I try not to respond to comments because I am an anxious person afraid of opening Pandora’s box BUT I’m glad you brought this up. First, thanks for the thought bubble. You raise a good point about a component of the essay I was going back and forth on for a while.

I had to cut it from the essay and now I’m rethinking this decision— I would say there’s this idea in enterprise management that private dollars are public dollars. In other words, private grants, corporate donors, and venture capital are all pools of money that could very well go towards public goods and services, local nonprofits, and mutual aid funds. Instead, these funders are caught in a rat race for the best return. So I’m not arguing that that one specific example of a non-alcoholic beer company is a problem but rather the entire system of “innovation” and “disruption” has become an endless pit where money is 50-75% wasted. Other examples of wasted funding include the hundred and one task managing apps, the Twitter clones, direct-to-consumer boot companies that make bad quality boots at high quality prices. I actually think Athletic Brewing is quite cool and didn’t mind giving them the free plug (albeit in a questionable light). So to reiterate, it’s not about one single company or app or designer. It’s about the culture that innovation has fostered and the economic repercussions that I could’ve done a better job including, explaining, and contextualizing. But I’m not opening Pandora’s box any more! No more replies from me!