Big Tech Ought to Step Up for Cities

Dynamic entrepreneurial companies have long been the drivers of America’s economic growth, and innovators like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs held up as heroes. But today, high-tech companies are increasingly cast as villains. Uber was recently thrown out of London; Airbnb has been criticized for taking housing off the market and driving up rents; and Google, Amazon, and Facebook are described by many as monopolies. In recent years, firms like these and the techies who work for them have come under fire for driving up housing prices and contributing to growing inequality—especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mounting anti-big-tech sentiments are also gaining strength in Washington, D.C. “We’ve got to start having a conversation in this country: How are we going to measure the success of the tech sector?” said Senator Cory Booker, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, this past summer. “Is it by its ability to create a small handful of billionaires, or the ability for us to create pro-democracy forces—empowering individuals, improving quality of life, improving financial security, expanding opportunity—the kind of things we want largely for democracy?”