There is a particular kind of optimism that sounds beautiful in speeches and falls apart on contact with reality. It goes something like this: if we just remove the barriers between peoples, if we dissolve the lines on maps and let cultures flow freely into one another, peace will follow naturally. Humanity will recognize its […]
Why Peace Requires Harder Borders, Not Softer Ones Read More »
Samuel Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations in 1993. The Berlin Wall had just fallen. Liberal democracy was supposed to sweep the planet like a benign virus. Francis Fukuyama had already declared the end of history, and most of the Western intellectual establishment was ready to pop champagne. Huntington refused to drink. Instead, he argued
Why an Islamic GPT and a Chinese GPT Will Never Agree Read More »
There is a particular kind of modern sermon that gets preached in graduation speeches, LinkedIn posts, and motivational podcasts. It goes something like this: find your passion, do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life. It sounds beautiful. It sounds liberating. Karl Marx would have found it terrifying. Not
Why Karl Marx Would Call Your “Dream Job” a Nightmare Read More »
There is a particular kind of person who has read every productivity book, installed every task management app, and color coded their calendar down to the minute. They can tell you about time blocking, the Pomodoro technique, Eisenhower matrices, and at least three different ways to process an inbox. They are also, almost always, behind
Why Most “Productivity Hacks” Are Just Sophisticated Procrastination Read More »
There is a peculiar kind of cruelty that disguises itself as compassion. It shows up in boardrooms and legislatures, in university policies and dinner table arguments. It says: everyone should end up in the same place, regardless of what they did to get there. It sounds generous. It sounds humane. And according to Ayn Rand,
There is a peculiar war that has been raging for centuries. It does not involve armies or territories. No shots are fired. No treaties are signed. Yet its consequences shape economies, cultures, and the very fabric of how societies organize themselves. This is the war between the intellectual class and the entrepreneur. And the man
The Intellectual Class vs. The Entrepreneur: The Eternal Cold War Read More »
There is something almost comedic about the fact that one of the most influential thinkers in modern ethics had a nervous breakdown at twenty. John Stuart Mill, the man who would go on to write the definitive text on liberty and reshape how we think about happiness, fell apart before he was old enough to
There is a particular kind of madness that strikes otherwise rational people when they walk into a car dealership. The floors are polished. The cars gleam under lights engineered to make sheet metal look like sculpture. A salesperson appears, friendly but not too eager, and begins a conversation that will eventually arrive at the only
The True Cost of a New Car (It Is Not the Monthly Payment) Read More »
You are forty three years old. You have the house, the career, the retirement account. And yet you wake up on a Tuesday morning with the distinct feeling that none of it means anything. Welcome to the midlife crisis, that peculiar modern ailment where people who have everything suddenly feel like they have nothing. Now,
How to “Produce” Your Way Out of a Mid-Life Crisis Read More »
You can buy a Karl Marx t-shirt on Amazon for $19.99. It ships in two days if you have Prime. The shirt says something like “I Hate Capitalism” or features Marx’s bearded face screen printed in red, and it arrives in a plastic mailer produced in a factory overseas, sold by a third party vendor