Knowing that the author owns a famous "startup incubator" intended to discover and grow companies that will either 1) turn into a giant like Amazon or Google or 2) be sold to a giant like Amazon or Google puts a certain spin on this. In particular, this passage seems to be a pretty thinly veiled way of saying that giant corporations are a natural consequence of a healthy economy:
> It's obviously true that the returns for performance are superlinear in business. Some think this is a flaw of capitalism, and that if we changed the rules it would stop being true. But superlinear returns for performance are a feature of the world, not an artifact of rules we've invented. We see the same pattern in fame, power, military victories, knowledge, and even benefit to humanity.
It relies on a flimsy claim: this consequence is not caused by social conventions. Are not all of the examples given some manifestation of "rules we've invented"? Which of these things have any significance sans any sort of social context?
> It's obviously true that the returns for performance are superlinear in business. Some think this is a flaw of capitalism, and that if we changed the rules it would stop being true. But superlinear returns for performance are a feature of the world, not an artifact of rules we've invented. We see the same pattern in fame, power, military victories, knowledge, and even benefit to humanity.
It relies on a flimsy claim: this consequence is not caused by social conventions. Are not all of the examples given some manifestation of "rules we've invented"? Which of these things have any significance sans any sort of social context?