The Elysian

We can’t deny that technology has pushed the human body far beyond what Greece’s ancient athletes could have achieved. Every person on a podium today got there, not just because they are athletically superior, but because they have been scientifically and technologically optimized to be superior.

This, we should recognize, is a new form of progress.

The allure of the "strongman" is back, and the ideal of a "benevolent dictator" haunts our imagination of the future. But the solution is not to abolish democracy, it’s to innovate it.

I’ve been struggling to follow the news in any way that is productive. It’s too zoomed in on the most dramatic things happening today, without any context of the wider picture and what the trends are actually saying about our countries and the world.

So I decided to zoom out and make a report card for the whole world. Something that is a snapshot of how every country is doing in terms of governance and economics, and whether they are trending in a positive or negative direction compared with 10 years ago.

KKR is either a villain or a hero, depending on who you ask.

The private equity firm started buying up companies, giving employees equity in them, then selling them at a profit with windfall results for employees and KKR. Some employee-ownership advocates see the company as an unlikely savior, offering workers stake in billion-dollar businesses. Others see it as an apex predator of late capitalism, giving workers a watered-down version of “equity” for their own financial gain.

Which is it?

And create an interspecies future that benefits humans and ecologies alike.

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Marjan Ehsassi is the executive director of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy (FIDE) - North America, an international organization working to increase citizen participation in policymaking. On this research call, we discussed her article "We Need a Fourth Branch of Government" about how we can use citizens' assemblies to better democracy, capitalism, and academia.

Katie Boland, co-founder of the Delta Fund, recently wrote an article arguing that KKR isn’t providing employee-ownership, but is “equity washing." A baseline employee ownership deal (known as an ESOP) would be much better, she says.

I think it’s a mistake to compare a private equity company like KKR to traditional employee-owned companies—we should compare them to other private equity companies. Is KKR’s model better than what other employee-owned companies are doing? Probably not! Is KKR’s model better than what other PE companies are doing? ABSOLUTELY!

Becky Chambers’ gentle sci-fi on the right amount of carbon, AC, airplanes, and yachts.

Read the essay and join the discourse at https://elysian.press/essays/how-much-of-the-planet-should-we

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New York City’s mayoral primary has served as a kind of theater for what the future of the Democratic Party should look like in the United States.

The story is told through three characters: The Trad Democrat, played by Andrew Cuomo, The Social Democrat, played by Zohran Mamdani, and The Abundance Democrat, played by Zellnor Myrie, Brad Lander, Whitney Tilson, and Adrienne Adams.

What kind of Democrat do we want in America? Well, that’s the subject of the show, and you, as the audience member, can vote on who wins.

But be warned: Whoever you choose will have to go up against one of Trump’s henchmen in the final round this fall. And whatever’s modeled here in New York City could eventually be modeled in the state, and even the country.

Can your choice of Democrat defeat Donald Trump in the final showdown for our country?

And how everyone else can get rich too.

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