Or what’s left of it. “When you take apart each step of their thinking, you can understand the logic. But when you put them all together, that’s when it breaks. Indeed, the Nationalist Bloc in Israel does not want Palestine… Read More »The Struggle for the Soul of Israel
Don’t do this to your company. “Say you’re in charge of a big software effort. If you make it hard to change code by requiring multiple levels of reviews, a web of Jira tickets, a horde of people needing to… Read More »Reverse Jevons Paradox
Tough situation if there ever was one. “So Gazans are trapped.They are trapped by the religious goals of Hamas.They are trapped by their bitterness against Israel and the losses of the last century.They are trapped by a public opinion at… Read More »The Gaza Trap
No. “there was not a single Arab nation-state in the world before the 20th century. We have a hard time understanding this now, but nationalism didn’t really exist until the 1700s, it spread around the world in the 1800s, and… Read More »Do Arab States Support Palestine?
This is why simple solutions don’t work. “Who Deserves the Land of Palestine?It depends. Who do you want?We can’t answer this question before acknowledging here the massive biases. People don’t have hard moral rules that they apply consistently across situations.… Read More »Who Can Claim the Palestine Region?
Being fast should not be a dogma. “People rush through the part where understanding is supposed to happen, then spend ten times longer cleaning up the consequences. The original rushed work gets recorded as “fast.” The cleanup gets recorded as… Read More »The Religion of Speed
Trade matters. “Now imagine that trade starts growing on a river. Naturally, you’re going to have bandits trying to steal your goods. This disrupts trade and makes everybody poorer. So the king pushes to enforce peace in their part of… Read More »Pax Mercatus
Travel times matter. “Levant was closer to Mesopotamia (mostly present-day Iraq) and Anatolia (mostly present-day Turkey) so Egypt could not hold that territory for long after empires emerged there. For example, the Achaemenid Empire (Persia) emerged close to Mesopotamia, conquered… Read More »How Transportation Technologies Shaped Empires
Your building would be considered a skyscraper a few decades ago. “Chicago’s Home Insurance Building is considered the first skyscraper in the world, completed in 1885 with elevators to reach its 12 floors. It was not the first building to… Read More »How Transportation Technologies Shape Cities
Some patterns emerge. “once sailing technologies developed, the sea had something special that none of the other lines had: It allowed to easily trade not just with cities connected to your roads or rivers, but with any city on the… Read More »Why Some Cities Thrive