A failed state is one which fails to achieve a monopoly on violence in its territory—e.g., one in which militias and gangsters also have the capability to inflict violence upon the people. A successful state achieves a monopoly on violence in a given territory, and after that, we face questions about the extent to which it works in the best

... See more

I write this to you from New York City, where we are governed by Democrats and we pay the highest taxes in the country, but that doesn’t mean we receive the best government services. Our transportation agencies are black holes for money, unable to deliver on their capital plans despite repeated increases in the dedicated taxes that fund them,

... See more

So here’s where we are: caught in a compound crisis where economic stress reduces cognitive bandwidth, reduced bandwidth enables extraction, extraction deepens economic stress, stress plus overload erodes trust, loss of trust prevents coordination, coordination failure leaves problems unsolved, and unsolved problems deepen the crisis.

This isn’t a... See more