War Today: We Pay and They Serve

Once upon a time war had structure. There was a kind of narrative arc to war. A beginning, a middle and clear end. In the modern era, certainly since Vietnam, they have become what Clausewitz called “protracted conflict.” Even the efforts to find resolution are nothing more than wars by other means.

Most have heard the biblical quote, that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but be not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.”

With respect to America's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan the end has still not come. Few understand this better than the men and women who served. And few articulate it better than Elliot Ackerman in his new work Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning.

My conversation with Elliot Ackerman:

Cities Represent the Ultimate Achievement of Mankind

Today, more than one-half of the world's population lives in cities. In every corner of the world, people are moving to cities at a rapid and geometric pace. The urban migration taking place today is both historic and inevitable. Our cities represent the ultimate triumph and organizing principle of humanity. They are more than either the concrete jungle portrayed by Billy Wilder in the Lost Weekend, or the human zoo, that Desmond Morris claimed.


The great San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, one said of cities, “that they should not be judged just by their length and width, but by the broadness of their vision and the height of their dreams.” They are, in some ways, the ultimate achievements of mankind.

Few understand them better than Monica L. Smith, a professor of anthropology and professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the UCLA where she holds a chair in Indian Studies and serves as the director of the South Asian Archeology Laboratory in the Cotsen Institute of Archeology. She is the author, most recently of Cities: The First 6,000 Years

My conversation with Monica Smith:

Saving Capitalism

Never before in human history has so much change been so rapidly foisted on human beings. Not during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.

Today, technology in all of its forms; from smart machines to robotics, from AI to VR to 3D manufacturing, to genetic and biomedical engineering, will make sure we are never the same

It's estimated by some that almost eighty million jobs could be gone in our lifetime. Certainly, the psychological and political consequences of this change, as we are already seeing, could be devastating. But so will the economic impact. It’s in this context that we need to reimagine capitalism. Just listen to some of the current candidates for president, and you’ll see that the very capitalist system that has produced this unprecedented change and wealth, is under siege. All of which raises the question, can capitalism itself keep up?  This is the question that author and business professor Ed Hess in a new White Paper in our recent conversation.

My conversation with Ed Hess: