For nearly a century, people have debated whether the glass is half full or half empty. British economist and banker Josiah Stamp helped popularize the idea in a 1935 speech: “An optimist is the man who looks at his glass and says it is half full; the pessimist looks at it and says it is half empty.” Since then, the metaphor has been used by everyone from Ronald Reagan in press conferences to comedian George Carlin.
The variations are endless. The engineer complains the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. The politician insists it would be emptier if the other party were in charge. The fatalist shrugs that millions still die of dehydration every year anyway. Yet nearly all of these clever twists focus on the glass itself, arguing over its current level as if that were the whole story.
I have a different take: The water came from somewhere. There is a pitcher nearby, continuously replenished, in humanity’s case by the Sun’s vast energy. Humans, when left largely to their own devices and properly motivated, have proven remarkably good at organizing that incoming flow, turning sunlight into stabilized food and shelter, into learning that compounds for future generations, and into surplus experiences of pleasure, beauty, and meaning far beyond bare survival.
The Sun does not care about our ideological teams. It simply keeps shining. Yet modern politics often behaves as if the glass itself actually matters. We are trapped inside artificial boxes labeled “left versus right,” “progressive versus conservative,” or “MAGA versus the establishment.” Inside these boxes, the game feels zero-sum: One side’s gain must come at the other’s expense, and someone’s innocents must be sacrificed.
When I find myself pulled into these ideological arguments, I do what comes naturally: I start backing up. I zoom out further and further until the narrower frame dissolves. What exposes itself at that distance is a simpler, more generative truth.
The Freedom Test
Any ideology or policy can be assessed for true freedom with one simple question: Does it sacrifice any innocents?
The test is short, impartial, and transparent. It asks whether a system requires some group or individual, guilty of nothing under impartial law, to surrender safety, opportunity, bodily autonomy, conscience, or dignity in service of a narrative or vision preferred by one side or the other.
In Rotherham and other British towns, authorities ignored organized sexual exploitation of thousands of vulnerable girls, many of them pre-teens, for years to protect multicultural sensitivities. Women’s single-sex spaces, sports, and prisons have been subject to ideologically driven gender-identity rules, trading female privacy for someone’s desire to cosplay. Doctors have been pressured to perform procedures they consider unethical or penalized for refusing to perform them. “Privileged” individuals have been penalized for their ancestry or success rather than for their personal conduct. Dissenters, including conservatives, Christians, and others, have been deplatformed and excluded for wrongthink.
In every case, people are treated not as sovereign individuals under equal rules, but as fuel for someone else’s greater good. Progressive frameworks often elevate this, through group essentialism and narrative protection, into a virtue. The right’s pushback, while frequently corrective, risks catching the same contagion through coarsened rhetoric and overreach.
Neither side is immune when it holds unchecked power. The freedom test cuts through the noise because it demands no complicated philosophy: No innocent should be sacrificed to sustain any ideology. It simply insists on impartial negative rights: freedom from interference in life, liberty, property, speech, and association. Or, as will be shown in a moment, freedom from friction.
Positive-Sum vs. Zero-Sum Games
The freedom test reveals a deeper divide: Some systems treat life as a positive-sum game, while others force zero-sum (or negative-sum) outcomes.
In a positive-sum game, the total pie grows naturally as humans invest surplus energy through voluntary cooperation, innovation, trade, and experimentation. One person’s gain does not require another’s loss. When motivated by real incentives like profit, curiosity, family, or reputation, humans organize energy, effort, and ideas in ways that raise baselines for nearly everyone. A healthy adversarial balance between competing visions can actually strengthen this process by checking each side’s worst impulses under impartial rules.
Zero-sum thinking works differently. It assumes resources, status, and moral worth are all fixed amounts. Progress requires taking from one group to give to another. Someone must be sacrificed for others to benefit. The modern left’s dominant strain often embodies this mindset: America’s prosperity is framed as harm to the world, success as unearned privilege, and equity as engineered outcomes that demand atonement. Politics becomes a moral ledger of who owes whom.
When one side dominates institutions or both descend into trench warfare, the political game turns destructive. The real objective should never be “pwn the other side” or put them in jail. It is maximum liberty under rules that let positive-sum prosperity flow.
The Pitcher: Energy, Organization, and Human Flourishing
Here is where it gets interesting.
The Sun pours energy into our world without pause. Nearly all usable power on Earth traces back to that constant fusion furnace 93 million miles away. Humans do not create energy. We capture, convert, store, and organize it.
When people are left largely to their own devices and motivated by genuine incentives, we excel at this task. We turn sunlight into stable calories that feed billions, into shelter that resists storms, into medicines that add healthy years, into knowledge that compounds throughout generations, and into surplus experiences of art, music, travel, and connection far beyond survival.
This is the pitcher. The glass reflects the current level in one cup. The real story is the continuous flow from the pitcher and our remarkable human ability to channel it into ordered, life-affirming outcomes. History shows the pattern clearly: periods of secure property, open exchange, and low artificial friction have produced the steepest rises in living standards, literacy, life expectancy, and broad-based prosperity ever recorded.
Sacrificial ideologies act as friction on this process. They divert human effort from capturing and compounding the incoming flow toward managing guilt, enforcing compliance, and redistributing outcomes. When prosperity itself is treated as theft or moral debt, the pitcher is ignored or actively undermined.
The Sun does not grade on intent or narrative. It simply keeps shining. Our job is to keep the conditions clear so that motivated humans can keep organizing that endless bounty into positive-sum gains for more people; it is not to burn human potential as ritual fuel.
Rejecting the Box as Necessary Illusion
When I get trapped in today’s ideological arguments, I do the same thing every time: I start backing up. Further and further, until the shouting match shrinks into perspective, until the boxes and the empty space that surrounds the boxes become visible. What eventually exposes itself is that the fierce left-right contest is largely an illusion. A useful one, perhaps, for short-term coordination and tribal belonging, but still an illusion.
The real game is not about which team controls the glass. It is about whether we protect the pitcher.
The modern left has fallen deepest into the sickness. Its dominant strain views America’s prosperity not as successful energy organization, but as evidence of harm to the rest of the world. This framing demands perpetual sacrifices to atone for phantom sins. I feel sadness and despair when I see it, not anger. A healthy left focused on true classical liberal ideals would strengthen the system. Instead, we have one that often treats individuals as fuel for the narrative.
The right’s current pushback is frequently necessary and corrective. It reasserts merit, borders as self-preservation, biological reality, and skepticism of captured institutions. Yet in the heat of reaction, it sometimes catches the same disease. Both sides become destructive when they hold solid, unchecked power.
I reject the box. I reject the premise that we must choose a team and sacrifice the other’s innocents to “win.” Healthy versions of both sides can check each other’s excesses under impartial rules and federalist experimentation. The goal is maximum liberty that keeps the pitcher flowing, not whether one side or the other wins. The side I choose is the side that makes this happen.
The Sun keeps shining regardless of who is elected. Humans remain extraordinarily good at organizing its energy into abundance when artificial frictions are low and innocents are not offered up as fuel.
This is the impartial truth that appears when you back up far enough. The glass-half-full-or-empty debate is entertaining, but ultimately small. The pitcher is what matters.
True freedom does not come from perfecting one ideology inside the box. It comes from refusing to sacrifice people, from choosing positive-sum cooperation over zero-sum atonement and punishment, and from cherishing the conditions that let motivated people keep turning sunlight into ordered, generous, life-affirming outcomes.
There is a pitcher somewhere around here. Let’s stop arguing over the level in the glass and start protecting the source.
Related: Two Faces Speaking: When Language Barriers Disappear
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