There is a comforting story we like to tell about progress. It goes something like this: a clever person has a wonderful idea, the world recognizes its brilliance, customers line up, competitors politely step aside, and everyone ends up better off. Cue the TED Talk. Cue the applause. Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist who spent […]
Innovation is a Blood Sport: Why Nice Guys Do Not Build the Future Read More »
There is a strange thing that happens when you read John Locke today. You expect a dusty seventeenth century philosopher in a powdered wig, mumbling about property and government. Instead, you find a man who sounds suspiciously like he is live tweeting our current culture wars from beyond the grave. Locke is the patron saint
Could Locke Defend Cancel Culture? Re-Examining the Limits of Free Thought Read More »
Twenty four centuries ago, a Greek philosopher with a receding hairline and an obsession for classifying everything from squids to syllogisms sat down and wrote a book that would later be plagiarized, repackaged, and resold as every modern self help title you have ever ignored on an airport bookshelf. The book was called Rhetoric. Aristotle
The Rhetoric-to-Riches Pipeline: Aristotle’s Guide to Influence and Success Read More »
There is a strange idea floating around in modern life. It tells us that real victory only counts when it comes from a fair fight. Two equals, same rules, same starting line, may the better one win. It sounds noble. It also happens to be one of the most expensive lies a person can believe.
The Myth of the “Fair Fight”: How to Win by Making the Conflict Uneven Read More »
There is a particular genre of internet content that promises you the secret schedule of a genius. Wake at 5am like this CEO. Cold plunge like that founder. Read for an hour before touching your phone. The implication is always the same: copy the routine, inherit the results. Voltaire would have found this funny. Not
The Voltaire Morning Routine: Coffee, Spite, and 18 Hours of Work Read More »
In 1748, a French aristocrat published a book that would quietly reshape how Europeans thought about why some nations grew rich while others stayed poor. His name was Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, and his book, The Spirit of the Laws, attempted something audacious. He wanted to explain human civilization itself. Not through divine
In 1845, a French economist named Frédéric Bastiat sat down and wrote one of the most devastating pieces of satire in the history of economics. It was called “The Candlemakers’ Petition,” and it pretended to be a formal complaint from the makers of candles, lamps, and lanterns. Their grievance? A foreign competitor was flooding the
The Bot-Made Petition: If Robots Could Write a Letter to the Government Read More »
When Samuel Huntington published Who Are We? in 2004, most reviewers treated it as the cranky last chapter of a career that had peaked with The Clash of Civilizations. He was accused of nativism, alarmism, and a certain unbecoming nostalgia for an America that may have never existed in the form he remembered. Two decades
Why Migration is the Ultimate Geopolitical Weapon Read More »
In 1790, a French mathematician named Nicolas de Condorcet wrote something that should have ended several debates before they even began. He argued that rights were not gifts handed down by kings or granted by tradition. They were the logical consequence of being a thinking creature capable of suffering, reasoning, and forming preferences about its
Why AI Needs Human Rights: Condorcet’s Framework for Defining Sentience and Agency Read More »
There is a phrase that has wormed its way into every corporate handbook, every LinkedIn post, every wellness seminar held in a windowless conference room with stale pastries. That phrase is work-life balance. It sounds noble. It sounds like progress. It sounds like something your employer cares about because there is a poster about it
Why Work-Life Balance is a Myth Designed to Keep You Working Read More »