Today, the largest opportunities arise from people living in the past. Obvious trends, like the exponential advancement of solar PV or electric vehicles, are irrationally badmouthed. There seems to be a longing for bringing back nuclear power, for bringing back manufacturing, for bringing back workers into offices, for bringing back military dominance. People still believe in college degrees, in standardized testing, credentialism in hiring, pension funds, the list goes on. Politicians try to compete with China, want to bring back supply chains, want to revive 40+h workweeks originating from the industrial revolution. This conservative nostalgia seems to be a large trend; or perhaps it has always been.

What has worked 20 years ago will not miraculously come back. Politicians are selling “the good old days” to people not aware of current reality – of how incredibly fast exponential technologies and societal changes are evolving.

The opportunities of today and the future are not in chasing the resurrection of the past but in identifying which underlying needs from those eras remain unmet in modern forms.

For example: People don’t want manufacturing jobs back. They also don’t want to out-manufacture China. Who really wants to labor in a factory? Who wants to work 10 hours a day on a farm? The answer is: nobody really. What people do want is economic security and a trade balance that doesn’t feel like losing. They want protection from foreign economic coercion, and the dignity of creating tangible products the world needs.

Another example: People don’t want coal plants or nuclear plants back. Who really wants polluted air or nuclear waste in their neighborhood? Again, the answer is: nobody really. What people actually want is affordable energy independence – which means electricity too cheap to meter – and a reliable baseload and a reliable grid during crises and days where the sun isn’t shining.

The pattern is always the same: the surface demand is to reverse time; it is nostalgia. The underlying need is mostly emotional and social: security, dignity, control, identity.

The opportunity is satisfying these needs through forward-looking solutions that people haven’t yet recognized as substitutes. It is in building for a world as it is, not as people wish it were. It is in accepting current reality the fastest and having the longest runway to build what’s actually next.

Every time I wish the minds I admire would open up and show the full depth of their thoughts, ideas, and experiences, I realize – I’m doing the same thing by staying too silent online.

The idols I look up to – for example Ido Portal, Bruce Poon Tip, Dr. Nun Amen-Ra, my Sifus, countless peers – are all masters of mind and body in private but leave little or no footprints online. The wisdom is real, yet it’s undocumented and the world barely sees it.

Meritocracy without equality is basically a ladder with missing steps, which only the fortunate few can climb. The rest is basically left at the ground to gaze up.

Furthermore, a pure focus on meritocracy can become a weakness if it’s a zero-sum game. While talents thrive in systems that value it, without fairness, you ultimately get exploitation, resentment, or fragility.

Ergo: meritocracy needs to be balanced with equality, and equality needs to be balanced with meritocracy.

In a meritocratic system, you basically need that the fortunate and the able are compassionate towards those less fortunate and able.

If you are more on the libertarian side, you need the fortunate individuals to compete as capitalists and then be socialists within their communities and families.

If you prefer a state, then the state must encourage meritocratic contribution of everyone that is able, to the best of their ability, while balancing it with a fair welfare system that nurtures and supports those less able and fortunate.

I think this is something Germany did historically quite well, but at one point we lost the balance: we lost the culture of merit by putting too much emphasis on equality – even to a point that Germany now cares for millions of non-citizens that never contributed, when it should instead demand these individuals to contribute to the best of their ability.

If we want to have a state, then we don’t want a welfare state, and – I think – we should also not want a pure capitalistic state. We need balance and thus a social meritocracy.