2026-05-08

Someone can certainly *make* a billion dollars. That’s not the same thing as earning. Growing fast and disrupting markets also often means chasing and wielding market power, political influence, and scale. Take Airbnb. They heavily lobby politicians against passing housing laws to protect working class residents because it’s bad for their business model. Airbnb could not exist at its current scale and size without the housing market destabilizations, displacements, and exploits that are supercharging the evictions of working people everywhere from Puerto Rico to Jackson Hole. Now young people are planning for a future where they will never be able to afford to own a home while others have 20 and live off renting it out to them at extortionate rates with zero protections. Yes, a tiny a…

Happy to! A lot of CEOs and Silicon Valley folks take commentary like this so personally and from such a moralizing and judgement frame, but it’s really about systems. Our current economic outcomes speak for themselves - we are in a time of record inequality and more working people than ever are struggling. It’s more expensive than ever to have a home, go to the doctor, and feed one’s kids. People (rightfully) talk all the time about the corruption of our political system and I don’t take those critiques personall - it’s true! What matters is what choices we make knowing that and how we want to make a better world.