Category: Reflections
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What a conflict‑windfall certification can achieve, how it differs from ESG, and why proliferation of such schemes is the only way to hold power accountable 0. The Certification Question The war‑windfall and harm‑windfall protocols described in the previous posts are governance tools. But tools left on a workbench change nothing. A fund may adopt a…
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A scalable, third‑party certification scheme for investors and portfolio companies that neutralise profit from intentional destruction – modelled on Fair Trade, B Corp, and organic certification 0. The Scaling Problem The war‑windfall and harm‑windfall protocols are governance tools for individual funds. But LPs cannot easily verify which funds have adopted them. GPs cannot easily signal…
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A generic framework for investors who refuse to profit from intentional or grossly negligent destruction – extended beyond armed conflict 0. The Precedent The war‑windfall protocol established a principled trigger: if a portfolio company profits from contracts intended to cause harm or kill during active conflict, the incremental gain is ring‑fenced and neutralised. A standalone…
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A framework for investors who refuse to profit from armed conflict – with an intent‑based trigger and a sanctions failsafe 1. The Investor’s Dilemma You are a GP. Your fund backed a satellite imaging startup built for flood monitoring. Then a war broke out. The startup’s revenue tripled – partly from humanitarian agencies tracking refugees,…
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A governance and capital allocation model for dual‑use technology startups 1. Problem Statement: Dual‑Use Inevitability Modern infrastructure technologies are intrinsically dual‑use. A satellite imaging system designed to monitor crop health can locate a tank column. An industrial IoT network built for predictive maintenance can relay coordinates for a precision strike. A cloud platform optimised for…
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Or: How oversensitivity, hair‑trigger interpretations, and vibe‑based accusations prepare the ground for the next moral panic 0. The Sequence Every witch‑hunt follows a predictable arc. It does not emerge from nowhere. It is prepared by an earlier phase – a period of oversensitivity, overreach, and hair‑trigger interpretations. That phase softens the ground. It erodes the…
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The old separation of powers – executive, legislative, judiciary – was a brilliant invention of the Enlightenment. But it was designed for a world where knowledge was scarce, communication was slow, and the church and the crown were the only institutions with reach. Today, we have universities that generate knowledge at an unprecedented scale, scientific…
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The janitor who hoards the keys. The shift supervisor who writes people up for being three minutes late. The department head who insists on signing every purchase order. The community board president who runs meetings like a military tribunal. You have met this person. You may have worked for this person. You may, in a…
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There is a forgotten virtue in politics: the art of voluntary relinquishment. The monarch who gives up power, the empire that transforms itself into a partnership of equals, the institution that knows when its administrative role has peaked – these are not failures. They are lessons. Queen Elizabeth II taught the world that true power…
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You cannot understand the Reformation, the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution until you understand one simple truth: the Catholic Church had overstepped its boundaries. The same institution that once preserved learning through the Dark Ages had become an empire unto itself. It owned land. It controlled kings. It operated its own courts. It collected…