There is a particular kind of magic trick that management consultants have perfected over the last century. You take an old idea, give it a new name, wrap it in certifications and colored belts, and sell it back to organizations as if it just fell from the sky. Lean Six Sigma is perhaps the most […]
Why Lean Six Sigma Is Just Taylorism in a Fancy Suit Read More »
There is a man whose ideas quietly run your company. He has been dead for nearly a century. He never raised a seed round, never posted a thread on X, and never pivoted. His name is Henri Fayol, and he understood more about building organizations than most of the people currently gracing the covers of
Why Henri Fayol Is More Relevant to Your Startup Than Sam Altman Read More »
The Enlightenment had a problem. It told everyone to think for themselves, question authority, and trust reason. Wonderful advice. But after a few decades of everyone thinking for themselves, Europe found itself drowning in revolutions, guillotines, and philosophical arguments that went nowhere. Freedom of thought, it turned out, was excellent at tearing things down. It
Auguste Comte: The Man Who Made the Enlightenment Scientific Read More »
There is a man you have never heard of who designed your Monday morning. He decided when you clock in, how your tasks are divided, why your boss watches your screen, and why your lunch break is exactly thirty minutes. He has been dead for over a century, and he is still your most influential
Scientific Management: The Reason You Hate Your Job Read More »
There is something deeply strange about the fact that the people who benefit most from capitalism are often its loudest critics. University professors with tenure, writers with publishing deals, journalists at major outlets, artists funded by grants or wealthy patrons. These are not the wretched of the earth. They are, by any historical standard, among
Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism, According to Schumpeter Read More »
Your boss has probably never read a single page of Das Kapital. They might not even know the difference between Marx and Engels. But they hate Karl Marx. Not the person, necessarily. They hate what he represents. They hate the questions he asked, because those questions have a nasty habit of making the answers uncomfortable.
You scrolled for forty minutes last night. You know this because your phone told you so, in that passive aggressive weekly report it sends like a concerned parent. And what did you gain? A vague sense that everyone is on vacation, everyone is in love, and everyone has better abs than you. This is not
Why Your Instagram Feed Never Makes You Happy (A Schopenhauerian Answer) Read More »
There is something almost comic about the way we argue. We gather our facts. We line them up neatly like soldiers. We march them toward the opposing view with full confidence that the sheer weight of evidence will do the work. And then nothing happens. The other person blinks, nods politely, and goes right on
Why Facts Don’t Change Minds: The Deeper Structure of Belief Read More »
There is something almost comedic about it. A 19th century German philosopher who went insane, wrote in aphorisms, and once declared God dead has become the most quoted thinker in podcasts, self help lectures, and online intellectual culture. Friedrich Nietzsche shows up everywhere. Jordan Peterson references him constantly. So does Sam Harris. So do the
Why Jordan Peterson (and Others) Keep Returning to Friedrich Nietzsche Read More »
Max Weber died in 1920, which means he never had to spend forty minutes on hold with his insurance company, only to be transferred three times and then disconnected. He never filled out forms in triplicate. He never received an email asking him to complete a survey about his experience filling out a form. And
The Bureaucracy Diet: How to Survive a World Built on Red Tape Read More »