Competition vs. Cooperation: The False Choice

“We need more cooperation and less competition in our economy.” You’ve probably heard variations of this sentiment from politicians, pundits, and well-meaning friends who worry that market competition creates a harsh, uncaring society. The underlying assumption is clear: competition and cooperation are opposites. If we want people to work together harmoniously, we need less of the brutal dog-eat-dog competition that capitalism supposedly encourages. This framing presents a false choice that fundamentally misunderstands both competition and cooperation. In our last post, we explored how competition in capitalism differs completely from zero-sum contests. Business competition isn’t about defeating opponents. It’s about creating …

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Hasard Lee on Making Life-or-Death Decisions: What Fighter Pilots Can Teach Entrepreneurs

When former F-16 and F-35 pilot Hasard Lee had to make a split-second decision about landing on a damaged runway during a mortar attack with only 15 minutes of fuel remaining, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. The framework he used in that moment—and countless others during 82 combat missions in Afghanistan—offers powerful insights for entrepreneurs facing their own high-pressure decisions. Lee’s military experience led him to develop what he calls the ACE Helix: Assess, Choose, Execute. This three-step framework breaks down even the most complex decisions into manageable components. First, you assess the situation by gathering information from multiple …

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Competition in Capitalism: Why Everyone Can Win

“Competition is brutal. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. May the best man win.” You’ve probably heard phrases like these countless times, and they reflect how most of us think about competition. One winner, everyone else loses. Whether it’s a foot race, a beauty contest, or a job interview, competition means someone comes out on top while everyone else goes home empty-handed. This zero-sum thinking carries over to how many people view business competition. We talk about the rat race and console ourselves about business failures by saying, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” But this fundamentally misunderstands what competition means in …

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The Political Incentive That’s Destroying Your Savings Account

No politician has ever stood at a podium and declared, “We’re going to fund this program by printing money and causing inflation.” That would be political suicide. Instead, they promise popular spending programs while simultaneously pledging to keep taxes low. It sounds like magic—getting everything you want without paying for it. But as we explored in our last post, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, even when politicians make it seem otherwise. The political incentive structure is straightforward. Spending money on programs that benefit specific groups is extremely popular with those groups. Whether it’s farm subsidies, infrastructure projects, …

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Ray Dalio’s Life Phases: Where Are You in Your Arc?

Most entrepreneurs get so caught up in the day-to-day grind of running their businesses that they rarely step back to consider the bigger picture. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, offers a framework that might change how you think about your entire entrepreneurial journey. In a recent presentation, Dalio outlined three distinct phases of life that every person—and every entrepreneur—goes through. Understanding where you are in this arc isn’t just philosophical edification. It can fundamentally shift your priorities and approach to business. Phase One is dependence and learning. You’re absorbing knowledge, making mistakes, and figuring out how the world works.  …

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Why Your Dollar Isn’t Worth What It Used to Be

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Milton Friedman’s famous declaration sounds appropriately academic, but what does it actually mean for your grocery bill or your rent payment? And why should you care about monetary theory when you’re just trying to understand why everything seems to cost more than it did last year? Let’s start with the basics. In economics, inflation is simply defined as an increase in prices. But when you hear it discussed on the evening news, what people are really talking about is price increases beyond the normal fluctuations caused by supply and demand. You’re probably …

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The Monopsony Problem: When Government Is the Only Buyer

In our last post, we explored how government spending creates unavoidable trade-offs by redirecting resources from private uses to public ones. Today, let’s examine a specific type of market distortion that makes these trade-offs even more problematic: monopsony. Most people are familiar with monopolies—situations where there’s only one seller of a particular product or service and multiple buyers. But the flip side, monopsony, gets much less attention despite being equally important. A monopsony exists when there’s essentially only one buyer for a particular good or service. In truly free markets, monopsonies are almost impossible to maintain naturally. Imagine if there …

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Melanie Perkins on Turning Wild Dreams into Reality

Building a successful business often starts with what seems like an impossible dream. Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva, knows this better than most. She transformed a “crazy” idea about democratizing design into a platform now used by over 100 million people monthly and valued at $32.5 billion. In a recent keynote address, which you can watch below, Perkins shares the journey from Canva’s humble beginnings with a team that could fit around one table to becoming a global design powerhouse with 3,300+ employees worldwide. What makes Perkins’ story particularly compelling for entrepreneurs is how she approached the seemingly impossible. She …

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Government Spending: The Ultimate Economic Trade-Off

If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that the United States government spends an eye-wateringly large amount of money every year, and it’s not always clear where exactly all that money goes or why. Leaving aside the printing and borrowing of money (for the time being), the main way these gargantuan budgets get funded is through extracting money from other people—that is, taxes. Taxes come in a variety of forms, from income taxes to tariffs and everything in between. Some are baked into consumer pricing (like tariffs), some get automatically drawn from every paycheck (like Social Security withholding), and …

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You’re Thinking About the System Incorrectly

“The economy is struggling.” “Capitalism exploits workers.” “The market has decided.” We use phrases like these all the time, and they sound perfectly reasonable. But there’s a linguistic problem hiding in plain sight. We’re talking about abstract concepts as if they were people capable of making decisions and taking action. In our last post in this series exploring what capitalism actually is, we touched on why systems can’t be racist. Only individuals can hold racist beliefs and make racist choices. Today, let’s dig deeper into the economic principle behind that insight, one that fundamentally changes how we understand everything from …

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