Category: Commentary

As soon as you say, “Everyone should believe X, and if you don’t, you’re a crazy”, you make X look both less desirable, and more likely to be mistaken.

If X really is obvious, you needn’t pressure everyone to accept it. Anyone who denies the irrefutable is not going to be pressured anyway. An appeal to authority or consensus is not going to win over doubters, nor should it. If X is untrue or even a little bit off in some way, your anger at non-believers will harden your perceptions and form an intellectual arrogance that blinds you to new developments. It also makes you look like an ass who’s afraid of a world where people believe things differently than you.

Believers in far-fetched, fringe ideas rarely suffer from this kind of angry, shaming proclamation, because they’re used to their ideas being considered fringe. Those who believe generally accepted ideas, or who oppose fringe theories, are most in danger of this mindset. They may be entirely correct that the fringe ideas are silly, but the angry demand that everyone agree with generally accepted ideas is at least as anti-intellectual as the fringe ideas themselves, and revealing of a deep insecurity.

From the Praxis Blog

Ultimately, what people believe determines the kind of world they live in. When the bulk of society is willing to tolerate some kind of annoyance, or oppression, or shortcoming, or injustice, or unfairness, it is likely to emerge in that society. Everyone weighs the costs and benefits of resisting undesirable features of social and political institutions, and when the costs are too high, they find ways to cope rather than push back.

Sometimes the coping includes creating belief systems that label the undesirable features good, or at least inevitable or necessary. These status quo justifying belief systems keep the status quo safe from pressure to improve. You see this in business, politics, and all manner of social settings.

If the beliefs of members of society are the binding constraint on the social order, how do those beliefs change, as they sometimes do, and often quickly and radically? (Think about the complete reversal of the common beliefs about slavery in the early 19th century, and the worldwide institutional changes that rippled outward from it).

There are two primary ways to change beliefs. You can give people new ideas and new experiences. Creating new ideas is to directly confront those that form someone’s belief system, and ask them to make room for new ones. It is to conceptually challenge, confront, question, or inspire. Think of the people who challenge the status quo with books, songs, sermons, speeches, essays, and conversation. Think of the times your mind has been opened or changed by a teacher or author or friend.

It’s easy to assume this direct educational approach is the only way to change beliefs, but there is another way more subtle and just as powerful. It may be less glamorous because it often lacks the decisive light-bulb moment or a clear hero, but it’s effect is no less profound. It is to give people new experiences.

This approach to changing the world does not require an intellectual turnabout, or any arguing over theories. When you create new experiences and offer them to the world, they are either valuable or not. If they make lives better, they succeed and overtake or fundamentally alter people’s beliefs about the status quo, sometimes before anyone consciously notices. Those who create new experiences are entrepreneurs, and they are world changers just as the influential intellectuals.

While people endlessly debate the merits of immigration law, and whether individuals from other countries should be allowed to work in the US and on what terms, entrepreneurs keep improving technology and creating jobs for foreign workers where they can create value for US firms and consumers without having to hazard immigration red tape. Innovators find ways to integrate the world economy even when political institutions and public belief make little room for it. Experts long debated the correct way to determine long distance telephone rates, who should own the valuable telephone lines, and how they should be managed. While they were wrangling, cell phones were created, and now the debate seems meaningless. While defenders of the status quo say taxi service must be regulated and restricted to work, Uber comes along and awakens us to the reality that it doesn’t.

People form beliefs with the best information available. Often, it is assumed some particular societal deficiency is inevitable simply because we lack the imagination to envision a different solution. You can open imaginations by thoughtfully articulating why the experts are wrong and computers can be small enough and useful in the home. You can also open imaginations by creating the microchip, and making, marketing, and delivering products that use it to better peoples lives.

When you see something unsatisfactory in the world around you, know that the beliefs which sustain it are subject to change. If you want to help humanity forge ahead, create new ideas and new experiences.

Interchangeable parts revolutionized manufacturing—and all aspects of life—at the dawn of the Industrial Age. It’s in some way analogous to how the digitization of information is changing life today. The difference is that now you get the best of both worlds: You can keep the differentiation and individualization while also getting the standardization. It’s a mash-up world; it’s weird, and it’s beautiful. We can most easily see the impact in entertainment, but the implications reach far deeper, opening new possibilities for commerce and governance.

To my kids, this is all second nature. My son thinks modularly, and sees the world as a series of modules. He’s grown up with platforms like the iPad that are populated with modules called apps, which you can mix and match any way you like. He likes Minecraft, Legos, and Star Wars. There are Lego mods for Minecraft, and Minecraft sets for Lego. There are Lego Star Wars products and shows. There are YouTube video mashups of all these things. Some of the shows he likes combine medieval adventure tales with high technology, or Greek myths with cartoon slapstick and pop-culture references. Nyan Cat and Batman fighting an ancient pharaoh with the Ring of Power? Sure, why not?

When I was a kid, things were far more cemented to their platforms. I liked Top Gun, Star Wars, baseball, Legos, and a great many other things. With the exception of constant attempts to make Star Wars characters with my Legos, the idea of crossing these forms of play never entered my mind. A Lego TV show would’ve seemed weird and never occurred to me.

It’s possible I’m only noticing a difference between myself and my kids, and there’s not much more to it. But it seems likely something more fundamental is going on.

Information is freely available in a wide open, wild market, and it’s beautiful. There are no Star Chambers to give imprimatur to what should and should not be considered official or good ideas. There aren’t publishing companies or government agencies powerful enough to dictate content or the media upon which it travels. All information is on an equal playing field. You referenced 20 great scholars in the footnotes and spent a lifetime completing this great work? Good for you. But I might just find a blog post written in 20 minutes or a TED talk that’s more valuable. Sorry.

This democratization puts Rebecca Black and Maria Callas in the same arena. The whole world has equal access to each (unless, as is often the sad case, one of them resists and tries to keep their work hidden from the world, thinking it will make them more valuable). My kids wouldn’t think anything was weird about a dub-step remix of Epic Beard Man singing Pavarotti. Everything, every great work and idea, from all of history and every genre, is available to everyone with an Internet connection.

A lot of the kings of the old guard lament this change and consider it vulgar. That’s what people thought about Shakespeare and Dickens and the Impressionists, too. Get over it. Content is king. If you want to be appreciated, create great content, and make sure not to hide it from a world that just might autotune or photobomb it.

It’s exciting to think how culture will evolve and find new ways to create out of this informational abundance. Right now, it kind of feels like the wild frontier, where this new ability has us exploring every crazy mash-up we can, just to prove it’s possible and break down old categories and constructs. It’s fun and it’s just the beginning. Kids who grew up without the old categories won’t feel the need to destroy them. They’ll be able to spend their energy creating new forms, not only being conscious iconoclasts.

What other areas of life, besides just culture (is there a difference now between “high” and “low” culture?) will this modular outlook affect? Seeing everything as a module that can be moved from one platform to another, layered or nested with any other module, has got to bring about some innovations we can’t even yet imagine in every institution and aspect of life.

Already people expect to be able to customize their lives in ways they never did before, and as a result, they want options in the services they purchase, many of which were once the sole domain of top-down governments. Ideas like community and patriotism used to be the foundation on which states could maintain their power, even when they delivered an inferior product. Digitization has revolutionized the way people view these concepts. They are more socially connected than ever, but it has little to do with arbitrary lines on a map or bureaucratic jurisdictions.

The overlapping networks of modules have created new communities, new loyalties, and new citizens who are citizens by choice. If your smartphone is a platform used to house modular forms of entertainment and commerce, why not also governance? Forget the government bus system and download the Uber app. Who needs the public school when you have Khan Academy? Why can’t services like getting a cat out of a tree, or defusing a domestic disturbance also be offered in a diverse array of modules, instead of by one clunky agency?

My kids’ video games are just the beginning. I’ve got my popcorn and I’m going to enjoy watching it happen—or at least follow the hashtag on Twitter.

Originally published in The Freeman

Not long ago, I launched Praxis; a ten-month alternative/supplement to college for entrepreneurial young people who want more.  I want to change the way education and career preparation happen.  I want to unleash a generation of entrepreneurs.  I want to help people escape the college debt trap.  I want to offer a better, faster, cheaper way to discover and pursue dreams.  I don’t want to just complain about the status quo, I want to create alternatives.  I am now devoting all of my energy to this project, and, somewhat bitter-sweetly, moving on from the wonderful Institute for Humane Studies.

Since my early teens I’ve wanted to help people achieve their dreams.  I’ve wanted to increase opportunity, prosperity, and freedom.  I started doing humanitarian missions.  Before long I noticed that, while noble and fulfilling, such efforts were like a band-aid on a tumor.  It was the political institutions that held so much of the world back from the pursuit of happiness.

I entered the realm of politics, ready to make a difference.  The experience, combined with my introduction of Public Choice Theory, revealed that politics was no cure.  Political actors were following a script already written.  They were followers, not leaders.

The realm of policy, and eventually of education in the ideas of freedom, drew me in.  Ideas are the driving force in the world.  People’s beliefs shape what they think about government and other institutions, and what they’ll let those institutions get away with.  Policy follows the path blazed by belief.  This led me to the Mackinac Center, where I worked with college students across the state of Michigan.  It led me to IHS, where I worked with students around the world, helping them understand liberty, and helping them find careers where they could advance the ideas that lead to sound institutions, which in turn allow for the peaceful evolution of a free and humane society.

IHS’s mission is near and dear to my heart.  They provide knowledge and support to intellectual entrepreneurs.  The big thinkers and communicators who’s ideas shape the beliefs of the public.  The innovators who challenge common notions and bust popular myths.  IHS has played a role in the life and work of nearly every one of the contemporary intellectuals I respect most; from Hayek and Friedman, to the younger crop of groundbreaking economists, philosophers, historians, journalists, and “dealers in ideas”. It has been an honor, a privilege, and a joy to work for this institution.

I mentioned intellectual entrepreneurs.  But to change the world requires two kinds of entrepreneur.  The innovators in the realm of ideas, who open up our imaginations, help us see what’s wrong with what is and to consider what could be.  And the innovators in the realm of enterprise, who create working alternatives to the failing, stagnant institutions of the present day.

People may be willing to question prevailing narratives if given enough intellectual ammunition, but shedding received wisdom and habits is much easier when better alternatives already exist.  You can convince people the Post Office or the telephone monopoly is silly and inefficient, but consider the power of offering them UPS, FedEx, email, cell phones, and WiFi.

It is indeed the work of entrepreneurs, mold-breakers, and “crazy ones” that drives positive change.  I am excited to support the great work of places like IHS as they continue to unleash intellectual entrepreneurs.  I’m even more thrilled now to throw myself headlong into the work of Praxis, as we seek to unleash the practical entrepreneurs.  I hope you’ll join me, whatever kind of entrepreneur you are, in creating new ideas, new businesses, new solutions.  Let’s do more than dream of a better world.  Let’s create it.

A while back I stopped blogging here every day, as my creative energy was focused on launching Praxis.  Well, Praxis is here, and now it has a blog.  Topics will range from education, entrepreneurship, innovation, hacking your life, business, and everything in between.

I’ll be posting there regularly, so check it out!

These are exciting times in education and career training.  The landscape is changing, and everyone knows it.  College degrees are still expected by most employers, but the trend is in the other direction.  Some of the most interesting companies don’t care.  They want something that stands out and signals real value.

Online education is exploding.  It still falls short in many ways, but for basic conveyance of knowledge to the motivated learner, it’s incredible.  Meanwhile, innovators are furiously trying out ways to test and verify knowledge, make it interactive, and enhance the experience.

Young people are listless and frustrated, but not willing to throw in the towel.  More and more are taking longer to make it through college; not because they’re dumb, but because college doesn’t help them discover their passions and hone their skills, even in four years, so they try a semester abroad, a new major, and on and on.  They crave a new, immersive experience.  They want something for them, not for the people who created the system.  They want to be the customer, and have their educational needs catered to; rather than feel like the cog who is used by the system then discarded.

Yet there is hesitancy.  Young people want to try something new, and break the mold, but they’re scared to be too far out there or too different.  They read articles about the declining value and rising costs of college, but they still see degrees listed as a requirement for many jobs, and their friends and parents keep urging them to go, to finish, and if that’s not enough, to try grad school.

Is it a little radical to try something like Praxis?  Yes.  That’s precisely why it’s so valuable.  Five years ago, doing something other than college was risky. In five years it will be common. Now is that sweet spot, where you have a chance to do something just enough on the edge to make you stand out, but not so far that no one understands. This is the time to push yourself just a little out of the comfort zone, be an innovator, and reap the first mover rewards on the job market.

The opportunity cost is low for young people.  The older you get, the harder it is to try something for a year.  It’s always possible, but the mental hurdles become harder to overcome.  Now is the time.

A nice story in the Daily Caller about the emergence of higher education alternatives mentions Praxis and quotes me.

“Can new opportunities like Praxis and Gap Year really supplant the traditional four-year degree? Morehouse thinks so.

“It seems radical only because the impractical and increasingly ineffective status quo is so normal,” he wrote. “Really, it’s radically practical.””

It’s been exciting to see the interest since launch, and I’m even more excited to see how the landscape continues to change to the benefit of young learners and job seekers. As I’ve written before, the current approach to life and career prep is as absurd as teaching a kid how to ride a bike without letting them actually do it.