American Supplicants: What to Expect from the State Department as a U.S. Expat
The U.S. has enough money to bomb faraway places in sneak attacks - Iran being the most recent example - and yet doesn’t seem to have the money to fund, or at least administer, what it calls American Citizen Services i.e. ACS. ACS is part of the…
Crossing Into Belarus, Europe’s Last Dictatorship
It wasn’t until we crossed into Belarus that anyone in the car spoke. It could have been 1986, not 2026, in terms of how Soviet it all felt. Here’s the scene: Four strangers in a Volvo SUV, who had been in the car together for the better part of…
Dark Clouds Over the Rainbow Nation: South Africa Today
After spending upwards of a year on the ground here in South Africa and having read quite a bit of the history on the place (it’s a never-ending wormhole, let me tell you) I’ve come to believe that the following quote from Rian Malan,…
The Most Important Hire for a New Dad
Quality, reliable child care is the great unlock. Want to go to the gym? Go for a run? Go out with friends in the evening? Show up on time for a call and be prepared for it? Do deep work that's uninterrupted? You need an extra set of reliable,…
Debate vs. Denounce: How Cancel Culture Replaced Civil Disagreement
It’s October 2020, and I’m at the Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit at Jekyll Island, Georgia – the site where the Federal Reserve was founded in 1910. Timing-wise, this was deep COVID. The lockdowns were in full swing. Sweden was running its…
Zero-Sum vs. Positive-Sum Thinking: Why the Game You Think You’re Playing Determines Everything
Economists stumbled upon something interesting a while back. Two different default assumptions about the world that shape how people see almost everything. Zero-sum thinking. There’s a fixed pool of any specific good. For you to have more,…
Rule of Law vs. Rule by Law: The Two-Letter Distinction That Encapsulates Felt Power
Americans like to believe that justice…
Critic vs. Revolutionary: How to Transmute What’s Wrong Into What’s Right
Table of Contents Criticism Is Cheap The Dopamine Hit of Being Right Shouting Into a System That Doesn’t Listen When Acting Locally Doesn’t Work Two Revolutions, One Lesson The Algorithm Loves a Takedown The Spectrum Between Critiquing and…
Here’s…