America loves to call itself a nation of entrepreneurs. Politicians routinely praise the family business, the independent contractor, the neighborhood store and the person who risks everything to build a company from scratch.

But being “pro-business” is not necessarily the…

How We Got Here: From Economic Shock to an Extraction Economy

Enshittification did not suddenly appear because corporate executives collectively decided to make everything worse. It developed within a much larger economic transformation—one involving pandemic stimulus, inflation, supply shocks, war…

For nearly two thousand years, the Bible has served as one of the world's most influential religious texts. It has inspired extraordinary acts of compassion, charity…

The presidency of Donald Trump has generated intense debate over the limits of executive power, conflicts of interest, government accountability, and the role of personal business interests in…

By a Software Developer with 35 Years of Experience

For most of my career, software development was about building solutions. We certainly relied on third-party products, operating systems, databases, and networking infrastructure, but there was an underlying assumption that the…

A lot of people in the U.S. feel this way right now, and there are several overlapping reasons why companies can appear to be “avoiding” customers or making human interaction harder.

Here are the biggest drivers:

Automation and Cost Cutting

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Donald Trump’s latest visit to Beijing was framed by both Washington and Beijing as a high-stakes diplomatic and economic engagement, but the symbolism of the trip may ultimately matter more than any single trade announcement. Standing alongside Donald Trump and…

The Return of the Hard Sell: Technology, Trust, and the Trump-Era Mood

In the late 2010s and into the 2020s, many Americans began to feel a subtle but persistent shift in the texture of everyday life online and off. It…

There’s a growing frustration among everyday users and professionals alike: the sense that Google Search is no longer a tool for discovery, but a marketplace where visibility is increasingly determined by who pays the most. Whether that perception is fully…

Over the past decade, software and web application development have undergone a dramatic transformation. What was once a discipline grounded in craftsmanship, stability, and long-term thinking has increasingly shifted toward speed, cost efficiency, and rapid feature delivery. The combined influence…

The Industry I Knew Is Gone

I’m 56 years old, and I’ve been writing software long enough to remember when discipline mattered more than hype. Back then, we argued about architecture, not optics. We wrote documentation because someone else actually…

Trumponomics - The Erosion of Capitalism

In the past few years, a new management philosophy has taken hold in parts of American business and politics: the idea that the fastest way to “fix” an organization is simply to cut it…

The Reagan Era and the Glorification of Wealth

During the 1980s, a cultural shift occurred in the United States that reshaped how Americans viewed money, success, and social status. Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, economic policy emphasized deregulation, tax…

There was a time—not that long ago—when Google Search felt like a public utility. You typed in a question, and the best answers floated to the top. Relevance mattered. Accuracy mattered…

President Trump’s decision to insert himself into the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) — particularly his call for CNN to be sold as a condition of any merger — marks a new chapter in his long-running campaign against…

As inflation squeezes workers and small businesses, corporate giants have found a convenient shield: Donald Trump’s emerging oligarchic model of governance. In this new political ecosystem, billion-dollar firms deflect scrutiny, blame Washington for price hikes they engineered, and quietly rake…

How the Trump Era Fueled a Politicized Version of Christianity on the American Right

The Trump administration marked a turning point in the long-running relationship between conservative politics and American Christianity. While religion has played a prominent role in U.S…

Ronald Reagan, Reaganomics, and the Cultural Transformation of the 1980s

My brother Kelvin grew up in the 80's.  Not only that, during the week, he lived and played football for a wealthy school 20 miles where my family lived in…

The Cult of Loyalty: Inside Trump’s Sycophantic Inner Circle

Donald Trump’s administration was never a government in the traditional sense. It was a theater of loyalty — a stage where sycophancy was rewarded, dissent was punished, and truth was an…

The Flying Fish Fable: How Trump’s “Civil Unrest” Narrative Went Off the Rails in Memphis

My family is very familiar with this area.  I played on Beale Street and my brother went to Booker T. Washington around the corner of…

The United States government has once again ground to a halt—this time over Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” The legislation, a bloated MAGA-driven spending package packed with extremist priorities and culture-war riders, became the latest hostage in the GOP’s…

Why would Trump waste his time even considering $13 when he's already making billions of his Presidency

For someone making $3 billion per year after his 2025 inauguration, $400k would be 0.000133333 of that.  For someone making $100k per year…

Purposely dysfunctional companies riding the wave of inflationary record profits thanks to Trump:

Amazon — 2024–2025: strong margins from AWS & advertising, multiple small/targeted layoffs and new rounds of corporate reductions; heavy push to replace live chat/agent support with automated…