The Resistance

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

The people who feel weird, different, and misunderstood are the ones who change the world.
–Nicolai Tangen

FAVORITE READS OF THE WEEK

Why myths can save humanity
They keep us going and going and going.

THINKING OUT LOUD

The Resistance
The challenge with change

Change is generally not a welcome experience. Every day, people resist it. We cling to habits, defend familiar institutions, and distrust the untested future. This instinct is not always irrational. It’s comfortable to be in a comfort zone. Yet when resistance to change hardens into ideology or institutional self-protection, it can impede growth and threaten progress.

Psychologists have long described the “status quo bias” as the tendency to prefer existing arrangements over uncertain alternatives. For many, it is easier to argue that the present system, even if it is flawed, is safer than an unpredictable alternative.

Today, that so many forms of resistance are gathering across our country is a telltale sign that Americans sense how many massive and consequential changes are underfoot. The instinct to protect and preserve is only normal, yet as a knee-jerk reaction, it presents a challenge to our future.

Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than with technological disruption. Every major innovation has met organized opposition. The Luddites destroyed textile machines not because they despised progress in the abstract but because they feared the loss of their livelihoods. The automobile displaced carriage makers. Electricity upended gas lighting, which upended candle making. Digital photography destroyed film. Each technological advancement created greater opportunity and led to greater overall prosperity, yet in the short term, it displaced workers, threatened established companies, and unsettled legacy institutions.

Today’s technologies promise similar transformation and challenge. They hold the potential to increase productivity, reduce costs, and expand human capacity. Yet they also threaten industries, companies, jobs, and livelihoods built on legacy systems.

As has happened with past periods of dramatic technological change, AI is likely to scramble entire industries and force adaptation or irrelevance.

Meanwhile, resistance mechanisms are kicking into response. Regulatory frameworks, often shaped by legacy incumbents, can become tools to slow new companies under the banner of safety or fairness. Labor groups, naturally protective of members’ livelihoods, lobby for restrictions that can blunt innovation’s potential.

The challenge is that while innovation may ultimately create greater overall prosperity, the short-term costs are immediate and obvious. Politicians, responding to the loudest voices of resistance in their political camp, provide an opportunity to “protect” voters.

Political resistance seems stronger today than in the recent past. Partisan identity has become deeply entwined with personal identity. For many Democrats, opposition to Republican initiatives—particularly those associated with President Trump—is not merely strategic; it is existential.

For Democrats to concede merit to Trump risks alienating their coalition, validating a rival narrative, and/or exposing decades of political and policy mistakes.

The latest GDP report puts Democrats’ resistance to Trump policies on full display. GDP would have been higher if Democrats had not caused the government shutdown over the administration’s refusal to extend or make permanent a temporary social safety net policy from the Biden administration. In this case, resistance hurt the American economy.

A Republican or Trump-aligned proposal to deregulate industry, restructure trade, reverse climate change policies, or contest illegal immigration are taken to Democrats as a direct repudiation of their policies since 2008. This makes it personal and threatening, which activates the resistance response. Anything else could appear as an admission that prior approaches hindered growth or burdened the country. What sane politician would do that?

Moreover, in our era of intense polarization, compromise can be punished. Primary voters often reward ideological purity over pragmatic cooperation. And as a profit strategy, the media amplifies outrage, making any cross-party agreement seem like a betrayal. Thus resistance becomes self-reinforcing, making opposition the safest political posture, which increases polarization.

When the layers of personal, industrial, and political resistance intersect, they can form a formidable barrier to change. Economic turnarounds require momentum. Bureaucratic inertia, partisan obstruction, and entrenched interests can hinder progress.

None of this implies that resistance is always wrong. Skepticism can guard against reckless policy. Regulation can protect against abuse. Political opposition can check excess. But when resistance reflexively opposes change because it originates from the “other side” or because it unsettles established hierarchies or entrenched bureaucracies, it can transform from prudence into paralysis.

The challenge, then, is not to eliminate resistance but to recognize and deal with it. Voters and the politicians they elect must try to distinguish between principled disagreement and reflexive obstruction. Citizens should be constantly reminded that change, though unsettling, is often the engine of greater opportunity and prosperity.

America’s great periods of economic expansion all came with some form of resistance that may have delayed, but fortunately did not derail, progress. No matter our current resistance, today’s dramatic change will hopefully do the same.

THE RANDOMS

American salaries and cheaper-cost-of-living locales—the perfect marriage.

Why have cartels become such an influence in Mexico? How is it that such a family-oriented culture rooted in Christian values created such a dysfunctional society? Might it be because Mexico’s elite hoards money, access, and power, leaving most citizens relatively disenfranchised and without pathways to prosperity? Did this fuel the rise and spread of the cartels?

I guess we will soon find out if the drug thugs really do run Mexico.

In search of a refund, FedEx is suing the US government over tariffs. You think some people will stop using FedEx because their self-interests seem to come before those of the American people?

If people become so scared of technology’s rapid attack on our basic human value, which companies might suffer from a boycott?

For some reason, my Apple messenger app now suggests responses I should make to my inbound texts. Is Apple trying to train us not to think for ourselves?

If the Western media would quit publishing stories about North Korea’s military shows, maybe Kim would just fall into obscurity.

What defines an honorable man these days?

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy

Home Depot says homeowners are stressed
National debt set to surge
Debt defaults are rising
America added 1,000 millionaires a day in 2025
Why the middle class feels poor

Labor

The remote work dream is slipping away
How to ace an AI job interview
The new rules of finding a job
Volunteer for jobs nobody wants

The Lone Star

Apple to make Mac Mini in Houston
Japan to invest $2B+ in Texas port
Rice U lands grant for space technology center

BUSINESS

Finance

KKR has a private credit problem
Anthropic goes after corporate finance
The private equity correction continues
Private credit default projections rise
JPM CEO sees bank mistakes being made
Is Blue Owl the next Bear Sterns?

Real Estate

Harvard made some poor real estate bets
Mortgage rates drop below 6%
Pain coming to Florida and Texas home values

Tech

Scotland’s whiskey sniffing robot dog
Toy Story 5 bashes tech
Meta glasses create a dysfunctional society
Big tech leaders shield their kids from tech

AI

AMD and Meta take on Nvidia
Anthropic dials back safety commitments
Safety no longer in OpenAI’s mission statement
Are startups gaming their valuation?

Energy

Trump presses big tech on energy costs
Climate change policy deaths approach 500K in Ukraine
The giant climate change financial scam

THE NATION

Politics

Trump pitches economic turnaround at SOTU
Why Democrats destroyed the border
California teachers don’t care about students

Policy

VP Vance starts going after government fraud
SCOTUS torpedoes Trump’s tariff approach
So he changes course
And looks for more trade angles
Why Trump will win the tariff war

Trade

EU delays US trade deal ratification
Why tariffs aren’t reducing trade deficit
US and Indonesia cut new trade deal

Culture

Californiacation catches up with Colorado
Home insurance, another reason to leave California
Is solarpunk our better future?

GEOPOLITICS

Global

Global debt hits record
Korea’s stock market bigger than France’s
Mexico is an obvious mess
Paraguay’s president is a Trumper
Good chart on the global economy

Europe

Investors going big on European stocks
France, the Soviet Union of Europe
Europe’s at risk of being left behind
Britain needs cheap energy

Ukraine

Putin is destroying Russia
Russia keeps up the attack
While Ukraine’s economy shows its grit
Russian economy is eating itself to death

Middle East

Iran doesn’t have many friends left
Syrian ISIS camp falls apart
Israel hits Hezbollah in Lebanon
Iranian students are back at protesting
Trump pledges $10B to Board of Peace

China

China is not dumping US Treasuries
Is China gaming trade tariffs?
It warns against adding new tariffs
China’s AI is stealing from US AI
Xi, the new emperor

War Creep

Anthropic tells Pentagon “no”
US deploys combat jets to Israel
China wanted to use AI to discredit Japan
Is China preparing to invade Taiwan?

MAKING A BETTER YOU

Mind

Meditation works wonders
How to be as innovative as the Wright Brothers
Networking when you’re socially anxious

Body

Moves to improve your balance
Four hours of sleep is plenty for some
Is jerky good for you?

FUN STUFF

Humans After AI
by Buck Roy and Nano Banana

The Extraordinary

Amber Glenn’s fun ice skating routine
Pompeii before it was destroyed
World’s oldest rock art found

Music That Found Us

Feeling down? “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
Pavarotti’s last public performance
A 1965 Pavarotti performance

Worth a Watch

The crazy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
The other crazy Over Your Dead Body.
Why not more crazy in California Schemin’?

The Yum Yums

Bring on the comfort food!
French opinion soup
Easy turkey meatloaf
Twice baked potatoes
Classic mac and cheese
Chili mac and cheese
Spaghetti and meatballs
King ranch chicken

PARTING THOUGHTS

If you have really high ambitions, you achieve great things even if you fail. If you have low ambitions, you achieve nothing even if you succeed.
–Nicolai Tangen

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Unleashing the US Economy
February 20, 2026

We Need Conservatives and Liberals
February 13, 2026

Uncertainty, the New Normal
February 5, 2026