Editor’s Note: It is Day 307 of the Great Con II. This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s departure signaled a fracture in crazy town (though I think it’s much more about running for another office), the Epstein files are closer to getting to the public eye, and the current occupant railed against elected officials for their call to military members to refuse unlawful orders. Chaos sold as strength is gaining less followers every day. Stay alert and stay tuned.

For Americans, we are headed into the week that we pause to give thanks, and during this time, when we are gathered with family and friends, we need to really reconsider how we define success.

It is a term invoked by CEOs, policymakers, pundits, and demagogues routinely.

But what is it really? Does it mean to be rich? Do we say, “I want my son to be rich,” or do we say, “I want my daughter to succeed?”

Are we to a dangerous point that rich and success are interchangeable?

Jeff Bezos, whose rockets can now mimic SpaceX, whose company took the Sears catalog and moved it online, is routinely held up as a paragon of this notion of rich and successful. Same thing for Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and numerous other individuals.

Yet during Bezos's 20-year rise, millions of Americans still struggle to afford healthcare, feel stuck in underpaid jobs, and experience crushing anxiety in the absence of a robust social safety net. Musk has experienced the highest pay package ever offered to a CEO in the same year that he worked giddily to cut tens of thousands of public service positions; positions not even under his direct control.

For all the talk of success, perhaps it’s time to ask for whom, and at what cost before the term is completely eroded of meaning.

At one time, the American retail landscape was dotted with malls and department stores: Kmart, Sears, and Borders were community fixtures, offering living-wage jobs, career ladders, and a kind of social glue to many towns. Malls were places that kids hung out and learned social skills and the hazards of talking to the opposite sex.

The rise of Amazon didn’t just displace stores. Similarly, X and Grok haven’t merely replaced verbal cues and innuendos. Together, they have eclipsed the opportunities for individuals and communities to define their own success. While “creative destruction” is often cited as the engine of capitalism (out with the old, in with the new), the sway of Amazon and tech titan dominance has only deepened inequalities across the country. Former retail employees find themselves in lower-wage, less-secure warehouse or gig roles like Uber and DoorDash to make ends meet. Teenagers find friends and experiences increasingly online rather than parking lots and aisles.

This is not a ringing endorsement of the notion of success.

Supporters of our modern transformation point to consumer convenience and a more frictionless marketplace. Until recently, lower prices were always the ace in the pocket to prove overall success. Yet if America’s middle class has steadily shrunk while a handful of tech titans amass unprecedented wealth, if suicide rates and feelings of not belonging among American youth have continued to rise, this notion of success must be questioned.

Over the last half-century of the American economic boom, Americans have gained greater access to a variety of economic choices, yet the same growth has included more public goods becoming private services. Healthcare, once a public calling, is now a vast privatized ecosystem that is complex, costly, and, for many, inaccessible except for the emergency room. The U.S. continues to spend more on healthcare than any other developed nation, yet leaves tens of millions, a majority of them working, uninsured or underinsured.

Mail delivery, formerly a monopoly of the trusted local post office, now competes with private logistics giants. Even military and intelligence operations increasingly rely on private contractors, with for-profit motives standing in for what once was public accountability.

The primary casualty of our current definition of success is our sense of a shared destiny. Public goods like healthcare, education, and infrastructure not only promoted equality, but they also knit together the disparate threads of our pluralistic society. Difference of opinion, yes. Difference of access to healthcare, government, food, and electricity? No.

While we have gained efficiencies and speed through modernization and technology, we have lost foundational bricks to what made us a successful country. It wasn’t the role of wealth making to co-opt these virtues. Indeed, many Americans today take for granted a level of consumption, choice, and convenience that would have seemed fantastical to previous generations but has come at the expense of many. This perspective often omits one crucial fact: the biggest gains of these successes have accrued to very few. In that case, increased speed and convenience is not the only, nor the greatest, measure of progress. If success continues to be measured solely by the Forbes billionaires list, then Amazon’s rise and the privatization of public goods are unmitigated successes. But if the true test is societal well-being, human dignity, and the health of the republic, the verdict is drastically different.

The success of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump can’t come with shuttered Main Streets, diminished worker power, public services recast as consumer choices, and a pervasive sense that the deck is stacked.

Success in a democracy must be considered differently: by the number of Americans with stable housing, accessible healthcare, meaningful work, and a sense of belonging. A society that supports innovation and efficiency, but also solidarity and fairness.

Americans are inheritors of a rich tradition that celebrates entrepreneurship but also recognizes the indispensable value of the commons. Redefining success means looking past the shiny bald head of Bezos and the gibberish grandeur of Musk, and asking harder questions about equity, community, and the kind of future we’re building. If our destiny is to be left up to yacht envy, we should at least be honest about the price of this success and who is really paying for it.

True progress will demand a revival of public investment and a recommitment to the idea of the common good. It has never been about what we can buy or build, but who we become in the process. It cannot come at the detriment of others or of the country.

This week, as you gather with family and friends, I urge you to look around the table and define success not by what is owned, but by who is there, who has helped us, and who we help along the way.

With the tremendous growth of AI, I’ve noticed a uptick on the discussion of a universal basic income. I see this increasing more as the use of autonomous agents take hold. While more jobs will be created that interact and oversee agents, the tech bros know the level of impact coming and that the market is not ready to make up the difference. Hence, the time for a radical change in what we view as a sustainable capitalism is here. This is an excellent read to see just what decisionmakers are thinking about. Some surprising things are said, with a bit of Star Trek-level futures thrown in.

We can’t have Thanksgiving without giving some thought to trends going in the right direction. Despite all the noise in the current regime, there are pockets of progress all around the world when it comes to recognizing our Earth as a living planet that can be either protected or destroyed. In only a few years, electric cars and hybrids are a large share of the market. Where one used to never see a used electric car for sale in the market, now there are many available.

Solar and alternative energy have surpassed coal and dirty sources in production and are becoming a common feature of power creation. I wrote in issue 34 about diversifying power. I saw it for real this summer when driving through the French countryside and seeing the wind turbines instead of the mass of billboards.

I get a sense of joy when I see that progress is being made, and thanks to newsletters like Fix the News for reminding us of the good that gets done.

And Now….

The holidays are great for reading, and a book is a splendid gift, but more than anything, ensure you make time to slow down and contemplate where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. Really see the people you are with. Hear them while you have ears to hear.

Keep up your progress. Continue to practice your gratefulness.

And always strive to be a good human.