Thorstein Veblen died in 1929, broke and largely forgotten, in a cabin outside Palo Alto. He would have appreciated the irony. The man who spent his career dissecting how the wealthy perform their wealth could not have imagined that nearly a century later, teenagers on a Chinese social media app would prove his theories with […]
The Cult of the “Old Money” Aesthetic: A Veblenian Analysis of TikTok Trends Read More »
There is a peculiar cruelty in the way we treat people who succeed without our permission. Not without our help. Without our permission. Because somewhere deep in the architecture of human psychology, we have appointed ourselves the gatekeepers of who deserves what. And the fastest way to fail that invisible audit is to show up
Why We Are Programmed to Hate Success We Did Not Witness Read More »
You woke up this morning as a reasonably decent person. You recycled. You held the door for someone. You even let that car merge in traffic, which practically makes you a saint. Then you opened Instagram, scrolled for eleven minutes, and somehow ended up coveting your neighbor’s kitchen renovation, resenting your best friend’s vacation, and
Why Your Moral Compass Resets Every Time You Open Instagram Read More »
There is a particular kind of pride people take in calling themselves perfectionists. They say it in job interviews. They whisper it like a confession that is actually a brag. “I just care too much about quality.” It sounds noble. It sounds like the mark of someone who refuses to settle. But Herbert Simon, a
Why Being a “Perfectionist” is Actually Irrational (According to a Nobel Prize Winner) Read More »
You have access to more information right now than every human who lived before 1900 combined. You carry a device in your pocket that connects you to the sum total of recorded knowledge. You can learn quantum physics at breakfast and Renaissance art history over lunch. And yet you are not meaningfully smarter than your
Your Brain is a Bottleneck: Why “Learning More” is a Waste of Time Read More »
There is an old line, usually attributed to Bismarck but probably older than him, that laws are like sausages. You should never watch either one being made. Most people hear this and chuckle. George Stigler, the Nobel laureate economist from the University of Chicago, heard it and thought: actually, let us watch. Let us watch
The Policy Factory: Why Laws Are Manufactured Exactly Like Sausages Read More »
You have probably been in this situation before. You are sitting across from someone at dinner, or scrolling through a comment thread, and someone says something that is obviously, demonstrably wrong. So you do what any reasonable person would do. You pull out the facts. You cite the numbers. You present the evidence like a
The Rothbardian case against the protective state You lock your front door at night. You check reviews before buying a car seat for your kid. You read the ingredients on food labels. You do these things because you care about safety. Nobody had to pass a law to make you care. And yet, somewhere along
How Government “Safety” Regulations Actually Make You Less Safe Read More »
There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a dinner table when someone announces they are studying philosophy. It is the same silence that follows a bad joke, except nobody is sure whether to laugh or offer condolences. The parents exchange a glance. An uncle clears his throat. Someone, inevitably, asks the question
Can Philosophy Pay the Bills? Russell’s Defense of “Useless” Arts Read More »
Here is a strange idea. What if the thing making you miserable is not your childhood, not your boss, not the economy, and not your ex? What if it is your sentences? Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher who gave away a family fortune and spent years tormenting himself over the meaning of meaning, believed something
Your Problems Are Just Mistakes in Grammar (And How to Fix Them) Read More »