Article Summaries
6/16/26
AI, Fear, and Why We’ve Been Here Before
Every day the growing hysteria over the potential of AI to negatively affect our lives reaches a new level.
History teaches us that there is no value in fearing or trying to impede the relentless march of technology in our universe.
All prior technology revolutions have been met with fear and resistance, and each time technology prevailed and our worst fears did not.
The big arc of history
By the time the U.S. was founded, 90 percent of Americans were farmers; today, fewer than 2 percent of American workers are employed in agriculture and ranching.
The Industrial Revolution replaced hand production with machines, cottage industries with factories, and artisan skill with assembly lines, and yet no one, I assume, would choose to go back.
The transition wasn’t always easy
In the early 1800s, bands of English textile workers called the Luddites went on a campaign of industrial sabotage, smashing mechanical looms and stocking frames across England.
The printing press created panic but did not destroy the scribes’ world - it created publishing, journalism, universal literacy, and eventually the Enlightenment.
The jobs of the future are always unimaginable
In 1990, no one predicted the app developer, the social media manager, the data scientist, the cybersecurity analyst, or the podcast producer.
Fear focuses on the eliminated tasks; history is made by the new categories.
AI is different and the same
AI doesn’t just impact manual labor and routine clerical work; it also affects cognitive tasks - the kind of work that, for the past century, only humans were able to do. That is different.
The productivity gains AI generates, however, will flow through the economy, and we will all benefit from higher output, lower costs, and new categories of human activity. That is the same.
How should we react?
The countries that thrive will be the ones that treat adaptation as a serious national project to run to, not from.
We must engage in a serious discussion about how to reform education to emphasize judgment, creativity, and the ability to supervise AI systems rather than compete with them.
We need to build workforce retraining pathways for people of all ages and disciplines.
And finally, we need to understand the national security implications.
Back to the lesson of history
Every generation that lived through a major technological transition had people who believed the change was too big, too fast, and fundamentally different from anything that had come before. And yet, here we are.
This is a pro-growth opportunity and we should seize it, as the potential productivity gains from AI have the potential to dramatically reverse the growing affordability problem Americans are facing in the areas of housing, healthcare, and food.
Humans overcame their fear to cross oceans and go to the moon; we now need to contain our fear and harness AI to create a better world.
6/9/26
Mayor Mamdani, Rent Control, and Multiple Intelligences
NYC Mayor Mamdani provides a startling example of the possession of brilliance and profound ignorance at the same time.
Not only do the principles covered in any high school economics course demonstrate why rent control can’t work, but the very history of NYC also provides the real-world case study to prove the theory.
First, the economics
Limit the price that landlords can charge for apartments and you will get fewer apartments.
Add to that a regulatory burden
According to Peter Salins of the Manhattan Institute in a 1996 study the regulatory structure had become the most complex and housing-unfriendly development ordinance of any large city.
What the numbers show
In the early 1960s, NYC’s private developers were building over 45,000 dwellings a year; by 1994, total housing development had fallen to roughly 7,500 units a year.
Compare this to Dallas and Houston, where over eight new residential building permits per 1,000 existing dwelling units were issued while NYC issued 1.34.
The modern data show nothing has changed
Despite having nearly twice the population, NYC issued 57,929 permits in 2024 versus 71,788 for Dallas-Fort Worth and 65,747 for Houston.
NYC is not failing to build because developers don’t want to build there -- it is failing because the regulatory structure makes building uneconomic in too many cases.
The apartments themselves
Housing subject to rent control has 79% more maintenance deficiencies than market-rate rentals.
Landlords have chosen to remove an estimated 88,000 rent-stabilized apartments from the market rather than upgrade and re-rent them.
And now Mamdani proposes to double down
He has proposed freezing rents for roughly two million tenants and will impose a $40 per hour wage and benefit minimum for workers on any city-financed construction project.
He is expanding the very regulatory system that has created the problem he aspires to fix.
What it gets right
He proposes to identify unoccupied city-owned property for housing development and create a process for streamlining the permitting process.
But it’s not enough
You cannot freeze rents, extend regulation to more buildings, mandate premium construction wages on subsidized projects, and simultaneously expect private capital to show up and build at scale.
A better answer
Phase out all rent regulation
Attack the burdensome and duplicative regulation that raises the cost of building
Capital flows to cities that welcome it, and NYC does not have a shortage of people who want to live there or investors who want to build there.
6/1/26
Big Problems Require Big Consensus
All of our large problems are long term in nature - climate change, our debt level, the coming depletion of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, the growing housing shortage, the cost of healthcare, and the coming AI revolution in the labor market.
The presidential and congressional cycle, however, is short term. When you combine that with parties that govern for the fringes, nothing gets done.
When consensus is missing
The Inflation Reduction Act, the Paris Accords, and the ACA passed along party lines and the Republicans have worked to weaken them since.
When consensus holds
The CHIPS Act of 2022 and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 passed with meaningful Republican support and both are largely intact today.
Big things require big consensus
The Interstate Highway System was signed by Eisenhower, the Clean Air Act was signed by Nixon in 1970, and Social Security was created by Roosevelt. All had consensus and all have endured across generations.
The modern executive order
Presidents use executive orders to avoid building consensus in Congress. Subsequent presidents lift them.
The lesson is simple
Consensus is not just good politics - it is the only way a democracy solves a problem that outlasts any single administration.
Problems just get bigger
Each of the examples listed is substantial, generational in nature, and only getting larger.
Enduring solutions sufficient to actually address the magnitude of the challenge will require a solution driven from the middle and passed with bipartisan consensus.
The Wisdom of Raymond
Former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond famously said “Presidents come and go; Exxon doesn’t come and go.” He could just as easily have been describing what good government looks like.
The wells we drill today will still be pumping 50 years from now - so will the problems we refuse to solve together.
5/26/26
Senator Durbin Asked the Right Question
Senator Durbin asked out loud what all Americans should be thinking: why, after weeks of U.S. bombing, could Iran still block the Strait of Hormuz?
The best the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs could offer was “it’s complicated.”
Is it really so complicated?
The U.S. spent approximately $954 billion on defense in fiscal year 2025 - more than the next six countries combined.
Iran spent an estimated $7.9 billion in 2024; even if quadrupled to be conservative, that is less than three percent of what we spend.
The administration cannot have it both ways
Secretary Hegseth repeatedly declared we have the strongest, most lethal military on the planet.
If that is true, why can’t we handle little Iran?
And why does a band of Houthi militants manage to strike a U.S. base?
We are still building the army for the last war
The F-35 program is projected to exceed $2 trillion in lifecycle costs - the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history.
Cost-plus contracts reimburse contractors for all expenses and guarantee a profit margin, eliminating every incentive to control costs.
The U.S. Navy has used a $2 million Standard Missile to intercept a $2,000 Houthi drone and a
Patriot PAC-3 interceptor costs $4 to $7 million per shot against an Iranian Shahed drone that costs roughly $50,000.
Iran and its proxies are not trying to defeat our military - they are trying to drain it.
Ukraine has shown us the future, and we are not paying attention
Ukraine reduced its reliance on imported defense equipment from 54 percent in 2022 to 18 percent in 2025, with drones now accounting for a dominant share of battlefield operations.
Where the U.S. fires a $4 million Patriot interceptor at a cheap drone, Ukraine built a $5,000 FPV quadcopter that hunts the same target.
China, however, has been paying close attention
China holds a 90 percent share of the U.S. commercial drone market and 80 percent of the global market.
The Heritage Foundation assessed that the U.S. would not win a drone war with China - its roughly 20 drone models face China’s millions.
A September 2025 Center for a New American Security wargame concluded that without deep counter-drone stockpiles, China could overwhelm U.S. forces and win a war over Taiwan.
In January 2026, the PLA demonstrated one soldier supervising 200 autonomous drones simultaneously; the U.S. has no public equivalent.
What will $1.5 trillion get us?
Before Congress approves the FY2027 budget request, someone should answer Durbin’s question - not with a tribute to the troops, but with an actual accounting of what we are buying and what threat it is designed to defeat.
In every failed engagement - Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and now Iran - the answer from both parties has been to spend more.
Republicans think more is always better; Democrats are afraid to be labeled soft on defense.
Since Republicans will not answer the call, Democrats must have the courage to demand accountability for our defense spending while ignoring the inevitable charge that doing so makes them soft on defense.
5/18/26
The Signal and the Noise: Introducing The Ledger
For several years, many of us have struggled with how to think about what is happening to our democratic institutions - not whether it is happening, but how to process it without becoming numb, hysterical, or depressed.
In 1776, Thomas Paine warned: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
My worry is that the relentless daily volume of events is producing the precise numbness Paine warned against.
We have been here before and survived
The founders themselves disagreed, often bitterly, about the nature of the government they had just created.
The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) made it a federal crime to criticize the government; newspaper editors were jailed.
FDR issued over 3,000 executive orders, often overstepping his constitutional authority, and then proposed expanding the Supreme Court with loyalists; Congress stopped him, with members of his own party joining the opposition.
The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans stands as one of the clearest failures of institutional resistance in our history.
President Johnson used a misrepresented naval incident to obtain congressional authorization for the Vietnam War; President Nixon then secretly bombed Cambodia, concealing it from Congress for over a year.
The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Johnson and Kennedy administrations had systematically lied to Congress and the public about Vietnam; the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon’s attempt to block publication.
Nixon ordered illegal surveillance of political enemies and authorized the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters; he was brought down by a bipartisan Senate investigation and a Supreme Court ruling requiring him to release the tapes.
In each of these cases, it was our institutions - Congress and the courts - that held the line.
A framework: what holds democracy together
Levitsky and Ziblatt argue in “How Democracies Die” that constitutions are not self-enforcing - what actually holds democracies together are unwritten norms.
The first is mutual toleration: the shared understanding that political opponents are legitimate rivals, not enemies.
The second is institutional forbearance: the idea that those in power should exercise restraint even when the law permits otherwise.
Levitsky and Ziblatt also identify four markers of authoritarian behavior: rejection of democratic rules, denial of opponents’ legitimacy, toleration of violence, and efforts to curtail civil liberties of opponents and the press.
Today is also different
In each earlier crisis, bipartisan resistance from within the institutions held the line; today, that bipartisan consensus is gone.
The Republican Party has largely acquiesced to behavior that previous generations of Republicans would have rejected: endorsing tariffs imposed without congressional authorization, tolerating the politicization of the Justice Department, confirming cabinet members unfit for their roles, and accepting the impoundment of congressionally authorized spending.
The Supreme Court’s reliability is also in question, from its ruling on presidential immunity to its cynical reversal of Roe v. Wade after representing to Congress that it was settled law.
Separating the Signal from Noise
The noise is the daily torrent of statements, provocations, and outrages that dominate the news cycle and consume our energy.
The signal is any action that erodes mutual toleration or institutional forbearance - or that matches one of the four markers of authoritarian behavior.
Knowing the difference is what allows us to stay focused rather than exhausted.
The Ledger
The Ledger is a documented record of each material challenge to our institutions, beginning with the first Trump administration.
The media cycle is short, hysteria fades, and collective memory is unreliable; the accumulation of events in one place is itself the argument.
Our greatest danger is not any single action - it is forgetting that it happened.
Why it also matters economically
Democracy is not just a method of governing - it is also the foundation of our economic system.
The arbitrary use of tariffs, the harassment of private enterprise, and the pressure on the Federal Reserve’s independence carry real economic costs.
The political and the economic are not separate conversations.
5/11/26
We’re Still Here
And we’re still being ignored. This is why I write.
A record 45% of Americans now identify as political independents — the highest level ever recorded.
Democrats and Republicans each account for just 27% of the electorate.
Furthermore, both parties’ favorability ratings are stuck at some of their lowest levels in three decades of Gallup tracking.
The independent plurality
A clear majority holds sensible, moderate, centrist views that neither party represents.
Given this, we should be able to reach agreement at least directionally on how to address our most pressing problems.
How to find the true majority
Where three-way polling exists, each group is weighted by actual population share: 27% Democrat, 45% independent, 27% Republican.
Where three-way polling does not exist, only clear overall majorities are used — no extrapolation, no guesswork.
What we actually agree on
Health Care: 86% of Americans are very or extremely concerned about the price of healthcare. A weighted average of 66% are very or somewhat concerned about medical debt.
Social Security and Medicare: 80% of Americans are worried or extremely worried about Social Security’s future — a 15-year high. A weighted average of 66% worry that Medicare will not be available when they become eligible.
Debt: 79% of Americans, weighted across party lines, want reducing the debt to be a top-three priority for Congress.
Gun Control: A weighted average of 56% favor stricter gun laws.
Climate change: 74% of Americans consider climate change a serious problem for the country if nothing is done.
Meanwhile, nothing gets done
Healthcare: The Big Beautiful Bill suspended the premium tax credit for millions of Americans, raising their cost of healthcare. In the meantime, nothing is done to address the structural problem with the cost of healthcare. For example, a bipartisan bill to add 14,000 residency positions over seven years sits in Congress with broad support and no action.
Social Security and Medicare: The One Big Beautiful Bill accelerated depletion of Social Security and Medicare trust funds rather than shoring them up. Both funds will need to reduce benefits by 2033 if no action is taken.
Debt: The Big Beautiful Bill will add an estimated $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
Gun Control: Any discussion of gun control died with the new administration. All we get now are the “hearts and prayers” of Republicans as each year records are set in the number of mass shootings.
Climate Change: The current administration has revoked offshore wind leases and halted permitting for new wind and solar projects on federal lands
The parties are losing people to the middle
The parties are not losing members to each other — they are losing them to independents.
In 2024, remaining Republicans and remaining Democrats both reached record highs in identifying as very conservative or very liberal respectively.
We need to speak up — and show up
If independents voted in primaries in sufficient numbers, candidates representing the 45% could replace those representing the 27%.
Massachusetts offers a working model: Romney, Baker, and Healey all governed from the center and across party lines.
We are the largest plurality and we are without representation. The first step toward changing that is acting like one. Get out and vote. Make your voice heard. Write something on Substack!
5/4/26
Affordability: Democrats’ Best Chance and Biggest Blindspot
More government spending on social programs won’t work. A pro-growth strategy for housing, healthcare, and food will.
Democrats will fail to deliver on affordability as long as they misunderstand its causes
For most households, housing, healthcare, and food account for the majority of spending
Affordability has two distinct components: inflation driven by poor Federal Reserve policy, and long-term supply failures in the things Americans spend the most on
Inflation
The Federal Reserve grew the money supply 40% between 2020 and 2022 — prices rose faster than wages, as they always do, and resultant gap is one component of the affordability crisis — blame the Fed, and no one else
Supply failures
Housing: decades of zoning restrictions, growing regulatory burdens, building codes, environmental requirements, and local mandates have systematically prevented new construction at the rate necessary
We can learn from states like Massachusetts, California, and Minnesota who have worked to limit zoning restrictions and/or reduce local regulatory restrictions on mult-unit housing.
Healthcare: the U.S. has too few doctors and too few hospital beds — physician supply has been artificially capped by Medicare residency limits set in 1997 and never meaningfully updated
A good start would be adopting national licensing for telehealth, addressing the “complexity tax” of our expensive multi-payer administrative system, and passing the bill languishing in congress that would lift the cap on residencies
Food: more nuanced — the 2020-2023 spike was primarily a monetary event, but long-term resilience requires closing labor gaps and reducing regulatory friction in production and distribution
Will Democrats get it?
More subsidies and redistribution do not fix any of this — they treat the symptom, not the cause
Democrats have the winning issue — but only if they are willing to embrace real reforms that accelerate growth