Derek Thompson

At the same time, I think people who fixate on corporate power, while they have some very good ideas, have some not very good ideas.

I mean, last year, I'm not going to open up this can of worms all the way, but I was engaged in a very protracted debate against anti-monopoly folks about the degree to which Dallas was a housing oligopoly.

I don't think it is.

I don't think we should be fixated on punishing builders who are successfully adding housing that seems like taking this one lens and applying it where it shouldn't be applied.

And that tells me that if the lens of corporate power leads to both some very good ideas and some not very good ideas, then it might not be the single best lens through which to see improving America.

I am not a populist.

I am a liberal.

I am concerned not about corporate power specifically, but about power, about how power can manifest in strange places.

It can manifest absolutely at the level of corporations and monopoly.

It can also manifest at the level of the neighborhood, as Mark was just explaining.

When a group of neighbors stop a new corporation,

apartment from going up by lobbying the city council and mayor to not build housing where it should be added, what is that if not the application of power?

In 2017, the New York Times, where we are sitting, published this incredible piece that I think went back and forth between us and Notion, even if the final didn't make it in the book.

And it was about the incredibly expensive per mile cost of connecting Grand Central to the Long Island Railroad.

Why was it so expensive to build a train, a tunnel in New York?

Partly it was about consulting fees.

Partly it was about construction.

Partly it was about the fact that public union staffing levels in New York City are like four times higher than they are in the typical city or state in Europe, France, Spain, the UK.

And that's why our construction costs are so much higher.

There's a way in which I'm not exactly sure how to answer that question.