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6 days ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
If you are fortunate or unfortunate enough to spend time around people who work for big tech firms, you will find that their views on every issue tend to be rooted in the assumption that the tech industry itself will determine the future of said issue.
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1 week ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
Corporations are granted many advantages in America that have allowed them to amass great wealth and power for their executives and shareholders. Some of these advantages are codified on paper: Favorable regulations, favorable tax laws, the ability to be treated as persons for the sake of political donations, and so on.
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2 weeks ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
Like milling elephants mourning a deceased member of the herd, each unsuccessful election season will produce a scrum of wealthy donors wringing their hands over how to turn things around. Some portion of these people will, inevitably, fixate on the media.
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2 weeks ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
A basic but accurate model of investor capitalism is: Companies have expenses, and they have profits. The job of company managers is to minimize expenses and maximize profits, to the extent possible. The huge pools of capital controlled by investors will flow to the firms that produce the highest profits, with the same inexorable logic of a river flowing where gravity leads it. In return for their capital, investors want as much of a company’s profits to be given to them as possible.
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3 weeks ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
This week, Verizon became the latest major company to end its internal DEI program—a move made in order to win government approval for a $20 billion acquisition. In scrapping its diversity program, it joins a long list of corporations, universities, law firms, and government contractors of all types. Many of these organizations were doubtlessly happy to have an excuse to get out of the equity business. Some, perhaps, were upset. All are cowardly. None are a surprise.
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3 weeks ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
I’ve been reading Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker, a history of the years leading up to World War 2. The entire book takes the form of short, stylized, factual items of a few paragraphs or less, presented in chronological order, which taken together tell the story of societies sliding—often unwittingly—into very dark places. While reading the book, I found over and over again that certain entries would vividly remind me of things happening today.
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4 weeks ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
When asked about your religious belief, the correct response is “agnostic.” It means “I don’t know.” That’s a fact: You don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody knows. The origin of the universe? The true nature of reality? Existence after death? Please. We only discovered atoms a couple of hundred years ago. Quantum physics, a hundred years ago.
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1 month ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
Warren Buffett, 94, has announced that he is planning to retire. He will go down as history’s greatest investor. Berkshire Hathaway, the company that Buffett spent six decades nurturing, began as a fading textile firm. Today, it is a sprawling conglomerate worth more than a trillion dollars. Buffett racked up a cumulative investment return of over five million percent during his long career. His own net worth today stands close to $170 billion.
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1 month ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
“The average voter” is a term that exists primarily for political consultants to commandeer as an avatar of their own advice. “The average voter believes things have gone too far. The average voter cares about kitchen table issues. The average voter wants common sense solutions for his family.
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1 month ago | 
hamiltonnolan.com | Hamilton Nolan
Most jobs come with a series of unappetizing demands. You must wake up early. You must endure a long commute. You must perform sweaty physical labor, or serve the thankless public, or corral a classroom of unruly kids, or waste away in a dreary cubicle. You must perform these grueling, tedious tasks, in exchange for an amount of money that is surely smaller than you deserve, in order to obtain food, clothing, and shelter, lest you and your family become destitute.