One of the reasons we are in a trade war is because we are the world’s greatest consumers. For some, it has triggered a mental discussion about what those purchases mean, not just in terms of cost but also in terms of origin, impact, and intent. This isn’t a manifesto or a boycott call; it’s a slow-motion consideration of our choices.
“I bring all of this up because the weird thing, and stick with me here, is that the world around us doesn’t mature. It keeps changing, even as we mostly stop doing so. The world doesn’t care that we’re not up for changing as much anymore, and actually maybe it seems to change more quickly the older we get, whether because culture actually accelerates over time or because of how we perceive the world as we age. Either way, to some extent each of us wakes up one day, and we’re forty-one, and we’ve shifted down like three gears. Life still feels crazy but we really have trimmed a lot of the extraneous stuff, we’re streamlined, we’ve chosen some kind of course, and maybe we’re even following it a bit. And for some reason, without really realizing it, we kind of expect the world to have chosen a course too. But the world, god bless it, is changing directions all the time, being immature as ever.”
From Scope of Work by way of The Browser, Import, Immature
“We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.
We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like. It’s informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience at OpenAI, and previous forecasting successes.”
From the AI Futures Project, AI 2027
And a report on our battered First Amendment.
“In 2021, 71% of young Americans said people should be allowed to insult the U.S. flag, which is a key indicator of support for free speech, no matter how distasteful. By 2024, that number had fallen to just 43% – a 28-point drop. Support for pro‑LGBTQ+ speech declined by 20 percentage points, and tolerance for speech that offends religious beliefs fell by 14 points.”
From The Conversation, From defenders to skeptics: The sharp decline in young Americans’ support for free speech
File this under What Would Adam Smith Do (WWASD).
“Smith saw mercantilism as a doctrine that enriched special interests and weakened overall prosperity. He called for a shift toward a system where markets and competition—not state-backed monopolies—allocate resources efficiently.”
From Marginal Revolution, Adam Smith on Mercantilism
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
