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Its tax season. Americans will pay an average of $10,489 in personal taxesabout 14% of the average households total income. Most will do so because they think it is their civic duty. Many believe they are morally obliged to obey the law and pay their share. But as tax day approaches, many Americans will bemoan their tax bill and complain that it is unfair. So, how are we to know if paying taxes is the right thing to do? Perhaps philosophy has some clues? Reasons to obey the law Many philosophers agree that we should obey the law. In The Crito, for example, Plato describes Socratess choice after the Athenian jury sentenced him to death for impiety. Crito, a wealthy friend of Socrates, arranges for him to escape from the prison a night before his execution. Socrates refuses saying he ought to obey the law. In explaining his decision, Socrates hinted at roughly three reasons why it would be wrong for him to break the law: First, he had chosen to stay in the city for many years despite being at liberty to leave if he did not like the laws. Second, he might hurt other peopleby damaging the state if he disobeyed. Finally, he had benefited from the laws in the past. More recent scholars endorse many of these claims. Eighteenth-century philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that citizens agreed to the law of the state by continuing to live in the place. Locke, for example, held that if a man owns or enjoys some part of the land under a given government, while that enjoyment lasts he gives his tacit consent to the laws of that government and is obliged to obey them. Twentieth-century British philosopher R.M. Hare suggests that citizens should obey the law to promote good social outcomes. Another British philosopher of the same era, H.L.A. Hart argued that citizens should comply out of fairness to others who obey. He held that it is unfair, and therefore wrong to benefit from their actions, without doing the same for them in turn. Is there a moral duty to pay taxes? Yet it is hard to see why these arguments would give the average citizen a moral responsibility to pay their taxes. Most of us never consented to the law. We were simply born here. Leaving would be costly, and even the chance to emigrate is dependent on another countrys willingness to accept us. Given the amount of government waste and its total budget, individual citizens could think that their tax bill is unlikely to make a difference to the services the government can provide. Even if they agree with how the government spends money, they might therefore conclude they have no reason to contribute. After all, one persons $10,000 is not going to determine whether the military can secure national borders. The most commonly defended argument from scholars for why one should pay taxes is a duty of fair play. Fair play is the notion of reciprocity, the idea that you should not take advantage of others. As philosophers like George Klosko argue, people benefit from their fellow citizens paying their taxes. They enjoy the roads that everyone helps pay for, the fire departments they fund. They ought to pay back fellow citizens who benefited them, just like you ought to do something for a friend who gives you a ride to the airport. The case against paying taxes As a philosopher who studies civic ethics, I have argued in a recent paper that this kind of responsibility still does not explain why one should pay taxes. The idea that we have to pay your taxes because other people have benefited by paying theirs rests, from my perspective, on a wrongly narrow view of what it means to satisfy ones duties of reciprocity. All that reciprocity requires is that one should compensate people for the work they have done that benefits us. Just like we can repay a friend who gives us a ride to the airport by doing something else that benefits themsay, making them dinner or helping them moveso, too, can we repay our fellow citizens by doing something other than paying our taxes. Lots of actions benefit your fellow citizens that you might pay for: taking a pay cut to do legally discretionary work to help the environment, volunteering to do policy research, choosing a career in public service over a more financially rewarding line of work, and more. If you do enough such acts, it could be argued, you would have no duty of reciprocity to pay your taxes. You would already have done enough to compensate your fellow citizens. Why pay taxes Given this, the best argument for paying our taxes, as I argue in my paper, is intellectual humility. And here is what it means. Satisfying these duties of reciprocity requires successfully compensating our fellow citizens for all the burdens they took on our behalf. As one can imagine, it is a hard calculation to make. It is difficult to know if we have done enough. If we choose not to pay taxes because we think we have already repaid our fellow citizens in other ways, we run a strong risk of getting it wrong. Paying the tax bill is one way of avoiding that risk nd making sure we treat our fellow citizens fairly. Brookes Brown is an assistant professor of philosophy and the director of the Law, Liberty, and Justice Program at Clemson University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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If you ask journalists and PR professionals what they fear most from AI, typically theyll say variations of the same narrative: AI will make content so easy to create that their roles will have little to offer. Virtually any AI model today can write passable articles and pitches (and lots more), so it feels like the value of the human touch is questionable at best. It is true that AI is automating big parts of knowledge work, and exactly how that plays out in media and adjacent industries is still being determined. At the same time, AI is transforming information discovery. Billions of people now get information from AI experienceseither chatbots or synthetic summaries like Googles AI overviewsinstead of traditional search results. Clearly, how AI answer engines find and present information (how they filter, prioritize, and interpret the things they find on the web) will play a central role in how media and public relations work going forward. More importantly, it will determine how the two sides work together. And I mean “together” in the most neutral way. Sometimes journalism and PR are complementary and sometimes they are in conflict, but in either case, AI will be the new interface where this plays out. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/media-copilot.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/fe289316-bc4f-44ef-96bf-148b3d8578c1_1440x1440.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to The Media Copilot\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for The Media Copilot. To learn more visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/\u0022\u003Emediacopilot.substack.com\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453847,"imageMobileId":91453848,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} What Im talking about of course is GEO (generative engine optimization), or more precisely the incentives it creates. AI answers are often said to be the new front door of the internet, since theyre extremely popular (ChatGPT alone has almost a billion users) and that popularity is growing. Googles AI Mode for search, which subs out the 10 blue links for an AI conversation, is now prominent on both the Google homepage and the Chrome omnibox. Some are predicting it will become the default this year or the next. That would (will?) be devastating for publishers (a subject for another column), and it would also instantly cement the AI summary as the new informational portal for . . . well, everyone. But it also suggests the future that journalists and PR pros fear, an arena where the primary weapons are automation and slop, is incorrect. Or at least incomplete. Narrative is the new SEO It all comes down to how generative engines prioritize information. Both sides want their narratives to become the basis of AI answersPR for clients, media for itselfin the hope of cementing their authority. Good news for the media side: Studies show that AI portals prioritize journalistic content far above commercial content (such as a corporate blog or site). Thats also good news for PR, since a large part of their job is interfacing with the media. If you think of the goals and messaging of a PR campaign as one circle, and the stories that a journalist wants to tell as another circle, where those two circles overlap is the highest chance for both sides to influence AI answers. Thats because of a fundamental difference between AI engines and search engines: AI is looking for patterns instead of keywords. The more it sees similar narratives across sites, domains, and social media, the more confidence it will have in the summary it’s creating. Domain authoritythe strength of any specific URLstill matters, but topical authority matters more. What that means in practice: If an AI engine sees that a site or person has continually covered the same topic, and from many different angles, and is cited often elsewhere, it will boost the authority signal. And that can matter just as much if not more than more generalized coverage from a major (Tier 1, to use PR lingo) publication. That has two key consequences for the publicist-journalist relationship. First, specialized journalists who are narrowly focused on a beat have increased value. That applies to publications, too, which makes trade/B2B pubs newly relevant. Second, while journalist relationships are crucial in media relations, its still just one part of a larger content strategy. There are other ways to build authority in the eyes of AI engines, including corporate blogs, social, and more. Yes, content from journalists takes priority, but all the rest will reinforce the narrative the answer engine sees. Beyond the byline On the flip side, journalists need to play this game, too. While their content is first in line for GEO, if it lacks uniqueness it wont stand out from competitors. If its too general or incomplete, AI engines will likely prioritize other content thats more specific and comprehensive. If it doesnt answer the common questions people ask AI, AI will move on to content that does. All this is to say that in an AI world, its far better for a journalist to have a clear coverage area instead of being a generalist. But thats just step one. In the same way that PR needs to build a narrative with a larger content strategy that involves other platforms and formats, journalists should too. Most journalists write articles for a living, but to better get the attention of AI engines, it’s advisable to spread those stories across formats and platforms. Whether its creating a personal website or newsletter, attending events, or publishing in new formats like short-form video or podcasts, the goal is to elevate the visibility of the stories youre tellingthe stories people are asking about in ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity. Building your brand around them is a bonus. The irony about all this is that AI, at first, promised to lighten the “content marketing” duties like writing social media copy and SEO headlines, which virtually no journalist wanted to do. But it turns out that to successfully leverage GEO, those duties get amplified: You need to continually think about the ways your stories can be presented and remixed to ensure AI engines take notice. The upside is that its all inherently human. Generative engines look for patterns, but they also prioritize uniqueness within those patterns. And uniqueness is what humans are best at. For journalists, its the scoops and unearthed facts that make compelling stories. For PR, its the person-to-person relationships that remain the most reliable way to find connections to those stories. As AI reshapes how stories are found and told, the edge still belongs to those who know how to tell them best. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/media-copilot.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/fe289316-bc4f-44ef-96bf-148b3d8578c1_1440x1440.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to The Media Copilot\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for The Media Copilot. To learn more visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/\u0022\u003Emediacopilot.substack.com\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453847,"imageMobileId":91453848,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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You’ve worked together before. You trust each other. You know how the other person thinks under pressure. On paper, it’s the safest move. In many ways, it is. Shared history creates speedfaster decisions, candid conversations, less time decoding intent. When CEOs bring former colleagues into senior roles, baseline trust feels like rocket fuel. But familiarity also introduces a hidden risk that undermines executive teams far more often than leaders anticipate. What I see repeatedly in executive teams built on shared history is the quiet formation of inner circles. Leaders who go way back share shorthand, context, and trust earned elsewhere. Others, often equally capable with deep institutional knowledge, find themselves outside that orbit. I coached a CEO whod brought three former colleagues into a 10-person executive team. Within months, critical decisions were being pre-discussed among “The Four” before formal meetings. The other six leaders became increasingly passive, not because they lacked capability, but because challenging pre-baked decisions felt politically risky. The damage isnt caused by intent. Its caused by relationships that were never recalibrated for a new reality, and by new relationships that were never deliberately cultivated. The most effective executive teams consistently apply these four practices to prevent individual excellence from turning into organizational friction. 1. Connection High-performing teams invest time getting to know one another, all members, not just familiar faces, before diving into business results. Career paths, pivotal decisions, what energizes and frustrates them. This doesnt take much time. A small investment upfront pays dividends for months. When facilitating executive off-sites, I often begin with a simple my journey exercise using images rather than words to reflect career highs, lows, decision points, and at least one non-work passion. The impact is often immediate. Leaders whove worked together for decades consistently say they learn something new about their colleagues, newly hired executives feel less like outsiders from day one, and everyone gains a clearer sense of how to tap into the talent around the table. 2. Clarify contributions Each executive understands not only what they own but also how their contribution creates value for the enterprise. Where do I lead? Where do I support others? Where might my strengths unintentionally create drag? Without this clarity, leaders default to optimizing their own function. Silos arent a cultural failure; theyre the natural outcome of unexamined individual priorities. 3. Intentional relationship recalibration For leaders with shared history, relationships must be explicitly reset for the new context. What worked at the last company doesn’t automatically apply here. Assumptions from past roles, how we made decisions, how we disagreed, who deferred to whom, need to be examined, not inherited. Strong teams explicitly revisit: How decisions are made now (not how they used to be) How disagreement is expected to show up in this company What information must travel across functions, not just within them How tension and conflict will be surfaced early within this team This isn’t about questioning trust; it’s about updating the operating system. The CFO who was your peer at the last company now reports to you. The CMO you brought in was brilliant at a scrappy startup, but this is a public company with regulatory constraints. Same people, different game, different rules. Without recalibration, old patterns quietly reassert themselves, even when they no longer serve the business, or the team. 4. Accountability over loyalty Loyalty protects people. Accountability protects performance. In cohesive executive teams, leaders dont avoid difficult conversations or cover for one another in the name of trust. They hold peers to shared standards, especially when its uncomfortable. Many capable teams stall here. Loyalty gets mistaken for cohesion when, in reality, unchecked loyalty is what allows silos and turf wars to persist. What great executive teams look like in practice In the strongest executive teams, something subtle but powerful happens in meetings. Side conversations are surfaced in the room. Misalignment is named before decisions are finalized. When one voice dominates, others step in, not to challenge authority, but to protect cohesion. Decision rights are referenced rather than assumed. The CEO doesnt act as referee. The team self-corrects. That’s the signal of a deliberately designed team. And it’s why these teams execute faster in a crisis. Trust wasn’t inherited from the past; it was engineered for the present. The CEO who’d created “The Four”? Once we surfaced the pattern and reset expectations, decision quality improved, and the full team reengaged. But it required deliberate intervention, not hope. The CEOs real work If youre building a leadership team from people you already know, your job isnt to rely on trust, its to reengineer it. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t move into a new office and keep the same floor plan from your last building. Why would you import relationship patterns from a different company, different roles, different stakes? The best leadership teams dont suppress individuality. They harness it through intentional relationship design. Shared history may get you started. Only deliberate cohesion sustains performance.
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