Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

First of all, it's pretty clear that the Valley isn't "disrupting" the establishment. It is the establishment.

The elephant in the room: the death of the middle class.

Thirty years ago, unions were strong and average people had savings. Venture capitalists were wealthier than average, but not of a superior class... and they still hung out with people who wrote code for a living. Class distances weren't nonexistent, but they weren't nearly as sheer as they are today. And venture capital wasn't a requirement because bootstrapping was really possible, because average people actually had money.

People complain about how the Valley is cranking out apps for spoiled 20-year-olds instead of regular people, and missing the much bigger point, which is that "regular people" are cash-strapped, time-poor, overworked and generally disenfranchised altogether. The people building apps for spoiled 20-year-olds are staking out the new, post-large-middle-class world.

Now, to bankroll a business you either need elite connections (usually to people spending others' money) or outlandish luck, you have to have people in your pocket who'll ensure coverage, and you'll probably end up taking a back seat in your company as soon as you hire a "business co-founder" who can deliver Sequoia and A16Z.

No one has a good idea what to build, and products and technology aren't really the point (the point is getting bought; "startups" are a long audition process for would-be corporate executives looking to jump the queue) but one sector that isn't being targeted is the (disintegrating) middle class.

Corporate America, meanwhile, is stronger than ever. The wealth and connections are even more concentrated, giving power to the few at the expense of the many. And these Valley startups are the driving force behind all of this.

Can you name any businesses where radical decentralization builds important revenue?

As others have pointed out, technology seems to consolidate more than decentralize. Network effect is opposite force to decentralization. Companies like Airbnb, Uber consolidate previously small businesses under one huge company.

It's hard to overstate how important monetary policy is in this state of affairs. CapEx has been plummeting for years because it makes more sense to lever up with artificially cheap debt and gamble with equity. We see less upstarts and less major capital investment by businesses because that's way riskier than the guaranteed returns that can be got through other common schemes predicated on cheap money.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-financialization-o...

Agree entirely. This is a perfect write up of the situation at hand.

> but one sector that isn't being targeted is the (disintegrating) middle class.

So, what (if anything) can we do to fix this?

Is there anything a regular person can do or work on to help the (disintegrating) middle class?

> Can you name any businesses where radical decentralization builds important revenue?

Well, contrary to popular belief, making large revenue isn't the only viable business model: The other viable model is to build something that greatly hurts your competition's revenue. Here, "viable" means "it survives", I don't think CARD is about making huge profits, it's about commoditizing scalable parts of a business, removing scalability as a revenue generating mechanism. (Airbnb and Uber are not CARD and I think will fail in the next 5-10 years.)

As for naming businesses: Only illegal business currently use this model, unfortunately (some parts of the online drug trade, and to some parts of the bittorrent scene.)