There is a particular kind of modern suffering that goes something like this. You feel stuck. You feel anxious. You feel like something is wrong with the way you are moving through the world, and so you do what every reasonable adult does. You book a therapist. You sit on a couch, or more likely […]
You Do Not Need Therapy, You Need a Mentor (According to Seneca) Read More »
Adam Smith is mostly remembered as the man who explained markets. The invisible hand, the pin factory, the butcher and the brewer pursuing self interest while accidentally feeding the nation. Most people who quote him have not read him, and most people who have read him stopped at The Wealth of Nations. That is a
Why Adam Smith Loved Small Talk: The Social Capital of Everyday Interaction Read More »
You are reading these words right now. Light bounces off the screen, enters your eyes, and your brain assembles the message. The whole process feels seamless, almost automatic. You see the world, and the world is there. End of story. David Hume, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher who terrified Immanuel Kant out of his “dogmatic
There is a peculiar moment in every argument when you realize you are wrong. It arrives quietly, like a guest you did not invite. Your stomach tightens. Your brain, that magnificent organ you trust to keep you alive, does something remarkable: it pretends the moment never happened. You keep arguing. You argue harder. You would
Why We’d Rather Fight a Neighbor Than Admit a Fact Read More »
There is something deeply uncomfortable about putting a price tag on moral outrage. Which is precisely why Gary Becker thought we should do it. Becker, the Nobel laureate who spent his career dragging economics into places it was not invited, had a talent for making people squirm. He applied cost benefit analysis to marriage, crime,
Why We Should Charge People to Protest: The Economics of Civil Disobedience Read More »
Somewhere in a university office right now, a brilliant chemist is not doing chemistry. She is writing a sixty page document explaining why she should be allowed to do chemistry. She has been writing this document for three weeks. When she finishes, a panel of strangers will read it. Most will skim it. They will
The Grant Writing Industrial Complex: How the Best Paper Pushers Win the Most Money Read More »
Most people assume democracy is the fairest system humans have invented. Markets, by contrast, get treated like a necessary evil. We tolerate them the way we tolerate a loud neighbor. Useful, maybe, but not exactly noble. Israel Kirzner would disagree. Not politely, either. Kirzner, an economist who spent decades at New York University, built a
Why Markets Are More Fair Than Democracy: The Kirznerian View Read More »
Descartes sat alone in a heated room in 1637, doubting everything he could think of, and arrived at one stubborn truth. He could not doubt that he was doubting. Therefore he existed. Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Almost four centuries later, we have updated the formula. We do not need to think
I Post, therefore I am: The belief that life did not happen unless it was shared Read More »
Descartes never set foot in a shopping mall. He never scrolled through an online checkout at two in the morning, eyes glazed, finger hovering over a button that promised some small renovation of the self. And yet, when he wrote cogito, ergo sum, he handed us the most quietly devastating tool we have for understanding
I Buy, Therefore I Am: The Classic Critique of Consumerist Identity Read More »
There is something deeply strange about a country that discovers oil and then watches its people get poorer. Not strange in the way a magic trick is strange, where you know something clever happened behind the curtain. Strange in the way a fire extinguisher that sprays gasoline is strange. The mechanism that should fix the
Why Resource-Rich Countries Stay Poor: The Modern Dutch Disease Re-examined Read More »