RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN FUTURE: A JULY 4TH CALL TO ACTION

From Stagnation, Beyond Chaos, and Toward the Renewal of the American Dream

Cracked, but not silenced — the Liberty Bell endures as a symbol of imperfect freedom still worth perfecting.

July 4, 2025

America has a problem: we've stopped building the future.

For too long, we've confused institutional momentum with actual progress, mistaking the churning of political theater for the engine of innovation that once defined us. We've become a nation of maintainers rather than makers, content to argue over the distribution of a pie that's barely growing instead of creating entirely new sources of opportunity and wealth.

This July 4^th, instead of another elegy for democracy or paean to past glories, let's confront an uncomfortable truth: America has entered what Peter Thiel calls "the great stagnation" – not just technologically, but institutionally, culturally, and imaginatively. The question isn't whether we're in decline, but whether we have the courage to disrupt our way out of it.

The stagnation trap

Consider the evidence. Our infrastructure crumbles while we debate endlessly about funding mechanisms. Our educational system produces graduates unprepared for an economy that barely resembles the one their curriculum was designed for. Our healthcare system is simultaneously the world's most expensive and least effective among developed nations. Our political system has devolved into a feedback loop of performative outrage that generates heat but no light.

This isn't partisan decay; it’s systems failure. We've created institutions optimized for a world that no longer exists, and we're paralyzed between nostalgia for a past that wasn't as golden as we remember and fear of a future we can't quite envision.

The result? We've become a civilization that builds monuments to past achievements while struggling to achieve anything monument-worthy in the present.

The innovation imperative

However, stagnation isn't destiny. It's a choice.

America's greatest historical advantage wasn't our natural resources or geographic isolation. It was our willingness to destroy old systems in service of better ones. We abolished slavery (eventually), dissolved monopolies, built the interstate highway system, went to the moon, created the internet. Each breakthrough required abandoning comfortable orthodoxies and embracing creative destruction.

The question facing us now isn't whether we can return to some imagined golden age, but whether we can summon the same disruptive spirit that created America in the first place to solve 21^st-century problems with 21^st-century solutions.

This means abandoning both the conservative fantasy of returning to some golden past and the progressive impulse to perfect outdated systems rather than replace them. Neither going back to 1950 nor doubling down on 1960s-era solutions will solve 21^st-century problems.

Disruption vs. chaos

Before I go further, let's be clear about what we mean by disruption. Clayton Christensen's original theory of disruptive innovation, developed at Harvard Business School, described how new technologies or business models could overthrow established incumbents by serving overlooked markets better and more efficiently. But in the public square, the word has become associated with everything from failed startups to political chaos, obscuring what genuine disruption actually looks like.

Breaking things isn't the same as building better things. Disruption without construction is just vandalism. The Trump administration's approach – dismantling institutions without replacing them, sowing distrust without offering alternatives, creating chaos without purpose – represents the pathological version of disruption: destruction masquerading as innovation.

True disruption is constructive. It builds new systems that work better than old ones, proves their superiority through results, and earns adoption through demonstrated value rather than imposed force. It's the difference between the iPhone disrupting Nokia and a wrecking ball disrupting a building.

What needs disrupting is the sclerotic systems that have made democracy less responsive, less effective, and less inspiring than it could be.

Constructive disruption

Real disruption, the kind that built this nation, requires three elements: vision, urgency, and institutional courage.

Vision means thinking beyond the constraints of current systems. What if we designed cities from scratch for remote work and climate resilience? What if we restructured education around personalized learning and practical skills? What if we built a healthcare system focused on prevention and outcomes rather than procedures and billing?

Urgency means recognizing that gradual reform isn't sufficient when facing exponential challenges. Climate change, artificial intelligence, demographic shifts, and geopolitical realignment aren't waiting for our political system to achieve consensus through traditional processes.

Institutional courage means recognizing when incremental reform is insufficient – and having the boldness to build new systems alongside, and sometimes in competition with, existing ones. While some institutions can and should be improved from within, others require parallel innovation to challenge their inertia and offer viable alternatives.

This isn't about revolutionary upheaval or authoritarian shortcuts. It's about strategic innovation applied to governance itself.

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about. The following proposals build on emerging or previously explored ideas, but reframe and expand them in new ways. They aren’t about tinkering at the edges. They represent strategic innovation, the courage to build alternatives alongside existing systems to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world.

• Reimagine governance as a service platform. What if citizens could choose from competing governance providers the way they choose internet plans? Charter cities and special economic zones could offer different regulatory frameworks, tax structures, and public services – some optimized for innovation, others for stability, still others for sustainability. Citizens vote with their feet for the systems that work best for them, creating competitive pressure for better governance while preserving choice and diversity.

• Build anticipatory institutions. Instead of reactive bureaucracies that solve yesterday's problems, create adaptive systems that identify and address challenges before they become crises. Imagine pandemic early warning systems that track genetic markers in wastewater globally, or economic stabilization mechanisms that automatically adjust fiscal policy based on real-time data flows. The goal is prevention, not just response.

• Develop new models of citizenship beyond geography. Digital nomads, remote workers, and global talent increasingly live location-independent lives. Why not create new forms of citizenship based on values, contributions, or expertise rather than birthplace? Network states that offer portable benefits, digital rights, and community membership while enhancing rather than replacing local connections.

• Create abundance infrastructure. Instead of managing scarcity, build systems designed for abundance: fusion energy plants that make power too cheap to meter; vertical farms and lab-grown meat that eliminate food insecurity; AI tutors providing personalized, world-class education to every child.

• Leverage universal basic assets – not just income, but ownership stakes in the automated economy. Whereas universal basic income (UBI) provides people with regular cash payments to meet basic needs, universal basic assets (UBA) aim to give everyone a share of productive capital: housing, education, data, digital platforms, or equity in AI-driven enterprises. It’s not just about surviving but about participating meaningfully in wealth creation.

The goal isn't efficiency. It's to make fundamental human needs so abundant they become non-issues, freeing us to focus on higher-order challenges like meaning, creativity, and exploration.

The courage to change

The America worth celebrating isn't one that achieved a fictional sense of perfection. It's the one that kept building better versions of itself. The founders weren't great because they created perfect institutions, but because they created improvable ones.

Our task isn't to restore some pristine past, but to prove that democratic societies can still solve hard problems faster and better than authoritarian alternatives. This requires moving beyond the comfort zones of both left and right, beyond the familiar grooves of ideological combat, beyond the safe harbor of managed decline.

It requires remembering that America's greatest innovations came not from consensus, but from entrepreneurs, inventors, and organizers who saw possibilities others couldn't and built them into reality.

This July 4^th, instead of mourning what we've lost or romanticizing what we never really had, let's commit to the harder work of building what we actually need.

The true challenge is whether we're brave enough to discover what greatness looks like in an age that demands entirely new solutions to entirely new problems.

The American experiment was never about perfecting a fixed system. It was about creating a system capable of perfecting itself. That experiment continues, but only if we choose to conduct it.