Is this how you do a rebrand?
The Unfinished
My Opus is intended to be thoughtful, grand, and complete.
Which has made it very difficult (mentally) to actually post articles. I’m sitting on many drafts at the moment. They’re mostly there, but I’m not excited about sharing them. They feel incomplete.
This, I am excited to share. I’m excited to continue the dialogue.
Ultimately, I set the standards of the Beginnings of a Magnum Opus a bit high in my head. I’ll resolve that with better writing and ah-ha moments. Can’t force it.
But to counter the mental hang-up, I have been sitting on this rebrand idea.
If something is posted to “The Unfinished”, I promise that it’ll either be a half-baked or burnt idea.
That is to say, I’ll try to get it at least half the way there. And I’ll even try to share the ones I messed up along the way.
A Sample
I’ve had this belief that Milton Friedman was too specific.
Humans in general learn too specific of lessons. Which is why history rhymes.
When we “learn” from our parents, we don’t go to a new level of thinking. Instead, we just make minor tweaks to that thinking we’ve inherited.
My mom and dad, they care about things. That’s why my dad always needs a plan. That’s why my mom always wants to be early.
They care. But in that caring comes some problematic behaviors too. I now exhibit most of these same behaviors in my own life.
I’ve not truly learned from them in a way that spares me from these problems. I’ve only learned from them in a way that makes my handling of them different (hopefully slightly better) than what they had figured out for themselves.
Milton stated that the objective of management is to maximize shareholder value.
I can get behind that idea, but only in a world where:
the employee, regardless of role & responsibility, gets to possess (at least) some of those shares.
the economist beats out the capitalist.
no monopolies or oligopolies
the government is not overly influenced by corporate special interests.
the incentives are appropriately aligned.
no passing off negative externalities
no short-term gains for long-term pain (has to be the other way around)
I’m not an economist. I haven’t worked out the math of this.
I’m not a political science expert. I don’t know the appropriate policies to make the above version of capitalism possible.
But if I were (or if you are), I would look at what America has adopted since the days of Ronald Reagan (aka Milton Friedman’s version of Capitalism) and work out how to modify it.
I would build all my messaging around this. I would ensure that every facet of my policies would be explainable with a clear relationship with this modified version of Milton’s capitalism.
Why It’s a Half-Baked Idea
If the Milton Friedman rebuttal I presented above was a fully baked idea then I would have to develop the policies and/or the math.
Maybe one day I will.
Or, better yet, someone else is already down this path and I’ll hear about it on the grapevine someday.
It’s half-baked.
One that I doubt is entirely original, but I’ve not seen executed in political or economic discourse. And that’s a shame.
In a few minutes, we can all understand Milton Friedman’s capitalism. We can see its pros and cons. We can see the wake it left behind. We can see the intended & unintended consequences all around us.
The primary narrative I hear these days that counters Milton’s capitalism is the idea of Late-Stage Capitalism. American youth (especially on TikTok and Twitter/X) are lamenting the conditions we find ourselves in.
And I understand that lament. I do.
Unintended consequences compound. The carryover effects of America’s prosperity have illuminated the cracks in our latest facade.
America has always had a facade. It has always been a structured story. A flawed, incomplete, human story. A biased, selfish story.
It can seem disheartening, to see the impact of these consequences:
The child who’s left barely unrecognizable after a bomb decimates his neighborhood.
The dutiful employee, nearing retirement, was unceremoniously laid off and left without the rewards she was promised after thirty years in service.
The teenager who sees leaders all over the country call them “Devil spawn”, “evil”, “despicable”, “inhuman”, and countless other transphobic statements just because of their interpretation of a few throwaway passages in a special book.1
But awareness is the first step.
What we will feel next is apathy.
Then we will feel empathy.
And that is when everything is just beginning…
And I think capitalism has proven to be the best system (so far) in enabling prosperity. But like any system, if left stagnate then the first to exploit it tends to be the ones who entrench themselves.
We need agility. We need revisions. We need transparency. We need input.
Those are the things that make humans better and therefore those are the things that make human systems better too.
We don’t need to burn it all down. We need to take in what we’ve accomplished, be proud of those accomplishments, recognize the unintended consequences & harm we caused, and build back better.
My Absence
I’ve been focused on other things.
Writing and reading have taken a bit of a backseat.
Honestly, I think that personal trend will continue.
I am still a rookie in the Chicagoland area. I’m even greener when it comes to Chicago proper.
My social groups are only now starting to catch speed (and I’m already out of time).
My work is exciting (and demanding, and fulfilling, and challenging).
My health is good and bad (contradictions are fun, aren’t they?).
The list goes on.
It was easy to read and write when I never left the house, and from March 2020 - June 2022 that was my life.
But it’s not my life anymore.
My Return
I love writing. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you know I’ve been writing up a storm. Even went viral once or twice.
My more deliberate work (the Magnum Opus) has been in the background.
I’ve been chipping away at these big ideas every week or so. Those articles will go live when I’m ready to share them. I don’t know when (I’m not very good at predicting timelines, especially when it comes to writing).
I am happy to be back.
Hopefully, you’re happy to read my pieces. I’m focused on quality. I will try my best to avoid wasting your time, even with the “Unfinished” premise I’m presenting.
I want to leave a trail of exciting ideas. Ideas that will only be made complete through the passing of time and the inclusion of others.