Sovereign Republic of Bir Tawil (SRBT)

 Executive Summary

https://sites.google.com/view/srbt/

The Sovereign Republic of Bir Tawil (SRBT) is a bold new experiment in sovereignty. Located in one of the most extreme desert environments on Earth, SRBT aims to prove that a new nation can be built on three foundational pillars:

1. Solar Sovereignty – 100% renewable energy independence, showcasing how nations can thrive without fossil fuels.
   
   

2. Ecological Innovation – pioneering desert agriculture, water security, and desertification reversal as global climate solutions.
   
   

3. Privacy-Focused Banking & Blockchain Democracy – a new model of financial governance where privacy is a citizen right, banking is democratic, and blockchain ensures transparency of rules but confidentiality of individuals.
   
   

SRBT will operate as a neutral research hub, a renewable showcase, and a financial democracy. Revenues from its privacy-focused banking system will directly fund ecological and renewable research, ensuring that finance serves sustainability.

Authenticity

 What is authentic?  This is the question, among others, that occupied my mind when I decided to enter the forests, prairies, valleys and waterfalls of Charleston Falls Preserve in January of 2013.  I went in without any tangible idea of what I was doing or what I would discover.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, a specific desire, in fact the reason I endeavored to enter Charleston Falls, did walk through the entrance with me.

The Case for a Permanent Tax Reduction for Parents: Sustaining the Social Welfare State

 

Modern social safety nets—such as public pensions, healthcare systems, and unemployment insurance—rest on a simple premise: today’s workers fund the benefits of today’s retirees and vulnerable populations. This pay-as-you-go structure has proven resilient in many countries, but it carries a built-in dependency: the system requires a steady stream of working-age taxpayers to sustain it. Without demographic renewal, the tax base erodes, the fiscal burden rises, and the viability of social welfare programs comes under strain.

Yet fertility rates across the developed world have fallen below replacement level (2.1 children per woman), creating a demographic imbalance that threatens the long-term solvency of these programs. Governments have attempted to address this through child tax credits, childcare subsidies, and parental leave, but these incentives tend to be temporary, ending once children reach adulthood. The flaw in this approach is that the public value of children—as future taxpayers—endures for decades, while the fiscal recognition of parenthood expires far too early.

This essay argues for a structural reform: a permanent, lifelong tax reduction regimen for parents, scaled by the number of children they raise to adulthood. Such a policy would directly align individual incentives with the collective need for demographic renewal, while addressing the free rider problem inherent in the current welfare state.

Preserving What Makes College Football Special: The Case for an 8-Team Playoff

 Few sports occupy as unique a place in the American landscape as college football. It blends tradition, pageantry, regional pride, and fierce competition into a spectacle unlike any other. At the heart of what makes college football special is the weight of the regular season. Unlike professional leagues where teams can afford multiple losses and still secure playoff spots, college football has historically demanded near-perfection. Every game matters; a single loss can upend an entire season.

Yet the sport faces a challenge in balancing this defining feature with the modern push for expanded playoff access. Fans and stakeholders recognize that the four-team playoff, while an improvement over the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), often excludes worthy contenders. Calls for expansion have grown louder—but expansion must not undermine the intensity of the regular season. The optimal solution lies in an 8-team playoff with tiered byes, a format that increases opportunity while protecting the essence of the sport.

A Philosophy Roadmap of Age: How Life Experience Unlocks Wisdom

 Philosophy is often presented as timeless—its truths available to anyone willing to read carefully and think deeply. Yet in practice, many philosophical traditions only become intelligible, or at least experientially real, when a person has lived long enough to provide them with context. The same aphorism that strikes a teenager as cryptic can, decades later, feel like it describes one’s life perfectly. This suggests that philosophy is not simply a static body of knowledge but a set of interpretive frameworks that “fit” differently at different stages of human development. To borrow a psychological term, philosophy is stage-appropriate: it resonates most when the challenges it addresses align with the challenges of one’s life.

A compelling way to trace this stage-appropriateness is through a three-part progression: Transcendentalism (especially in a more immediate, experiential “Gonzo” form) for youth and early adulthood; Stoicism for the middle decades of responsibility; and Zen Buddhism for later life, when impermanence and release become central concerns. Each philosophy answers the psychological question most alive in its season: how to discover, how to endure, and how to let go.

Shifting the Lens on the Sea Peoples: A Nuragic Hypothesis of Multiple Sardinian Confederations

 

Egyptian records from the late 13th to early 12th centuries BCE list several groups—Sherden (Shardana), Shekelesh, Lukka, Denyen, Tjeker, Peleset, Teresh, Ekwesh—under the umbrella modern scholars call the “Sea Peoples.” Modern treatments often read these names as compact, state-like ethnonyms. Yet that assumption reflects the perspective of a palace society (Egypt) more than the social realities of every group named. Sardinia’s Nuragic world, organized not as a single kingdom but as a landscape of many autonomous communities, offers a different model. If the Sherden correspond to one Nuragic confederation, it is plausible that other Egyptian names could reflect other Nuragic tribal coalitions active at the same time, alongside non-Sardinian groups from Sicily, the Aegean, and Anatolia. This essay sets out the logic, evidence, and tests of that hypothesis.

Saving the Post-War Liberal Order

 

Introduction

The post-World War II liberal economic order has been built on principles of openness: reducing trade barriers, promoting cross-border investment, making international travel and communication seamless, and encouraging the global flow of goods, services, and capital. This framework has generated extraordinary global prosperity, lifting billions of people out of poverty and creating unprecedented wealth, particularly for the managerial and professional classes who operate most effectively within an interconnected world.

Yet, this order has not been without its tradeoffs. Capital mobility and the relocation of production to lower-cost countries have devastated many American communities, displacing tens of millions of workers and hollowing out local economies. The resulting sense of economic abandonment has fueled the rise of populism on both the left and the right. Unless addressed, this political backlash risks dismantling the very openness that underpins the liberal order.

The path forward is not to retreat into protectionism or punitive taxation. Instead, the United States must secure the future of the liberal economic order by making itself the single most attractive and profitable place in the world to do business. By ensuring that global firms choose to invest, operate, and employ workers in America, the U.S. can simultaneously preserve the benefits of globalization while restoring opportunity to its citizens.