I've had Enough
Anger + Hope = Resolve
Who I Am & Why I’m Writing This
Hey,
I’m Andrew. I’m a husband, father, entrepreneur, reader, gardener, and recently, really into making pizza.
The State of the Union was a few weeks ago. I didn’t watch it, but if, oh, say 90% of us were to sum it up…
I’m increasingly troubled by the trajectory of our nation. And so (statistically) are you.
… Barely one in 10 Americans think the government represents them well, and only about two in 10 say they trust officials to do the right thing, with roughly seven in 10 believing corporations and the wealthy control government and that politicians are in it for themselves. — National Opinion Research Center
Here are a few reasons why we feel this way.
Defense: The U.S. spent $997 billion on defense in 2024 (with a proposed increase to $1.5T) , outspending the next 9 countries combined. We’ve spent over $10 trillion on foreign wars this century alone, with catastrophic results for our troops, the countries we’ve invaded, and our national debt.
National Debt: Interest payments are approaching $1 trillion annually, projected to double to $2.1 trillion by 2036. (If you ever really want to stress yourself out, go here and watch it happen in real time).
From Ken Rogoff (Harvard economist, former IMF chief economist)
“The notion that debt is a free lunch that had been pushed by many economy‑watchers is absurd.”
Rogoff said that with current policy, the U.S. is likely to enter “a debt crisis within the next four to five years,”
Healthcare: We spend $14,885 per person, 2.5x the wealthy-nation average, yet rank last among 10 high-income peers in access, efficiency, and equity. We have worse life expectancy, more chronic disease (obesity, diabetes, CVD), and higher rates of preventable death than peers. We pay more and get worse outcomes.
Income Inequality: The top 1% earn about 40 times more than the bottom 90%. Roughly 33 million workers earn less than $10/hour, placing a family of four below the poverty line.
Cost of Living: From 2000 to 2023, medical premiums rose 301%, rent 131%, and the cost of raising children about 107%, while real purchasing power fell. The Fed’s 2024 survey found 37% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency expense without borrowing.
Incarceration: The U.S. imprisons 639 people per 100,000, the highest rate on earth. Over 2 million people behind bars, exceeding China and Brazil.
At the risk of you stopping here….
I’ll pause on the stats, but there’s plenty more…
Widespread corruption & fraud, special interests, a corrosive public discourse, politicians blatantly enriching themselves, mental health, our food and agriculture system, education, addiction, and Social Security on the verge of insolvency.
Even if we’re fortunate enough to be financially stable and relatively healthy, we feel this collectively. Anger. Distrust. Cynicism. Despair. Fear.
Lately, in conversations where we all agreed about the problems, I found myself admitting defeat. “What can I do?”
As the saying goes, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Or in this case, feeling angry and powerless.
I thought a lot about it, and here’s what I can do:
I can channel my love for writing, wide-ranging curiosity, and hope for a better future into writing about what an actual fix would look like. While that may sound like it belongs in the “high fantasy” section, I don’t think it does. I think we’re at an inflection point.
In a September 2025 survey, 62% of U.S. adults said the two major parties do such a poor job that a third major party is needed, with that sentiment strongest among independents at 74%.
I think we live in an amazing country. And I think we’ve strayed dangerously far from our foundational democratic principles. To put it in perspective, of the roughly 342,000,000 people living in America, nearly 308,000,000 don’t think the government represents them well. Not very democratic.
I deeply want that to change. I’m betting you do too.
First, a Foundational Premise
Everything I write about and every fix I prescribe is based on the presupposition that no meaningful change will take place within our existing two-party system. I may elaborate on that in a future post, but I think most of us probably agree, and the data seems to point that way.
A record high of 45% of U.S. adults identified as political independents in 2025. Both major parties sit at just 27% each. Gallup
Gen X and Millennials are bucking historical trends by remaining independent as they age, breaking the usual pattern where people become more partisan over time. Independent Voter News
An independent party with a meaningful majority is the only way any of this gets done. And, to spill the beans, I think the issues I’ll write about and the fixes I prescribe would be a pretty good platform for such a party.
So, with that out of the way. Here’s what you can expect from this newsletter.
Systems
To develop an effective cure, you must first be able to diagnose the disease.
The prevailing narrative is that the “other” is the problem, the other party, leader, group.
They’re not. They very well may be a problem, but not the problem.
If they were, then when your party or person got into office, things would get better. And they, objectively, have not.
Demonization is a distraction. And a very enticing one. It’s tempting to buy in because it’s simple (cognitively efficient), and we’re hardwired for it (social identity theory).
But it distracts us from focusing on the actual problems and actual solutions.
Those people who are so easy to demonize are a natural byproduct of a diseased system with perverse incentives. The system is made up of mostly rational human beings, just like you and me, responding to incentives and acting out of self-interest.
And the reason things don’t change, regardless of who is in power, is because the system is working really well for the people who maintain it. It’s not in their self-interest to effect meaningful change.
And it’s very easy, and very common, to convince yourself that what’s in your best interest is in everyone’s best interest. Charlie Munger summed it up perfectly in his 2007 USC Law School Commencement Address:
…And, of course, a self-serving bias, you want to get out of yourself: thinking that what’s good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on the subconscious tendency to serve one’s self. It’s a terribly inaccurate way to think and, of course, you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise, not foolish.
You also have to allow for the self-serving bias of everybody else, because most people are not gonna remove it all that successfully, the only condition being what it is. If you don’t allow for self-serving bias in your conduct, again, you’re a fool.
Incentives
To quote the late, great Mr. Munger again:
“Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.”
This is best illustrated with a story from my work in the financial world.
I’ve worked in private investments for the last 5 years. About 2 years in, I noticed a really troubling pattern. Really smart, seemingly decent people were making really stupid investment decisions, and the results were devastating.
A quick generalized example.
A group identifies an apartment community they want to buy for $100,000,000. Prices are higher than they’ve ever been, and rents have been increasing 10% each year in this part of the country.
The way these deals work is a business or group of people (often called the lead sponsor) finds an opportunity, develops a business plan for increasing its value, raises money (equity) from investors and debt from a bank to purchase the project. If everything goes according to plan, they’ll improve the apartment community, increase income, and sell it 5 years later, passing on the majority of profits to their investors and taking a nice bonus (called the promote or carry) for themselves.
In this example, the sponsor buys that $100M apartment community on the premise that rents will continue to climb at 10%/year and that interest rates will stay extremely low. So they get a floating rate loan. You probably remember these from the 2008 financial crisis. They’re great when rates are low, but when rates go up, your payment could double or triple.
They took on a $70,000,000 floating rate loan and raised $38,000,000 in equity. Shortly after the purchase, interest rates doubled over the course of a year. Their monthly loan payment went from $234,000 to $500,000. But they didn’t budget for that, because it would have made their business plan unviable, and any investor with a 5th grade education would have walked away. And rents, surprise surprise, stopped increasing 10% each year, because rents pace with household incomes, and the average employee does not get a 10% raise every year. Actually, rents went flat, because that market, being so strong, drew a bunch of developers building new communities.
This $100,000,000 project was hemorrhaging money, and the lead sponsor was forced to sell at a significant loss. Those investors that collectively put in $38,000,000? They lost all of it.
So why? Why did really smart people make such a foolish investment decision?
It was very clear interest rates were going to go up. It was blatantly obvious that rents could not continue to grow at that pace. A brief internet search or drive around the surrounding area could have shown several thousand new apartment units set to be completed.
So why?
Incentives.
If you did the math, you saw they capitalized the project with $108,000,000. So where did that extra $8,000,000 go?
The majority went to fees. To the lead sponsors. They got rich just for putting the deal together.
A multi-million dollar payday is a powerful incentive. And the incentive was to put the deal together, not to ensure it performed, or that their investors’ money was protected.
This behavior plays out everywhere, in every system. It was blatant in the 2008 financial crisis at multiple levels. When someone benefits greatly regardless of the outcome, it’s called moral hazard.
It has been studied extensively and it governs how we as a species behave, even when we’re not aware of it.
Maximum Leverage
A principle that has served me well in my work, and is behind all highly effective people, is maximum leverage.
What are the few actions we can take that will have the greatest impact?
The point is not to fix everything, but to identify the actions and reforms that will have the largest net benefit to the largest number of Americans.
Each week I’ll lay out sensible policy proposals in roughly this format:
What is the system? What does it look like in its current form? How did we get here?
What are the incentives? Who benefits?
What are the costs? Who is negatively impacted and how?
What are the highest leverage actions that will fix it? There’s a narrative that it’s all too complex to fix, that’s not true. In most cases there are very simple fixes, but the people in a position to implement them are not incentivized to do so.
What could the results be? Based on real data from other countries who have implemented similar policies, policy studies, and reliable modeling.
Here are the first things I’ll be tackling:
National Defense & The Military Industrial Complex
National Debt
The Tax Code
Crony Capitalism
Special Interests.
Healthcare.
Cost of Living
Social Security
Mass Incarceration & The War on Drugs
What’s the Goal?
That you read this far. Hi there:)
That this would become a policy foundation for a truly independent party. Free from special interests. Committed to structural reforms that change the incentive structures that got us here. Committed to practical, powerful actions that would dramatically improve our country now and into the future. Willing to major on the majors and agree to disagree on the rest.
If this resonated:
Subscribe if you haven’t. Everything I write will always be free to read.
Become a paid subscriber. There’s no gated content - but I’d love to dedicate more time to this, bring in other contributors and expand it beyond Substack.
Share this with one person who’s tired of feeling powerless.
Reply and tell me where I’m wrong. I am. So are you. The goal isn’t to be 100% right. It’s to be less wrong.
~ Andrew
Anger + Hope = Resolve