Category Archives: Models

How I don’t need willpower by learning to feel disgust for what once tempted me. You can too.

on June 28, 2024 in Addiction, Leadership, Models, Tips

Maybe you’ve heard me share how from when I had my own kitchen, I always had ice cream in my freezer and pretzels and Doritos in my cupboard. I struggled to pace my consuming them, but nearly always ate more than I meant to, but kept buying more. Now I say there isn’t enough money in the world for me to eat that stuff. I also talk about my relationship[…] Keep reading →

How what I’m doing feels, subway version

on June 24, 2024 in Addiction, Fitness, Models

Sometimes I feel like I’m responding to someone who fell on the subway tracks. No one else acts. I jump down onto the tracks to help the person to safety, but the person is morbidly obese and struggles just to lift themselves from the ground. They’ve decided to stop trying. “It’s too hard. It’s not worth it.” They resign themselves to the train hitting them. “As long as I can’t[…] Keep reading →

Magnitude of suffering and death then and now

on June 15, 2024 in Leadership, Models, Visualization

I wrote recently in When changing fast is easier than slow about the growth in number of slaves in the United States based on a peer-reviewed paper From ‘20 and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States, by J. David Hacker in the journal Slavery & Abolition. That paper also reported the cumulative number of slaves in the United States. Before looking at[…] Keep reading →

Another lie we tell ourselves: “Human life requires polluting and depleting”

on June 6, 2024 in Models, Nature

Rationalizations and justifications no matter how specious and self-serving sound legitimate and true to the person using them. I hear a lot of rationalizations and justifications on why people pollute and deplete. To the person saying them, they sound legitimate and true. Rarely are they. The other day someone repeated one I’ve heard before but didn’t realize how insidious and powerful it is. The person saying it stuck with it[…] Keep reading →

Milton Friedman: Free Markets Don’t Have to Mean Growth and Governments Ought to Regulate Pollution

on May 25, 2024 in Freedom, Models, Nonjudgment

Researching more for my upcoming book and planning to write opinion pieces, I’m learning more limited government, free market thought and practice relevant to sustainability and the environment. It’s relevant beyond anything I expected. If only people asked questions of people they disagreed with and listened to their answers in 2024 as much as they tried to convince and defeat, we’d have solved a lot of problems where we mutually[…] Keep reading →

What made sustainability politically polarized: my hypothesis

on May 10, 2024 in Education, Models, Nature, Relationships

Our environmental problems have become a politically polarized issue. Why? I don’t know values of any political tradition that oppose clean air, land, water, and food, while all seem consistent with stewardship. Meanwhile, the main political tribes seem to see their opponents as obvious enemies, blatantly exacerbating the problems. Liberals say conservatives and libertarians don’t care and are greedy. They say they prefer profit over helping other people or wildlife.[…] Keep reading →

What do you call a market where people can profit from depriving others of life, liberty, and property with impunity?

on April 25, 2024 in Models

I like the idea that if I create something, you and I agree on a price, and we exchange your cash for my product then we mutually benefit. The more I sell to people voluntarily choosing to buy what I made, the more mutual benefit I create. What if to make my product, I harm someone? For example, if in my manufacturing process, I save money by dumping mercury in[…] Keep reading →

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