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What Happens When Democracy Never Outgrows Tribalism? As we watch the spectacle — ordeal, perhaps — of the Kavanaugh confirmation unfold, a thought keeps striking me. There’s no more perfect symbol of American collapse than Brett Kavanaugh. It isn’t just that he’s a force of regress at a time when America desperately needs…

When Defense Mechanisms Replace Working Minds with Broken Myths As I wrote my last essay, about groceries being way more expensive in America compared to Europe, my partner, reading it over my shoulder, said (laughingatme, not with me), “you know, most people just aren’t going to believe it. Americans will mostly make…

Why Wealth Gushed Upwards as Americans Were Taught to Prey on Each Other Harder Sep 19, 2018 Member-only Save Look carefully at this chart. What does it say? It says that Americans aren’t paid what they’re worth — their incomes have flatlined for half a century, but their productivity, which is roughly the profit that … Read more

Why Dignity is the Highest Kind of Freedom My kid sister arrived to visit me this morning, on a 7AM flight, and as she took a nap, unable to sleep, I headed off bleary-eyed to the little street where I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. There, in the morning sunshine, a London taxi … Read more

How the Perverse Idea that Selfishness, Cruelty, and Greed are Good Fuelled Collapse Aug 24, 2018 Member-only Save Here‚Äôs a tiny observation: America developed a moral philosophy that‚Äôs utterly unique in the world, and in history. One that‚Äôs solely its own, not used anywhere else ‚Äî and is fatally, weird, gruesome, and backwards, when you … Read more

Why Are the Fiercest Defenders of Capitalism Those Who’ll Never Be Capitalists? When I was a little boy — maybe six — I made a friend named Rick. An all-American golden boy, as athletic as he was whip-smart, all tousled blond hair and piercing blue eyes, and we met in an all-American way, too — … Read more

Why Capitalism Isn’t the First World Anymore Here’s a tiny question: do you think America is still a first-world country? Life expectancy in Chile’s higher. Kids in Pakistan, Nigeria, and Thailand don’t get massacred at school. Even Rwanda’s building a public healthcare system. So if “first-world” means “well-off”, then something’s gone badly wrong.

What America Still Doesn’t Understand About 21st Century Prosperity Here’s a funny, strange, inconvenient truth. If you want more capitalism, you should also want more socialism. Yes, really. I’ll prove it, in just a second.

What Happens When to a World When There’s Nothing to Run Towards? Here’s a tiny question. Do you remember when we imagined the future as better? How do you think about the future now? If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that you don’t imagine it quite that way anymore. If you … Read more

How Liberalism Became the One Thing it Was Created to Destroy I want to tell you the sad, funny, and strange story of how liberalism destroyed itself. Assuming you’ve looked around the globe lately, the fascists and extremists are winning altogether too easily. It goes like this. Liberalism, once a great and noble philosophy, split … Read more