Power and Public Life.

Democracy · Revised from a 2015 article

Open Source and Democracy

What changes when citizens turn idle time into statesmanship?

Immigration · Civic Continuity

An Apron & an Admission

Why are citizens quick to claim a nation’s triumphs, yet reluctant to inherit its mistakes?

Health Care · Game Theory

The Bluff-Fueled Price Spiral

How opaque estimates, inflated charges, and defensive bargaining turned American health care pricing into a self-sustaining bluff.

Band-Aid Politics · Bipartisanship

The Limits of Band-Aid Politics

Modern politics has become remarkably skilled at treating symptoms. That is something, I suppose. A Band-Aid may stop the bleeding. But when the bleeding comes from…

Abundance · Automation

Who Needs Sticks in a True Carrot Economy?

For most of human history, societies have used some combination of carrots and sticks to regulate access to resources and shape behavior. In the justice system, the…

Civil Rights · History

A Wallet-Free Conversation About Reparations

Tuning Out the Static Few subjects provoke as much immediate disagreement as reparations for slavery. For many people—some unwittingly, others perhaps…

ai · Artificial Intelligence

The Receding Goal: AI, Development, and Class Divides

The artificial intelligence revolution does not simply divide people into optimists and pessimists. It divides those who have the conditions to use the future from…

Class · Ideology

Meritocracy: A Slippery Eel in Olive Oil

On competence, inherited wealth, and the politics of deservedness Meritocracy is one of the most cherished moral stories in highly individualistic societies. It…

Civil Liberties · Digital ID

The Rise of the Left-Libertarian

Why some liberals are becoming libertarian about power without becoming conservative about government. Something is shifting inside liberal politics, but the old…

globalism · identity

Nativism Sells Like Hotcakes

The oldest fear in the human brain, served hot with fries. Pete Hegseth went to Normandy, on the anniversary of D-Day, and spoke of European beaches being “stormed”…

ai · artificial inteligence

Technology & National Boundaries: A Civilization Mismatch

One of the stranger realizations that emerges from studying Big History and complexity theory is that technological progress and social maturity do not necessarily…

adam smith · ai

The Cerberus Market

Commodity, Broker, Consumer: Marx, Keynes, and Smith on AI Capitalism The economic problem is simple enough to state plainly: if capitalism weakens the consumer,…

economy · finance

A Nation with a Tired Playbook

On national identity, threat, and how deep the blade went under the skin When I first moved to the United States, one of the things that struck me most was the…

Creative Work · Revised from the archive

Image: Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig · CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Gratuity and Gratitude as Game Changers

Generosity expands access. Reciprocity sustains its source. A principle of shared value through authorship, recognition, and support for creative work.

Social Protection · Revised from the archive

The Welfare State and Technological Revolution

If technological innovation creates profits while displacing workers, part of those gains should help finance social protection.