Selected Writing
Essays, analysis, and commentary on the systems that shape business and daily life. Selected from more than a decade of public writing, with the original dates and context intact.
Latest essay · August 25, 2026
A proposal to connect trade, manufacturing, affordability, and legal worker mobility through a phased common market across the Americas. It examines industrial supply chains, agriculture, entry standards, and the costs of transition.
Originally published in An Appalachian Perspective on Substack.
Read the introduction & original essayEssays & commentary
These articles explore a wider field than the Research & Publications collection. Each reading note offers a short introduction and a link to the original.
The selection favors enduring questions and substantial arguments. The full LinkedIn archive also includes older product reactions, short posts, and historical commentary.
LinkedIn · May 6, 2026
An essay about authority inherited through software updates, authenticated connections, vendors, and AI retrieval pipelines. It argues for examining what a trusted path permits a system to do.
Reading note & original article →DEV Community · April 2, 2026
Commentary on the distinction between trusted delivery and permission to execute, with an introduction to pre-execution control. Read alongside the working papers for technical context and scope.
Reading note & original article →LinkedIn · December 11, 2025
A 2025 argument for looking beyond headline attack volumes to routing behavior, coordination, and the position of network controls. The essay asks whether downstream mitigation alone addresses the structural problem.
Reading note & original article →Substack · June 26, 2025
An account of lost context, broken instructions, and unreliable document workflows. The essay argues for keeping important records in dependable external tools, bounding tasks, and supervising work that requires precision.
Reading note & original article →LinkedIn · November 11, 2025
A proposed county ordinance organized around measurable water, sound, and energy-performance requirements. The draft connects permitting with engineering verification and continuing operational records.
Reading note & original article →LinkedIn · April 3, 2024
A marketplace concept exploring buyer anonymity, verified ownership of renewable-energy credits, and coordination among providers, storage, transmission, and consumers.
Reading note & original article →Substack · August 25, 2026
A proposal to connect trade, manufacturing, affordability, and legal worker mobility through a phased common market across the Americas. It examines industrial supply chains, agriculture, entry standards, and the costs of transition.
Reading note & original article →The Well News · April 11, 2025
Independent opinion examining the arithmetic, commercial consequences, and strategic rationale of the tariff policy debated in April 2025. A dated commentary, reflecting the policy context at publication.
Reading note & original article →LinkedIn · October 18, 2016
A personal essay on why promising partnerships lose momentum: slipping commitments, missed timelines, and assumptions that go unexamined. Its focus is the work between agreeing on an idea and carrying it through.
Reading note & original article →Three connected essays / December 2025
A three-part argument about upstream decisions, distributed-system instability, and the placement of control.
The essays build from diagnosis to propagation to an architectural proposal. Their relationship is preserved in a single reading guide.
Read the series guide ↗The wider archive
Skip’s Substack publication brings an independent Appalachian perspective to economic policy, media, technology, and the practical consequences of public decisions.
Visit An Appalachian Perspective ↗More than a decade of writing also spans AI and search products, healthcare economics, aviation, retail, and technology policy. The original archive remains available in its publication context.
Browse the LinkedIn articles ↗Opinions are Skip’s own. They do not represent the positions of boards, clients, affiliated companies, or partners. Future substantial essays will normally appear here first, with LinkedIn and Substack used for excerpts, discussion, and distribution.