Power Without Excellence
The editors of major media outlets and the public figures who appear in them as “officials” and “experts” speak a language different from that of ordinary people in everyday life.…
Measuring Corporate Power
Matthew Yglesias recently published a sharp-edged essay arguing that all the talk about “corporate power” and the need to rein it in amounts to little more than empty sloganeering. If…
Education in Heaven
If it were possible to implement an optimal educational program for children and young people—one aligned with their psychological development and attentive to what human beings actually need in life—it…
Power Over Rules
The idea that fair rules are binding in themselves is largely an illusion. The powerful can be compelled to honor agreements only by someone more powerful still—and no one, in…
The Great Redistribution
When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared that more wealth has been created since the 1980s than in the entirety of previous human history, he was not merely exaggerating. He was…
From experience to experiment
A few days ago I wrote about a decisive turning point in human history: the transition from experience to experiment. Experimentation allows us to see more clearly and produces more…