Voltaire never actually said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That line was written by his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, summarizing his attitude. Which is fitting, really. We live in an age where misattributed quotes travel faster than verified ones, and where the […]
The Holy War of Words: Is Political Correctness the New Inquisition? Read More »
You did not choose your face. You did not select the angle of your nose, the width of your jaw, or the particular way your ears sit slightly too far from your skull. These were handed to you without consultation, like a uniform on the first day of a job you never applied for. And
Most people know Voltaire as the sharp tongued French philosopher who mocked the church, irritated monarchs, and wrote Candide. Fewer people know he was also spectacularly rich. Not comfortable. Not well off. Rich in a way that would make modern tech founders pause and do the math. By the time of his death in 1778,
The Billionaire Philosopher: What Voltaire’s Wealth Teaches Us About Modern Independence Read More »
Carl von Clausewitz died in 1831. He never saw a smartphone, never doom scrolled through Twitter, and never watched a TikTok video of someone explaining geopolitics over a makeup tutorial. Yet his most famous strategic concept, the “center of gravity,” describes the modern social media landscape with an accuracy that should make every living strategist
Imagine a man who takes forty five minutes to explain why you should not lie to a murderer standing at your door asking where your friend is hiding. Now imagine that man on Twitter. Welcome to the nightmare of Immanuel Kant in the age of hot takes. Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, a
Why Kant Would Be the Most Hated Man on Twitter/X Read More »
There is a particular kind of person who wakes up every morning burdened by the weight of problems that are not theirs. They scroll through the news, absorb the suffering of strangers in distant countries, and feel personally responsible for fixing all of it. They post about injustice. They sign petitions. They argue at dinner
Stop Trying to Save the World: The Radical Ethics of Minding Your Own Business Read More »
In 1821, David Ricardo did something unusual for an economist who had spent his career defending machinery. He changed his mind. In the third edition of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, he added a new chapter titled “On Machinery,” in which he admitted that the introduction of machines could, in fact, hurt workers.
Why ChatGPT Is the New “Steam Engine” of the Intellectual Class Read More »
There is a quiet injustice in the history of ideas. The people who plant the seeds rarely get credit for the forest. Ask anyone to name the father of data science, and you will hear familiar names. Maybe Thomas Bayes. Maybe John Tukey, who coined the term “data analysis” in 1962. Maybe some Silicon Valley
Is Condorcet the Real Father of Modern Data Science? Read More »
When people think of radical economic thinkers, they tend to reach for the obvious names. Marx, with his barricades and manifestos. Keynes, with his cocktail party brilliance and government spending programs. Maybe Milton Friedman, cigar in hand, telling everyone that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Almost nobody reaches for Jean Baptiste Say.
Why Jean Baptiste Say Is the Most Radical Man in the History of Money Read More »
The modern state has an appetite. It consumes revenue the way a growing organism consumes nutrients, always requiring more to sustain its expanding functions. We accept this as normal, even inevitable. But Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, writing in eighteenth-century France, saw something different when he looked at heavy taxation. He saw the slow
Taxation as Tyranny: Montesquieu’s Argument for a Frugal Republic Read More »