An essay series about the assumptions underneath everything
What if the pie is learning to bake itself?
For ten thousand years, every economic system — every one — was a machine for answering a single question: how do we divide what there isn't enough of? AI and automation are quietly bending that question out of shape. The ReThink picks up the assumptions the scarcity age handed us, turns each one over in the light, and asks honestly: is this still true, or is it just old?
Read the first essay New here? Start with the map What is The ReThink?
What this is — and what it isn't
What this is.
A series of walks. Each essay picks up one assumption we all inherited — work equals worth, the pie is fixed, someone has to lose, growth must cost the vulnerable — and walks around it slowly. Where did it come from? What was it protecting? Is the world it was built for still the world we're standing in?
What this is not.
Not hype — we won't tell you the future is guaranteed to be wonderful, because it isn't; it depends on choices that haven't been made yet. Not doom — we won't sell you dread, because dread sells and that's exactly why you should be suspicious of it. And not a political jersey — we don't play for a team. Some of these old assumptions were carried by the left, some by the right, and the honest examination doesn't care who's holding one when we pick it up.
The method.
Every essay runs the same three steps, in order, no skipping:
- Truth first. The real history, the real trade-offs, the real body counts where there are body counts. Nothing airbrushed.
- Turn it in the light. Ask what the assumption was actually for, and whether its reason still holds.
- Hope on top. Only after the truth has been paid in full — what becomes possible if this one really is loosening? Hope without honesty is just marketing. We do it in this order on purpose.
Start here · The ReThink · Nº 08
The Smartest One in the Room Shouldn't Be President
Two old rivals, one pie, and the strange discovery that they were never really fighting about systems — they were fighting about scarcity itself. This one holds both sets of receipts honestly — the market's real rescue of billions from poverty, and the famines and gulags that must never be airbrushed — and then asks what happens to a ten-thousand-year-old knife fight when the pie starts learning to bake itself.
The assumption on the table
There is one pie — and every slice I get is a slice you don't. …is that still true, or is it just old?
The assumptions on the table
- Nº 08
The Smartest One in the Room Shouldn't Be President
A line from a recent political speech — reportedly, that if someone is smarter than you, you shouldn't hold the office — turns out to be a serious philosophical claim. Follow it honestly and it points somewhere nobody intended: at the machines. A thought experiment about competence, consent, and who gets to rule. Open questions, not a verdict.
- Nº 07
Three Fronts, One Week: The Weights, the Wiring, and the Referee
In one week: a 975B open-weight model dropped, the strongest post-transformer pitch yet got made, and the most powerful AI CEO in the world asked to be regulated. Signal from hype on all three — and why they're actually the same fight.
- Nº 06
Safe Autonomy: The Promise of AI You Can Actually Trust to Run Things
AI is learning to act on its own, not just answer. That's a gift — if it's built to be trustworthy. A manifesto on safe autonomy: what 'safe' really means, why governance beats fear, and how to keep a human at the center.
- Nº 05
The Vault, Cross-Examined
The companion piece asks the harder questions: who does the newborn-account design actually favor? Is it a tax shelter, a captive bid for the market, a feel-good gesture? Each charge pressed at full strength — then ruled on honestly, including the ones that don't hold. Not financial advice.
- Nº 03
The Eighteen-Year Bet
Every American newborn now gets $1,000 locked in an index fund until adulthood — and penalty-free until 59½. A fair look at a fascinating tension: what does a two-decade lockup mean if the economy transforms in five years? Not a takedown, not a cheer — an honest walk around a genuinely interesting question. Not financial advice.
The rest of the house
The essays are the front room, but the house is bigger. ReThink Policy is a trans-partisan reading room — each brief steelmans the strongest case from the left and the right before offering a proposal to debate. The tools shelf holds the instruments being built in the workshop — sourced curves and a run-your-own-numbers planner. And Start Here puts the whole map on 1 page, including 3 suggested ways to walk in.
Where this is going (honestly)
The ReThink is young. Here's the truthful state of the shelf:
- More essays in this series. More inherited assumptions on the table — work and worth, ownership, competition, what stays scarce when almost nothing else is. Written the same way: truth first, hope on top.
- A book, in progress. The Warmth Left Over — a book about real physics and real meaning, and how to live well through what's coming. It is being written now. It is not out yet, and we won't pretend otherwise; when it's ready, readers of these letters will hear first.
That's the whole roadmap. No countdown timers, because nothing here is counting down.
The first full-length walk
The Warmth Left Over
Twelve short chapters, each opening a real piece of physics — entropy, information, deep time — and following it honestly to a human question: what is worth doing in a world where machines are learning to do almost everything? It is being finished now, and the opening chapter will be free to readers of the letters.
Get each ReThink as it's written
When a new essay is ready, we'd like to send it to you — the whole essay, in your inbox, free. That's the entire arrangement: we write the letters, you read the ones that earn it. No funnels dressed up as friendship, no "act now." Unsubscribe anytime and we'll assume you had good reasons.
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