Alex Wittenberg

I don’t mind what happens. Perhaps these words need a little unpacking; I don’t think Krishnamurti means to say that we shouldn’t feel sorrow, compassion, or anger when bad things happen to ourselves or others, nor that we should give up on our efforts to prevent bad things from happening in the future. Rather, a life spent “not minding what... See more

Illich was not a romantic, and he is often explicit about the futility of romanticizing the past. But even more importantly, the apparent severity, from the perspective of consumerist assumptions, was, in fact, a pathway to the experience of life-giving community, environmental health, meaningful work, social solidarity, and personal well-being.... See more

Back in the 1980s, the Oxford psychologists Michael Argyle and Monika Henderson wrote a seminal paper titled “The Rules of Friendship.” Its six takeaways are obvious, but what the hell, they’re worth restating: In the most stable friendships, people tend to stand up for each other in each other’s absence; trust and confide in each other; support... See more

Aristotle argued that true leisure—by which he meant self-reflection and philosophical contemplation—was among the very highest of virtues because it was worth choosing for its own sake, whereas other virtues, like courage in war, or noble behavior in government, were virtuous only because they led to something else. The Latin word for business,... See more

If you’re in your 20s, don’t get overly swayed by the “magic of compounding interest.” It’s only magical if you make basically the same amount for the rest of your life. If you’re reading articles like this though you’re probably gonna do pretty well for yourself and make way more money later, so stop trying to be so responsible with it right now.... See more

Why don’t all of those Linux developers just build the enterprise layer themselves and use the profits to fund their work? To answer that question, consider the steps the Linux community would have to take to make that work:

A protocol treasury should help grow the network. If managed well, the treasury can serve as a strategic asset that improves the protocol’s market position. If a treasury becomes significant enough, it can fund important public goods, including things in the physical world.