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thoughtportal · 3 months ago

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A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)

PublicAffairs, 288 pp., $28.00

But don’t worry—it almost never comes to this. As one park service PSA noted this summer, bears “usually just want to be left alone. Don’t we all?” In other words, if you encounter a black bear, try to look big, back slowly away, and trust in the creature’s inner libertarian. Unless, that is, the bear in question hails from certain wilds of western New Hampshire. Because, as Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s new book suggests, that unfortunate animal may have a far more aggressive disposition, and relate to libertarianism first and foremost as a flavor of human cuisine.

Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.

None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don’t bode well either—especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just “working to create their own utopia,” property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its “discontents,” as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to “indifferent nature” on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of “freedom,” both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed.

“In a country known for fussy states with streaks of independence,” Hongoltz-Hetling observes, “New Hampshire is among the fussiest and the streakiest.” New Hampshire is, after all, the Live Free or Die state, imposing neither an income nor a sales tax, and boasting, among other things, the highest per capita rate of machine gun ownership. In the case of Grafton, the history of Living Free—so to speak—has deep roots. The town’s Colonial-era settlers started out by ignoring “centuries of traditional Abenaki law by purchasing land from founding father John Hancock and other speculators.” Next, they ran off Royalist law enforcement, come to collect lumber for the king, and soon discovered their most enduring pursuit: the avoidance of taxes. As early as 1777, Grafton’s citizens were asking their government to be spared taxes and, when they were not, just stopped paying them.

Nearly two and a half centuries later, Grafton has become something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more. Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, “almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England’s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,” the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton’s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a “mutual aid” venture) and running for governor on the libertarian ticket.

Although John’s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton’s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second—if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what “freedom” entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to “traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.” He had also bemoaned the persecution of the “victimless crime” that is “consensual cannibalism.” (“Logic is a strange thing,” observes Hongoltz-Hetling.)

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.” The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns.

Hongoltz-Hetling profiles many newcomers, all of them larger-than-life, yet quite real. The people who joined the Free Town Project in its first five years were, as he describes, “free radicals”—men with “either too much money or not enough,” with either capital to burn or nothing to lose. There’s John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the “Peaceful Assembly Church,” an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it. There’s Adam Franz, a self-described anti-capitalist who set up a tent city to serve as “a planned community of survivalists,” even though no one who joined it had any real bushcraft skills. There’s Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as “Dick Angel.” And so on. As Hongoltz-Hetling makes clear, libertarianism can indeed have a certain big-tent character, especially when the scene is a new landscape of freedom-lovers making “homes out of yurts and RVs, trailers and tents, geodesic domes and shipping containers.”

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right.

Black bears, it should be stressed, are generally a pretty chill bunch. The woods of North America are home to some three-quarters of a million of them; on average, there is at most one human fatality from a black bear attack per year, even as bears and humans increasingly come into contact in expanding suburbs and on hiking trails. But tracking headlines on human-bear encounters in New England in his capacity as a regional journalist in the 2000s, Hongoltz-Hetling noticed something distressing: The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly “bold,” they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Combining wry description with evocative bits of scientific fact, Hongoltz-Hetling’s portrayal of the bears moves from comical if foreboding to downright terrifying. These are animals that can scent food seven times farther than a trained bloodhound, that can flip 300-pound stones with ease, and that can, when necessary, run in bursts of speed rivaling a deer’s. When the bears finally start mauling humans—attacking two women in their homes—Hongoltz-Hetling’s relation of the scenes is nightmarish. “If you look at their eyes, you understand,” one survivor tells him, “that they are completely alien to us.”

What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in “pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,” the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire–risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project’s fate was sealed. Grafton became “just another town in a state with many options,” options that did not have the same problem with bears.

Or at least—not yet. Statewide, a perverse synergy between conservationist and austerity impulses in New Hampshire governance has translated into an approach to “bear management” policy that could accurately be described as laissez-faire. When Graftonites sought help from New Hampshire Fish and Game officials, they received little more than reminders that killing bears without a license is illegal, and plenty of highly dubious victim-blaming to boot. Had not the woman savaged by a bear been cooking a pot roast at the time? No? Well, nevertheless. Even when the state has tried to rein in the population with culls, it has been too late. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of bears doubled in the wildlife management region that includes Grafton. “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire—Learn to Live with Bears,” the state’s literature advises.

The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply.

Their prosperity also appears to be linked to man-made disasters that have played out on a national and global scale—patterns of unsustainable construction and land use, and the climate crisis. More than once, Hongoltz-Hetling flags the fact that upticks in bear activity unfold alongside apparently ever more frequent droughts. Drier summers may well be robbing bears of traditional plant and animal sources of food, even as hotter winters are disrupting or even ending their capacity to hibernate. Meanwhile, human garbage, replete with high-calorie artificial ingredients, piles up, offering especially enticing treats, even in the dead of winter—particularly in places with zoning and waste management practices as chaotic as those in Grafton, but also in areas where suburban sprawl is reaching farther into the habitats of wild animals. The result may be a new kind of bear, one “torn between the unique dangers and caloric payloads that humans provide—they are more sleep-deprived, more anxious, more desperate, and more twitchy than the bear that nature produced.” Ever-hungry for new frontiers in personal autonomy and market emancipation, human beings have altered the environment with the unintended result of empowering newly ravenous bears to boot.

Ignoring institutional failure and mounting crises does not make them go away. But some may take refuge in confidence that, when the metaphorical chickens (or, rather, bears) finally come home to roost, the effects are never felt equally. When bears show up in higher-income communities like Hanover (home to Dartmouth College), Hongoltz-Hetling notes, they get parody Twitter accounts and are promptly evacuated to wildernesses in the north; poorer rural locales are left to fend for themselves, and the residents blamed for doing what they can. In other words, the “unintended natural selection of the bears that are trying to survive alongside modern humans” is unfolding along with competition among human beings amid failing infrastructure and scarce resources, a struggle with Social Darwinist dynamics of its own.

The distinction between a municipality of eccentric libertarians and a state whose response to crisis is, in so many words, “Learn to Live With It” may well be a matter of degree rather than kind. Whether it be assaults by bears, imperceptible toxoplasmosis parasites, or a way of life where the freedom of markets ultimately trumps individual freedom, even the most cocksure of Grafton’s inhabitants must inevitably face something beyond and bigger than them. In that, they are hardly alone. Clearly, when it comes to certain kinds of problems, the response must be collective, supported by public effort, and dominated by something other than too-tidy-by-half invocations of market rationality and the maximization of individual personal freedom. If not, well, then we had all best get some practice in learning when and how to play dead, and hope for the best.

#article #new hampshire wildcats #the new republic #bears #ecology #economics #urban planning

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hearteyespierce · 1 month ago

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tl;dr — unemployment woes, job hunting and existing as a disabled person sucks. i am open for art commissions and a post is coming soon, but feel free to dm me if you are interested! + status of my latest queer pulp novel cover redraw wip at the end as tax

being unemployed in 2024/2025 sucks, the job market is the worst for workers it’s ever been. i’ve applied to hundreds of jobs the last several months and i even do what all the recruiters on linked in say you need to do of “make a custom tailored resume and cover letter for every job you apply for 😇”/threat.

i make sure i use as many keywords from the job descriptions as possible and even run my resumes/cover letters through ATS scanners and always get around a ~90%+ match to the job description (what is considered a “great” score is apparently 80-85%), and still nothing! My applications are better than they’ve ever been but never has even getting an interview been so difficult.

i applied to a job that i have ten years of experience for in that exact role and they didn’t even want to talk to me — I got a form rejection email. That one was devastating.

and yeah, literally the worst part of all of this is that i’ve been forced to actually use linkedin as an actual social media app instead of just slapping my resume up there and ignoring it as god intended. every day i go online and see the worst takes of all time. i have found some genuinely good people and good opportunities (really hoping the one i’m pursuing right now, it would be so amazing and feel like a gift tbh to be offered this job) but the whole unemployment grind is so soul crushing.

i’ve barely had time to talk to any one who isn’t my partner who lives with me bc i’m using all my battery to try to find a job and try to build a website + portfolio for my art bc unemployment runs out next month so if something doesn’t work out i’m going to need to figure out something. i already lost my health insurance and can’t afford marketplace so i’m just rawdogging it rn as a disabled/chronically ill person, so that’s fun 🙃

but yeah, if you read this far, i am open for commissions — i have a post ready to go, I just need to wait a few days to post it publicly bc one of the examples on it is a surprise gift I did for someone and it’s in the mail to them right now. but if you’re interested, dm me or email [email protected] and I’ll send you the graphics/info!

and, as promised: remember this pulp cover that was making the rounds LAST january?? yeah i sketched this back then and then. never finished it 😅 but i started painting it a day or two ago and i’m so thrilled with how it’s coming out!

#sorry for the bummer update #but!#commissions open #my art wips #farina #my art #media: dghda #char: farah #char: tina #ship: farina

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nadianova · 5 months ago

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how much $ did u get from sales from malmaid & other VNs on itch/steam? i wanna upload my VNs on itch/steam but 1. idk how much i wanna price it (like... yeah its free but for the pwyw slot for itch) & 2. (for steam) idk if the 100$ steam price for Uploading is worth it/if ppl will like/buy it (am insecure/nervy #girl :'3) .. i luvv ur work n i love seeing ur works it Makes me v happy thank you!!!!

disclaimer everything here is my opinion and perspective from me in this current moment of my life so just take everything with a grain of salt and preferably look for others perspectives to compare to. ultimately its something everyone kinda have to figure out on their own and do what works for them..

but that being said theresa lot of things to say here so ill just start with like... every dev i see says that if you're gonna sell your game put it on steam. i keep hearing numbers throw around like 90% of sells come from steam and 10% from itch io for devs that sell (commercial projects) on both. you still need following etc to promote the wishlists since that is what boosts your game after the initial release on steam or something like that?

if you have a free game put it on itch io. its free just do it might as well. being shy and insecure about what you make is fine but keep in mind that people arent after some perfect flawless projects and making those is impossible

just make what you can and share it, the right people just need to find them

still itchio is nice that its free but the userbase is also 50% people on their mobile searching for strictly free android games to jerk off or horror game with red background because popular streamer #453425 played it. the site culture is different from steamw which some people treat as if games don't count as real unless they're on steam.

from my perspective paying $100 to put a game on steam is 'cheap'. even if you just consider it an ad fee for however much traffic steam algorithm blesses you with, its kind of a good deal if you think about the unhinged amounts you'd have to pay on twitter or facebook or whatever the hell people use to actually promote the game to same amount of eyes.. if you're doing free games its less of a incentive but if you're trying to do business and make money for rent 100(and whatever fees steam and taxes will eat from your earnings) is a very low price of doing business. i see people complain about steam cuts and steam fees but as someone who used to be an online sexworker there was literally popular sites AND STILL ARE that take like 50% cut directly so steam isn't bad when compared to that (also steam gives you the 100 back after you make 1000, which i reasonable believe i could reach if i put a paid game on steam)

also did you know you can set itch ios marketplace cut to 0% if you want with no repercussions. you can do that if you want. do it.

i think if you have rent to pay you should get into the habit of asking for something. artists love supporting other artists and outside of that the people who have money will gladly support someone whose work they like. there's really no concrete numbers to give for pricing projects. just ask anything. tho know that asking for 1 dollar is pretty much the same as asking for like 5 tho. if people are ready to pay they generally don't care if its in that range so i think everyone's happy if its 5 when payment processors get to swipe a smaller percentage of the fees from the transaction

maybe something like just ask for something nad once you make more projects keep rising it. its better to have an empty patreon with 0 subscribers than no patreon at all. my games used to be 0€ to download and 6.66€ pay what you want and people kept paying that. then i raised the suggestion to 15€ just to try it out and i was surprised to see the amount of donations didn't go down. bonus artbooks are a good incentive. its nice to share something special for those who want to donate and its nice for them to get something out of it since a huge portion of these people might have just given that same donation money expecting nothin in return

its taken a few months but malmaid has now made like 800 dollars on itch io which is like wow holy shit but it kinda stops being as exciting when i think about how it took me 6 months to make it and that would be like one month of rent. still ultimately the fact that its a free game and everyone just decided to donate anyway is kinda absurd and it makes me infinitely grateful

i do know that if i had priced it with a set price the amount would be a lot more (this is even more evident from my 4€ comic projects that i keep putting on sale constantly for even cheaper are still by far the most earning projects I've ever put on itchio) id argue people are more likely to take a project seriously and engage with it if it cost money. free games you can just dl and forget about it if you want.. but having a price next to the download button makes things seem more legitimate because money has worth

i also get pay-per-project patreon money. tho patreon hates that mode and will be deleting in like a year or so instead of having stupid monthly payments. idk what ill do then i might delete patreon at that point will see

but on the matter of if these numbers really are a useful metric to share is debatable. hopeless junction made like $1000(ignoring the vncup 2 award) since i released it year ago and this and malmaid are two of my most popular games like that. i think i made 300-400 during the first few release months back then. I've been posting stuff on itch io for FREE for a decade soon and its an accumulation of all my visibility from over the years. itch io also favorites nsfw games with their tag traffic so its an environment that works for me

if i had started asking for money and packaging my things in a more commercial form i would be making a lot more with it i think and the people who followed me would already be accustomed to that. its just that for now ive valued people being able to play my things for free and my situation has allowed for it

everyone hates marketing but ultimately its about making the thing you made look good and be seen by others. a nice custom theme on an itch io page is more likely to get someone to stay than a game with blank profile no screenshots.

its important to make the thing you made look presentable and that's just finding your own voice by looking at how others do these things

the coolest story in the world isnt gonna sell if it doesn't have a nice cover if nobody knows that story exists.. but if people like the story they're more likely to stick around for future stuff and spread the word.. i think that matters more than what amount of money is being asked for a game as there are popular cheap games just as there are popular expensive games

idk. if theres more specific questsions ask again its a very broad thing

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democracyunderground · 3 months ago

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TO PAY FOR TRUMPS TRILLIONS IN TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH.

"Oz will succeed Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the current administrator of CMS, to lead programs including Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older, and disabled people, and Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for lower-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for more than 140 million Americans.

Also in the CMS fold are the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) and the Health Insurance Marketplace, which was created by the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama in 2010.

Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are currently discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other government welfare programs to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multi-trillion-dollar 2017 tax cut."

Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US Senate. Donald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6 trillion dollar annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.

“I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS,” Oz posted on X on Tuesday. “I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr].”

In the announcement of Oz’s selection, Trump said that Oz would “make America healthy again” and described him as “an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades”.

Oz has been on US television screens for nearly 20 years, first appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004. In that time, he has talked to his audience about losing weight with fad diets and what it takes to have healthy poops and, toward the end of his run, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential remedy for Covid-19.

Here’s what to know about the New York University professor and surgeon turned television show host, and now Trump appointee.

Mehmet Oz, 64, is a Turkish American Ohio native best known for The Dr Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. His father was a surgeon in Turkey, and after Oz graduated high school in Delaware, he was admitted into Harvard. He also served in the Turkish military in order to maintain dual citizenship, the Associated Press reports.

Before entering US homes via daytime TV, he had more than 20 years of experience as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Presbyterian-Columbia medical center in New York. He was also a professor at Columbia University’s medical school.

His bona fides at the prestigious institutions earned him quick credibility with viewers, and his popularity garnered him nine Daytime Emmy awards for outstanding informative talkshow and host.

Though his show ended in 2022, Oz maintains a YouTube channel filled with old episodes of his shows where he interviews guests such as Penn Jillette about his weight loss and Robert F Kennedy Jr about his 2014 book about the presence of mercury in vaccines. He also has an Instagram account that boasts more than a million followers, where Oz shares photos of his family and sells products from iHerb, an online health and wellness brand for which he is global adviser.

Oz’s questionable medical advice and time in politics. Throughout his TV tenure, Oz dabbled in the hallmarks of weight loss culture like detoxes, cleanses and diets that promised rapid weight loss. He also faced a grilling by senators in 2014 over claims he made and alleged false advertising on supplements he promoted on his show. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Oz regurgitated misinformation that came from the fringes of the right and medical communities.

These comments continued when he threw his hat into the race to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate in 2022 against John Fetterman. At the time, the Guardian wrote:

“Oz was dogged by questions about his actual connection to the state during the campaign. Oz lived in New Jersey for decades before he moved to Pennsylvania in October 2020, into a home owned by his wife’s family. He announced his bid to be the state’s US senator just months later.”

Following Fetterman’s stroke, during which he said he “almost died”, the Oz campaign launched unsavory attacks against him, with one Oz aide, Rachel Tripp, claiming Fetterman might not have had a stroke if he “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life”.

Oz ultimately lost to Fetterman, who garnered 51% of the vote compared with Oz’s 46%."

#Medicare #Medicaid #Childrens Health #Disabilty #ACA #Health Insurance #Obamacare #Marketplace

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bambamramfan · 7 months ago

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The exact twitter quote people are roasting:

“If I were president I wouldn’t care about party lines, I’d just always truly make the American people my #1 priority,” explained MrBeast. “For problems I’m ignorant in I’d have experts from the left and right advise me on them and try to find the middle ground that’s best for America. Wouldn’t be buyable, don’t care about doing things just because my party says I should, and I would focus on uniting the country instead of dividing it.”

To anyone forged in the fires of online ideological discourse, this sounds very dumb. There's good bills (from our side) and bad bills (from their side) and any middle ground is self-defeating at best, and fake bait to appear to a centrist voting block that doesn't exist and doesn't pay attention.

But there is something important this reaction is missing, and why Mrbeast's position isn't that wrong-headed.

Because Congress (and other law-making bodies) aren't just two football teams pushing the ball forward, on nothing but a left-right axis. If you've ever worked with Congress (or any other partisan body) you've run into this firsthand.

There are a lot of practical problems that everyone in Congress agrees are bad, and have a practical solution that would make things better for the public. No, really. Staffing up the border to deal with the asylum crisis. Making our (previous) 35% corporate tax rate something more economically efficient. Fixing the healthcare marketplace. Renewing various authorizations that expire. And a lot of banal "actually fund the things everyone wants."

The problem is, there are more left-wing and more right-wing solutions to all these problems, even if you agree that solving the problem is good whatever solution you use. SO, you get the majority side proposing a solution aligned with their ideology but is still good for everyone, and the minority thinks "this bill is ok, but let's wait until we're in power, then we can pass a BETTER bill." And bonus, until then you can attack the majority for failing to fix the problem. As they say "never let a crisis go to waste."

So there are, in fact, a number of measures Congress could tackle at any time that would make the country better off regardless of which side you're on, but it won't because everyone is holding their breath until some mythical day when they can pass the perfect bill on their own.

... not to mention how many times politicians hold up good and important things they don't even object to *just* to spite the other party. Or completely non-partisan territoriality where you oppose bills you ideologically agree with because it's coming from the wrong committee. (This last one is perhaps THE major workload of congressional staff - the constant sorting and jockeying of which bill has the most support even within your party conference.)

And so it's very tempting for an outsider to say "screw all this positioning. I'm going to approve and fight for any bill that solves a problem," instead of waiting until that promised day when we can pass whatever bill we want with no compromises.

Unfortunately, when an outsider gets in it doesn't work like that (for obvious, cynical reasons), but I can very much understand the *desire* for such a stance.

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notwiselybuttoowell · 11 days ago

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Vivi Armacost loves Temu. She uses the Chinese online marketplace to buy crafting supplies for her purse-making hobby. “You can get purse detailing and hardware for cents and pennies,” said Armacost, who is 24 and lives in New York. She says it seems like “basically everything” in her apartment comes from Temu

Donald Trump’s 10% tariff on China-made goods sold to the US, which went into effect early on Tuesday morning, might change her shopping habits. On top of this, the US Postal Service briefly suspended deliveries of incoming parcels from China and Hong Kong before they were later resumed.

The tariff closes off a trade loophole that allowed fast-fashion companies such as Temu and Shein to ship packages under $800 into the US duty-free; this loophole, called “de minimis” has been criticized by both political parties in recent years. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Shein and Temu are now likely to raise prices, as is Amazon’s Haul, a new e-commerce app that imports products from China-based sellers.

Shoppers are concerned the tariff will get in the way of their retail therapy.

“Trying to get that last Temu order in before Trump puts another tariff on China,” Armacost, who works in consulting and also makes comedy videos on TikTok, captioned a post on Monday that shows her frantically typing on a computer, hacker movie-style. It was mostly a joke, but she has friends who made one final Temu run. “My friend Piper got a ton of apartment stuff during a last-minute tariff haul,” she said.

Temu – which surpassed Amazon as the most-downloaded shopping app in 2023 – and Shein are beloved by the overly trendy and the obsessively thrifty. While Shein is known primarily for clothing, Temu also sells makeup, home goods and decor. These products are cheap – just over $4 for a pair of women’s sneakers on Temu, or $1.45 for bracelet on Temu – but of dubious quality. Inevitably, many end up in landfills.

“A lot of the stuff comes actually way smaller than you expect,” Armacost said. “I bought a desk lamp, except it can fit in my hands.”

In the months before Trump took office, shoppers urged each other to stock up on Temu and Shein, in case the new administration followed through on its promise to tax US trade partners. “Kinda feeling emo bc this may be the last good Black Friday for a while because of the tariffs,” one TikTok user wrote in a clip. “Better collect your ‘vintage Shein’ because they will probably go for $100 next year.’”

Two days after the election, the fashion writer Amy Odell warned readers of price hikes in a post to her BackRow Substack titled: “Trump Won. So Shop Now.” Susan Scafidi, a lawyer and founder of Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute, told Odell: “Everything’s going to be more expensive, which is a little crazy when you realize that a lot of the Trump appeal was with regard to the economy.”

Could the tariff kill fast fashion, an industry defined by wasteful over-consumption, as we know it? No, says Margaret Bishop, a textile and apparel specialist and professor at New York’s Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. “If anything, I think these tariffs will strengthen fast fashion’s hold on customers,” she said. “If everything costs more, particularly food, transportation and housing, they’re going to have to cut back somewhere.

“Americans have a real hunger for new fashion, so they will trade down to be able to continue to buy things. If a $1 pack of T-shirts at Temu becomes $2 a pack, that’s still cheaper than spending $20 for a couple of T-shirts that are better made,” she continued.

Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, agreed that tariffs would not “fundamentally shift” Americans’ love of a good, if sketchy, deal. While small businesses will bear most of the pain from tariffs – due to supply chain snarls or the fact that Americans won’t be able to spend as much – larger corporations such as Shein and Temu tend to absorb costs.

“These companies are resourceful,” Lu said. “My more immediate concern is that small and medium-sized enterprises won’t survive, or will face significant challenges.”

In 2023, a US congressional report alleged that there was an “extremely high risk” that Temu used forced labor in its supply chain, and that both Shein and Temu evaded US human rights reviews. (Shein denied these claims at the time, while Temu did not comment on the report.) A recent report from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye found that some Shein workers endure 75-hour work weeks. (Shein told the BBC it was “working hard” to address the issues raised in the report.)

The fast-fashion industry is also synonymous with high carbon emissions and pollution.

Lu fears that tariffs will exacerbate these issues. “If they have to pay more on tariff duties but at the same time make their prices competitive, that’s not good news for workers or the environmental impact, because companies will have more incentive to cut corners,” he said.

In the EU, the European Commission moved on Wednesday to tighten checks on goods sold by online retailers such as Shein and Temu, amid fears that “dangerous products” were flooding the market and that local competitors were losing out to competitors selling unsafe or counterfeit products.

Armacost knows that these e-commerce giants represent the worst of Americans’ desire for excess. “But also, at the same time, spending does stimulate the economy,” she said. “In response to the idea that it’s a good thing if people stop ordering so much random stuff, I say: ‘What’s the point of living in a country if I can’t order 100 pieces of junk for $15?’”

#posted in full because wow #anyway #trade wars #overconsumption #tarrifs #fast fashion #temu #shein #waste #pollution #labor rights

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suomeen · 29 days ago

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Things I Love About Finland #4 - Social Security

I know this topic might draw some objections from the Finns. Of course, in the past year there have been a lot of cuts to social benefits, various payouts and taxes were raised. I have an educated guess it might have to do with increasing the defence budget. However, it is still much better than in most countries.

There's the free healthcare. Well, for citizens anyway. And the hospitals are well-funded, from what I saw. They look very modern and have all the needed equipment. And there's been some negative experiences but I know a friend of mine went for a check-up, learned she had a blocked heart artery, and was immediately operated on. The bill came for 42e. And even for people like me, there's basic healthcare and free medication when we need it.

There's child support, even for non-citizens. The delivery and aftercare are all free and you get child benefits and medical support.

There's free education and the schools are nice and well-equipped , no matter where you are. I've heard there's been some decline in education in recent decades, but it's still very good.

On the most basic level, it's just easier to survive.

It's pretty easy to get food. It might not always be great food, but you won't go hungry. At least in the big and medium cities, there are churches where you can get free food almost daily and also there are food banks that give up food and some things.

As for stuff, it's also rather easy to get. If you look at online marketplaces like Tori, you'll find everything from furniture to clothing given away for free or really cheap. Some Finns are even willing to deliver it to you.

The public housing isn't always great. BUT it's still incomparably better than even the lower medium housing where I live. It's generally clean and all the houses are well-maintained, as well as the adjacent spaces.

I haven't seen any homeless people or stray pets in the year that I've lived here. There is consideration for disabled people and elderly. There are special bathrooms in every shop and office. You see a lot of disabled and elderly people on modern electric wheelchairs. They look content.

I realize my experience is limited and there are always some issues but I still have the impression that here people are cared for. You can get help when you need it and you feel like people who work in social services and healthcare genuinely try to help you, not just do the bare minimum.

#finland #textpost #don't have much time for writing lately but I'll try to do more of these when I can

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dua1999 · 2 months ago

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Top Business Ideas in the UAE for Entrepreneurs

Starting a business in UAE is an exciting venture, as the country offers numerous opportunities across various sectors. The UAE is home to some of the most lucrative industries in the world, whether you're an experienced professional looking for new growth opportunities or an aspiring entrepreneur searching for the ideal niche. There is a lot of potential to tap into, including in the areas of real estate, e-commerce, tourism, healthcare, and IT. We'll look at the best business concepts in this blog to help you start a profitable company in the United Arab Emirates.

Why Entrepreneurs Find Success in the United Arab Emirates

In addition to being a prime location for companies, the UAE provides an environment that encourages development and creativity. It is a desirable location for entrepreneurs due to its tax-free zones, sophisticated infrastructure, and business-friendly laws. Whether you're looking to launch a local business or expand your global reach, the UAE is the place to be. However, which industries are the most lucrative and appropriate for would-be business owners?

Profitable Sectors for Starting a Business in the UAE

1. Real Estate

One of the most profitable industries in the UAE is real estate, and international investors are drawn to Dubai and Abu Dhabi on a regular basis. The nation is the perfect place for real estate services and property investment because of its expanding population, influx of tourists, and creation of famous landmarks.

Innovative Business Ideas in Real Estate:

Property Management Services: Providing property management services can be a profitable choice in an ever-growing market.

Real estate brokerage: Helping foreign customers purchase or rent real estate can generate a consistent income in this cutthroat industry.

Flexible office spaces are becoming more and more in demand as the entrepreneurial culture expands.

2. E-Commerce

Due to the widespread use of smartphones and the growing number of tech-savvy people, the e-commerce sector has grown rapidly in recent years. Starting a business in UAE’s e-commerce market can be an excellent choice, especially as the country embraces digital transformation.

Innovative Business Ideas in E-Commerce:

Online Retail Store: Selling specialized goods, such as electronics or clothing, can give you a firm footing in this cutthroat market.

Marketplace Platforms: In order to take advantage of the UAE's booming retail industry, establish a platform for local vendors to sell goods online.

Subscription Boxes: Provide specialized subscription boxes for niche markets, such as gourmet foods, wellness, or cosmetics.

3. Tourism

With millions of tourists visiting the UAE each year, tourism plays a major role in the economy of the nation. There are plenty of options for entrepreneurs with sights like the Palm Jumeirah, the Burj Khalifa, and the desert safari experiences.

Innovative Business Ideas in Tourism:

Luxury Travel Services: Provide wealthy people with unique and personalized travel packages.

Services for Tour Operators: Focus on speciality tours, like eco-tourism, adventure, or cultural experiences.

Travel Technology Solutions: Offer cutting-edge platforms or applications for travel that improve visitors' experiences.

4. Healthcare

The UAE's healthcare industry is expanding quickly, with an emphasis on offering both locals and visitors top-notch medical care. The government's drive for top-notch medical facilities and health technology innovation can help entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector.

Innovative Business Ideas in Healthcare:

Offering online medical consultations and healthcare services, telemedicine has become more and more popular in the post-pandemic world.

Fitness and Wellness: Open a yoga studio, fitness center, or wellness app to appeal to the health-conscious population in the United Arab Emirates.

Medical Equipment Supply: Provide medical devices and equipment to clinics, hospitals, or home care agencies.

5. IT and Technology

Fintech, AI, blockchain, and cybersecurity are among the rapidly growing tech-driven industries in the United Arab Emirates.. Starting a business in UAE in the IT sector is a smart move, as the government is heavily investing in technological infrastructure.

Innovative Business Ideas in IT:

AI Solutions: Create AI-driven solutions for companies in a range of industries, including retail, healthcare, and real estate.

Cybersecurity Services: Provide cybersecurity services to companies that want to safeguard their systems and data in a world that is digitizing quickly.

Blockchain Solutions: Develop blockchain-based software for logistics, finance, or supply chain management.

How to Enter These Markets

Understanding the local market, adhering to legal and regulatory requirements, and making the appropriate technological and infrastructure investments are all crucial for capitalizing on these lucrative industries. Starting a business in UAE requires careful planning, market research, and a solid business strategy. Operating in one of the numerous free zones can provide substantial tax benefits and streamlined business setup procedures for foreign business owners.

Start Your Business in the United Arab Emirates

Are you prepared to begin your business endeavors in the United Arab Emirates? The UAE provides business owners with a multitude of options, regardless of their interests in IT, e-commerce, real estate, or healthcare. Working with a reputable business setup company that can help you navigate local regulations and guide you through the process is essential to turning your vision into a reality.

Starting a business in UAE has never been easier. Establishing a successful business in one of the most dynamic and business-friendly environments in the world is possible with the correct business idea, strategy, and support.

#StartingABusinessInUAE #UAEEntrepreneurs #BusinessIdeasUAE #UAEStartups #EntrepreneurshipInUAE #UAEOpportunities #ProfitableBusinessesUAE #DubaiBusinessIdeas #BusinessSetupUAE #EntrepreneurialSuccess

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tomblomfield · 9 months ago

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Taking Risk

I just spent a week talking with some exceptional students from three of the UK's top universities; Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. The US - a country with 5x more people and 8x higher GDP - has the same number of universities in the global top 10.

On these visits, I was struck by the world-class quality of technical talent, especially in AI and biosciences. But I was also struck by something else. After their studies, most of these smart young people wanted to go and work at companies like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or Google.

I now live in San Francisco and invest in early-stage startups at Y Combinator, and it's striking how undergraduates at top US universities start companies at more than 5x the rate of their British-educated peers. Oxford is ranked 50th in the world, while Cambridge is 61st. Imperial just makes the list at #100. I have been thinking a lot about why this is. The UK certainly doesn't lack the talent or education, and I don't think it's any longer about access to capital.

People like to talk about the role of government incentives, but San Francisco politicians certainly haven't done much to help the startup ecosystem over the last few years, while the UK government has passed a raft of supportive measures.

Instead, I think it's something more deep-rooted - in the UK, the ideas of taking risk and of brazen, commercial ambition are seen as negatives. The American dream is the belief that anyone can be successful if they are smart enough and work hard enough. Whether or not it is the reality for most Americans, Silicon Valley thrives on this optimism.

The US has a positive-sum mindset that business growth will create more wealth and prosperity and that most people overall will benefit as a result. The approach to business in the UK and Europe feels zero-sum. Our instinct is to regulate and tax the technologies that are being pioneered in California, in the misguided belief that it will give us some kind of competitive advantage.

Young people who consider starting businesses are discouraged and the vast majority of our smart, technical graduates take "safe" jobs at prestigious employers. I am trying to figure out why that is.

___

Growing up, every successful adult in my life seemed to be a banker, a lawyer or perhaps a civil engineer, like my father. I didn't know a single person who programmed computers as a job. I taught myself to code entirely from books and the internet in the late 1990s. The pinnacle of my parents' ambition for me was to go to Oxford and study law.

And so I did. While at university, the high-status thing was to work for a prestigious law firm, an investment bank or a management consultancy, and then perhaps move to Private Equity after 3 or 4 years. But while other students were getting summer internships, I launched a startup with two friends. It was an online student marketplace - a bit like eBay - for students. We tried to raise money in the UK in 2006, but found it impossible. One of my cofounders, Kulveer, had a full-time job at Deutsche Bank in London which he left to focus on the startup. His friends were incredulous - they were worried he'd become homeless. My two cofounders eventually got sick of trying to raise money in the UK and moved out to San Francisco. I was too risk-averse to join them - I quit the startup to finish my law degree and then became a management consultant - it seemed like the thing that smart, ambitious students should do. The idea that I could launch a startup instead of getting a "real" job seemed totally implausible.

But in 2011, I turned down a job at McKinsey to start a company, a payments business called GoCardless, with two more friends from university. We managed to get an offer of investment (in the US) just days before my start date at McKinsey, which finally gave me the confidence to choose the startup over a prestigious job offer. My parents were very worried and a friend of my father, who was an investment banker at the time, took me to one side to warn me that this would be the worst decision I ever made. Thirteen years later, GoCardless is worth $2.3bn.

I had a similar experience in 2016, when I was starting Monzo, I had to go through regulatory interviews before I was allowed to work as the CEO of a bank. We hired lawyers and consultants to run mock interviews - and they told me plainly that I was wasting my time. It was inconceivable that the Bank of England would authorise me, a 31 year old who'd never even worked in a bank, to act as the CEO of the UK's newest bank. (It turned out they did.) So much of the UK felt like it was pushing against me as an aspiring entrepreneur. It was like an immune system fighting against a foreign body. The reception I got in the US was dramatically different - people were overwhelmingly encouraging, supportive and helpful. For the benefit of readers who aren't from the UK, I hope it's fair to say that Monzo is now quite successful as well.

___

I don't think I was any smarter or harder working than many of the recent law graduates around me at Oxford. But I probably had an unusual attitude to risk. When we started GoCardless, we were 25 years old, had good degrees, no kids and supportive families. When fundraising was going poorly, we discussed using my parents' garage as an office. McKinsey had told me to contact them if I ever wanted a job in future. I wonder if the offer still stands.

Of course, I benefitted from immense privilege. I had a supportive family whose garage I could have used as an office. I had a good, state-funded education. I lived in a safe, democratic country with free healthcare. And I had a job offer if things didn't work out. And so the downside of the risks we were taking just didn't seem that great.

But there's a pessimism in the UK that often makes people believe they're destined to fail before they start. That it's wrong to even think about being different. Our smartest, most technical young people aspire to work for big companies with prestigious brands, rather than take a risk and start something of their own.

And I still believe the downside risk is small, especially for privileged, smart young people with a great education, a supportive family, and before they accumulate responsibilities like childcare or a mortgage. If you spend a year or two running a startup and it fails, it's not a big deal - the job at Google or McKinsey is still there at the end of it anyway. The potential upside is that you create a product that millions of people use and earn enough money that you never have to work again if you don't want to.

This view is obviously elitist - I'm aware it's not attainable for everyone. But, as a country, we should absolutely want our smartest and hardest working people building very successful companies - these companies are the engines of economic growth. They will employ thousands of people and generate billions in tax revenues. The prosperity that they create will make the entire country wealthier. We need to make our pie bigger, not fight over the economic leftovers of the US. Imagine how different the UK would feel if Google, Microsoft and Facebook were all founded here.

___

When I was talking with many of these smart students this week, many asked me how these American founders get away with all their wild claims. They seem to have limitless ambition and make outlandish claims about their goals - how can they be so sure it will pan out like that? There's always so much uncertainty, especially in scientific research. Aren't they all just bullshitters? Founders in the UK often tell me "I just want to be more realistic," and they pitch their business describing the median expected outcome, which for most startups is failure.

The difference is simple - startup founders in the US imagine the range of possible scenarios and pitch the top one percent outcome. When we were starting Monzo, I said we wanted to build a bank for a billion people around the world. That's a bold ambition, and one it's perhaps unlikely Monzo will meet. Even if we miss that goal, we've still succeeded in building a profitable bank from scratch that has almost 10 million customers.

And it turns out that this approach matches exactly what venture capitalists are looking for. It is an industry based on outlier returns, especially at the earliest stages. Perhaps 70% of investments will fail completely, and another 29% might make a modest return - 1x to 3x the capital invested. But 1% of investments will be worth 1000x what was initially paid. Those 1% of successes easily pay for all the other failures.

On the contrary, many UK investors take an extremely risk-averse view to new business - I lost count of the times that a British investor would ask for me a 3 year cash-flow forecast, and expect the company to break even within that time. UK investors spend too much time trying to mitigate downside risk with all sorts of protective provisions. US venture capital investors are more likely to ask "if this is wildly successful, how big could it be?". The downside of early-stage investing is that you lose 1x your money - it's genuinely not worth worrying much about. The upside is that you make 1000x. This is where you should focus your attention.

___

A thriving tech ecosystem is a virtuous cycle - there's a flywheel effect that takes several revolutions to get up-to-speed. Early pioneers start companies, raise a little money and employ some people. The most successful of these might get acquired or even IPO. The founders get rich and become venture capital investors. The early employees start their own companies or become angel investors. Later employees learn how to scale up these businesses and use their expertise to become the executives of the next wave of successful growth-stage startups.

Skype was a great early example of this - Niklas Zenstrom, the co-founder, launched the VC Atomico. Early employees of Skype started Transferwise or became seed investors at funds like Passion Capital, which invested in both GoCardless and Monzo. Alumni of those two companies have created more than 30 startups between them. Matt Robinson, my cofounder at GoCardless, was one of the UK's most prolific angel investors, before recently becoming a Partner at Accel, one of the top VCs in the world. Relative to 15 or 20 years ago, the UK tech ecosystem is flourishing - our flywheel is starting to accelerate. Silicon Valley has just had a 50 year head start.

There is no longer a shortage of capital for great founders in the UK (although most of the capital still comes from overseas investors). I just believe that people with the highest potential aren't choosing to launch companies, and I want that to change.

___

I don’t think the world is prepared for the tidal wave of technological change that’s about to hit over the next handful of years. Primarily because of the advances in AI, companies are being started this year that are going to transform entire industries over the next decade.

It doesn't seem hyperbolic to say that we should expect to see very significant breakthroughs in quantum computers, nuclear fusion, self-driving vehicles, space exploration and drug discovery in the next 10 or 20 years. I think we are about to enter the biggest period of transformation humanity has ever seen.

Instead of taking safe, well-paying jobs at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, our young people should take the lead as the world is being rebuilt around us.

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