I’m alarmed to realize I’ve joined the FIRE movement. That’s “Financial Independence, Retired Early.” FIRE is an Internet community of people plotting how to escape the Rat Race while they’re still young. It had a real moment during the Pandemic, and my impression is there’s a lot of overlap with the CrossFit people. I’m not actually racing to retire; instead, I’m racing to get to the retirement job/Walmart greeter phase of my career faster.

How do you tear down an oppressive system? Creatively. Another name for innovation is creative destruction. By pioneering a better way, innovators can undermine what existed before. Peeling apart the concepts of policy innovation (trying something new) and program evaluation (rigorous tests of what works) helps us see how they operate differently and serve different purposes. Policy innovators try something new, while program evaluators legitimize existing practices. For anybody with extreme views of a public service—like abolishing child protective services—the goal should be to create such compelling alternatives that program evaluators cannot ignore them.

When the US gives money to another country, there’s often a string attached—it can only be used to buy from America. Similarly, federal contracts commonly include a “buy American” clause. This way, the money serves a double purpose of helping the recipient and supporting American industry. A polar opposite story is the growth of Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s. Groups of local merchants would often organize to try and prevent Walmart from moving into a town and destroying them all.