Zachary Karabell

New York

Investor, Commentator, Consultant at Freelance

Author of various books, most recently "Inside Money," investor, commentator, consultant, host of the podcast “What Could Go Right?” + founder of @progressntwrk

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Articles

It's Not About The Plane

2 weeks ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

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It's Not About The Plane

2 weeks ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

Far too often, the stories that dominate our discussions are not the ones that will matter most over the arc of time. The drama of “if it bleeds, it leads” remains the most dominant driver of news and social media, which means that larger forces remain under-examined. Bad news often happens quickly; positive news often evolves slowly. Take the events of last week.
Comments - Ailing States - by Zachary Karabell

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

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Ailing States

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

Whilst the Second Season of the Trump Show continues to break ratings records, elsewhere in the world two events of lasting import are unfolding: one is the election of a new pope to head the 1.4-billion-person Catholic Church, and the other is the war dance between India and Pakistan, two of the largest countries in the world, both capable of deploying nuclear weapons.
One Hundred Days of Solitude

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

"The infrastructure of the state was dismantled."When the state is a hellish totalitarian tyranny, dismantling the infrastructure of the state is a good thing. People used to understand that. People used to believe in freedom. People used to read 1984, and take it as a cautionary tale about the horrors of totalitarianism.
One Hundred Days of Solitude

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

It’s been said that it’s lonely at the top. It should now be said of the first 100 days of the Second Season of the Trump Show that, after all the drama, what’s left is a series of hollow and pyrrhic victories. Where others have built, this administration has torn down. And for sure, sometimes destruction can be constructive; trees and plants need pruning or else they will die. There is creative destruction, where eliminating the old gives way—often painfully—to the new.
Schlock and Awww

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

Alternative interpretation: the fact that we did NOT react very strongly when those previous offenses happened left the window wide open for more and worse offenses now. And if we just say, "welp, democracy will probably survive" right now, what will happen the next time someone pushes that window a little further? Again, you are right that we don't *know* what's going to happen.
Schlock and Awww

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

There is an emerging global narrative that democracy is imperiled, and that with the seeming retreat of the United States as the arbiter of the economic and political order, a period of chaos and darkness looms. Maybe.
You Can't Step Into The Same River Twice

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

I agree with you that we cannot be certain what the future will bring. Having said that, this comes perilously close to sounding like justification for just sitting back and waiting, because the future will be whatever it's gonna be. And if you're an academic historian, you should know that history is not a thing that *happens*, separate from people's actions; it is something we *create*, through those very actions. Will this be an era that changes very little?
You Can't Step Into The Same River Twice

1 month ago | edgyoptimist.substack.com | Zachary Karabell

It’s Passover and Easter week in the Western world, and whether you are a believer or not, it seems fitting to pause for a moment and consider the wider arc of history. It seems clear—or as clear as anything can be in a messy present where we are all in the process of steering into an unknown future—that there is an unusual degree of flux in what was once called the global system. That must come with the major caveat that said system was hardly peaceful, orderly, or simple.