[ This was a fun read and worth far more than the comment I'm about to place here ] There are times when I wonder whether we fail to spend enough time understa

[ This was a fun read and worth far more than the comment I'm about to place here ] There are times when I wonder whether we fail to spend enough time understanding one another. Failure in this generally creates many distractions and unplanned after effects that really do add right up over time. Take this idea: Thiel says we have made significant progress on things related to air travel, but the actual aircraft flies slower than it did back in the day. I've seen this put in front of me a few times in various contexts. One common conclusion is we are leaving real money on the table by ignoring the speed of air travel, despite the fact that actual travel from point A to B may be quicker and or far more accessible than it was in the era of faster aircraft. To that I would argue failure to understand one another goes well beyond the classic "what is worth what?" conflict inherent in so many of Thiel's points. The real money left on the table is massive security theatre!! We have bogged down air travel, and perhaps other travel as the tentacles of the TSA continue to work their way into the machinery of society. That growth is driven by our failure to understand what creating an entity in charge of reducing risks presented by threats it is also supposed to identify! Fact is the incentives are in the wrong place here! I would question any mandate to grow. Growth may be indicated as growth in real threats grow. Fair enough. However, when the identification and mitigation of said threats is within the scope of the same organization, any growth comes with serious questions about "security theatre." It's obvious, yet here we are continuing to ignore a basic problem. [none of this should be taken as an attack on the TSA, which is simply operating as intended, nor Thiel, who is arguably operating as intended :) ] Given the current state of affairs, Thiel talking about airplanes needing to go faster, and why we aren't doing that, makes a lot of sense too, and I will stop the security discussion right there really wanting to make a point more than continue this discussion. That point being we do not understand one another as a nation of people and it's chronic, impacting almost everything we do. And, like with the security example above, this failure to understand one another has left us a nation with peoples in it[0] rather than a nation of people. This has left us with many expensive symptoms inhibiting progress and or valuing it in ways that aren't doing us any favors. [0] "Peoples" taking the definition referring to many distinct groups, factions, sects...