The Zynga chronicles
Remember when social gaming was all the rage? Social gaming startup Zynga, founded in 2007, wa...
dellsystem.me
Latest posts
Every billionaire is a policy failure, part 2
Continuing the theme of the previous fragment: Every billio...
Every billionaire is a policy failure, part 1
There’s a common refrain on the left when it comes to the presence of extreme wealth: “Every b...
Minimum wage is livable
Yesterday’s post was about 2,000 words longer than I’d originally planned, so today’s post...
Worker control and HBO's Silicon Valley
HBO’s Silicon Valley is like if someone tried to remake Arrested Development ...
Local Tech Worker Suggests Protesters Learn To Code
May 8, 2019 SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Annoyed by the disturbance of the Uber protes...
In the long run we are all dead
I’m extremely behind on fragments - I wrote the previous 3 days’ worth of fragments today - so...
A union for startups
Here are my two favourite ways to take the pulse of the tech industry. One is to read through ...
What if you could take out a loan to pay rent?
Here’s an article that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal: <a href="https://www.mans...
Cannabis Delivery Concierge
Software engineer position at Serf.com
Hi Wendy, I hope you’re having a great day. I came across your profile on Tinder and w...
Influencer marketing is a scourge, exhibit A
For context: Kylie Jenner is the world’s youngest “self-made” billionaire, having founded an e...
Why hypocrisy is good, actually
Here’s something leftists get accused of a lot: hypocrisy. Sometimes the charge stems ...
Game of Thrones and the end of history
Apologies to non-GoT fans for how GoT-centric my blog and newsletter have become. This pos...
The fly and the web
He has been buzzing around happily for a while when he unexpectedly flies into the web of capi...
But He Could Not Outrun The Might of the People
His foot snags on a rock and he falls again, harder this time. Behind him he hears a distant c...
When does the system becomes intolerable?
(Some spoilers for the season 3 finale of The Man in the High Castle .) <...
Is losing an investment like losing a limb?
Today’s fragment will be a brief response to this tweet: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet...
The choices you make
Warning: this post contains spoilers for the latest episode of Game of Thrones. ...
The duality of tipping
Another short fragment, building on yesterday’s fragment ab...
The invisible hand of Adam Smith's mother
Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? is one of those book titles that answers its own ques...
Domain name colonialism
The basic story of colonialism goes something like this. An imperial power - e.g. Britain or S...
Assume a spherical cow
There’s an old joke about physics (at the expense of physics, rather) that goes something like...
When regulation gets in the way
Today, something special happened in California labour law history. As Bloomberg Law reports, ...
Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome
If you’re familiar with the equality of “opportunity” vs “outcome” dichotomy, it’s probably in...
April recap
This month’s recap (These no longer have new descriptions by ...
You are not your code
For the software designer, programming with interaction involves seeking a kind...
Customer happiness isn't enough
I recently listened to episode 166 of Exponent, <a href="https://exponent.fm/episode-166-fence...
996.ICU and the rewards of hard work
If you haven’t already heard about the “996” movement in China, here’s the gist of it: similar...
When the sorting function is broken
This came out a little more than a day late, and the next day’s fragment is also late. Ple...
Economic inequality is almost never harmless
Continued from day 113 . Part 3 of a 3-part series that ...
We can have entrepreneurship without extreme wealth
Continued from day 113 . Part 2 of a 3-part series that ...
What's wrong with inequality?
(This fragment is actually coming out 2 days late, because I was on vacation for 2 days an...
On internal migration restrictions
Something we usually take for granted when it comes to immigration restrictions is that althou...
Why do people work?
Something I often try to do with this blog is to simulate the experience of looking at our soc...
Borrowing an ebook from the library
In a previous fragment on J. K. Rowling, while discussing ho...
When is a company a 'tech' company?
What does it mean for a company to be a tech company? This is something I’ve been pond...
Locally optimal, globally absurd
A theme that’s come up in a lot of my writing is the idea that a solution can be locally</...
Finding the breadcrumbs
The beginnings of my fascination with the left coincided with the decline of my confidence tha...
Building a better billboard
Picture your average billboard: a huge flat expanse of advertising next to the highway or mayb...
Why we can't have free online tax filing
Last week, ProPublica wrote about the progress of corporate lobbying efforts to prevent the IR...
Unbundling progress
(This was supposed to go out on Sunday, but as I mentioned in my <a href="https://dellsystem.s...
Insulin as a public service
Following on from a fragment from two days ago: If the market d...
There are experts, and there are experts
Thinking about this recent article by Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith: <a href="h...
If the market doesn't give us affordable housing ...
I was reading a truly horrifying LA Times article on rising rents in Inglewood, California: <a...
Gratitude is a trap
I’m not entirely sure how healthy this is, but I spend a lot of time thinking about potential ...
Why Peter Thiel praises monopolies
I just finished Noam Cohen’s book The Know-It-Alls , a mildly interesting book that lo...
Eero's fire sale
In last night’s newsletter, I linked to a <a href="https://mashable.com/article/amazon-eero-wi...
Workplace surveillance
Here’s a FastCompany article with a striking headline: <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90...
The billionaire who wants to reform capitalism
Have you heard of Ray Dalio? Hedge fund manager, investor, philanthropist, and one of the top ...