Vivek Defends Capitalism and Civility in Hostile Breakfast Club ‘Interview’

In an “interview” with The Breakfast Club, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy answered intense hostility with calm eloquence and gain a lot of followers in the process. In the video, Ramaswamy fielded personal attacks about his character in the guise of questions from a guest host Tezlyn Figaro. She said that Ramaswamy wasn’t a good candidate […]

What Discovering My Ancestry Taught Me About Race and Privilege

After thinking it for almost my whole life, I was pretty disappointed when I found out that I did not in fact descend from the great artist and inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse. That caused me to rethink my pen name, one of my son’s names, and my web development company that plays off of […]

John Bel Edwards’s War on Prosperity

I awoke this morning to find my Amazon Affiliates account terminated. For anyone who does affiliate marketing or benefits from online ads, this can be a terrifying alert. You’ve spent years building up an online link network that is finally generating some income and you’re happy because after all that hard work, your family can […]

2016 SXSW Interactive Recap

SXSW Interactive is pretty much how life should be lived—inspiring talks, great networking, and free booze. I love it so much that even though I had moved away from Austin and had to leave behind a loving family for nearly a week, I made it happen. It might even have  been worth it. Obama The […]

John Bel Edwards: Don’t Make Me Regret Moving to Louisiana

My wife and I decided to move to Louisiana from Texas in 2015 for her to be closer to her family and for me to be closer to good gumbo. It was a difficult move because Texas was the land of opportunity with no income tax, a flourishing economy, and the best brisket in the […]

Agreement in the Time of Zika

2015 was pretty bad for the concept of agreement. Religious differences spurred despicable terrorist attacks; protests across the US resulted in antagonism between racial minorities and police; and caustic political vitriol seemed to be at an all-time high across the globe. As one commentator wrote, “If you ask 100 different people how we should fix this […]

What Caused the Financial Crisis of 2008?

I recently rewatched one of the best financial movies of all time: Margin Call. It’s expertly acted, intensely dramatic, and has some great cinematography. There’s only one problem for a film about the 2008 financial crisis: it completely misses the root cause. Near the end of the film, it’s clear that the filmmakers see greedy […]

Let My People Rent!

We are in the midst of a dramatic sea change in technological society. Just a few years ago, for services like getting a ride or a night’s stay, we had to rely on bloated, bureaucratic corporations. Now, with technology and the Internet, anyone with a computer can become an entrepreneur in 60 seconds and offer […]

This is What Happens When Every Kid Gets a Trophy

Millennials are the most social-justice-warring generation ever and it’s hard to imagine anything less appealing to them than an old white man forgetting to check his privilege and doing something so insensitive as becoming president of the United States. Yet, here the are in a recent Monmouth study, saying that they want old, white Bernie […]