We get into:

• Why political radicalism and terrorism attract elites

• How Western life radicalized Mohamed Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

• Osama Bin Laden’s trajectory from construction tycoon heir to jihadist

• How terror cells use hazing intermarriage to lock in commitment

• The problem with Ron Paul’s “blowback” theory of Islamic terrorism

• How bureaucratic turf wars left America vulnerable on 9/11

• The PATRIOT Act and the limits of 4th Amendment rights

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Protect your privacy on the cellular level with Cape at https://cape.co/dadsavesamerica. Use code DADSAVESAMERICA33 at checkout for 33% off your first 6 months.

*Chapter: Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Check out Richard Miniter’s work at Zenger News: https://zenger.news/

Check out Richard’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JOWHF2?ccs_id=dcb9f8b6-c904-4dfb-b199-cc8d15600bca

Outline:

[0:00] Why do people become terrorists?

[7:56] Who was Mohamed Atta?

[17:48] Who was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

[26:58] Ramzi Yousef and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

[32:27] 9/11 wasn’t as ideological as we think

[36:00] Who was Osama Bin Laden?

[42:53] Work, terrorism, and a sense of purpose

[47:44] What really motivated Bin Laden?

[49:43] The psychology of terrorism

[1:03:29] The rise of the Red-Green Alliance

[1:11:47] Theology is the center of every civilization

[1:22:14] Terrorism is a political technology

[1:25:40] Living through 9/11 and turning to Ron Paul

[1:34:32] Did our government allow 9/11 to happen?

[1:48:29] The American and Soviet fight over Afghanistan

[1:52:33] America’s longterm conflict with Iran

[2:02:13] Bureaucratic tenure makes bad policy

[2:07:56] Is the PATRIOT Act unconstitutional?

[2:22:01] COVID permanently changed our society

[2:26:52] What did 9/11 mean for American society?

[2:33:03] Do young people really hate the country?

[2:39:39] Pragmatism, ideology, and incentives

[2:46:19] Can we avoid religious war?

[2:50:30] Utilitarianism contradicts human nature

[2:56:19] Can Islam be compatible with America?

[3:07:30] Immigration and assimilation in 2026

[3:12:31] Dad’s job is to tell kids the truth

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wK85AT87m_k

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For me, that image was my dad reading a book.

Not any book in particular, and not any particular time. Just the image of my dad quietly sitting in the living room, reading a physical book, sometimes hours into the night.

It’s not a sight many see these days. According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the number of Americans who read books has been steadily declining. In 2012, 54.6% said they had read at least one book within the past year. By 2022, that number had fallen to 48.5%. Similar trends were seen amongst children and teenagers too, with fewer and fewer reporting that they regularly read for fun.

This decline in habitual reading has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in general reading skills. Exact measurements are difficult to obtain, but most of the data points decisively to a literacy nosedive. In 2017, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that about 80% of American adults could accurately paraphrase and make reasonable inferences from a multi-page text. Just seven years later, only 70% could do the same. Of those aged 16-74, just 46% could read above a 6th grade level, while 21% were considered “functionally illiterate,” meaning that while they could technically read very basic sentences, they struggled to read the requirements on job listings or instructions for filling out legal documents.

Not that any of this is surprising. Anyone who grew up in the mid-2000s or later knows just how many things now exist in our homes that relentlessly distract us from focusing on anything, especially reading. Traditional television was distracting enough, but at least there were times when whatever was on simply didn’t interest me. When I was a teenager, I’d sometimes read during commercial breaks. With the advent of streaming, we no longer have even those short lulls anymore. It’s just constant entertainment and immediate gratification.

Share

Lest I be accused of being an old man yelling at a cloud, keep in mind that I’m a millennial, and a younger one at that! If I am worried about how passive entertainment has destroyed our society’s appetite for reading, it’s because I’ve experienced it myself. Netflix, smartphones, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all came about when I was a kid. With endless movies, shows, and videos to choose from, I was less tempted to pick up a book that would take me several focused hours to read. A book was a heavier commitment. Reading started to feel like work.

Reading can be real work at times. But that’s part of why literacy is so important. Just like working out makes us stronger and improves our athletic performance, reading engages our brain and strengthens our intellectual muscles. And like your real muscles, your intellectual ones shrink if you don’t use them.

Of course, reading books doesn’t necessarily make you a better person. In fact, reading for the wrong reasons can turn you into an acquisitive philistine. Online finance bros and self-help gurus often frame reading as “extracting value.” Then there are the toxic “Book-Tokers,” creators on TikTok who mainly promote YA fiction and stir up fake controversies, usually by accusing someone of racism, sexism, or one of the various phobias.

So how do we build a healthy society of readers? Readers that can not only understand the books they’re holding, but who also don’t just read them to find clues about how to get rich, get clout, or get some poor sap fired from their job?

Leave a comment

To get kids to read, fathers must lead. The best way to set children up to be life-long mature readers is to provide them with a good example. Kids can learn technical skills almost anywhere, but they learn cultural habits and customs from their families and communities first. The things they’re regularly exposed to become part of their world, for better or worse. If they grow up in a household that values reading, they’ll come to see reading as a normal and even vital part of their lives.

That might seem daunting, but raising up a generation of readers isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Modest time investments, like reading aloud to your kids for a few minutes before bed each night, can have enormous impacts. Studies show that reading aloud improves a child’s story comprehension, widens their vocabulary, and makes it easier for them to learn to read on their own later.

But the easiest thing fathers can do is to read books themselves. Read in the living room, so your kids can see you doing it. Keep books around the house. Just having them around encourages kids to read more. They become part of your family’s culture. Even if they never pick your books off the shelves, seeing them there sends a message: books are important.

That’s what my dad taught me, probably without ever intending to. And hopefully, while I’m lounging on the couch reading my dusty old history books, my kids will see that too and be inspired, just like I was.

Share

• Scott Bessent takes on the bond market - The Economist

• Let the Bond Market Speak - WSJ

• Interest Rate Surge? - The Grumpy Economist

• Debt to the Penny - FiscalData

• How much revenue has the U.S. government collected this year? - FiscalData

• Why Bond Yields Are a Key Economic Barometer - WSJ

• Can the US Defy Fiscal Gravity? - Bloomberg

• How Bonds Work and Impact Mortgage Rates and Home Prices - Financial Freedom 101

• How People Around the World View AI - Pew Research Center

• The Great “Transfer”-mation - Economic Innovation Group

Share

We get into:

• Why children are safer with their own married mother and father

• What the data actually says about stepparents and abuse

• How the sexual revolution reshaped our whole society

• Why legalizing gay marriage meant eliminating “mother” and “father” from the law

• The truth about IVF and the fertility industry

• Why adults’ desires are now put before children’s needs

• What Christianity requires of us when defending kids

See if your SSN is for sale right now. My sponsor Cloaked will tell you for free in 2 seconds here: https://cloaked.com/dadsavesamerica ✅

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444. to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

*Chapter: Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Follow Katy Faust on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Katy_Faust?s=20

Read Katy’s work on Substack: https://katyfaustofficial.substack.com/

Order a copy of “Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City”: https://a.co/d/08FsLwfZ

Learn more about Them Before Us: https://thembeforeus.com/

Outline:

[0:00] Raising conservative kids in a woke city

[12:06] The needs of children should come first

[16:23] Why stepparents are more abusive

[27:49] The misplaced empathy for Lindsay Clancy

[33:36] The sexual revolution deranged our culture

[46:56] Traditional values can work for everyone

[51:59] Is gay adoption better than nothing?

[1:04:12] Are people born gay?

[1:14:01] Legalizing gay marriage had crazy side effects

[1:29:07] Does IVF or surrogacy violate the rights of children?

[1:44:00] AOC’s egg-freezing stunt and the denial of tradeoffs

[1:52:19] Should we just ban it all?

[2:04:53] Parenting for future generations

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7ZX38GIbGRA

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

According to Arday, he couldn’t speak until eleven, couldn’t read until 18, earned a PhD by age 30, raised millions for charity, and was such a prolific distance runner that he was basically a world-record contender. As Coleman Hughes put it, “Jason Arday was either the most interesting man in the world or he was a liar. It turned out to be the latter.”

Arday’s fantastical claims about his life have largely been proven outright false or at least highly misleading, but the rubber really meets the road when it comes to his academic career. He recently faced extensive allegations of plagiarism, including in his PhD dissertation. Many of his allies are still clinging to denial, but it’s enough to say the story sold to the public was not the whole story, and Cambridge wanted that story badly.

Whatever else is true about Arday, he seems to have been a sweet person who genuinely struggled with mental disability, and the dead deserve a moment of silence before we start arguing about politics.

Regardless of Arday’s personal failings, we shouldn’t underestimate the intensity of an internet mob. Most normal people can’t be expected to psychologically handle it when they become the target, rightly or wrongly. We live in a really weird time, where any individual’s mistakes can become global news for unpredictable reasons.

Did Jason Arday behave dishonestly in pursuit of success? Yes, he did. Did Cambridge jump at the opportunity to have a token rags-to-riches black professor? Yes, it did. How responsible is he as an individual for the scale of the public praise at first and the intense criticism now? Without Cambridge enthusiastically capitalizing on his clearly suspect story, he wouldn’t have advanced to such heights where his downfall could be this catastrophic.

Cambridge wanted a mascot to prove how progressive it was. Whenever you hear of a “historic first…” or “historic youngest insert identity and job title,” you’re looking at a manufactured milestone that only matters because the institution has arbitrarily declared that it matters. That’s the actual scandal.

When an institution puts identity and victimhood narratives above proven merit, it invites grifters like Arday. It also undermines the members of “protected classes” who’ve earned their positions honestly. Reasonable people will inevitably view their legitimacy with at least a degree of default skepticism.

This is just one symptom of the phenomenon Thomas Sowell calls “mismatch.” Place a student not at the school that matches his level of preparation, but at the most prestigious school that will admit him under a lowered bar, and you’ve set him up to fail. More than 30 years ago, Sowell pointed out that, “At MIT, the average black student is at the top 10% nationwide in mathematics and in the bottom 10% at MIT,“ and a quarter of them didn’t make it to graduation. After the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, black admissions at MIT fell from 13% to 5%. A student capable of a first rate education at a good college was instead handed a third rate education at an elite college, because the point was never his success. The point was the institution’s optics.

Leave a comment

There is a proven solution to racial disparities in education, and it comes from one of the poorest states in the country. Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of black residents, was 49th in the nation in reading in 2013. It is now ninth, with fourth grade black students ranking third in the country in both math and reading. They didn’t invent anything new. They just threw out the failing teaching methods introduced in the late 90s and went back to what had worked for decades. That’s the whole miracle. It’s just what works, applied honestly, for over a decade now.

Following the “cutting-edge” teaching methods has failed, but that’s no problem for ideologues. If the goal were outcomes, Mississippi already handed everyone a blueprint. Cambridge clearly wasn’t interested in outcomes. It didn’t need Jason Arday to produce high-quality work. It needed him to exist, as proof the institution had reckoned with its past. The people running Cambridge, MIT, and every DEI office in between are not, for the most part, driven by malice. They’re driven by so-called “white guilt.”

Shelby Steele’s analysis, and I think it’s correct, is that white guilt isn’t really guilt at all. It’s the loss of moral authority that follows an institution admitting it was wrong, and the desperate effort to buy that authority back. Once white America reckoned with the wrong of segregation, it lost the standing to simply assert its own legitimacy.

The problem with perpetually trying to prove that you’re not racist is that you’re trying to prove a negative, which is impossible. If a university or company doesn’t visibly have enough of the right kind of diversity, it risks being branded illegitimate, and once branded, everything else it does can be waved away.

In Steele’s words, the Great Society actually was, “designed not to solve racial problems but to dissociate our institutions and our government from its racist past.“ It obviously failed to end poverty, with the perverse side effect of hollowing out the black family in the process.

So here is where I land, as a white American who is done with all of it. I don’t feel white guilt. I don’t acknowledge it as legitimate. It has no place in a Christian or an American understanding of the individual. Thomas Aquinas defined love as willing the good of the other. That’s the standard I try to hold myself to, and it applies to every person regardless of what they look like. It’s the standard Cambridge failed when it turned a troubled man into a mascot instead of asking the hard questions that might have set him on a better path.

Jason Arday’s death is a tragedy. But it should also be the last straw for institutions that have been performing virtue instead of practicing it.

Share

Videos of women excusing Clancy’s actions or promoting conspiracy theories implicating her ex-husband have spread like wildfire on TikTok. Hundreds of women showed up to her trial wearing pink in solidarity and her family has now raised over $1,000,000 on GoFundMe. Meanwhile, Massachusetts lawmakers just legalized abortion up until the moment of birth to great fanfare.

Both reflect the same moral drift: a culture that has grown increasingly comfortable letting mothers decide when they are, and aren’t, responsible for the lives of their children.

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4AusNBM64Ls

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

We get into:

• Why Fauci saying “I represent science” was a betrayal of science

• How the RCP 8.5 climate scenario was used for propaganda

• Working as BP’s chief scientist and inside the Department of Energy

• Why the global energy transition hasn’t moved the needle on fossil fuel use

• Why wind and solar can’t be the backbone of the electric grid

• The real risks of EMP attacks and solar storms

• The state of nuclear power and small modular reactors

• How AI is reshaping energy reliability, affordability, and emissions

Protect your privacy on the cellular level with Cape at https://cape.co/dadsavesamerica. Use code DADSAVESAMERICA33 at checkout for 33% off your first 6 months.

Order a copy of “Unsettled”: https://a.co/d/0b7F59dt

Outline:

[0:00] Can science be “settled”?

[12:39] What is a scientific model?

[20:25] Human behavior is hard to predict

[25:36] Cause and effect in complex systems

[28:33] Why are scientists swayed by “consensus”?

[33:47] Working in the Obama administration

[42:59] Insane climate models were treated as sane

[53:41] Fossil fuels and power grids are life-saving

[1:03:38] The risk of an EMP attack

[1:12:38] AI data centers and energy reliability

[1:18:05] “But we need climate action!”

[1:26:53] The incentives inside scientific institutions

[1:31:56] How the military drives scientific research

[1:39:25] Should we worry about the Skynet timeline?

[1:51:27] Always check your opinions against real data

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Uq2w-nF9Yrw

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The person engaged in deception is convinced that their actions are motivated by love, but love and deception mix as well as oil in water. In reality, the secrets and lies the family abides by are hiding shame, guilt, and judgment.

I mean, have you ever met someone who’s said, “I’m glad I was lied to?” Of course not.

However, the truth, not the lie, always gets blamed for the fallout once revealed, destroying bonds and trust built with the people you loved.

I’m currently dealing with my own version of deception, one I had no clue was even taking place, and I’m still processing how to move forward in life.

As I understood it growing up, my father had another child with another woman but I knew nothing else about them. For years, I told myself that it didn’t really matter but as I got older, I thought, “What if my sister was looking for me?”

I talked it over with my wife and she agreed that I should try to search for her, so I took the first step of submitting my DNA to Ancestry.com and seeing if there were any hits. My results came in a few weeks later, and while I didn’t see anyone that resembled my sister, I found something else I’d never even considered.

My father was an immigrant from Trinidad who’d moved to America around the age of 30, yet when I looked at the family tree on my father’s side, there was zero lineage from the Caribbean.

I saw a first cousin listed there whose tree branched to great-grandparents from Mississippi. Something didn’t make sense. I talked to my wife for hours about what I was seeing, but I still couldn’t make sense of it.

I was in a state of denial until I could accept the truth that had been hidden from me: the man I had called my father wasn’t my father.

There never had been any rumblings of me being someone else’s child. That possibility was a secret only known by one person. Without divulging too much information, I wasn’t getting any help understanding the situation and was encouraged to leave it alone, as if wanting to know the truth was a bad endeavor.

With the help of a search angel, someone who helps to reconnect family members, I was able to get in contact with my first cousin. Immediately, he welcomed me as family and wanted to help me connect the dots as to who my father was.

Leave a comment

Hours later, my cousin called me back.

“Are you sitting down?”

“No.”

“You should sit down.”

“Okay.”

“We found your father.”

Those words of discovery made me cry like a child who had been missing his entire life finally making his way home.

He spoke with his uncle about whether he knew who my mother was and he confirmed he did. He remembered when she was pregnant but wasn’t sure if he was the father, as there was someone else in the picture at the time.

Growing up, my conversations with my father were superficial and incredibly brief. But today, I got to have a deep conversation with my real father. The man I’d always wanted my father to be was always out there, and I had no idea until the age of 42.

I was robbed of growing up with siblings, uncles, and a father who would have been involved in my life, all because of a secret. A secret that covered up someone else’s shame but robbed me of what every child deserves: a father.

A secret has left me with pieces of an identity that I now have to glue back together, virtually on my own. I spent years healing my father wound, and now it’s been picked back open because of a family secret.

The only saving grace is that I’ve now had the opportunity to talk to my father before he leaves this earth. I don’t believe in coincidences, and I thank the Lord for helping to reveal the truth to me.

This past Father’s day was the most difficult Father’s Day. I broke down crying in church as my deacon held me. Darkness had covered my entire life, but now it was time for the Lord’s light to shine on me.

Even if my family wouldn’t tell me the truth, God eventually did.

Share

• I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can’t do middle school math - The San Francisco Standard

• Our collective statement on the death of Professor Jason Arday - Amnesty International

• National Museum of African American History and Culture Releases “Talking About Race” Web Portal - National Museum of African American History & Culture

• The Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina - Congress.gov

• Race Relations - Gallup

• Left Ramps Up Its Demands For Sweeping Online Censorship, From The US To UK To EU - Public News

• After a Scholar's Awful Death, Mistaken Calls for Censorship - New York Times

• Preferential Policies: An International Perspective - Thomas Sowell

• Intellectuals and Race - Thomas Sowell

• White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era - Shelby Steele

Share

We get into:

• Growing up in China during WWII and the rise of Mao

• Why the West is a “cut flower civilization”

• The golden triangle of freedom, virtue, and faith

• Why atheism conflicts with free will

• Whether Islam can adapt to Western norms

• The Hebrew Republic’s overlooked influence on America’s founding

• The rise of antisemitism on the left and right

• What it will take for the West to come home to its own roots

Order a copy of “Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds”: https://a.co/d/0bdSVQbY

Order a copy of “America Agonistes: America’s 250th and the Restoration of a Nation in Conflict with Itself and Its Past”: https://a.co/d/0eL4mAbN

Outline:
[0:00] Growing up in China in the 1940s
[2:34] Eastern VS Western Civilization
[6:53] The roots of the West have been cut
[16:14] Freedom, virtue, and faith
[27:51] Civility and truth in public discourse
[36:59] Can people be equal without faith?
[40:19] Christianity is anti-utopian
[48:21] Is an Islamic Reformation possible?
[59:07] Are there limits to free speech?
[1:10:21] The Jewish influence on the Founding Fathers
[1:17:35] How can Christians and Jews work together?
[1:25:48] Why are Jews so influential in the West?
[1:35:53] The elitist-populist divide
[1:42:04] The role of entrepreneurship in freedom
[1:46:32] Man’s Search for Meaning

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-j-QB93yegU

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

What some of you may not realize is that this show is a project of Emergent Order Foundation, an organization I founded five years ago. Dad Saves America was my response to concerning political and psychological trends I’d noticed bubbling up throughout our society.

But the idea was always to eventually expand the roster with a range of voices dedicated to getting the West back on the right track. This week, we’re launching a brand new show, Strictly Education, hosted by Katharine Birbalsingh.

Known as “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress,” Katharine brings decades of experience pushing back against progressive schooling in favor of traditional wisdom. As she put it, “Strictly Education is about putting children on the map.” She’s working to revive the time-tested approaches to education, both at school and in the home, that too many teachers and parents have been led astray from in recent decades.

On Dad Saves America, I try my best to highlight all sorts of perspectives on our modern challenges, but I’m still just one guy. With the launch of Strictly Education, we’re moving into the next phase of our mission: to build a bottom-up movement that champions civilization and the potential it unlocks in each of us.

As I reflect on this milestone, I’d like to walk you through how our mission came to be in the first place.

The 2008 Financial Crisis

The first time in my adult life I felt like the world was crashing down was the 2008 financial crisis. I was working in New York at the time, listening to EconTalk on my long commute to try and make sense of what was going on. This habit developed into a sort of DIY economics education and eventually led to my collaboration with EconTalk host Russ Roberts on the original Keynes vs. Hayek rap battle in 2010, followed up by round two in 2011.

Both videos had their viral moments and have maintained a cult following to this day. We’re actually reviving the format at this very moment over on Radical Discourse, with Hamilton vs. Jefferson, Marx vs. Friedman, and more to come every Friday.

The financial crisis marked the end of what economists call the Great Moderation: a steady period of falling volatility and rising prosperity, roughly from Ronald Reagan taking office to 2008. The Soviet Union finally succumbed to the fatal flaws of communism and there was a real consensus that democratic republics and free markets were the recipe for success. Marxism, communism, and socialism were fringe positions in mainstream culture, only held by whack job academics. Now that consensus has been rejected, at least in part, by just about everybody.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement gave us a glimpse of the socialist revival underway today. Our country had begun its slide into an identity crisis.

Leave a comment

The 2020 COVID Crisis

The second time I, and everyone else, felt like the world was crashing down was when COVID hit.

In the years leading up to 2020, I was alarmed by the psychological state of my son’s Gen Z peers. America was raising a generation that, frankly, didn’t want freedom. They couldn’t handle the risks inherent in making choices for themselves.

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, arrived at just the right time to make sense of the generalized anxiety and lack of agency I was observing. I ultimately began producing a documentary on the topic and found myself interviewing Jonathan Haidt at NYU in March 2020. Ironic timing.

The world shut down, and everything I was worried about was about to get magnified a thousandfold. The anxiety, the social isolation, the tyranny, the collapse of freedom. And soon, the rise of a kind of radical politics America hadn’t seen since the early 1970s.

Share

The 2026 Socialist Crisis

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party just barely avoided nominating Francesca Hong, an avowed socialist, for governor. She lost, which is good, but 300,000 Democrats voted for her anyway. The Democratic Socialists of America (+17%) now poll better among Democrats than congressional Democrats (+4%) do. Favorable views of capitalism among Democrats have fallen from 51% in 2010 to 42% today, while favorable views of socialism have climbed from 50% in 2010 to 66% today. And let’s not forget, Kamala Harris almost won in 2024. The “almost” might buy us some time, but it’s not much comfort.

It’s not just a series of close calls either. AOC, Ilhan Omar, and friends have been in Congress for almost a decade at this point. Zohran Mamdani won the NYC mayoral election on a socialist platform. “Progressive” Abdul El-Sayed won his Senate primary in Michigan just a couple weeks ago. While the original “Squad” leaned heavily on environmental and immigration issues, the current wave of left-wing victories is built around affordability messaging with a side of pro-Palestine virtue signalling.

On the issue of affordability, it’s easy to see why they’re succeeding. Groceries are up 33% since 2019, nearly half of renters spend over 30% of their income on housing, and 95% of Americans feel that we’re in a genuine affordability crisis. That’s the soil this movement is growing in.

Part of the problem is that, for decades, we’ve undersold how socialistic many parts of American life already have become. So when the socialist comes along and says, “Look how capitalism has screwed you over! Only socialism can save you!”, the pitch makes sense to a lot of young voters.

The Israel-Palestine stuff concerns me in a different way. The reaction after October 7th brought all of this to a head for me. I’m not Jewish and I don’t exactly have a dog in the fight, but watching young people who claim to care about social justice, feminism, and LGBT rights embrace Hamas outright was inexplicable.

I don’t even think it’s really about Israel, Hamas, or the Middle East in general. The moral logic is largely inconsistent, completely overlooking far worse tragedies and atrocities in conflicts like the Syrian Civil War. The reality is that this issue is being used as a wedge to drive a destabilized generation toward groups like the DSA, whose actual platform is to overthrow the constitutional order.

Leave a comment

How to Save America

The documentary I began making before COVID ended up transforming into Dad Saves America. With the podcast boom during lockdowns, it made sense to take advantage of the new media environment.

Fundamentally, what I’m trying to do with Dad Saves America is to argue the case for Americanism. That includes liberty, limited government, a belief in equal human dignity, and an understanding that humans are fundamentally flawed. I will alternately call myself conservative or libertarian, but I think American is the best term to sum up my worldview.

Today’s political challenges highlight more than ever that the American project doesn’t sustain itself on its own. Young adults who’ve never been taught the worldwide historical reality of human suffering, whether through economic deprivation or violence, aren’t set up to draw reasonable conclusions about economics or geopolitics. They have no reliable context to interpret the world around them. Add in social media, AI chatbots, and the mental health issues that follow, and you can’t be surprised when they vote for radicals of all sorts.

Saving America means continually making the case for America. That’s what I try to do here.

Share

This show began in response to the mental health crisis I saw emerging among my son’s peers. Then COVID lockdowns hit and turned my worst-case predictions into reality. Now, socialism is sweeping the Democratic Party and young women are marching in support of Hamas, all while social media continues to poison the minds of our kids.

As I like to say, the 1990s were the peak of Western civilization. The Cold War had been won, the economy was relatively stable, and our politics didn’t feel existential. Most importantly, both parties agreed that America was fundamentally good.

That consensus is dead. If the next generation no longer believes in the system that built the world they’ll inherit, what comes next?

Ready to give MASA a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to https://www.masachips.com/dad and using code DAD.

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PMpTTQQb3AI

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

We get into:

• Why shame, done right, is essential to raising well behaved kids

• How gentle parenting and white guilt are burning down Western civilization

• Why the left refuses to try proven solutions in education

• The consequences of failing to teach our true history

• Why AI can never replace the relationship a great teacher builds with a child

• Her case for government intervention regarding social media and smartphones

• The vision behind Strictly Education and why she wanted to team up with Dad Saves America

Ready to give MASA a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://www.masachips.com/dad and using code DAD.

My first interview with Katharine: https://youtu.be/uLmb3as-MQc?si=Qfd_7vXHLOcW7ym2

Watch “Strictly Education”: https://youtu.be/UpTqPSSOMn0?si=pUkovSuiHgCs2p0n

Follow Katharine Birbalsingh on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Miss_Snuffy

Outline:

[0:00] Why launch Strictly Education?

[15:39] What’s happening to young women?

[20:40] Can free-range parenting work in 2026?

[30:56] What does “culture” actually mean?

[35:49] Bad behavior thrives on attention

[42:46] Why shame is useful in the classroom

[52:43] White guilt is destroying civilization

[1:00:07] Why the left attacks real solutions

[1:08:55] Kids are being lied to about our history

[1:18:26] You can’t teach critical thinking

[1:27:01] Is technology a net-negative in education?

[1:32:06] How do we keep kids off social media?

[1:50:55] Gentle parenting, adulthood, and the death of God

[1:58:05] How should we teach the Western canon?

[2:05:51] We’ve literally dumbed-down education

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WrCd_oec5VE

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

On Wednesday, July 29th, Republican senators questioned the lying weasel about his time as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci didn’t answer one question. Instead, he repeated over 100 times, “Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

More than six years after the world shut down, a moment like this should’ve felt cathartic. However, all it did was drudge up the insurmountable anger, loss, and grief that many of us have tried to put behind us. This sociopath was pardoned and continues to face no real consequences, so yes, people are still mad.

Dr. Fauci is certainly the highest-profile villain of COVID, but he isn’t the only villain. Perhaps it’s easier to be angrier at him than at the people whose betrayal was the most personal: our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even family members who would have gladly turned us into the gulag for refusing to comply with lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates. It isn’t healthy to hold onto anger and resentment forever, but it also isn’t healthy to be abused for years and then pretend that nothing happened, allowing the abuse to be repeated in the future.

The most disturbing and eye-opening aspect of the COVID era was how children were treated as sacrificial lambs. Viewing COVID as an existential threat, otherwise normal adults forgot basic principles of childhood development. Children were locked in their homes, forced onto screens, masked, deprived of important life events, pitted against one another, told they were going to kill Grandma, and taught to fear the air they breathed. Then they were given experimental shots, all for a virus that posed virtually zero threat to them.

Leave a comment

The total damage COVID policies did to children is impossible to measure. According to an Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health meta analysis from 2021, “A high prevalence of COVID-19-related fear was noted among children and adolescents, as well as more depressive and anxious symptoms compared with prepandemic estimates. Older adolescents, girls, and children and adolescents living with neurodiversities and/or chronic physical conditions were more likely to experience negative mental health outcomes. Many studies reported mental health deterioration among children and adolescents due to COVID-19 pandemic control measures.”

In the name of COVID “safety,” children’s physical health was also compromised. Ironically, COVID had minimal health effects on children, but keeping them isolated at home, out of the sunlight, away from sports, with limited access to healthcare services had a significant negative impact on their health. In May of 2021, the NIH concluded, “Harms of school closure on child and adolescent health seem to exceed some indicators of positive health care system effects.” This study emphasized the damage from decreased access to school-based services, especially for lower income families and children with disabilities.

Many people hope that one day, Anthony Fauci will answer for his role in the tyrannical government overreach of COVID. But what about everyone else? What responsibility belongs to government officials, school administrators, healthcare leaders, employers, journalists, and ordinary citizens who enforced or cheered on these policies? At what point does “following orders” stop being an excuse? Those are uncomfortable questions, but they are necessary to ask.

If you still feel angry, you’re not alone. Don’t let anyone convince you that remembering what happened is the same as refusing to heal. Sometimes it’s a sign that something profoundly wrong happened and was never acknowledged, let alone corrected. Forgiveness and healing do not require pretending that the abuse never occurred.

The goal is not to remain consumed by resentment. It’s to learn from the past, demand accountability where it’s warranted, and make sure that children are never forced to bear this kind of burden again.

Share

• A Working-Class Party Without Many Workers - New York Times

• 2021 DSA Member Survey Report - DSA North Star

• Progressive Candidate Wins Michigan Democratic Senate Nomination - Wall Street Journal

• The Road to Serfdom - F. A. Hayek

• Abdul for US Senate

• We're on you side! - Reddit

Share

We get into:

• What masculinity is really all about

• The moment Nick’s co-host changed the way he gives advice

• Why conservatives aren’t getting through to radicalized young men

• What he’s observed raising both a son and daughters

• How he and his wife built a successful marriage and family

• Why Christianity gets results, even if you can’t see it yet

American Hartford Gold can help you protect your wealth with precious metals! Contact them today to get up to $20,000 in free silver on your first order! Call 888-650-9836, or text DAD to 65532, or click here find out more: https://offers.americanhartfordgold.com/content-affiliate/?Leadsource=Affiliate&utm_sfcampaign=701Nv00000hAYCcIAO

Order a copy of “The Manbook”: https://a.co/d/0iZo3I5Y

Follow Nick Freitas on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/NickJFreitas?s=20

Watch “Making the Argument” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Nickjfreitas

Outline:

[0:00] What does it mean to be a man?

[2:59] How can we speak effectively to young men?

[16:56] The woke revolution in corporate America

[30:19 30:22] Compassion has become victimhood worship

[38:30] Is ideology downstream of technology?

[47:22] Men blame objects and women blame themselves

[55:45] How do we protect girls from bad influences?

[1:05:58] Gen Z’s expectations are off

[1:15:09] Are we overthinking our problems?

[1:22:38] Marriage is hard because life is hard

[1:36:10] Cause and effect is a good guide to truth

[1:41:45] What does a healthy identity look like?

[1:56:28] Why losing his Congressional election was a blessing

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-GC5BjyhctA

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

That’s true. He should’ve stopped there. But Mamdani kept going, arguing that the past few months have shown that, to the contrary, socialists do understand economics. The supposed proof was that he’d solved “years of [capitalist] mismanagement through the embrace of [socialist] principles.”

So how did he pull off this “socialist miracle”? Well, he convinced Governor Hochul to provide a multi-billion dollar bailout, he used some accounting magic to delay pension payments, and he implemented new taxes on the rich. We’ll see how many of them actually stay to pay those taxes.

One potentially good thing he did was install “chief savings officers” in city agencies, tasked with finding 2.5% in wasteful spending to cut for 2027 and 2028. Not exactly a high bar, but we can hope, right?

Balancing the budget by asking the state to bail out NYC reminds me of how, until January of this year, Venezuela used to subsidize the Cuban regime with oil shipments. So I guess he’s right that “socialist principles” have come to his rescue.

Expanding on his budgetary miracle, he said, “There’s nothing fiscally responsible about balancing the budget on the backs of working people.” In context, he was referencing the fact that they’d refused to cut any of the countless services the city provides for its residents. But he revealed something deeper about his worldview with that statement. He’s implying that budgetary sanity, a matter of hard numbers, is somehow subject to a timeless battle between the rich and the working class. The oppressor and the oppressed.

Socialism. Communism. Marxism. Call it what you want, but that’s the Mamdani playbook.

The Zombie Labor Theory of Value

Let’s start with the idea underneath all of it: the labor theory of value. Marxism holds that the value of something is measured by the cost of its inputs, chiefly labor. Work harder, work longer, and the thing you made is worth more. It sounds intuitive, and it’s true in a very limited sense. All else equal, working harder or working longer hours does result in more value created. But working eight hours using primitive tools is unlikely to be more productive than two hours using cutting-edge technology. Digging holes in the desert for a whole day is worth exactly the same as spending just 15 minutes on the task: $0.00.

In the 1870s, three economists working independently, the Austrian Carl Menger, the Englishman William Stanley Jevons, and the Frenchman Léon Walras, all converged on what’s now called the Marginal Revolution. They showed that value isn’t set by the cost of inputs at all. It’s set at the margin, at the intersection of supply and demand. It doesn’t matter how hard I worked or how long something took to make. If nobody wants it, it isn’t worth anything. Value rises as supply contracts or demand expands, and it falls as supply expands or demand contracts, regardless of the production cost.

So the founding assumption of Marxian economics was overturned before the Soviet Union ever pulled Marx out of obscurity and put him to use. Somehow, that theory is now baked into the politics of our country’s greatest city.

Share

Supply Creates Demand

There’s an even older idea underneath all of this: the law of markets, also known as Say’s Law. Properly understood, it says demand is made possible by supply. Your income is a function of how much you can produce. If you want to buy more, you have to get better at making more.

This is where Marxism runs into its deepest problem. Because it starts from a faulty theory of value, it also assumes the world is a zero-sum game.

If the labor theory of value were true, then anyone profiting off your labor would be stealing from you in some sense. Under that framework, labor has a one-to-one relationship with value creation, so any “surplus value” must be the result of a conspiracy against your interests. The next logical step is that, if you want to claw back your stolen wages, wealth must be redistributed, either through negotiation or by force.

Of course, that’s not actually how the material world works. The average American is wealthier today than a century ago because of technology, not because workers got better at collective bargaining. Income is a direct function of how much we can produce, and we increase what we can produce through technological innovation. The Industrial Revolution let us make more with every hour of effort. Capital, what Adam Smith called stored labor, gets invested in tools and machines so we can level up our productivity.

Here’s how the mechanism actually plays out. Say I’m a farmer and I invest in a tractor. I’m suddenly producing five times more wheat than before. I’m not the only one who can see the opportunity. Every other farmer either makes the same investment or loses market share to whoever can sell for less. Total output climbs, and food gets cheaper across the board.

Now, say I’m the blacksmith down the road. I still need to eat. As the cost of food collapses because farmers have new technology, my wages effectively rise as a share of what it costs to put dinner on the table. That’s how wages actually go up across the board. They’re the product of supply, not negotiation. We can’t all bargain our way to more if the total amount of stuff to go around is fixed. All you can do is redistribute what already exists. Growing the total requires making more, and making more requires technology.

Leave a comment

Good Luck, NYC!

A state bailout doesn’t create new wealth, it just moves next year’s problem onto Albany’s balance sheet. Delaying pension payments doesn’t the obligations disappear, it just kicks them down the road. Treating the rich like the city’s piggy bank works great, until they leave. Rebranding DOGE as “responsible socialist governance” isn’t the worst option for NYC, but the targets Mamdani has set are nowhere near the size of the hole being papered over.

Every piece of Mamdani’s “socialist miracle” is the same move: treat the city’s finances as a fixed amount to be divided differently, rather than something to grow. The only way NYC can actually get the numbers to work past 2027 is the same way the farmer, the blacksmith, or any economy ever has.

Building beats bargaining every time, and no accounting trick can change that.

Share

• Tony's Diary - Senator Rand Paul

• Research on Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Influenza Virus: The Way Forward - National Library of Medicine

• Blumenthal and Whitehouse Call on Twitter to Inform All Users Who Interacted with Russian Accounts Promoting #ReleaseTheMemo and #SchumerShutdown - Senator Richard Blumenthal

• 'I'm not a progressive': Fetterman breaks with the left, showing a maverick side - NBC News

• Public Opinion - Walter Lippmann

• Propaganda - Edward L. Bernays

• Dr. Anthony Fauci: The Highest Paid Employee In The Entire U.S. Federal Government - Forbes

Share

We get into:

• Why University of Florida ranks #1 and Harvard lands at #37

• What the 68 variables in this new ranking system actually measure

• Why US News & World Report rankings almost never change, even as elite campuses melt down

• How faculty became activists, and why even tenured professors self-censor

• What DEI bureaucracies did to schools like the University of Michigan

• The three competing purposes of the university: personal development, job training, and politics

• Why universities are alienating the students they need most

American Hartford Gold can help you protect your wealth with precious metals! Contact them today to get up to $20,000 in free silver on your first order! Call 888-650-9836, or text DAD to 65532, or click here find out more: https://offers.americanhartfordgold.com/content-affiliate/?Leadsource=Affiliate&utm_sfcampaign=701Nv00000hAYCcIAO

City Journal College Rankings: https://collegerankings.city-journal.org/rankings

https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/college-rankings/PDFs/CollegeRankings.pdf

Outline:

[0:00] Universities have lost public trust

[6:59 7:12] What happened on campus in 2015?

[16:38] How universities became ideological

[24:33] What is the purpose of education?

[37:00] Should we think of college as career training?

[45:38] Campus politics is a status game

[53:51] The self-censorship tipping point

[1:07:40] Why don’t academics like debate?

[1:19:09] How academics view American society

[1:26:43] Has a diploma become a meaningless credential?

[1:35:29] How colleges stack up in 2026

[1:57:35] University governance is broken

[2:06:48] The tension between public funding and academic freedom

[2:19:23] Higher ed is about to drop off a demographic cliff

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IaLNRUlScJk

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

While “bipartisanship” is usually invoked to describe a handful of moderate Democrats or Republicans voting with the other party on a particular issue, often something most voters don’t even support, in this case it’s real. Recent surveys show that 63% of Americans support a one year moratorium, including 67% of Democrats, 66% of independents, and 58% of Republicans. Asked in a slightly different way, 71% oppose the construction of AI data centers in their local area.

An important fact to keep in mind is that popularity is not some infallible metric of right and wrong or good and bad ideas. Fads and moral panics come and go all the time. A poll is not an argument. Even when a bipartisan consensus correctly identifies a problem, the rushed “solutions” politicians offer probably won’t help. They’re more likely to be stunts they can tout in their reelection campaigns to prove they’re on the “right side of history.”

According to those surveys, more Americans worry about data centers in their neighborhoods (71%) than data centers in general (63%). So should we be talking about one-size-fits-all national policies or practical problem-solving on the local level?

The Energy Question

Of all the worries about data centers, spiking residential electricity prices have dominated the public conversation. These facilities draw enormous amounts of power, so following the laws of supply and demand, you’d expect prices to rise accordingly. Elizabeth Warren has claimed that in some areas, electricity bills have increased by up to 267% over the past five years. Her solution, as always, is to increase taxes on data centers, since they were “built on American land using our shared resources,” whatever that means.

So are data centers causing a nationwide energy crisis? The truth is more complicated. First, the number Warren cited is extremely misleading. While whole-sale electricity prices have increased by up to 267%, that only represents a fraction of the bills paid by households. It doesn’t account for the costs of transportation, distribution, or taxes.

Her claim also ignores inflation, which peaked during the exact time period she was referencing. If you look at nationwide average prices adjusted for inflation, they’re up about 10-15% from the most recent low point in 2021. However, that was preceded by a roughly equivalent decline during the first Trump administration. Today’s prices are just around where they’d floated from 2007 to 2017.

But that’s just the national average, which could be obscuring localized spikes near data centers. Virginia leads the country in data center buildout, followed by Texas. So those states must have out of control electricity costs, right? In reality, both states are 10-15% below the national average. California, which has a similar number of currently operating data centers as Texas, has double the electricity costs. Whatever the impact of data centers may be, other factors clearly play a much larger role in the bills households have to pay.

Part of why data centers don’t appear to be spiking electricity costs is also a function of supply and demand. Earlier this year, the Trump administration negotiated the Ratepayer Protection Pledge with the biggest players in AI to encourage the buildout of new power sources to cover their electricity consumption. This is a win-win: increased supply and economies of scale mean that both residents and data center operators can avoid massive price spikes.

Share

An Undeniable Problem

So if electricity costs aren’t really the problem they initially appeared to be, what are all the complaints about? Unfortunately, building a power plant next to a data center instead of connecting to the grid has one big downside: it’s loud.

In Sterling, Virginia, there’s a new data center located just across the street from a residential neighborhood. Its generators run 24/7, forcing residents to listen to a constant high pitched ringing, “almost like you have a headache.” This is obviously a disaster for quality of life, and if they want to move elsewhere, they’ll likely take a price hit when they try to sell their homes.

I lived in New York City for many years, and when I later moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, I discovered the simple luxury of quiet. Without the horn honking and trucks driving over metal plates outside of my apartment all night long, I experienced dramatically lower ambient levels of stress and anxiety. That luxury has been stripped from these communities. Living in NYC, I knew that was part of the package. But for this community in Virginia and elsewhere across the country, the noise has radically changed the deal they signed up for when they bought their homes.

Again, however, like Elizabeth Warren’s claims about electricity prices, there remains the question of how prevalent this problem actually is and whether there are fairly straightforward, win-win solutions on the table. It’s not obvious why you don’t just… build a data center away from residential neighborhoods. The United States isn’t exactly known for having too little land. Halting data center construction nationwide is treating a paper cut with amputation.

Leave a comment

Our Ancient Anxieties

All of the practical concerns about AI data centers, reasonable if not always accurate, distract from a much more fundamental anxiety: what will be left for humans to do once AI advances far enough?

If we can trust centuries of historical precedent, there’s an economic concept to answer this question. It’s known as the Jevons paradox: when technology allows us to use a resource more efficiently, we use more of that resource, not less. William Stanley Jevons noticed in the 19th century that, as steam engines were improved to run more efficiently, we didn’t consume less coal. That would be the intuitive result, since you could do more work with less. We also didn’t consume the same amount of coal, even though we could again do more work with that. Instead, we consumed more coal, because there now was an economic incentive to find new industrial applications of steam engines.

The question here is: does AI replace human labor, or does it amplify the power of human labor?

In my experience, it’s both. Over the past year, I’ve been building apps to improve my everyday workflow and doing deep research for Dad Saves America that I never could have done before. I’m not just not spending time on tasks I had before. I’m doing completely new tasks, while getting everything else done in less time, because of AI.

The uncomfortable reality is that, yes, many jobs will disappear as we know them today, but the concept of a job will not. New ways to mix human labor with technology will continue to be discovered, as they always have been.

This is the story of every technological revolution in human history. It’s the story of the Luddites, the 19th century English textile workers who smashed the new machines. The irony is that they themselves relied on stocking frames, a technology that had put the old hand-knitters out of work less than 200 years earlier. The people fighting the new machines were, as usual, living off the second-to-newest ones.

Their anxiety was understandable, just as ours is now. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t step back, see the historical pattern, and realize that “this time is different” is what we’ve always said.

Share