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 »
Every time you scroll through a feed, tap “accept” on a cookie banner, or type a search query, you are producing something. You are generating data. Clicks, locations, preferences, habits, relationships, fears, desires. All of it captured, stored, processed, and sold. The question nobody seems to settle is whether any of that belongs to you.
Is Your Data Your Property? The 300 Year Old Answer from John Locke Read More »
Adam Smith never meant to make you stupid. When he wrote about pin factories in 1776, he was trying to explain why England was getting rich. One worker draws the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it. Eighteen distinct operations to make a single pin. Ten workers could make 48,000
The Paradox of Plenty: Why Specialization Makes You Richer and Dumber Read More »
You wake up tomorrow and gravity stops working. Your coffee floats away. Your car drifts into the sky. The sun decides not to rise. Ridiculous, right? But here’s the uncomfortable question: why are you so sure it won’t happen? Because it never has? Because the laws of physics are reliable? David Hume, the 18th century
Why Science is a Religion Built on Habit (David Hume) Read More »