Streets vs. Roads: An Ode to Dutch Urban Design
Leave the microstates and Malta aside and the Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe, at roughly 520 people per square kilometer. And yet when you’re in a Dutch city, it doesn’t feel that way. The biggest reason is…
Voice vs. Exit: Stay and Fight, or Leave and Build?
You are unhappy with something you belong to. A company, a church, a party, a platform, a country. You have exactly two instruments. You can complain and try to change it from inside. Or you can leave. Albert Hirschman named them in 1970, in…
Suffrage vs. Turnout: The Two Voting Filters
Table of Contents The first filter: who is allowed to vote The second filter: who actually votes What first-filter reforms actually produce What the second filter is actually producing Why reform energy goes to the wrong filter A note on…
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…
By the late…