For Your Weekend Reading: What Capitalism Gets Wrong About Freedom

Saturday morning thoughts & book recs for paid subscribers.

In America, we’re told we’re free. Free to choose, to speak, to pursue whatever version of happiness we can afford. But that freedom is often a sleight of hand.

Not because it’s been taken from us in some obvious authoritarian way—but because it’s been redefined. Freedom, as most people experience it today, means navigating a system that offers more choices than ever, but fewer real paths to security, dignity, or meaning. It’s the freedom to hustle, to brand yourself, to climb—alone. And for many, especially those without wealth or inherited stability, that freedom feels more like exhaustion than empowerment.