When you own a home, you have a tangible stake in its future. You maintain it, build memories in it, cultivate the values that shape life within it, and hope to leave it better for whoever comes next. That instinct to preserve and improve something beyond your own lifetime is essential to the life of a nation.
Our people need reasons to believe they can build a future here: own a home, start a business, raise a family, and leave something for the next generation. When those possibilities feel increasingly out of reach, we risk weakening the sense of shared responsibility that holds a society together. The greatest of nations will fail when there is diminishing interest in upholding the values that bind the nation.
Writing this essay today is a direct testament to these values. I would not have been born here, would not have contributed to the world in the way I have, had this nation not welcomed my parents with a process and open arms at a time when the communists turned Afghanistan into a third-world country. The only stipulation was to adhere to our framework: our identity, laws, and values, and the rest of life is what you make of it.
At the most pivotal moment ahead of superintelligence where we hold the promise to change the future of every human's life, our people are becoming more polarized, our identity is becoming more politicized, and we continue drifting further away from the shared values that our founding fathers so brilliantly authored at a time when foresight was scarce.
As we enter the next 250 years of our home, I am reminded that this flag represents a shared identity, laws, and values that truly embody freedom in its fullest sense. It's the one country where the most ambitious thinkers, researchers, engineers, athletes, all come to fulfill their dreams freely. You can visit Japan and never be Japanese, visit France and never be French, visit Switzerland and never be Swiss. But to be American is a pride open to every corner of the planet.
One of those values that are unique to America is our willingness to embrace controversy, engage in discourse, and shape the future of the world. Freedom of thought and the right to challenge authority are part of the inheritance we are responsible for preserving. We honor that inheritance when we use it to pull the country closer to its own promises.
America began as a controversy. It takes controversy to challenge your rulers, your way of life, your religion, your beliefs, and ask whether there's a more rational approach to governing a society that maximizes human dignity, freedom, and development. It takes controversy to attract other people across the world who are willing to escape their circumstances to participate in the American way of life. It took controversy to empower women's rights, to abolish slavery, and it'll take controversy to solve our economic challenges at a time when the world is increasingly turning to socialism. Without any of our controversies, we would have never catalyzed the greatest acceleration of global human development in the history of civilization.
Our values and laws create an asymmetric tolerance for risk, and that willingness to embrace controversy and challenge every idea is one of our deepest advantages. You weren't incentivized or protected to take big bets under the old world's monarchies, and in much of the world today, you still aren't. It's why capital formation is strongest here, it's why we produce the highest GDP with ¼ the population of the next country. It is the free expression of thought that helped produce the technologies that have changed modern life worldwide — the internet, the plane, the phone — allowing people to come together, to problem solve, to improve their lives.
We are not a country of people whose interests are only of self, we have built technologies and innovations that are distributed across the world to help make the world better. 19 of the 25 largest publicly traded companies are American, and that's not because our value exists in a vacuum. Our services and innovations increase the quality of life in areas of the world that may have never been able to invent or acquire equivalent solutions. We invented self-driving cars and as a result, one day you will never lose a loved one to a car crash again — and in time, the entire world will benefit from this technology.
Our economy is predicated on growth, meaning, as long as there are unsolved problems in the world, there will always be more jobs. It's not just our citizens who benefit, our multinational enterprises build value in local economies to create jobs and give other countries more opportunities. Every single country around the world, all of the flags worn on July 4th, has benefited tremendously from our innovations. Even when it's unsaid, the world looks to America to pioneer the future of civilization, and over these next 250 years as we enter the age of superintelligence, our leadership will be instrumental to uphold the values that protect humanity and accelerate human progress.
Embrace controversy, because the ramifications of apathy are far greater than the individual effort to be informed. The second- and third-order effects of our decisions all come with consequences and without your participation, that data may never be understood.
We are all ambassadors of the country we call home, and we have a civic duty to stay informed so that we collectively make decisions that align to the values embodied in our belief system. The country is nothing without its citizens, and the citizens are nothing without their country. There's no more time to sit on the sidelines — you must engage in the discourse and development of the country, no matter if you're an employee, employer, or unemployed.
The next most important companies in America must be deeply interested in aligning economic incentives with the values of the nation. They will help incentivize capital formation towards good, foster tremendous economic growth, create more jobs and career paths, catalyze more progress, and reinvigorate our hope for the future. No matter big tech or small business. They will remind the world of our unique value proposition, that we are the nation of thinkers who are grounded in the words ratified in our texts.
America is the heartbeat of planet Earth — the belief in and willingness to take care of our home is not reserved to your political allegiance, it is a civic duty for your life here… Embrace our values, change the world, and when you don't agree with someone's opinions on how to make this country great — you have the freedom to make it better, no matter the circumstances.
Happy 250th birthday, America. Let's make sure our future generations look back at the decisions we make today and thank us for the life they live tomorrow.
— Iman