There is a particular kind of shame that arrives around 11 PM on a Tuesday. You opened your phone three hours ago to check one message. Now you are watching a man in Ohio review gas station hot dogs while a woman in Seoul explains her skincare routine in the bottom corner of the screen. […]
Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” for the TikTok Generation: Why We Cannot Focus Read More »
Voltaire once said something that still slaps centuries later. The line, paraphrased through time, goes roughly like this: it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. He spent his life writing things that got him jailed, exiled, and chased across borders by people with titles and swords. He did not survive that
Why You Cannot Be a Radical on a Minimum Wage Mindset Read More »
Imagine sending the IRS after a bank robber. You file the paperwork. You request his quarterly earnings statement. You ask, politely, for him to declare his stolen income on line 21 under “other earnings.” You remind him about self employment tax. The absurdity is the point. We do not tax criminals because criminals do not
Why Taxes Do Not Work on Criminals (But Fines Might) Read More »
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of modern life. We worship efficiency. We download apps to save three minutes on our commute. We buy ergonomic chairs, productivity planners, and meal kits that promise dinner in fifteen minutes flat. And yet, the moment we reach a certain rung on the social ladder, we begin
Adam Smith is mostly remembered as the cheerful prophet of capitalism, the man who told us that the butcher, the brewer, and the baker would feed us not out of love but out of self interest. We put him on currency. We name buildings after him. We quote his invisible hand at dinner parties to
Is Your Job ‘Wretched and Contemptible’? Smith’s Harsh Grading of Modern Careers Read More »
Here is a thought experiment. Imagine two people apply for the same job. One spent four years at a prestigious university, studying economics, pulling all nighters before exams, and graduating with honors. The other spent those same four years reading every economics textbook ever written, taking free online courses from MIT and Stanford, attending public
There is a strange thing that happens when a billionaire walks into a room. Half the people there will privately resent him. The other half will privately want to be him. And quite often, those two halves live inside the same person. We have been told that the rich are villains, that wealth corrupts, that
Why We Hate the Rich (But Want Their Human Capital): The Logic of Class Envy Read More »
Jean-Baptiste Say had a idea that many economists after him conveniently ignored. While everyone else was busy arguing about land, labor, and gold, Say quietly insisted that the real engine of wealth was something far less glamorous: what you personally know how to do. Your skills, your knowledge, your ability to combine resources in ways
Your Skillset Is Your Capital: How to Audit Your Personal Production Capacity Read More »
Most people who quote Clausewitz have never read him. They know the line about war being politics by other means, and they deploy it at dinner parties like a pocket knife they never actually use. But buried in the dense, unfinished manuscript of On War is an idea far more useful than that famous soundbite.
The Strategic “No”: Clausewitz on the Importance of Limiting Your Scope Read More »
Marcus Tullius Cicero spent most of his life trying to save the Roman Republic from itself. He watched senators trade principle for popularity. He saw demagogues whip crowds into frenzy with half truths and theatrical outrage. He fought, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes desperately, to preserve a system of governance built on reasoned debate, civic duty,
Why Cicero Would View Modern Social Media as a “Psychological Civil War” Read More »