Questions On Nike, Colin Kaepernick, and Corporate Social Responsibility
September 9, 2018

I spend a lot thinking about whether or not for profit entities can be relied upon to be forces for social good, if they can be at all (see my post on impact investing, for instance). Thus Nike’s recent decision […]

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Business  / Musings  / philosophy  / Politics

The Problem With Most Impact Investing
September 8, 2018

Imagine I told you that by switching your money from one investment vehicle to another—with the click of a button!—you could not only earn the same return on your investment with the same level of risk as before, but also […]

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Capital Good Fund  / environment  / Musings  / philosophy  / Politics

The Composition
August 4, 2018

Nothing but a flock of pre-dawn breeze,
And florid sky, and lake

Taut with water, like a sail:
A painting in motion, unfinished.

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poetry

Perfection
August 4, 2018

I had thought I lacked for time
And spent my days frantic,
As though life were a web
And death a looming spider, his
Approach inexorable, his mouth

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Musings  / philosophy  / poetry

The Machinery of the State
July 29, 2018

A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
Flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
Mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,
Ripples the lone unarmed security guard’s shirt
As he waves concentration camp employees

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America on the Brink  / poetry

The Problem With the Proverb About Teaching a Man to Fish
July 28, 2018

We’ve all heard the Chinese proverb, “Give a poor [wo]man a fish and you feed her for a day. You teach her to fish and you give her an occupation that will feed her for a lifetime.” It’s a great concept, one that is popular with those who are more free market-oriented–they like the notion of hand-me-ups instead of hand-outs–as well as with those who tend toward socialism, as they like the idea of empowering the poor.

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Business  / Capital Good Fund  / philosophy

Can Love Trump Hate?
July 22, 2018

This is an oversimplification, but one way to think about the Civil Rights Movement, especially from the mid-to-late 1960s, is that there were two philosophical approaches: Dr. King’s faith-based, inclusive, nonviolent strategy; and Malcom X’s Black Power, “the bullet or the ballot,” movement.

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philosophy  / Politics

What I Saw in McAllen and Brownsville, Texas
July 21, 2018

“The trouble with [Nazi war criminal and participant in the Final Solution] Adolf Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. 

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Politics

Why I’m in McAllen, Texas
July 14, 2018

We 21st century humans are pretty good at studying and learning the lessons of history but terrible when it comes to turning this knowledge into action. Consider the myriad books that have been written about the two World Wars, the Vietnam War, Stalinism, the Rwandan Genocide, the HIV / AIDS epidemic, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and other events

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Politics

The Poet of Resistance
June 26, 2018

I am become the poet of resistance.
I write like a comet, a solar flare,
A sawed-off shotgun,
And where my words no longer suffice
Let them mingle with my blood,

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America on the Brink  / poetry