Nick Hanauer is one of America’s more interesting voices on capitalism. Born into a prosperous business family in Seattle, he made a fortune in tech himself, including as the first non-family investor in Amazon. But he and his former friend Jeff Bezos stopped seeing eye to eye a long time ago. In our conversation, Hanauer explains his unlikely road to becoming a critic of American capitalism. Listen to what he has to say about Bezos’s fundamental blind spot, one that may be surprisingly common at the top of our economy; why markets are useful but American-style capitalism is poisonous; and how he and colleagues want to re-center economics on…people.
Is Hanauer pulling up the ladder after securing prosperity for himself? Is he an ungrateful class traitor? Is he not enough of one, with his basic faith in the power of markets? Are socialists dangerous, as some suggest? What do even the ones Hanauer respects, like Zohran Mamdani, get wrong? We discussed all of this and more.
And check out his booklet on the subject, MARKETS BUILT FOR HUMANS, here. Unlike anything else these days, it’s free.
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