Every July 4th I see fewer American flags and wonder, if we can't take pride in our flag for a single day, where exactly are we headed? The freedom to fly another flag is among our greatest value propositions, yet our own flag has become controversial and politicized. Yet still, with all our controversies, it was our values and laws that catalyzed the greatest acceleration of global human development.
Let's not forget that America itself began as a controversy. It takes controversial thoughts to challenge your rulers, your way of life, your religion, your beliefs, and ask whether there's a more rational approach to life. It takes controversy to attract other people across the world who are willing to abandon their circumstances in pursuit of a universal framework for human dignity. It took controversy to eliminate slavery at a time when the rest of the world didn't, and it'll take controversy to solve our economic crisis at a time when the youth is turning towards socialism.
Our values and laws create an asymmetric tolerance for risk, and that willingness to be controversial and challenge convention is one of our deepest advantages. It helped produce the technologies that reshaped modern life worldwide — the car, the internet, the plane, the phone — and the post-WW2 order that enabled the greatest sustained expansion of human freedom, prosperity, longevity, and peace in history, with so much more to solve.
We are not a country of people whose interests are only of self, we have built technologies and innovations that are distributed across the world to help make the world better. 19 of the 25 largest publicly traded companies are American — and that's not because our value exists in a vacuum. Our services increase the quality of life in areas of the world that never had a chance at success. We aren't automating the cashier at Walmart just to optimize company margins, we're automating it to sell Cloud-Powered Checkouts and Automated Fulfillment Centers built on Google Cloud to countries whose populations would massively benefit from our technology. Every single country around the world, all of the flags worn on July 4th, has benefited tremendously from our innovations.
I think a lot about the second- and third-order effects of our decisions, because right now we're dealing with compounding second- and third-order effects of the past. Nobody thought about the second-order effects of mass refugee displacement, open borders, social media (especially TikTok), prediction markets, OnlyFans, looksmaxxing, and the list goes on. We are all ambassadors of the country we call home, and we must take the civic responsibility to create incentive structures that drive us towards good, towards a higher average baseline of intelligence, under the values that are embodied in our belief system.
Let's examine TikTok for a moment — a foreign entity is deciding how to disseminate information to the minds of 170 million Americans. Increase the virality coefficient of political anger. Make them dance more. Get grown men to act silly in public for likes. Meanwhile, the CCP does not allow TikTok in mainland China, they use Douyin — also made by ByteDance. Douyin pushes national cohesion, STEM, promotes a good life. When your competitor is playing the long game, they'll spend a decade turning a population away from knowledge and turning them against each other so that one day we won't have the aptitude to compete on the basketball court. We can argue about free markets all day, but when your competitors are sequencing a longer, malicious strategy to disrupt U.S. cohesion — national interests always come first.
The next most important companies in America must be deeply interested in aligning economic incentives with the values of the nation. They will help incentivize capital formation towards good, towards economic growth, towards more jobs, more progress, more hope for the future. They will remind the world of our unique value proposition, that we are the nation of thinkers who are grounded in the words ratified in our texts. Without controversy, we will never solve the problems within our own walls, let alone support the development of all who look to us for assistance.
America is the heartbeat of planet Earth, and I don't know where we'd all go if this dream went away… I hope to see more participation in national advocacy. Embrace our values, change the world, and when you don't agree with someone's opinions on how to make this country great — you have the freedom to make it better, no matter the circumstance.
Happy 250th birthday, America. Let's make sure our future generations look back at the decisions we make today and thank us for the life they live tomorrow.
— Iman