Most economic theories treat the entrepreneur like a vending machine. You insert capital, press a button, and out comes a product. The person running the operation is barely worth mentioning. They are rational. They maximize profit. They respond to incentives like a dog responds to a bell. Joseph Schumpeter thought this was nonsense. Writing in […]
The “Heroic” Entrepreneur: Why Schumpeter Thought You Needed an Ego Read More »
Samuel Huntington argued that the future of conflict would not be drawn along ideological or economic lines, but along civilizational ones. Culture, religion, language, history. These were the fault lines that mattered. The Cold War had fooled everyone into thinking the world was split between capitalism and communism, but once that curtain fell, older and
Crypto Civilizations: Can Blockchain Replace National Identity? Read More »
There is a particular kind of ambition that looks noble from a distance but turns dangerous up close. It is the ambition to unite everyone under a single agreement, a single set of rules, a single moral framework. The people who hold this ambition usually mean well. They talk about cooperation, shared values, and the
Rousseau’s Warning to Globalists: The Danger of Scaling the Social Contract Too Far Read More »
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of modern policy. Governments will subsidize corn, solar panels, electric vehicles, and even beekeeping. But the one institution that arguably produces more social good than any of these – marriage – gets almost nothing. No quarterly check for staying together. No tax rebate for making it past
Why We Should Pay People to Stay Married: The Case for Relationship Subsidies Read More »
John Stuart Mill would have hated your smartphone. Not because of the technology itself. Mill was no Luddite. He believed in progress, in science, in the expansion of human capability. What would have horrified him is what you do with it. Or more precisely, what it does with you. Because here is the uncomfortable truth
Digital Serfdom: Why You Are Less Free Than a Victorian Factory Worker Read More »
There is a comfortable story we like to tell ourselves. It goes something like this: all human beings are born wanting freedom, and the arc of history bends naturally toward liberty. It is a beautiful idea. It is also, according to Samuel Huntington, almost entirely wrong. Huntington, the Harvard political scientist best known for The
Why Freedom Is a Cultural Artifact, Not a Biological Constant Read More »
You probably think power is simple. Someone has it, someone does not. The boss tells you what to do. The government passes a law. The rich guy buys what he wants. End of story. Max Weber, the German sociologist who spent his career dissecting how societies actually work, would tell you that you are barely
The Three Faces of Power: Why Money, Prestige, and Law Run Your Life Read More »
Most of what you learned in school is already wrong. Not wrong in the way a typo is wrong. Wrong in the way a map of the world from 1400 is wrong. The basic shapes are there, but entire continents are missing, the proportions are off, and someone has drawn sea monsters where Australia should
Stop Teaching Facts: Russell’s Revolutionary Method for Critical Thinking Read More »
Most people spend their entire lives trying to be right. They collect opinions like trophies, defend them like territory, and treat any challenge to their beliefs as a personal attack. Karl Popper thought this was exactly backwards. He argued that the whole point of knowledge is not to prove yourself right but to find out
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with running a company. Not the romantic, misunderstood genius kind. The operational kind. The kind where you sit across from a board that wants growth but not risk, employees who want vision but not change, and a market that rewards you on Friday for the same
The One Book Every CEO Should Read (That Is Not a Business Book) Read More »