Politics

TLDR: Conservatives believe in jungle law (survival of the fittest), while socialists risk creating dependency We need a third way: guarantee human dignity while demanding everyone contribute more than they receive Five pillars—healthcare, food, shelter, education, and the obligation to give back more than you take—create a society that’s both more humane and more resilient than either extreme offers The Dead End of Left vs. Right We’re stuck in a tired debate. The right looks at society and sees the jungle—survival of the strongest, competition as the organizing principle, let the weak fall away. There’s an honesty to this: nature is brutal, competition drives evolution, comfort breeds weakness. ...

There’s a phrase in Latin that refuses to let us hide: hic et nunc—here and now. Whatever your story—your religion, your cosmology, your philosophy of where souls come from or where they’re headed—today you are a human among humans. You woke up inside this species, on this planet, with agency. That is enough to give you a duty. Respect the origin story. Respect the destination. But protect the present. I’m convinced of something simple: if, by whatever cosmic lottery, your consciousness ended up in a living human, then you are responsible for what happens to us—now. Not responsible for everything, but responsible to someone. Responsible for the choices you touch, the systems you influence, the harms you prevent, the goods you can advance. ...

TLDR: Regulation is inevitable—if democratic institutions don’t write the rules, corporations will through their “permission systems” Current complex regulations favor large companies while crushing small competitors, creating digital feudalism where platforms extract rent from participation The solution isn’t eliminating rules but creating thin, open, transparent protocols like the early internet that enable innovation without permission How We Traded Democratic Rules for Corporate Permissions Regulation is the landscape, not the weather. Whether you’re building an app, writing a newsletter, selling crafts online, or just trying to share your work with the world, you will encounter rules that shape what’s possible. If democratic institutions don’t write them, the market’s largest players will. The question isn’t whether we’ll have rules—it’s who writes them, and whether they serve the many or the few. ...

TLDR: Labels like “left/right” or “elite/worker” don’t just describe reality—they create and reinforce the divisions we claim to oppose Inverting our language (“cancer got this person” vs “person has cancer”) externalizes conditions rather than making them defining features AI could amplify collective wisdom without the distorting lens of political categorization, helping us see each other as humans first Small linguistic shifts can create cascading changes in how we perceive reality and relate to each other In a world increasingly defined by division, we find ourselves trapped in a paradoxical cycle: the categories we create to understand our society reinforce the divisions we claim to oppose. Left or right, Democrat or Republican, worker or elite, pro-choice or pro-life—these labels don’t just describe reality; they actively shape it. ...

TLDR: The West’s problem isn’t “too much empathy” but selective application that prioritizes economic interests over human welfare Western powers maintain relationships with authoritarian regimes for resource access while ignoring their populations’ suffering True empathy would address root causes of displacement rather than exploiting desperate migrants for cheap labor Resources exist globally to meet everyone’s basic needs—what’s lacking is political will, not compassion Introduction In a recent podcast interview, Elon Musk suggested that “too much empathy” poses a problem for Western societies. This perspective, while provocative, misdiagnoses the actual issue at hand. The real problem isn’t an excess of empathy but rather its absence where it matters most. What we witness today is not too much compassion but a selective, inconsistent application of empathetic values—one that prioritizes economic self-interest and geopolitical convenience over genuine human concern. ...