3x author on tension & transformation | CSO @DarioHealth | Data over dogma | https://xitter.cf/t.co/GDFEkwPhFq
Midway, UT
Joined August 2008
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A decade of framework thinking. Three books. One thread.
2015: Tension is the energy of innovation 2019: Change your identity, change your future 2026: America's biggest problems are becoming our greatest advantages
America's Stubborn Allure — coming June 2026 from Forbes Books.
Data over dogma.
Chris Wasden retweeted
If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.
My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx
Chris Wasden retweeted
This PERFECTLY explains the Capitalism vs Socialism argument for America
“So now, Colombia rejected a socialist. Peru rejected a socialist. El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina all rejected Marxist or socialist leadership. And Venezuela was destroyed by socialism. Latin Americans are rejecting socialism after having tried it. So why are Americans accepting socialism, having never tried it?
Well, partially because most Americans don't know what socialism is
It's not healthcare for all or affordable housing. Socialism isn't a synonym for all the things I want, but I'm not getting in my capitalist country. It's not a vibe. It's an economic system characterized by collective or governmental ownership of the means of production. Means of production meaning infrastructure used to produce goods and services like factories, farms, and companies.
Capitalism also isn't a vibe. It's not billionaires and corporations controlling politics. It's not a synonym for all the things I hate about my country. It's an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, AKA the means of production.
Now, just like Mac versus Windows, there are different versions of capitalism and socialism. Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are less capitalistic than America, but they are still capitalist. Although they have a few exceptions to the rule, private companies own the means of production, not the government in those countries.
Now, you might like certain programs that socialism promises, like universal healthcare, but those programs aren't tied to a specific operating system. You can run Photoshop on Mac or Windows, just like you can have universal healthcare in socialism or capitalism. But it seems we as a people keep getting more confused about what socialism is.
In 1949, 34% of Americans correctly identified socialism as government ownership of the economy. By 2018, only 17% did, and I suspect it's even worse now.
American politicians are confused, too. In 2015, Denmark's prime minister had to correct Bernie Sanders and say, "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy." Zoran Mamdani is a democratic socialist. Democratic socialism is a version of socialism.
Now, you could argue that socialism just hasn't been done right yet. And when every socialist experiment at the national level in the 20th century failed, and every experiment in the 21st century is failing, maybe the problem isn't that socialism hasn't worked in practice, it, that it almost certainly can't work in principle.
And maybe the assertion that this time will be different isn't optimism, it's actually just unfalsifiability, where a theory cannot ever be contradicted by actual evidence.
We have bugs in this version of capitalism that need to be fixed, principally that there is too much money in politics, that billions of dollars speak louder than millions of voices. And you know what? The socialists might create healthy pressure to fix those bugs. That's good, but that's different than changing the whole operating system.
Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Because when there's never been a successful socialist country in history, and the countries who have actually experimented with it are abandoning it, the results start to speak for themselves. And lately, they're speaking Spanish.”
And just so we’re crystal clear, here are the stated goals of the Democratic Socialists of America in America
- Abolish the US Senate
- Replace the Presidency and Supreme Court
- Abolish the Electoral College
• Abolish police and the prison system
• Abolish ICE, grant amnesty to all immigrants and end visa restrictions
• Public ownership of the largest corporations
- Defund the US military
- End economic sanctions on Iran
- Government owned social housing
Chris Wasden retweeted
Most Americans don’t understand what socialism is.
It’s not universal healthcare.
It’s not affordable housing.
It’s not what Nordic countries do.
Confusion is making socialism appeal to those who never lived it.
People who have, reject it.
Great insights on why America is great because it is free. And why China can never be great because it will never be free underneath the CCP
Chris Wasden retweeted
20 years ago, An Inconvenient Truth put climate change at the center of global debate, shaping politics, influencing leaders, and inspiring a generation of activists.
Two decades later, we can assess not just its impact, but its accuracy. Many of the film’s most alarming predictions did not materialize, while many of the policies it inspired have proven costly and ineffective.
The lesson? Panic is a poor guide for public policy. Focusing on innovation, adaptation, and economic development can do far more to help both people and the climate—at a fraction of the cost.
financialpost.com/opinion/bj…
xitter.cf/BjornLomborg/status/20…
20 years ago, An Inconvenient Truth put climate change at the center of global debate, shaping politics, influencing leaders, and inspiring a generation of activists.
Two decades later, we can assess not just its impact, but its accuracy. Many of the film’s most alarming predictions did not materialize, while many of the policies it inspired have proven costly and ineffective.
The lesson? Panic is a poor guide for public policy. Focusing on innovation, adaptation, and economic development can do far more to help both people and the climate—at a fraction of the cost.
financialpost.com/opinion/bj…
Chris Wasden retweeted
This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.
I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.
Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.
We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."
Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.
My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.
People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.
We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."
Chris Wasden retweeted
Ben Shapiro today on his podcast:
“There is no category of humans that are entirely good and honest…
…maybe the Mormons come close.”
Analysis: Harvard Global Flourishing study compares Latter-day Saints with people of other faith and no faith deseret.com/opinion/2026/05/…
Chris Wasden retweeted
Someone praying for you in another building can change your brain in real time. There is a study that proves it.
Researchers at North Hawaii Community Hospital placed 11 people inside fMRI scanners, fully isolated. In a separate building, spiritual leaders who knew them personally sent focused intentions toward them at random two-minute intervals. The receivers had no way to know when. Their brains lit up at the exact moments the senders focused on them. Specific regions associated with attention and awareness activated on cue. The odds of this happening by chance were less than one in seven thousand.
Most people have never heard of this. Here are three more.
Hand-holding and pain. Researchers placed 22 couples under EEG caps. When the woman was in pain and her partner held her hand, their brain waves synchronized. The more empathy he felt for her, the more their brains coupled. The more their brains coupled, the more her pain decreased. Touch combined with focused care produced a measurable analgesic effect. The lead researcher got the idea while holding his wife's hand during the birth of their daughter.
Two brains in shielded rooms. A Mexican neuroscientist named Jacobo Grinberg ran a series of experiments at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Two participants meditated together for 20 minutes. Then they were placed in separate electromagnetically shielded rooms more than 14 meters apart. One participant was shown 100 random flashes of light. The other, hooked to an EEG with no sensory contact of any kind, registered matching brain-wave responses one out of every four flashes. Pairs who had not bonded showed nothing.
Group prayer. Andrew Newberg at Thomas Jefferson University has spent more than two decades scanning the brains of praying nuns, meditating monks, and chanting Sikhs. His imaging work shows a consistent pattern. The frontal lobes activate. The parietal lobes quiet. The effect amplifies in groups. Brains in shared prayer entrain to one another the way two pendulums swinging in the same room eventually fall into the same rhythm.
These studies measure what physically happens to the human nervous system when people focus caring attention on each other, in the same room or at a distance. The findings are consistent across labs, methods, and decades.
The basic finding, that human brains synchronize during empathic connection, is now mainstream neuroscience. Newberg alone has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers.
People have been doing this for thousands of years and calling it prayer. Christians alone offer a window into the variety. Latter-day Saints kneel as families. Catholics pray the rosary. Protestants join hands in prayer circles.
What is actually happening when you pray? On the imaging, something measurable. On the EEG, something synchronized. On the pain scale, something diminished.
Prayer works.
Chris Wasden retweeted
Some people suggest that while green is expensive, the benefits are much greater
Well, no:
The benefit of net-zero is $4.5 trillion/year, but the cost $27 trillion
(much larger costs and benefits, because we're currently only doing a bit of net-zero currently)
Threads&refs:
xitter.cf/BjornLomborg/status/19…
Climate campaigners tell you green is cheap
It isn't
Global green transition cost is now $14+ trillion, rising with over $2 trillion/year (2% of global GDP)
105x our spending to avoid hunger
Still, CO₂ emissions set another record last year
assets.bbhub.io/professional…
Chris Wasden retweeted
"If I told you there was one free thing you could do every Sunday that would make your kids happier, healthier, smarter, and closer to you, you'd think I was selling something."
Take your kids to church regularly. I don't care if you believe. The data is so lopsided that skipping it is the parenting equivalent of refusing vegetables because you don't like the taste.
Grades. Religious teens get As at almost twice the rate of nonreligious teens. In a class of 100, that's 24 A-students instead of 14. Church gives a kid the same academic boost as being born rich instead of poor.
College. Working-class religious kids earn bachelor's degrees at double the rate of their nonreligious peers. Middle-class kids do it at 1.5x the rate. For families without a trust fund, this is one of the most powerful forms of upward mobility social scientists have measured.
Character. Religious teens are far less likely to lie, cheat, or do things they hope their parents never find out about. They're more likely to care about racial equality, the elderly, and the poor. They reject the idea that morality is whatever works for you in the moment. That kind of kid doesn't happen by accident. It's built.
Closeness. 60% of parents of religious teens say they feel "extremely close" to their kid, compared to 50% of nonreligious parents. The kids report the same thing back. They get along better with their parents, talk about hard stuff, and actually want to spend time with their family.
Despair. Religious teens are dramatically less likely to be depressed, anxious, lonely, or feel that life is meaningless. 90% of devoted religious teens never binge drink, compared to 41% of the disengaged. Economists named the modern epidemic "deaths of despair." Regular church attendance is one of the strongest known buffers against it. Parents are spending fortunes trying to solve teen mental health. The most evidence-backed intervention is free.
Purpose. Religious young adults report higher purpose, gratitude, life satisfaction, and resilience. These are the exact traits every parent says they want their kid to have.
Here's why it works. Affluent families already surround their kids with networks of stable, accomplished adults through neighborhoods, schools, and parents' colleagues. Working and middle-class families usually don't. A congregation is often the last institution in American life that puts your kid in weekly contact with dozens of stable, employed, sober adults who know their name. It used to be called "a village." Now it barely exists outside of churches.
"But I don't believe." Your kid doesn't need your theology. They need you to show up.
"But church is boring." So is sitting through a kindergarten music recital. Parenting is the deliberate choice to be bored on purpose for someone you love.
There's a church within 15 minutes of nearly every American home. You don't need money, connections, or credentials to walk in. Nothing else in this country will surround your kid with engaged adults, teach them moral seriousness, and give them a stable weekly rhythm at zero cost.
You already drive them to practices that produce far less. The free thing on Sunday produces more, on more dimensions, than almost anything else you do as a parent.
You don't have to believe anything. You just have to take them.
The paper never once asks whether the people who will be displaced should have agency over whether, when, and how AI transforms their specific domains.
open.substack.com/pub/chrisw…