There is a particular kind of anxiety that grips people when currencies wobble. You see it in the headlines. You hear it at dinner parties where someone who just discovered gold ETFs suddenly speaks with the authority of a central banker. The dollar is dying, they say. Protect yourself. Buy gold. Buy crypto. Buy Swiss […]
Don’t Hedge Against the Dollar. Hedge With Your Own Productivity Read More »
Carl von Clausewitz never pitched a VC. He never had to explain his burn rate on a board call or pretend to enjoy a team offsite. He spent his career studying Napoleon, fighting in wars he sometimes lost, and writing a book he never finished. He died in 1831 of cholera, which is about as
5 Lessons from a 19th Century General That Will Save Your Startup (Clausewitz) Read More »
There is a peculiar disease spreading through modern business culture. It lives in keynote speeches, bestselling books, and corporate retreats held at places with too many glass windows. The disease is this: everyone wants to be a “leader.” Nobody wants to be an “administrator.” Say the word “leader” in a room full of professionals and
Why You Should Stop Trying to Be a “Leader” and Start Being an “Administrator” 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 »
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 »
Most people think of economic progress as a straight line going up. More jobs, more wealth, more comfort. A rising tide that lifts all boats. It is a pleasant image. It is also completely wrong. Joseph Schumpeter knew this. The Austrian economist, writing in the middle of the twentieth century, looked at capitalism and saw
There is a particular kind of discomfort that arrives when someone says profit is good. Not useful. Not necessary. Good. The word lands like a brick through a stained glass window. We have been trained, culturally and emotionally, to treat profit with suspicion. It is the thing corporations chase at the expense of rivers and
Why Profit Is the Only Honest Metric of Human Value Read More »
In 1803, a French economist named Jean-Baptiste Say made a claim that most people ignored for about two hundred years. He argued that the entrepreneur’s real job was not to own land or accumulate capital. It was to combine knowledge, judgment, and imagination into something the world did not yet know it needed. He called
The Intellectual Entrepreneur: Why Ideas Are the Raw Materials of the 21st Century Read More »