Kaustubh Sule

Addressing Market Failure Is the Legitimate Ground for Coercion The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all. —John Maynard Keynes

States use the threat of violence in order to obtain obedience on taxation and behaviour. The state is not a parent, a philanthropist or a friend. The individual has a soul but the state is a soulless machine. The state can never be weaned away from violence to which it owes its existence. —Mahatma Gandhi

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

At the Heart of the State Is Coercion A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. —Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, 1919

Machines for breadth, human intuition for depth

Sean Monahan, co-founder of K-Hole and writer of the 8Ball newsletter, recently argued that, with the advent of AI, the human trend forecaster will become obsolete. I disagree. What I think will happen instead is that LLMs will raise the standards for our trend research. Machine and human

Instead, what I think we’re missing is a sense of imagination, creativity, and genuine curiosity. Without these elements, the act of research itself has lost its potency, our findings and interpretations reduced to a shallow performance, where the same ideas are recycled and repackaged in an endless feedback loop.

The industry of cultural futuregazing, once a niche subset of ‘coolhunters’ in the 90s, who began tracking street-born trends for brands, has evolved into a sprawling industry. This year alone, 135+ trend reports were published by tech companies, agencies and consultancies. Today, anyone with a TikTok account or Substack and a penchant for digital

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

Tuning in to weird signals

In the world of trend research, we are traditionally taught to be on the lookout for ‘weak signals’ - small, low-frequency indicators that hint at a potential shift in culture. And while scanning for these weak signals is a fundamental part of the process, it’s easy to get stuck in a pattern of only noticing evidence