“The Venture Capital Populist”, George Packer, The Atlantic (June 2026) spends a bunch of ink arguing that David Sacks, a professed free-market “libertarian capitalist”, is in fact the architect and beneficiary of White House initiatives that leave him substantially richer. But from all the reading I’ve been doing over the last few months, this is the normal way of capitalism. The mythology of small businesses eagerly competing with one another free of interference and winner-picking by government is historically just a myth, especially with empires. The state power of empire is traditionally used to secure and enforce the profitability of favored companies, often through state-mandated violence.

I remember Douglas showing me an illustrated book about a small baker and how what he did was the exemplar of capitalism. But historically speaking, I rather think it’s more that slavery is the exemplar. Crony capitalism, monopoly, corruption seem more the rule than the exception, in history and around the world.