Your authentic self is probably holding you back. I know how that sounds. We live in an age where authenticity is the supreme virtue. Bring your whole self to work. Be genuine. Stay true to who you are. The self help section of every bookstore groans under the weight of books telling you to dig […]
Stop Being “Authentic” and Start Being Efficient Read More »
You cut someone off in traffic because your child is vomiting in the back seat and you need to pull over immediately. The other driver thinks you’re a selfish idiot. Later that week, someone cuts you off and you think they’re a selfish idiot. You have no idea they’re rushing to the hospital. This isn’t
Dan Ariely on Why We Judge Others by Their Actions but Ourselves by Our Intentions Read More »
Carl von Clausewitz never met a management consultant. The Prussian general, writing in the early 19th century, would have found their obsession with efficiency puzzling. He spent his career studying war, the messiest human endeavor imaginable, and came to understand something most modern leaders have forgotten: friction is not a bug in the system. It
Carl von Clausewitz on Why Capable Modern Leaders are Too Afraid of “Friction” Read More »
Picture this: a city that knows when you wake up, tracks how you move, adjusts traffic lights before you arrive, and manages energy down to the last watt. Sensors everywhere. Data flowing like rivers. Algorithms making thousands of decisions per second. This is the dream of the smart city, sold to us as the future
Why ‘Smart Cities’ Are Actually Very Stupid (Friedrich Hayek) Read More »
Every business book tells you the same story. The customer is king. Listen to your market. Give people what they want. Build your product around consumer needs. This advice sounds so reasonable that questioning it feels almost heretical. Yet Joseph Schumpeter, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, thought this entire framework
Forget the Consumer: The Entrepreneur is the Only Person Who Matters (Joseph Schumpeter) Read More »
Your manager walks past your desk for the fifth time today. She hovers. She checks. She corrects the font size on your presentation. She reminds you about the deadline you already circled in red on your calendar. This is managing. And according to Henri Fayol, the man who essentially invented modern management theory back in
Why You Should Stop Managing & Start Organizing (Henri Fayol) Read More »
Your uncle just shared another post about how Big Pharma is hiding the cure for everything. Your wellness influencer swears by a detox tea that cleanses your aura. That guy from high school is now an expert on climate science, vaccines, and the true shape of the Earth, apparently all at once. Welcome to the
How to Spot a Pseudo-Scientist in Your Social Media Feed (Karl Popper) Read More »
In 1600, merchants convinced Queen Elizabeth I to grant them a monopoly on trade with the East Indies. The pitch: we’ll bring back exotic goods, expand English influence, and share profits with the Crown. In 2015, technologists convinced Silicon Valley that AI should be developed as a nonprofit for humanity’s benefit. The pitch: we’ll build
Why OpenAI is the New East India Company (A David Ricardo Reading) Read More »
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes made a bold prediction. By now, he said, we’d all be working about 15 hours a week. Three hour workdays. A perpetual long weekend. Technology would make us so productive that we’d meet all our needs in a fraction of the time, leaving us to wrestle with the
The ‘Bullshit Job’ Economy: Why Keynes Predicted We’d Invent Fake Work Read More »
Most people know Ayn Rand as the woman who made selfishness sound like a good thing. Fewer know that her ideas, controversial as they remain, offer something genuinely useful for anyone trying to build something from nothing. You don’t have to worship at the altar of Atlas Shrugged to extract practical wisdom from her work.
5 Lessons from Ayn Rand for the Modern Entrepreneur Read More »