial, municipal, and hidden. That’s 46% before you account for inflation as a hidden tax. Tax Freedom Day fell on June 13 for most Canadians. Every dollar earned from January 1 to mid-June went to government. Only after that date did you start earning money you could actually keep.
If you’re in the Productive Core—doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, high-earning professionals—your effective burden runs closer to 60-70% when you count all layers. You work six to seven months per year for the state, then start working for yourself.
These aren’t political talking points. They’re arithmetic. And most Canadians have never done this calculation.
This book explains why the burden keeps rising, why the promises keep expanding, and why the system driving both is fundamentally unstable. It’s not an indictment. It’s not a political manifesto. It’s a warning based on patterns we’ve seen before—in Rome, in Weimar Germany, in recent crises across Southern Europe and Latin America. Systems under unsustainable pressure don’t decline gradually. They tip suddenly.
We live in a time when governments pile up debt they can’t repay, when central banks monetize on unprecedented scale, when democratic systems without constitutional limits exhaust themselves through unbounded promises. These aren’t opinions. These are measurable facts. The question isn’t whether these facts are true, but what they mean for the stability of the system we live in.
A Universal Analysis, Locally Applied
The mechanisms we describe—democracy without limits, debt monetization, electoral mathematics—aren’t unique to Canada. They play out across many Western democracies. This analysis has been localized for different countries, adapted to local tax systems, historical parallels, and cultural context. French readers will recognize the Gilets Jaunes and the French Revolution. German readers will see Weimar and the Energiewende. American readers will recognize their own polarization.
Canadian readers will recognize something else: the housing crisis that’s pushed homeownership out of reach, the convoy protests that revealed broken trust, the equalization system that breeds regional resentment, the healthcare wait times that make a mockery of “universal” coverage. We’ll see our own patterns—Trudeau I’s spending sprees in the 1970s, the near-death experience of the 1990s when debt threatened sovereignty, the COVID spending that made those previous episodes look modest.
This book uses Canadian examples, Canadian data, Canadian history. The Dutch original came first. The lessons are universal.
For Whom This Book Is Written
This book addresses primarily what we call “the Productive Core”—the entrepreneurs, professionals, and high earners who carry the economic system but represent only 18-20% of the population and wield far less electoral power. For them, this book is a mirror showing why their growing frustration is rational, why emigration to the US becomes more attractive, why the system is fundamentally unstable.
But it’s also written for the broader middle class—people who intuitively sense something’s wrong, who see their purchasing power eroding despite working hard, who wonder why politicians’ promises never seem to materialize. For them, this book explains mechanisms that are often deliberately kept opaque.
And it’s written for policymakers and public servants with good intentions but trapped in systems that create perverse incentives. For them, this book is an invitation to be honest about what’s sustainable and what’s not.
This book is not written for economists who already know what’s in these pages, or for activists already convinced. It’s written for normal, intelligent people who want to understand why their intuition that “this isn’t sustainable” aligns with the facts.
What This Book Is Not
This is not crash porn. We don’t sensationalize. We describe mechanisms and historical patterns. Whether Canada actually experiences a crisis depends on choices being made now.
This is not conspiracy theory. We accuse no one of malice. Most policymakers act with good intentions. But good intentions have never guaranteed good outcomes. Systems can produce destructive results even when individual actors behave rationally.
This is not a political manifesto. We don’t advocate for a specific party or ideology. Liberal and Conservative governments both contribute to the problem when they make unbounded promises without honesty about costs. This book is about systemic dynamics, not partisan politics.
This is not a political manifesto. We don’t advocate for a specific party or ideology. Liberal and Conservative governments both contribute to the problem when they make unbounded promises without honesty about costs. This book is about systemic dynamics, not partisan politics.
This is not an academic treatise. We cite sources where needed, but the goal is not scholarly completeness. The goal is understanding. We write for the interested citizen, not for academics.
The Structure of This Book
Part I – The Mechanisms (Chapters 1–4): How does the system fundamentally work? Why does taxation feel different than it seems? Who really pays? What happens when taxes aren’t enough? Why have democratic brakes disappeared?
Part II – The Reality (Chapters 5–8): How much do we really pay, all layers included? What megalomaniac plans are being developed? What infrastructure is being prepared for when the system comes under pressure?
Part III – The Dynamics (Chapters 9–12): Why do people vote for unsustainable policy? When does a system tip? How fast can it happen? What are the accelerators?
Part IV – The Tipping Points (Chapters 13–14): At what thresholds do systems break? What would Canadian scenarios look like?
Part V – Reflection (Chapters 15–17): Why does this pattern repeat? What alternatives exist? What can we learn for the future?
Why Urgency, Not Panic
The tone of this book is deliberately urgent but not panicked. We believe awareness is the first step toward change. But awareness without understanding leads to panic, and panic leads to poor decisions.
So we don’t just explain what’s wrong, but why it works this way. We don’t just show problems but also mechanisms. We don’t just present doom but understanding of dynamics.
The goal is that readers finish this book thinking not “this is hopeless” but “I understand now why this happens, and what the options are.” Because understanding gives power—power to make rational decisions about your own future, power to question politicians critically, power not to be surprised by developments that were predictable.
A Personal Note
This book is written from frustration and concern. Frustration because public debate is often superficial, full of soundbites but poor in depth. Concern because the patterns described here are historically consistent—and historically, they’ve led to economic and political crises that disrupted millions of lives.
I fervently hope this book proves irrelevant in hindsight. That Canada will prove capable of implementing structural reforms that stabilize the system. That policymakers become honest about trade-offs. That citizens can and will use democratic power to reject unsustainable promises.
But if those reforms don’t come, if denial and delay dominate, then this book serves as documentation of what could have been seen if we’d looked objectively at underlying factors. And as a tool for those who want to prepare for what may come.
Finally
Water boils and transforms at 100°C. Suddenly. That escalation is physics, not opinion. Economies under unsustainable pressure tip. That’s systemic dynamics, not pessimism.
This book describes what happens when our economy approaches the boiling point. It’s up to us—citizens, policymakers, voters—to decide whether we turn down the heat before it boils, or keep hoping that laws of physics won’t apply this time.
The choice is ours. But the time to choose is getting shorter.
November 2025
Chapter 1 – A forgotten Truth
A forgotten Truth
Money = Time
Tax Freedom Day: June 13, 2024
In 2024, the average Canadian family earned $105,000 and paid $48,000 in total taxes. That’s 46% of income – almost half the year working for government before you start working for yourself.1
Here’s a different way to think about it.
That same person earning $75,000 works roughly 230 days per year, after weekends, statutory holidays, and vacation. At 46% effective tax rate, that’s 106 days per year – almost four months – working exclusively for government.
Every email you send from January 1 to April 15? That’s government time. Every meeting, every project, every commute in that period? Government’s. Your morning coffee on February 23? You bought that with government’s money, not yours.
Only starting mid-April does the time become yours.
This is the same information – 46% of income – but framed differently. And that framing changes everything.
The cognitive dissonance
Someone at a Tim Hortons in Mississauga earning $80,000 per year tells their coworker: “I pay about 40% tax, all in.”
The coworker nods. They talk about the Leafs.
But what if that same person said: “I work from January until mid-May for the government. Only starting in May do I work for myself.”
Suddenly it feels different. Much different.
This isn’t a semantic game. It’s the core of what this book will reveal: how we talk about taxation determines how we think about it, and how we think about it determines what we accept. Policymakers understand this. That’s why they consistently frame taxation as a percentage of money, never as a percentage of our time.
This chapter explains why that difference matters psychologically, and why understanding it is the first step toward understanding why the system we live in is structurally unstable.
The policymaker frame: Taxation as money flows
Open any budget document. Watch Question Period in the House of Commons. Listen to the Finance Minister. This is what we hear:
“Tax burden is 33% of GDP.”
Or: “Middle-class tax relief totals $2.3 billion.”
Or: “Capital gains changes will raise $8.1 billion.”
Money. Percentages. Numbers.
This framing isn’t neutral. It’s a choice with enormous psychological consequences.
Why do policymakers talk this way? Because money is abstract. It flows from here to there. Dollars are dollars, wherever they come from. It can be redistributed, allocated, optimized. For them, it’s a technical problem requiring technical solutions.
In this frame, taxation is something you have and then give. Someone earns $80,000, the state takes $32,000, $48,000 remains. Simple math. Neutral. Technocratic.
But this frame hides something essential: time.
The citizen frame: Taxation as time confiscation
Let’s frame the same scenario differently.
A working person is awake sixteen hours per day and sleeps eight. Of those sixteen hours, roughly ten go to work when we count commute time, evening emails, and mental energy.
Forty percent taxation means this: of those ten hours per day, four hours go compulsorily to government.
When we calculate this over a year, the pattern becomes clear. A work year counts roughly 230 days, after weekends, vacation, and statutory holidays. Forty percent of that is 92 days. Three months per year goes exclusively to the state.
At fifty percent taxation – what many professionals effectively pay when we add all layers – this becomes 115 days per year. Almost four months. From January until the end of April.
At seventy percent effective burden – what some high earners experience in provinces like Quebec – it’s 161 days per year. More than five months. You don’t start keeping your own time until the end of May.
Suddenly it’s not a neutral number anymore. It’s time. Our time. The only non-renewable resource we have.
Why this works fundamentally differently psychologically
The Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura showed how framing affects behaviour. American psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his work on how people think about losses. One of his core findings: people experience losses much more intensely than equivalent gains. Lose a hundred dollars? That hurts more than the joy of gaining a hundred dollars.
But there’s a deeper layer. Loss of time feels more existential than loss of money. Why? Because lost money is replaceable. You can earn more. Time isn’t. Every day that passes is gone forever.
Taxation as a percentage of money is an economic loss. Taxation as a percentage of time is an existential loss.
This explains the cognitive dissonance many people feel. Consciously they think: “I pay forty percent, that’s reasonable for a country with universal healthcare.” Emotionally the question persists: “So why do I feel so squeezed?” The answer is that our brain instinctively does time-accounting, even when we consciously use money-accounting.
The historical parallel: Corvée and feudal obligations
This isn’t a new insight. Our ancestors understood the time frame perfectly.
In many medieval feudal systems, peasants were obligated to work a certain number of days per year for the lord, unpaid. This was called corvée or feudal labour. Typically forty to sixty days per year.
An important nuance: the local lord couldn’t replace this with a money tax. Why not? Because peasants would experience it psychologically differently. “Pay me thirty silver pieces” feels different from “work forty days for me.”
The lords knew: direct time confiscation makes the power relationship visible and tangible. That was the point. It maintained the social hierarchy.
One of the catalysts of the French Revolution wasn’t just the height of taxation, but how it was experienced. The “taille” (direct tax), plus the “dîme” (tithe to the church), plus local burdens added up to more than fifty percent for many peasants.
Crucially: French revolutionaries didn’t speak in percentages. They spoke in days of corvée-equivalent. “We work more than half the year for others” was the complaint. Only when this tax burden was translated into time did revolutionary energy emerge.
The Canadian context: 1970s to now
Pierre Trudeau – father of our current Prime Minister – famously said in 1967: “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”
But the state ended up in our wallets. And our calendars.
In 1961, when Tommy Douglas created Medicare in Saskatchewan, the average Canadian worked until March to pay their taxes. By 1981, when the Fraser Institute started calculating Tax Freedom Day, it had moved to June 6.4
Today? June 13 in Ontario. June 14 nationally. June 25 in Quebec (the highest).
That’s two and a half months of additional government time since Tommy Douglas’s era – and we’re still adding more. Every budget promises more spending. Healthcare, climate, infrastructure, defence. No policy area ever gets abolished.
The question isn’t whether these are worthy goals. The question is: when does the time confiscation become psychologically unsustainable?
The fifty percent threshold: From voluntary contribution to compulsory servitude
Why is fifty percent such a critical boundary? Not economically. Economically there’s no fundamental difference between forty-nine and fifty-one percent. But psychologically there’s a fundamental phase transition.
Below fifty percent, there’s a psychological experience: “I work primarily for myself, and I contribute something to the collective.”
Above fifty percent, that experience inverts: “I work primarily for the collective, and I’m allowed to keep something for myself.”
This isn’t semantic. This is identity. Below fifty percent: sovereign citizen who contributes. Above fifty percent: subject who’s permitted something.
This is the line between free citizen and serf.
That’s not political hyperbole. It’s psychological reality. When more than half of working time is compulsory, the psychological experience becomes: “I am not free. I have an owner. That owner happens to be the state, but that changes nothing fundamental about my status.”
This explains the powerful emotional reactions many professionals and entrepreneurs experience. It’s not about the money. It’s about freedom. The gut feeling: “I work for the state, not for myself.”
Empirical observation: Tax revolts through history
The American Revolution began with a paradox. Official British Crown taxation of the colonies was relatively low, estimated five to ten percent of income. Why revolution then?
There were two reasons. The first is known: “No taxation without representation” – a legitimacy crisis. But more important was that the time dimension was visible. For many colonists, British taxation literally meant corvée service. It wasn’t abstract. It was visible time confiscation. Once taxation became felt time-confiscation, revolutionary energy emerged.
French tax burden was fifty percent or more for many peasants in the late eighteenth century. But the critical moment came when this burden was translated into time. Revolutionary pamphlets didn’t speak about percentages. They spoke about: “How many days per year do you work for nobility and church versus for yourself?” When that became clear, and the answer was “more than half,” revolution followed.
The Soviet economy had no official “taxation” in the Western sense. Everything was state labour. But in the late 1980s, people began reframing this: “Wait, I work my entire life for the state. I’m only allowed to keep what they permit. I’m not free.” This realization was more deadly to the system than economic problems.
The pattern is clear. Whenever taxation is reframed from money to time, and time-confiscation exceeds roughly fifty percent, fundamental resistance emerges. This isn’t coincidence. This is psychological regularity.
Modern context: Why Canada is vulnerable
Let’s now apply this to the Canadian situation.
But these figures mislead. They count only direct taxes. They ignore indirect taxation like HST/GST and excise taxes, which add 10 to 15%. They ignore inflation as hidden taxation, which adds 5 to 10%. They ignore property taxes, which add 2 to 4%. They ignore CPP/EI contributions, which add 7.5%.
ALBERTA PERSPECTIVE
ONTARIO REALITY
If you bought a house in Toronto before 2015, you’re asset-rich. If you’re trying to buy now at $1.1M median? You’re squeezed.
QUEBEC REALITY
Quebec operates the most European-style social democracy in North America. Trade-off: $8/day childcare, low university tuition, generous parental leave. But the tax burden approaches French levels.
For professionals and entrepreneurs – the Productive Core who economically carry the system – effective burden reaches 60 to 70% or more. In time-equivalent: 140 to 160 days per year. Until the end of May, the labour goes to the state.
This is no longer a theoretical boundary. This is the psychological boundary where identity flips.
And the burden is increasing, not decreasing. Climate action, defence (NATO 2% commitment), aging demographics – every policy area demands more. No policy area gets abolished.
We’re told we need to spend more on healthcare to save it. More on climate to meet Paris targets. More on defence because of global instability. More on infrastructure because population is growing by 500,000 per year.
But nobody asks: At what point does the time confiscation become psychologically unsustainable?
The question we end with
This chapter began with a simple observation: forty percent taxation feels different from “four months per year of labour goes to the state.”
We’ve seen why this is so. Psychologically: time feels more existential than money. Neurologically: the brain processes time-loss differently. Historically: 50%+ time confiscation triggers fundamental resistance. Identity: from sovereign citizen to neo-feudal serf.
We end with a question.
If we realize that effectively 60 to 70% of working time goes to the state – until the end of May – how do we then think about the system? Do we still feel like free citizens who contribute? Or do we begin to feel like serfs who are still allowed some freedom of movement?
And if that second realization grows, not just individually but among a critical mass of people who economically carry the system, what does that mean for system stability?
The following chapters answer that question.
But the first step is simple: reframe how we think about taxation. Stop with percentages of money. Start with months of our lives.
That changes everything.
Reflection for the reader
Before we continue, there’s an exercise worth doing. Calculate your effective tax burden, all layers included. Translate this into days per year. Is it above or below the 50% boundary? What does this evoke?
This isn’t an academic exercise. This is awareness of the actual situation. And awareness is the first step toward change – personal and collective.
1 Fraser Institute, “Canadian Consumer Tax Index, 2024 Edition.” The calculation includes all federal, provincial, and municipal taxes: income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, vehicle taxes, profit taxes, import duties, natural resource levies, and other indirect taxes. For a family earning $105,092 (2024 average), total tax bill estimated at $48,297.
2 Fraser Institute, “Canadians Celebrate Tax Freedom Day on June 13, 2024” (press release, June 2024). Tax Freedom Day varies by province: June 13 in Ontario, June 14 nationally, June 25 in Quebec (highest), May 31 in Alberta (lowest).
3 Fraser Institute, “Tax Freedom Day Calculations Methodology,” available at www.fraserinstitute.org. The Institute has calculated Tax Freedom Day annually since 1981 using consistent methodology based on total tax revenue divided by total cash income.
7 Fraser Institute, “Alberta’s Fiscal Contributions to Confederation,” 2023 analysis. Between 2007-2021, Alberta contributed $244 billion more to federal revenues than received in federal spending—an average of $16 billion annually. With Alberta’s population of approximately 4.5 million, this represents roughly $3,500-$5,000 per capita annually depending on calculation method.
9 Tax calculations based on 2024 federal and Quebec provincial tax tables. Quebec’s provincial tax at $150k: approximately 19-20% effective rate (highest in Canada). Quebec Sales Tax (QST) 9.975% + GST 5% = 14.975% combined. Montreal property taxes average 0.7-1.0% of property value. Quebec offers offsetting benefits: subsidized childcare ($8.85/day), lowest university tuition in Canada, generous parental leave programs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erik Hoekstra is an entrepreneur and author.
Besides economic analyses, he writes about consciousness and ancient wisdom in his “Generative Thinking” series.
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