First Principles

◆ Latest Essay

The Invisible Hand Was Never Invisible: Misreading Adam Smith

June 1, 2026 Economics

Smith's "system of natural liberty" was always embedded in a moral framework — one we have quietly forgotten.

Everyone who has taken an introductory economics course knows the phrase. Few have read the two sentences surrounding it in The Wealth of Nations. Fewer still have read The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the companion volume Smith considered more important — the one that explains what he actually meant. When we strip away the context, we don't simplify a thinker; we replace him with a caricature.

✦ ✦ ✦

May 22, 2026 Philosophy

Socrates Never Wrote a Word: The Problem of the Philosophical Dialogue

Everything we know of Socrates comes filtered through Plato — a student who may have disagreed with his teacher far more than the dialogues suggest. This is the strange epistemological predicament at the heart of Western philosophy's founding document.

May 10, 2026 History

The Bronze Age Collapse and the Fragility of Complex Societies

Around 1200 BCE, almost every major civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean disintegrated within a few decades. Palatial economies vanished. Writing systems were forgotten. What happened — and what it might tell us about our own moment — remains one of history's most compelling open questions.

April 28, 2026 Books

Reading Montaigne in a Distracted Age

The Essays were written by a man who retreated from public life to think carefully about what it means to live well. That project feels, four centuries later, more urgent than ever. A reflection on why Montaigne is the ideal companion for uncertain times.

April 14, 2026 Economics

What Keynes Actually Said About the Long Run

"In the long run we are all dead." It is perhaps the most frequently quoted — and misunderstood — sentence in the history of economic thought. Keynes was not being nihilistic. He was making a precise methodological argument about the limitations of equilibrium analysis.