America would rather have an autocrat or kleptocrat than a weak party, evidenced by a survey showing Trump would still win if the election were held again knowing what we know about his administration.

There is a natural cultural gravity in America whereby experiencing success becomes correlated with becoming kinder and thinking bigger-picture about leaving a positive mark — as the robber barons eventually did — but those rivers have reversed, with some of the most powerful and influential men digressing rather than evolving as their platforms grow.

After several months off Twitter you realize how small it is — a tiny part of the world occupying way too much of your mental world — with no negative difference to real life, just relief from a hostile, biased, angry environment.

Billionaires are no worse than the rest of us

The cartoon of billionaires as mean or bad people is wrong; to be very successful in business it helps to be ethical and to invest in relationships so people want you to win, and while billionaires are no better than the rest of us, they are almost certainly no worse.

Entrepreneurs are taxed less than salaried workers

Because society romanticizes entrepreneurship, founders selling their companies pay effective tax rates of 17-18% (with the first $10 million tax-free under section 1202), while salaried employees in lower-level positions trying to put their kids through school pay 30-40%.

Money correlates with happiness up to a threshold

There is a real correlation between money and happiness, but moment-to-moment well-being tops out once you can afford housing, good schools, vacations, and absorbing an economic shock; beyond that billionaires are no happier than millionaires, though they are no less happy either.

Capitalism is segregating shared American experience

Capitalism is segregating us by casting and sorting people into different pods, lines, theaters, and experiences across generations, so we no longer share movies, schools, or military service together; this erodes the empathy and shared self that comes from mixing income levels, which Galloway credits his integrated high school for giving him.

Capitalism endlessly segments offerings to drive desire

A capitalist economy continually segments offerings into ever-higher tiers (fast passes, VIP tours, business class, private aviation, concierge healthcare) so there is always more to buy, which is great at incentivizing grit and innovation but means the appetite for more is never sated.

Galloway's success owed to demographic luck

Being born a white heterosexual male in 1964 in California meant winning the lottery: free access to a great university system, coming of age during the 1990s San Francisco wealth explosion, and walking into rooms where 97% of venture funding went to that demographic profile while women he knew never raised more than a million dollars.

Democrats need a wealthy candidate to match Trump's money

The Democratic Party's one moral imperative is to remove Trump, which requires a candidate with relevant executive experience and massive personal resources like Bloomberg's $60 billion, because Trump will raise a billion dollars (partly by selling ambassadorships) while the DNC has only $8 million, and the good money is on Trump's re-election since no incumbent has been removed mid-cycle without a recession.

Competition would force tech to invest in safety

If you forced Google to spin off YouTube into a competing video-search company, one of the two resulting companies would differentiate itself by making the requisite investment to protect kids from online pornography and attract advertisers like Procter & Gamble; monopolies have no such incentive because advertisers have no choice.

Breaking up big tech oxygenates the economy

Big tech should be broken up not because the companies are evil but because monopolies remove competitive incentives; just as breaking up AT&T produced baby bells worth more than the original within ten years, breaking up Google or Facebook would force the spun-off units to compete, attract venture funding to fast-growing categories that currently get the least seed money, and create incentives to fix harms—with the only real loser being the CEO who wants to sit on the iron throne.

Wealth taxes drive mobile capital to flee

A wealth tax is unworkable because the wealthy are the most mobile people in the world and think long term; even a seemingly small 2% annual wealth tax effectively halves their wealth every 15-20 years, so they will simply leave for countries that want them, as happened in France.

Expanded child tax credit cheaper than UBI

Rather than universal basic income costing a trillion dollars, expanding the child earned income tax credit (as Senator Bennet proposed) would lift 40-60% of kids out of poverty at roughly $40 billion, making it a far cheaper and more effective anti-poverty solution.

Tech privacy claims are a cover for abdicating responsibility

Tech companies' professed concern for privacy is a hollow claim with no basis in their founders' backgrounds; encryption is the fastest path to abdicating responsibility for the data on their platforms and avoiding the scrutiny that could break them up, while the fetishization of the unbreakable iPhone ignores that we have balanced privacy and security through laws and judges for 250 years.

People rationalize harm for personal economic security

People make incremental rationalizations to secure economic benefit for themselves and their families even when it causes small incremental damage to the commonwealth over the medium and long term, which is precisely why we pay taxes to a government meant to think long-term and why we have agencies like the FDA and EPA to address externalities.

Society is an elegant wealth transfer from young to old

Nearly everything in our society functions as an organized transfer of wealth from the young to the old: Social Security reallocates over a trillion dollars to the wealthiest generation in history, rising college costs and home prices price out the young, and deficit spending borrows prosperity from future generations to benefit current asset holders.

Wealthy stress shifts from economic to relevance

Even billionaires never stop stressing about money; the stress simply shifts from economic survival to maintaining relevance, where the scorecard for relevance becomes the ability to keep increasing their wealth.

Wealth inequality self-corrects through war or revolution

Dramatic wealth inequality almost always self-corrects, but the mechanisms of self-correction are usually war, famine, or revolution; we are currently in the midst of a 'soft revolution' around income inequality.

Capital gains should not be taxed below labor income

Rather than a wealth tax, the simpler fix is to stop taxing money that money makes (capital gains) at a lower rate than money that muscle and sweat makes (labor income); the system is progressive until you can derive most income from capital gains, at which point your effective tax rate plummets as you 'make the jump to light speed.'