It's a good read, but this seems to be the most important sentence of the piece:
Superstar companies can make the pie bigger, so squelching them probably wouldn't make workers better off.

These 'superstar' companies are helping to make a person, or a handful of people, obscenely rich. The workforce at those companies, especially those who got in from the ground floor, do very well also. But these companies aren't sucking up money from other industries or competitors, money and wealth isn't finite. But on all graphs and charts of income and wealth, these companies probably help explain the growing gap: how many Zuckerberg's were popping up in the 70's, 90's, vs now?

And I don't believe we should be taxing these uber-rich individuals or corporations to death either, they're already contributing something like 40% of all federal revenue and would just find a way to shelter their wealth better anyway. Many of them are pumping huge, huge sums to charity, I'd rather see that than more money going to the fucking government.

Right, but the bigger issue is that the actual number of people that it takes to do the highest value added work in the world is shrinking as technology becomes more sophisticated. The highest value added work in the world used to be enough to float an enormous middle class. Now it's enough to make comfortable lives for white collar professionals and coders. And Watson's coming for most of them. It's a simplification but I think our options are binary:

- withdraw from international trade. Reclaim lower value work from countries that can do it more cheaply than us and hope the broader availability of lower-value-added work offsets the rise in prices.

- continue to push low-value work overseas even though that increasingly means there won't be much actual work to do in the US. Those who control capital and technology will do fine but eventually this model has to provide for a redistribution of wealth / minimum income.

Of course there are bandaids: we could rebuild the highway system , expand the military for no obvious reason (or any other arm of the government for that matter), but the forces at play here seem irreversible.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

This is how and why we get a universal basic income.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

As described along with automation in the manufacturing sector. It all explains why Trump won't be bringing all those jobs back to the rust belt.

I blame Neil Young:

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

This economy definitely needs more barn.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Consumers prefer "celebrity companies."

This is why Starbucks succeeded, where 109,000 locally owned coffee shops failed.

This preference for "celebrity" might also be why middle and working class is in decline. That's what the article suggests.

"Celebrity companies" create a lottery economy- where some people succeed big, but most fail.


But why?
Why? Why would consumers prefer this?
Especially, if it means that most people will "loose?"

Some say it is rational, it is because of "technology. That celebrity companies are "better at tech."

But that doesn't seem true for Starbucks.

"Liberals" might say education will solve the problem. But educated people seem to prefer Starbucks also. (Or even more so).

I don't think a trade war with China or Mexico is likely to stop our preferences for celebrity companies.

On the other hand - if this is not rational- then consumers might change their opinions "for no reason at all."

I've been thinking about this issue and have come to the same conclusion. If most work can be automated and particularly that work which ordinary people do (although most of us are pretty ordinary) why should those in control get all the benefits? In a democracy if the masses cannot even have a shot at a reasonable level of prosperity from a job they are going to demand it happen another way. The way I see it is if it happens we will have a universal basic income and those who want more will either have to have the brains or the hustle to do better.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot