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Michael J Donnelly

Michael J Donnelly

Evanston, Illinois

Elite Brands Are for Poor People

Elite Brands Are for Poor People

Luxury brands do not just sell handbags and watches. They sell the feeling of arrival. A systems-level analysis of how companies like LVMH, Kering, and Richemont turn status anxiety into one of the most profitable business models in modern capitalism.

Why Construction Productivity Still Looks Stuck in the 1970s

Why Construction Productivity Still Looks Stuck in the 1970s

Why has construction productivity improved so little despite increased use of managerial tools, using empirical data? Donnelly’s Law shows how data overload, administrative complexity, and limited managerial attention quietly reduce efficiency across the construction industry.

When the Humanities Lost the Public: Dead-End Degrees, Academic Celebrity, and Donnelly's Law

When the Humanities Lost the Public: Dead-End Degrees, Academic Celebrity, and Donnelly's Law

Rising tuition, weak labor-market outcomes, academic celebrity culture, and increasingly speculative public theories combined to erode public trust in the humanities and accelerate their institutional decline.

The Big Ten Is Quietly Splitting into Two Conferences

The Big Ten Is Quietly Splitting into Two Conferences

The Big Ten’s television riches are masking a growing internal split. Programs driven by football obsession, billionaire-backed NIL, and year-round relevance are separating rapidly from conference cellar dwellers surviving on geography, nostalgia, and donated losses.

Authenticity for Sale: Trauma as Content

Authenticity for Sale: Trauma as Content

A long-form systems-analysis essay examining how digital platforms transformed trauma into monetizable content within saturated attention systems.

Minnesota Athletics Is Getting Professionally Left Behind

Minnesota Athletics Is Getting Professionally Left Behind

Minnesota athletics faces a dangerous new reality in the NIL era. Despite Big Ten money, stable leadership, and major-market advantages, the Gophers risk falling permanently behind as college sports become a professionalized arms race.

Donnelly’s Law: Digital Content Expands to Fill Data Capacity

Donnelly’s Law: Digital Content Expands to Fill Data Capacity

A systems-analysis essay introducing Donnelly’s Law: as informational capacity expands, content expands to saturate bandwidth regardless of proportional value, driving recursive media, AI content floods, attention scarcity, and collapsing signal integrity.