How the World’s Most Powerful Countries Handle Financial Crime — And Why None of Them Are Doing Enough
Here we examine how the eight countries ranked highest for power by U.S. News & World Report handle financial crimes.
February 2026
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How Sci-Fi Becomes Reality: When Speculation Turns Into Systems, Products, and Power
Science fiction is often treated as entertainment, escapism, or metaphor. In practice, it functions as an informal research and development lab for civilization. Writers imagine futures, audiences absorb them, engineers and policymakers internalize them, and corporations eventually build them. What begins as speculative narrative becomes technical roadmap, corporate product strategy, and state policy architecture. This…
Mental Health Systems: Why Distress Is Structural, Not Just Personal
Mental health has become one of the defining conversations of modern life. In public discourse, workplaces, schools, and social media, distress is discussed more openly than at any other point in recent history. Anxiety, depression, burnout, trauma, and neurodivergence have entered everyday language, often framed as personal identities and individual struggles. This visibility matters. For…
Why Republican Leaders Are Against Education: Power, Inequality, and the Politics of Knowledge
Across modern political history, education has been one of the most powerful engines of social mobility, democratic participation, and economic growth. Public schooling, universities, scientific research, and open access to knowledge have consistently expanded opportunity, reduced poverty, strengthened civic institutions, and enabled societies to solve complex problems. Yet in the United States, a coordinated political…
What Is Freedom? A Philosophical Exploration of Choice, Constraint, and Responsibility
Few questions are as old, persistent, and contested as the question of freedom. Humans have asked it across cultures, religions, political systems, and philosophical traditions. What does it mean to be free? Is freedom something granted by society, something inherent to human nature, or something that exists only in theory? Depending on who you ask,…
Centralization vs. Interdependence: How China’s Rise Reveals the Tensions of a Connected World
Here we examine how China’s push for technological self reliance, its global infrastructure ambitions through the Belt and Road Initiative, its economic trajectory, and Xi Jinping’s consolidation of political power illustrate a deeper systemic pattern. Interconnected systems create power, but power often seeks to reduce dependence on those systems.
Labor and Wealth in a Slice of Cheesecake: Capital and Extraction in the Modern Economy
Here we examine worker pay, executive compensation, shareholders, and profit margins through a specific example: Philadelphia Cream Cheese, owned by Kraft Heinz. We use this case to explore the widening wealth divide, the structural difference between ancient reciprocal economies and modern financialized supply chains, and what it would realistically take to make the system more equitable without collapsing productivity or retirement systems.