2 legit 2 tariff
Ambiguity, the absence of transparency and clear channels of accountability is a mechanism to burden the lesser powerful.
There is a community of analysts who work on complex dense issues that are boring to most normies (but not us!) where we discuss, not war-planning, but how to make research, analysis and policies more accessible to the world. There is a thread that reemerges every time a topic representative to someone’s portfolio dominates the news cycle called “Explain This To Me Like I’m 5 Years Old”
The economists in the group chat are having A Week, y’all.
“What is happening?” “Why is this happening?” “What does it mean?” “What should we do?”
It’s greed. It ain’t that deep.
But ambiguity and inaccessibility makes it easier for systems to facilitate an economy of fear and mistrust. When I go through the archives of these threads on topics ranging from tariffs to private equity to carbon credits to Formula 1, the breadcrumbs always lead back to the fact that inaccessible language and the absence of accountability makes it easier to blame, scapegoat, harm or exploit women, poor people and immigrants.
There is always someone building power and making profit off of manufactured chaos and confusion.
My last contribution to the analyst water cooler was explaining how venture capital is like welfare for white men because I like to keep my offerings short and sweet. But this time around, as institutions and systems continue to fail communities, I started thinking how it would be amazing if these experiences of collective sense-making had a designated poet laureate.
I am not an economist but in this moment of chaos and confusion, I offer the sense-making insights of late American poet laureate Tupac Shakur.
“This world is gimme, gimme, gimme. You’re taught that in school, big business, everywhere. If you want to be successful, you want to be like Trump? Gimme, gimme, gimme. Push, push, push. Step, step, step. Crush, crush, crush."
This is an MTV News interview from 1992.
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In 2024, MTV News was shuttered and the site's archives taken offline disappearing decades of cultural commentary and music journalism. The only remaining archives preserved by the Internet Archive have been under continuous DDOS attacks by presumed hackers since October 2024.
This is all by design. The absence of information and transparency burdens the lesser powerful.
Keep making it plain. Keep fighting complexity. Keep using language to bring each other in.
None of us got here alone. We need each other to make keep making sense of chaos, to keep our collective lights from being put out by these storms.
"Even if you earned it, you still owe." – Tupac Shakur.
Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.