MELi

[Billy Graham @BillyGraham]

"When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God." —Billy Graham

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

I spent 23 years in the Army. I went out past the wire in Iraq.

Out there, color of skin does not determine who has your back.

My MawMaw taught me the same thing before I could tie my shoes.

So let me tell you what ACTUALLY destroyed a community that survived slavery, Jim Crow, and everything else.

It has a name. It has legislation. Thread 👇
#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[Oliver Burdick @oliverburdick]

Science says we need four basic elements to survive:

- Food
- Water
- Air
- Light

Now here's what Jesus says:

- I am the bread of life
- I am the living water
- I am the breath of life
- I am the light of the world

Science was right, we all need Jesus.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

What have I left out?

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/OMPl94pcNz

[MELi @melee77]

Love this! It so ENFP me! I lose interest quick but I learn and then I take it to the next interest and the next interest and I build and I end up with something wonderful. It's a weird seemingly chaotic process but it works for some of us.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Hungarian psychologist raised three daughters to prove that any child could become a chess grandmaster through early specialization. He succeeded. Two of them became grandmasters. One became the greatest female chess player who ever lived.

Then a sports scientist looked at the data and found something nobody wanted to hear.

His name is David Epstein. The book is called "Range."

The Polgar experiment is one of the most famous case studies in the history of deliberate practice. Laszlo Polgar wrote a book before his daughters were even born arguing that geniuses are made, not born. He homeschooled all three girls in chess from age four. By their teens, Susan, Sofia, and Judit were dominating tournaments against grown men. Judit became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time, breaking Bobby Fischer's record. The story became the gospel of early specialization. Pick a domain young, drill it hard, and you can manufacture excellence.

Epstein opens his book by telling that story honestly and then quietly demolishing the conclusion most people drew from it.

Chess works that way. Most things do not.

Here is the distinction that took him four years of research to articulate, and that almost nobody who quotes the 10,000 hour rule has ever read.

There are two kinds of environments in which humans develop expertise. Psychologists call them kind and wicked. A kind environment has clear rules, immediate feedback, and patterns that repeat reliably. Chess is the cleanest example. Every game ends with a winner and a loser. Every move is recorded. The board never changes shape. The pieces never invent new ways to move. A child who plays ten thousand games will see most of the patterns that exist in the game, and pattern recognition is exactly what chess mastery is built on.

A wicked environment is the opposite. Feedback is delayed or misleading. Rules shift. The patterns that worked yesterday may be exactly the wrong patterns to apply tomorrow. Most of the real world looks like this. Medicine is wicked. Investing is wicked. Building a company is wicked. Scientific research is wicked. Almost every job that involves a complex changing system with humans in it is wicked.

The Polgar sisters trained in the kindest environment any human can train in. Their success was real and the method was correct. The mistake was generalizing the method to fields where the underlying structure of the environment is completely different.

Epstein's research is what made the implication impossible to ignore.

He looked at the careers of elite athletes outside of chess and golf and found that the pattern was almost the inverse of what people assumed. The athletes who reached the very top of their sports were overwhelmingly people who had played multiple sports as children, specialized late, and often switched disciplines well into their teens. Roger Federer played squash, badminton, basketball, handball, tennis, table tennis, and soccer before tennis became his focus. The kids who specialized in tennis at age six and trained year-round for a decade mostly burned out, got injured, or topped out at lower levels of the sport.

The same pattern showed up everywhere he looked outside of kind environments. Inventors with the most patents had worked in multiple unrelated fields before their breakthrough work. Comic book creators with the longest careers had drawn for the most different genres before settling. Scientists who won Nobel Prizes were dramatically more likely than their peers to be serious amateur musicians, painters, sculptors, or writers.

The skill that mattered in wicked environments was not depth in one pattern. It was the ability to recognize when a pattern from one domain applied unexpectedly in another. That kind of thinking cannot be built by drilling a single subject. It can only be built by accumulating mental models from many subjects and learning to move between them.

The deeper finding is the one that should change how you think about your own career.

Specialists in wicked environments often get worse with experience, not better. Epstein cites studies of doctors, financial analysts, intelligence officers, and forecasters showing that years of experience in a narrow domain frequently produce more confident judgments without producing more accurate ones. The expert builds elaborate mental models that feel comprehensive and turn out to be increasingly disconnected from the actual structure of the problem. They stop noticing what does not fit their framework. They mistake fluency for understanding.

Generalists do better in wicked domains for a reason that sounds almost mystical until you understand the mechanism. They have less invested in any single mental model, so they abandon broken models faster. They are used to being a beginner, so they are not threatened by the discomfort of not knowing. They have seen enough different domains that they can usually find an analogy from one field that unlocks a problem in another. The technical name for this is analogical thinking, and the research on it is one of the most underrated bodies of work in cognitive science.

The single most useful sentence in the entire book is the one Epstein puts almost as a throwaway.

Match quality matters more than head start.

A person who tries six different fields in their twenties and finds the one that genuinely fits them will outperform a person who picked one field at fourteen and stuck to it on willpower alone. The lost years were not lost. They were the search process that produced the match. Every field they walked away from taught them something they later imported into the field they finally chose.

The reason this is so hard to accept is cultural, not empirical. We tell children to pick a path early. We reward the prodigy who knew at six. We treat the late bloomer as someone who failed to launch on time, when the data suggests they were running an entirely different and often more effective optimization process underneath.

The Polgar sisters were not wrong. The conclusion the world drew from them was.

If your environment is genuinely kind, specialize early and drill hard. If it is wicked, and almost every interesting human problem is, then the people who win are the ones who refused to specialize until they had seen enough to know what was actually worth specializing in.

You are not behind. You were running the right experiment all along.

[signüll @signulll]

this woman doesn’t need a matchmaker. she needs to accidentally book the wrong airbnb in a mountain town called pine hollow.

it’s december. there’s one coffee shop, one christmas tree farm, & one emotionally unavailable man named jake who owns a struggling bookstore despite somehow having perfect stubble, a golden retriever, & unresolved grief from a fiancee who left him for a private equity guy in denver.

she arrives in a black suv, wearing a cashmere coat, trying to take a “clarity weekend” before interviewing $80k/year matchmakers in nyc.

the town hates her immediately because she asks if they have oat milk.

jake says, “we have milk.”

she says, “from what?”

tension.

then a snowstorm hits. her flight gets canceled. her phone dies. the only place with wifi is jake’s bookstore, which is called “second chances”.

over the next 4 days, she helps him realize the store doesn’t need to close, it just needs a better merchandising strategy, a paid newsletter, & a tasteful espresso machine. he teaches her how to chop firewood, slow down, & pronounce “community” like it isn’t a fund thesis.

by day 5, she has accidentally saved the town’s winter festival.

by day 6, she is wearing flannel.

by day 7, the high end matchmaker calls with “an incredible candidate” who is 42, divorced, skis, runs a family office, says he’s “emotionally available,” lives in tribeca, has 3 phones.

she looks across the bookstore at jake reading to local kids while his dog sleeps under a table.

she says, “i’m going to pass.”

cut to one year later & she has opened a bookstore wine bar called “due diligence.” jake still owns the original bookstore because hallmark cannot handle cap table complexity. she’s pregnant with twins. the golden retriever has a red bow. the matchmaker sends a christmas card.

“turns out the best match was the one not in the database.”

roll credits.

[Libriscent @libriscent]

This generation doesn’t know how to build healthy relationships.. We end up saying stuff like “I don’t owe anyone anything.” You do owe people something. You owe those you offended an apology. You owe those who gave you support, gratitude. And you owe those you disrespect, respect. Accountability is a personal act of integrity and moral principles. We will forever live in a broken society, until we learn to account for our actions that impact other peoples lives negatively.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/CJ8XbTz52M

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/v0kc5BUQek

[MELi @melee77]

I approve! I'll even call them flapjacks. Maybe Union Jack Flap Jacks?

[Cooking with Carter @cookingwithc479]

One of my favourite sweet treats! Flapjacks! Made these ones for my lunchbox ☺️😋

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Senator Sanders.

Detroit. Detroit now. The "Fighting Oligarchy" tour has arrived in Michigan, and I see you are still out here promising Medicare for All, a $20 minimum wage, and getting big money out of politics — from a man who just spent $550,000 of campaign money on PRIVATE JETS and owns three homes.

You are a whitewashed wall, Senator. Matthew 23:27. Spotless on the outside. And we all know what is on the inside.

Let us do this properly. Because I am a science teacher, and I do not just assert things — I explain them. So allow me to explain, slowly and clearly, why every single item on your Detroit promise list is either unconstitutional, economically illiterate, or has already been tried and failed. Possibly all three simultaneously.

— MEDICARE FOR ALL AND THE TENTH AMENDMENT —

Article I of the Constitution gives Congress a specific, enumerated list of powers. Health care is not on that list. Not even close. The Tenth Amendment then states — and I will use small words here because I am a teacher and clarity matters — "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

That is not complicated. That is eight grade civics. The federal government does not have constitutional authority to nationalize one-sixth of the American economy and mandate participation in a single-payer system. The states retain that authority. This is not a political opinion. This is the document. The one you swore an oath to.

But here is what I find truly fascinating about Medicare for All specifically: you have been in Congress for 35 YEARS. The Democrats have controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House simultaneously on multiple occasions during those 35 years. And yet. AND YET. Medicare for All has never passed. Not once. Not even close. Your OWN PARTY will not vote for it.

You know why? Because the math does not work. Because every single country with a nationalized health system either rations care, has catastrophic wait times, or is going bankrupt funding it — often all three at once. "A better future is possible" is a lovely sentence, Senator. It is also clouds without rain. Promising. Delivering nothing.

— THE MINIMUM WAGE — AND ITS FILTHY ORIGINS —

Quinn's Law Number One: "Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent."

Let me tell you something about the minimum wage that your Detroit crowd almost certainly does not know — because if they did, they would not be cheering for it.

The minimum wage is, at its root, a RACIST POLICY. I do not use that word casually. I am a science teacher. I use words precisely.

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 — one of the original federal prevailing wage laws and the grandfather of modern minimum wage policy — was passed EXPLICITLY to prevent Black laborers from competing with white union workers on federal construction projects. The congressional debate is in the record. Representative Miles Allgood of Alabama stated plainly on the floor of Congress that the bill was needed because contractors were bringing in "cheap colored labor" from the South to underbid union wages. The solution was to mandate a wage floor high enough that Black workers — who were systematically excluded from the very unions setting those wages — could no longer compete.

Read that again. The minimum wage was designed as an economic wall to keep Black workers out of the labor market. Not to help them. To STOP them.

And now, nearly a century later, a rich white Democrat who has been in Washington long enough to have lived through the HEIGHT of the KKK's political power is standing in Detroit — a majority-Black city — demanding an even HIGHER minimum wage floor.

Why am I not surprised.

Because here is what the data says today, in 2026, after all those decades of "fighting for working people": minimum wage increases STILL disproportionately eliminate entry-level jobs. And who holds the majority of entry-level jobs? Black teenagers. Hispanic teenagers. First-time workers without degrees, without connections, without the luxury of waiting out an economic correction.

You are not lifting them up. You are pricing them out. Again. The same way it was designed to do in 1931. The mechanism is identical. Only the marketing has changed.

A minimum wage increase does not lift people up. It prices them OUT. When you mandate that an employer pay $20 an hour for an entry-level position, that employer buys a kiosk. Or cuts hours. Or closes the location. The people who lose those jobs are not the skilled workers who could command $20 anyway — they are the teenagers, the high school dropouts, the people trying to get their FIRST job so they can build a resume and stop being dependent on the government you are so eager to expand.

You are sealing the door to the first rung of the ladder and then handing them a government check and calling it compassion. That is not fighting for working people. That is manufacturing a permanent underclass that will keep voting for whoever promises the most free things. And YOU have been doing this for 35 years.

The party that founded the KKK, wrote the Jim Crow laws, and created Planned Parenthood to — in Margaret Sanger's own documented words — reduce the Black population, is now in Detroit telling Black Americans that THIS time the minimum wage will save them.

Quinn's Law Number Two applies here too. When Democrats scream about racism the loudest, check whose policies are actually doing the damage.

In a battle of wits, Senator, you would show up completely unarmed — and yet here you are, asking Detroit to believe the 36th year will be different.

— BIG MONEY OUT OF POLITICS —

This is my personal favorite. The cacafuego standing on a stage funded by a $75 million documentary deal, $2.5 million in book royalties, and $550,000 in campaign jet travel wants to get big money out of politics.

You ARE big money in politics. You ARE the thing you claim to oppose. The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me — and I teach teenagers for a living, so that is saying something considerable.

— THE SOCIALISM PROBLEM —

Here is what nobody in that Detroit crowd stopped to ask: where has this model actually WORKED?

Venezuela had the largest proven oil reserves on earth and implemented every policy you advocate — nationalized industries, wealth redistribution, price controls, guaranteed wages. The average Venezuelan lost 24 pounds due to food scarcity within a decade. Seven million people fled the country. The Maduro family accumulated billions. The party elite got the compounds. The people got the bread lines.

THAT is what socialism produces. Every. Single. Time. Because socialism only functions when you can forcibly eliminate the people who will not contribute to the collective — and you of ALL people understand this better than anyone alive, Senator, because the communists in Vermont tried the gentle version of that policy on YOU in 1971 and asked you to leave after 72 hours for being a pilgarlic who would not pull his weight.

The hippies ran a tighter ideological ship than you give them credit for.

— WHAT 35 YEARS ACTUALLY PRODUCED —

Eight bills passed. Two post offices named. Zero Medicare for All votes. Zero minimum wage increases at the federal level that you can personally claim credit for. Zero campaign finance reform of any substance.

You donated your brain to the cause before you were done using it, Senator — because someone operating with full cognitive capacity would look at 35 years of that legislative record and perhaps recalibrate the message.

Running on dial-up in a fiber-optic world, promising Detroit a revolution you have had three and a half DECADES to start and somehow never quite got around to.

You speak, as Shakespeare observed, an infinite deal of nothing.

The unctuous sanctimony of a millionaire with a lake house standing in Detroit and declaring himself the champion of the working class is not courage. It is not even audacity. It is a poltroon's performance — all the swagger of conviction with none of the sacrifice required to back it up.

Detroit deserves better than a 35-year promise with a 0.23 bill-per-year delivery rate.

But what do I know — I am only a science teacher and retired Army combat medic who understands that you cannot spend money you do not have, pass laws the Constitution does not authorize, or lecture working-class Americans about sacrifice from the window of a Bombardier Challenger 604.

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it.

SHARE this — Detroit deserves to see these numbers.

COMMENT below — name ONE country where Medicare for All has worked WITHOUT rationing care, catastrophic wait times, or going broke. Just one. Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this — the data, the history, the science, the stories — JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.
@JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2
#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/C8ANcRIPth

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Wow, I am genuinely glad you said that. Now we can stop spending money on housing assistance -- because, you know, it is a RIGHT. And rights do not cost anyone anything to provide, right?

Wait. That is not how rights work at all.

See, @RepPressley, a RIGHT is something the government cannot TAKE from you. It is not something the government FORCES someone else to give you. That is called a mandate. A bill. Someone else's problem. There is a reason the Constitution says "shall not be infringed" -- not "shall be provided at others' expense."

Shall we apply this logic consistently? If housing is a right, you cannot force lumber companies to donate materials. Cannot make contractors build for free. Cannot compel landlords to forfeit their property. The wheel is spinning on this one, but the hamster checked out a while ago.

Oh -- but here is where it gets FASCINATING. You champion "housing justice" while your party's own single-family zoning laws, minimum lot size requirements, and weaponized environmental reviews are the DOCUMENTED reason housing costs $400,000 for a median home. 82% of residential land in major progressive cities is zoned single-family ONLY. Duplexes are ILLEGAL in most of the country. Who passed those laws? Who runs those cities?

Quinn's Law #1: liberalism always generates the EXACT OPPOSITE of its stated intent. Your side made affordable housing structurally illegal for 80 years, and now you need a federal bill to fix the crisis your regulations created.

And while we are here -- who exactly is going to BUILD all this housing? Because I notice you and @RepRashida are also very passionate about importing people who will work for wages your own "living wage" laws supposedly forbid. The anebellum South had a phrase for needing a captive labor class to do work nobody else would do cheaply enough. I am sure the irony is not lost on you. Actually, based on this tweet, it probably is.

Here is the part that should embarrass every single person who voted for the policies creating this disaster. The first-time homebuyer median age is now 40. In 1950 it was 25. A 2024 survey of 2,000 Americans found that people now do not even FEEL like full adults until around age 27 -- not because they are lazy, but because the economic conditions government created make independence nearly impossible. In 1975, nearly HALF of all 25-to-34-year-olds had already moved out, landed a job, gotten married, AND had children. That pathway has been systematically dismantled. Median marriage age is now 27-30. Median age of first home purchase -- again, 40.

The Greatest Generation felt adult by 18-21. They built this country. Your generation of lawmakers spent 80 years making it structurally impossible for young Americans to replicate that, and the solution you are offering is a bill to house people with criminal records.

That did not happen because of the free market. It happened because of GOVERNMENT POLICY -- the same government that is now going to fix it with another bill.

But what do I know -- I am only a science teacher who actually read the zoning codes and the 100-year history of government-manufactured housing unaffordability instead of designing legislation to solve a crisis caused by my own party's policies.

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this.

COMMENT below -- do you think housing is a right, or are you just describing who pays for it? Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.

@JoJoFromJerz @catturd2 @GuntherEagleman #MAGA #Trump

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

You know what a burn pit smells like.

If you were there -- if you served in Iraq or Afghanistan -- you already know. That thick, chemical, wrong smell that never fully left the back of your throat. Plastics. Chemicals. Medical waste. Ordnance. Burning. All day. Every day. Right next to where you slept, where you ate, where you ran PT in the morning.

Nobody told you what it would do to your lungs.

His name was Richard Star. Army combat engineer from Ohio -- right near Cleveland. He cleared IED-laden roads so other soldiers could drive on them without dying. Desert Shield. Desert Storm. Iraq. Afghanistan. Kuwait. He went back. He kept raising his hand. He breathed those burn pits for years -- the same smoke, the same chemical air, the same carcinogens that had no business being in a human lung.

In 2018, that smoke caught up with him. Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. The VA rated it 100% service-connected. His own government certified in writing that the United States of America's burn pits gave Richard Star terminal cancer.

He was medically retired before hitting 20 years. Not because he quit. Because there was nothing left to give.

And then the Army sent him a letter.

The letter showed two numbers. The first number was what Richard Star had EARNED in military retirement -- what the United States government had promised him when he raised his right hand and swore an oath and then spent decades keeping it. The second number -- what he would ACTUALLY receive -- was zero.

Zero dollars. Zero cents.

His 100% VA disability rating for the cancer eating his lungs wiped out his entire retirement check through the concurrent receipt offset. Dollar for dollar. Every single penny of retirement pay he had earned, gone. A man dying of cancer he got in uniform, holding a piece of paper from his own government that said his retirement was worth nothing.

If you have buried someone from burn pit exposure, I need you to sit with that image.

Your brother. Your battle buddy. Your soldier. Sitting at a kitchen table. Oxygen tank next to the chair. Chemo running through his veins. Holding a government letter that says zero.

That is what happened to Richard Star.

His wife Tonya quit her career to become his full-time caregiver. While she sat next to him through every treatment, while their household ran on whatever the VA disability check provided, while the retirement check the Army told him he'd earned sat at zero -- Tonya was also fighting. Calling. Writing. Testifying. Standing in congressional hearing rooms telling her husband's story to the people who had the power to fix it.

Richard never stopped either. He traveled on oxygen tanks to advocate for this bill. He could barely stand. He fought for the 50,000 veterans behind him who were carrying the same injustice, because that is what that kind of man does -- he thinks about the ones behind him even when he is the one dying.

He died February 13, 2021. He was 51 years old.

Tonya kept going. She kept his name alive in every room she could reach, because she loved him and because she refused to let what happened to Richard happen to the next family.

Tonya passed away on August 12, 2024. She was also 51 years old.

Both of them gone at 51. Both of them fighting until they could not.

The bill still not law.

Right now -- today, this month, this year -- there are 50,000 veterans receiving that same letter Richard received. Two numbers. What they earned. What they actually get. And for too many of them, the second number is devastating. Some of them are already sick. Some of them already have the diagnosis. Some of them are sitting at kitchen tables with oxygen tanks next to the chair, opening mail from the government that sent them to those burn pits, wondering if this country is going to keep its promise before they run out of time.

Sgt. Lyle Allen. 14 years. Multiple deployments to Iraq. His vehicle hit an IED. He does not remember much after that -- just the medics' faces above him. The VA certified his TBI as 100% permanently and totally disabling -- it will never improve. The offset wiped out his retirement. He calls himself "retired without retirement." He says the country is "turning their backs" on him.

A Marine. 17 years. Three combat tours. An IED in Afghanistan took both of his legs. THREE YEARS from the 20-year mark. Three years. The government took his legs in the service of this nation and then took his retirement check on top of it because of a calendar.

These are not abstractions. These are the men who were standing next to you downrange. The ones who smelled what you smelled. The ones who drove those roads.

The bill to fix this is the MAJOR RICHARD STAR ACT. Current 119th Congress: H.R. 2102 in the House, sponsored by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) with Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), introduced March 14, 2025. S. 1032 in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) with bipartisan co-sponsors including Mike Crapo, Elizabeth Warren, and Rick Scott. Previous Congress: H.R. 1282 in the House and S. 344 in the Senate -- died without a floor vote.

Current co-sponsors: 322+ in the House. Nearly 80 in the Senate. The Wounded Warrior Project, MOAA, VFW, IAVA -- virtually every major veterans organization in this country -- stands behind this bill. The votes exist. The will to schedule them does not.

On March 3, 2026, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin blocked this bill on the Senate floor. Twice. Once on unanimous consent. Then again when a compromise was offered for a simple recorded roll call. He did not want the bill to pass. He did not want to go on record opposing it either.

His reason: cost.

Richard Star got a letter that said zero. Senator Johnson found that affordable.

I need you to make a phone call. Right now. While this is still in your chest where it belongs.

SENATE SWITCHBOARD: [phone].

Tell them: "I am calling to demand my senator support S. 1032, the Major Richard Star Act, and force a floor vote. Combat-wounded veterans are dying while this sits in committee."

HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: [phone].

Tell them: "I am calling to ask my representative to co-sponsor H.R. 2102 and demand leadership schedule a floor vote."

Then share this post. Every share puts Richard Star's name in front of someone who has not heard it yet. Every share might reach a veteran who does not know they are owed this money right now. Every share might reach the family member who makes the call that changes the vote.

Richard Star traveled on oxygen tanks to fight for veterans he would never meet.

The least we can do is make a phone call.

@MajorStarAct @StarActEnemies @SenRonJohnson @SenatorWicker

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to the people who need to read it. SHARE this -- for Richard. For Tonya. For the veteran you know who is sick right now and does not know this fight exists. COMMENT below -- have you called yet? Tell me right here. Hold yourself accountable out loud.

And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.

But what do I know -- I am only a medically retired Army combat medic who breathed that same air, who served alongside men who came home carrying things that would kill them slowly, and who has spent years watching a government that sends people to war find every possible excuse not to keep its promises when they come back broken.

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump #majorstaract

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/18vreh8o3J

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.

Cette phrase change tout.

L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?

Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.

Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.

Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.

Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.

L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.

Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.

Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.

Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.

Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.

La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.

Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.

Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.

La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

[MELi @melee77]

Truth! This makes me want chicken thighs real bad

[Kyle Collinsworth @collinsworth55]

Chicken thighs will always be superior to chicken breast. I only buy chicken thighs. Way more flavor and not as dry

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

https://t.co/wUoUBBCDZ1

[MELi @melee77]

If you want to get a feel for the Zeitgeist of any era starting at the beginning of the 20th century, watch all the movies. Even going back and watching movies from the '80s and '90s, when I grew up, shows me things I never noticed back then.

[Upstate Federalist @upstatefederlst]

People out here acting like 80s and 90s kids regularly watched movies from the 50s and 60s.