Silicon Valley’s Inequality Machine: A Conversation with Anand Giridharadas

I love his analogy to people in Finance - how they are unabashedly "about that life" - and they're upfront about it.

After traveling across the US, I realized I prefer my wealth and power desires out in the open. Inordinate wealth is hidden so insidiously in the valley. We don't really dress in wealth signals, or even drive in wealth signals (as opposed to NYC or Miami.) - the subtler cues to social status are things like an Au Pair or private yoga lessons or an address in Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside or Palo Alto. But they dress like us, and they drive in the same luxury cars we do.

And yet, they are so, so far above us.

This is incredibly ironic. Techcrunch's (partial) release of this article is a perfect example of what the author describes: excluding those who can't afford to pay while pretending to act in the interest of all.

>And, at the heart of what I’m trying to establish with the book, is how they have then turned around, and in response to this exclusion, and the anger it generates, sought to pass themselves off as change agents who can fix the problem that they are complicit in causing, and who can fight the fire that they helped set.

It's true. But there's a slight difference. No one has faith in the government. There are only those who are see themselves as powerless in the face of this and those who see themselves as the agents of change. The Messiahs have been commoditized.

Also, while I think it's great that folks want to level the field and reduce the wealth gap, the likely outcome will be that the ultra rich will evade taxes like they always do, while the $1-10 millionaires will be pulled down to appease the masses. I don't lose sleep over some mildly rich tech bro. They're not the problem. It's the ultra rich that are holding all the cards and controlling our destinies.