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jlev retweeted
On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.
And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.
I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.
A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.
Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.
At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.
At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.
Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.
At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.
B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.
When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.
In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.
The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.
C. Suffering demands a culprit.
A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.
But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.
And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?
D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.
Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.
Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?
No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.
E. One lens, a thousand causes.
And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.
F. The perfect inversion.
Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.
It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.
G. The ballot box confirms it.
In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.
In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.
H. The way out.
These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.
The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.
That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.
I'm on the waitlist for the Interface ring. Join the waitlist with my link: natura.inc/i/8ny5q9 #natura
jlev retweeted
Zuck has been delivering for millennials at every stage of life.
Facebook for checking out everyone in college.
Insta for early career when you have disposable income.
Muse for mid-career with kids and no time to do personal tasks.
You know empty nesting is gonna be lit.
jlev retweeted
I need to make a very PUBLIC announcement on behalf of younger GenXers and older Millennials.
If you see someone in their 40s or 50s who seems a little boring now, I need you to understand something...
We already got it in.
Like...GOT. IT. IN.
We are not sitting home on a Friday night because we never knew how to have fun.
We are sitting home on a Friday night because we have seen enough.
We went to parties in houses that should have been condemned and were almost certainly owned by the local drug dealer.
We saw police lights and RAN and not across a nice, flat field.
INTO THE WOODS.
Do you understand the athleticism required to hurdle uprooted tree roots in platform shoes while simultaneously trying to keep your low-rise jeans from sliding completely off your ass?
And somehow...we never spilled the Zima. We never spilled the Boone’s Farm.
That was TALENT.
We slept on floors in strange houses because the designated driver either never showed up or, in a shocking turn of events, was drunker than everybody else.
There was no Uber, Life360 or Find My Friends.
There was just somebody named Mike saying, “I know a shortcut.”
And we FOLLOWED MIKE.
We closed down bars and then decided the night was still young, so we drove to Atlantic City, where we somehow managed to get drunk, sober up, get drunk again, sober up again and then get drunk a THIRD TIME before breakfast.
And according to our parents? We were at Michelle’s house.
Eating pizza and watching movies.
Michelle’s mother unknowingly covered for approximately 17 people every weekend. If there even was a Michelle.
We drank things called Purple Passion, Mad Dog 20/20 and whatever somebody mixed inside a giant plastic garbage can. Nobody asked what was in it. You grabbed a red Solo cup and trusted the process.
We went to clubs until the lights came on. Do you know the psychological damage of seeing a nightclub with the LIGHTS ON? Nothing good happens after those lights come on.
We danced for four straight hours in shoes that permanently altered the structure of our feet.
We made entire plans without cell phones...no texts, dropped pins or group chats...just an extremely questionable sense of direction.
We rode in cars with 11 people when the vehicle legally seated five. Someone was always sitting on someone. Someone was always in the hatchback.
And there was always one friend yelling, “DUCK!” when we passed a cop.
So yes...now we like being home.
We like sweatpants.
We like cancelling plans.
We like saying, “That sounds fun!” with absolutely no intention of attending.
We like restaurants at 5:30 because we can get a good table.
We like being home by 8:17.
And if someone texts at 9:30 PM and says, “What are you doing?”
Sleeping...we are sleeping.
Because this is not boring my friends...this is retirement.
We already played, partied and danced on the bar.
We already ran from the cops through a wooded area dressed like a Spice Girl.
We have stories that cannot be posted because there are still people with careers, marriages and reputations to protect. And thank GOD there were no camera phones.
So kids, when you look at your Gen X and older Millennial parents sitting peacefully on the couch watching Dateline at 8 PM and think:
“God, you guys are boring.”
Sweetheart...oh sweetheart.
You are looking at retired legends.
Put some respect on our names. We're probably the reason Life360 was invented.
xoxoxo (posted from someone else on FakeBook) 🤣 #genx #oldandtired
jlev retweeted
In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.
That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.
FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.
US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.
So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.
Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.
Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.
They will not.
jlev retweeted
Trump killed 50 of Iran's top leaders, did at least $1 trillion worth of damage to their military equipment and infrastructure, totally wiped out their naval fleet and air fleets, put their government in a state of endemic internal conflict, and left them totally incapable of meaningfully attacking their neighbors in the region any time soon. By the end of it, all Iran could do is rig the strait with mines and take pop shots at passing ships.
The loss of insurance coverage had more of an impact on the flow of marine traffic than Iran did.
I personally would have preferred the total destruction of the IRGC (which technically isn't off the table if they decide to FAFO) but it would have been difficult to accomplish without more civilian casualties -- something third worldist leftoids were already complaining (and campaigning) about.
In the meantime, consider the following:
No boots on the ground. No prolonged conflict. No permanent occupation. No military draft. No lasting impact on energy prices. No multi-trillion dollar boondoggle. None of the things anti-war retards with Israel tunnel vision like Dave Smith and Candace Owens predicted would happen.
In addition:
- Oil and gas prices are falling in time for summer and the midterms.
- "Free Palestine" third worldists like Graham Platner have less ammo on which to campaign for Congress.
- Russia is bringing in less revenue.
- The U.S. got a foot in the door to block China's Belt and Road projects.
- Trump has greater latitude to tighten sanctions on Russia without exacerbating supply shocks to energy markets.
- Europe and America have agreed to increase cooperation in providing for the national defense of Ukraine.
- Israel isn't a signatory to the MOU and isn't bound by its terms, leaving it free to independently defend itself from threats if necessary.
- America isn't creating a power vacuum for China and Russia to fill by absconding and surrendering its own influence over the region.
The people who say this is a "humiliating defeat" for Trump?
- Russia
- China
- Iran
- Democrats
- The leftist Drudge-led media establishment
All the worst people you know have joined arms and are pretending like Iran pulled one over on the Bad Orange Man in hopes that it will piss off Republicans and Israelis enough to get them to kill the deal themselves.
It's very transparent. Don't let your enemies control you with such a stupid and obvious Reflexive Control op.
jlev retweeted
My theory is that the American empire is JUST getting started.
US has a stranglehold on Space with SpaceX, which is the next frontier for defense/war. It has a comically large lead. No one will be close for at least 20 years.
It is the leading power in AI by far - both in models and chips. China is catching up fast, but the US has an inherent mechanism that will increase the likelihood that it will win in the end - a free market + capitalism + free speech.
A free market + capitalism allows for brutal competition between companies. Free speech allows for AI models to be maximally truth seeking, which means that AIs CAN and WILL BECOME smarter than humans to the point where they can tell the truth about its leaders.
This is literally impossible in China. Try having a Chinese model that says Xi Jinping is corrupt. Good luck with that.
Then, you have a country that has more guns than people and surrounded by two massive oceans and two friendly neighbors, which means any sort of kinetic take over of the country is literally impossible.
Not to mention the US has BY FAR the best and strongest military.
The only way adversaries can hope to defeat the US is by tearing it from within by pitting us against each other. This is why it's virtually guaranteed that all the division/hatred/polarization you see within the country is fomented by China/Russia Psy Ops + propaganda efforts.
I'm not saying these aren't naturally happening in spots - America is far from perfect - but it would be naive to think our adversaries aren't pouring millions of gallons of fuel on a fire.
As long as the American public a) has the ability to exercise its free speech b) has a protected 2nd amendment c) capitalism and free markets continue to function and d) the populace is aware of how awesome America really is, it is literally impossible to stop the US's trajectory to global domination in the coming decades, especially as China's demographics continue to collapse.
It's the bottom of the 9th, the game is tied, and the US has the bases loaded. It's a 3-2 pitch.
All we need is a home run, and we win the rest of the century.
Something miraculous is happening in the USA and the world thanks to the World Cup and the USA’s 250th.
I’m not quite sure yet what it is, I have to give it more thought.
I think it has something to do with the world realizing that managed decline is not necessary (with Trump’s America as the example), and I think it has something to do with more Americans not being afraid to be patriots about their nation and their culture.
It’s more than that though—I have to ponder.
Article coming when I figure it out. Any and all ideas welcome.
jlev retweeted
No idea who made this game, but it's extremely fun and addicting.
Thank me later.
82-0.com
jlev retweeted
Been a management consultant for 20 years.
Made Partner in my 30s.
Led teams of 100+ people.
Run 9-figure client portfolios.
Lived and worked in 4 continents.
Typically, corporate IT investment would follow a common script.
Capital spent on software means a shrinking payroll.
As boards map out their strategies for the coming quarters, they are operating under the comfortable assumption that this way of thinking still holds true for AI.
But I think a fiscal reckoning is brewing there, because within the next few quarters, the current prevailing narrative of AI as a headcount killer (which we all know is vastly exaggerated) will give way to a far more punishing reality.
Instead of a clean capital-for-labor swap, executives are about to watch their IT infrastructure costs and their personnel expenses balloon simultaneously 🚀🚀🚀
It may not be fun.
First, this whole idea that generative AI can operate autonomously will shatter as early deployments attempt to scale.
Because LLMs remain inherently prone to hallucination and error, companies cannot simply fire the analysts; they will be forced to retain them (or hire new talent) to serve as high-vigilance editors.
Furthermore, because AI makes it effortless to generate code, reports, marketing collateral, etc etc organizations will soon find themselves drowning in internal output. Managing, auditing, and securing this massive influx of AI-generated material will require an unprecedented wave of human oversight....
This will ultimately EXPAND corporate bureaucracy rather than trimming it (remember the 'Scaled Agile' saga??).
Even in scenarios where entry-level automation does succeed, the math of headcount reduction will fail to balance out on the ledger.
In the coming quarters, the wage differential of the AI era will trigger *severe* skill inflation.
Replacing 5 mid/entry-level programmers does not result in a net savings of 5 salaries. Instead, it requires hiring a premium-tier AI architect whose single salary frequently eclipses the combined wages of the workers they replaced (plus tokens cost).
Companies will trade high-volume/low-cost labor for scarce/ultra-premium talent, driving TCO UPWARD despite a leaner organizational chart on paper.
Jevons' Paradox again...
AI slashes the time and cost required to draft a legal brief, design a graphic, build a software feature, and therefore executive appetite for those outputs will skyrocket.
Management will demand 10x the volume of data analysis or continuous product iterations. Because the corporate demand for output will scale far faster than the technology's efficiency gains, departments will find themselves forced to expand their human teams just to handle the sheer velocity of these new AI-driven initiatives.
Until AI achieves absolute, unmonitored autonomy (if ever), it will function not as a replacement for human labor, but as a hyper-amplifier of it.
If ungoverned, the corporate balance sheets will show that the AI boom made running the business vastly more expensive.
jlev retweeted
The older I get, the more I realize making memories with family, a solid fitness routine, a job you don't hate, a group chat of great friends, annual traditions, and a productive hobby will lead to a very happy life.
jlev retweeted
No Kings explained for people who think they're fighting fascism.
You're standing in a crowd on Saturday. You look around and think yeah. No Kings. This is what democracy looks like.
Bro.
You're holding a sign made by a communist billionaire who lives in Shanghai.
You live in a constitutional republic.
Elections. Term limits. A free press that spent four years calling the president a fascist without one journalist being arrested.
The modern left's definition of fascism:
You love your country? Fascist.
You want to enforce the border? Racist.
You think parents should raise their kids? Bigot.
You want to know who's voting in your elections? Jim Crow.
Being patriotic is fascism to the modern left.
But every country has borders and enforces them. 176 countries require ID to vote. That's the definition of a country.
But the Democratic establishment told you otherwise. And you believed them.
Congress has a 15% approval rating. 80% of Americans disapprove. 97% of incumbents got re-elected.
Chuck Schumer. 46 years. Longer than Stalin.
Steny Hoyer. 45 years. Longer than Mao.
Mitch McConnell. 42 years. 5x more than Napoleon.
Nancy Pelosi. 39 years. Longer than Henry VIII.
Maxine Waters. 35 years. Longer than Mussolini.
Bernie Sanders. 35 years. Triple Hitler's entire reign.
Trump. 5 years and 3 months. Won the popular vote and the electoral vote.
But Trump is the king. Okay buddy.
You don't hate kings. You hate kings that aren't yours.
And Saturday they had you in the streets carrying their water.
The Democratic Party installed a president without letting you vote. Biden quit on a Sunday. By Tuesday your queen was crowned.
No primary. No debate. No ballot. First time since 1968.
Three days before your march every Senate Democrat voted against photo ID to vote.
During COVID you carried a vaccine card everywhere like a hall pass from the government just to eat at a restaurant.
But getting a birth certificate or waiting two hours at the DMV to prove you're a citizen before you vote? That's oppression.
The Democratic Party is pro illegal immigration.
Counts non-citizens in the Census. Census determines congressional seats. More non-citizens means more seats means more power. No voter ID means no way to check.
That's how you keep power without wearing a crown.
Biden built a censorship machine.
Pressured Facebook to suppress true information and admitted it in writing. Censored scientists. Censored doctors. Censored JOKES. The Biden White House told Facebook to remove "humor and satire."
They literally went after people for making fun of them. UK does it better tho...
Everything they censored turned out to be right. They just outsourced the silencing to Silicon Valley.
And it doesn't stop at speech.
The extreme left justifies taking children from families.
Six thousand schools rewrite children's identities without telling parents. And the State has the right to intervene.
The Hitler Youth did this. Mao's Red Guards did this. The Soviets built statues of a child who reported his own father.
Same playbook.
During Covid, your bakery got shut down. Church closed. You couldn't hold your dying mother's hand at the hospital.
But thousands packed together during BLM to burn Minneapolis and THAT was essential civic engagement. Obviously.
$2 billion in damage. 25 dead. 2,000 cops injured. 20 states burning. VP Kamala promoted a bail fund for the rioters. No investigation. No hearings.
January 6. One building. Few hours. 1,000 prosecuted. Two years of televised hearings.
Kings decide which violence counts. The left decided.
Charlie Kirk spent his life walking onto campuses asking for honest debate. He was assassinated.
CSIS terrorism database. 2025 is the first year in 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber right-wing. Yet no one brings this up.
75% of liberal students say preventing a speaker from talking is justified. 27% say violence is acceptable.
Liberals who went to Trump rallies: "I never felt unsafe." "The experience changed me."
Conservatives who show up on liberal campuses get screamed at, blocked, and assassinated.
One side talks. The other side screams.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation marched with you Saturday.
Their stated purpose in their own words: "Revolution." Not reform. Marxism.
The system that killed a hundred million people last century. They had you holding their signs while they said it out loud.
500 groups. $3 billion in revenue. Pre-printed signs. The signs were ready before you were angry.
The money leads to Neville Roy Singham. Billionaire in Shanghai. Attends CCP workshops. Funnels millions through shell companies at UPS mailboxes. Three Congressional committees have subpoenaed him as a suspected CCP foreign agent.
You thought you were fighting for democracy. You were carrying water for Beijing.
"Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind." Spoken by the ACLU lawyer who defended Nazis in court because it was their constitutional right.
Bill Clinton put 100,000 cops on the street. Reformed welfare. Said illegal immigration is wrong to a standing ovation. Told America the era of big government is over.
Today his own party would call him a fascist.
The 1990s Democrat defended free speech for Nazis. Yours censors doctors for telling the truth.
The 1990s Democrat held open primaries. Yours installed a nominee without a vote.
The 1990s Democrat trusted parents. Yours takes their children.
Historians measure fascism across eight traits. Here's who checks the boxes in 2026:
Censorship of political opposition. Democrats.
Contempt for democratic process. Democrats.
Tolerance of political violence. Democrats.
State ideology forced on families. Democrats.
Corporate-state fusion. Democrats.
Scapegoating and manufactured enemies. Both sides.
Cult of personality. Both sides.
Ultranationalism. Republicans.
Five for the left. One for the right. Two shared.
You marched against kings on Saturday.
You marched FOR kings.
You just didn't know which was which.
Stop being gaslit.
I hope you understand what's at stake.
jlev retweeted
I don't know what you guys aren't getting.
Trump is a dictator. But also a king.
But also a Nazi.
A Nazi controlled by Jews, naturally.
Oh, and also a Russian double-agent who protects his secret agent identity by peeing on Moscow hookers.
See? It's simple.
jlev retweeted
Imagine throwing a “No Kings” protest after your party refused to hold a primary, coronated Kamala without a single vote, sued to keep RFK Jr. off the ballot, and attempted to remove Trump from state ballots only after your illegal lawfare scheme failed.
If there was a modern day monarchy in America there would only be one party you could point to.
The Democrats.