Jonathan

The only antidote to exploitation is infrastructure.

• Infrastructure of ownership


• Infrastructure of valuation


• Infrastructure of refusal

Moving from labor to leverage requires us to:

• Price work according to legacy, not scarcity


• Build systems that protect IP and authorship


• Say no to deals that romanticize visibility while disguising theft

The work of reparative economics is to build valuation models that honor what the market cannot quantify.

This means asking radical questions:

• Should ghostwriters receive points on the master?


• Should dancers unionize into IP co-ops?


• Should emerging designers receive royalties when their designs are “referenced” on runways?

These are not hypotheticals.... See more

The next kind of influence will come from those who create genuine connections and clarity.

We just don’t yet have the right words for them.

At the same time, it’s clear that many tech founders now act like creators, audience-builders. They’ve learned that the story is part of the product. They build in public and narrate as they go. They’re growing their own channels instead of relying on traditional media to tell their story, creating a direct conversation with the people who care... See more

If you squint, you can see what’s possible. People like Dr. Becky can not only grow their own audiences and businesses; they can also start launching other founders, linking their communities with theirs, sharing attention, tools, and network value. Adjacent experts—in Dr Becky’s case, educators, therapists, coaches—can each begin to own a piece of... See more

I have spent past 8 years scriptwriting hundreds of videos, with the median video getting millions of views.

When I want to make what I do sound more virtuous, I say things like “I make educational videos about pop culture topics, like physics lessons on how Ant-Man’s powers are affected by the square-cube law, or what Pokemon can teach us about... See more

Marketing strategists talk openly about how the purpose of a clickbait headline is to intentionally create a gap between the information you’re given and the information that’s withheld. Here are 3 recent representative examples from Upworthy:

• “The number one conversation mistake that instantly kills good rapport instead of building it”


• “Woman is

... See more

The AMC theaters live release party for Taylor Swift’s album launch generated $50 million in revenue. This followed a study by the National Research Group that found 60% of Gen Alpha, aged 12 and under, prefers watching movies in theaters rather than watching at home — the strongest rate preference across all age groups: “For them, the draw is the... See more