People thought the same in the guilded age: standard oil is too big, Edison and Westinghouse already have the electric market captured and have captured political power. It was a similar transformation in society. If all we do is follow the same playbook America did then we’d be in a better position that the current approach.

There are clear anti-trust mechanisms to prevent market capture and the emergence of asymmetric power. Go back and see how much nashing of teeth Lina Khan triggered in SV when she started to enforce antitrust law and then compare it to what the Pinkerton agency was doing in the transition from the guilded age to the progressive era.

There is a vocal segment of SV that wants the return of the guilded age. Marc Andreessen as said that explicitly. Those of us in SV that value free markets and recognize that the progressive era actually saved markets from their natural tendency to self destruct when winners capture markets and destroy competition that provides the incentive to innovate and drives the price setting function for efficiency.

But if you are an aspiring and ambitious founder in Silicon Valley, which side would you take? The Glided Age mentality, or the Progressive Age mentality? The VC playbook made it very clear that the role of startups, or at least the very successful startup, is explosive growth, expanding quickly, capturing a monopoly and its distribution. Even if you are thinking otherwise, soon you'll face the reality of Silicon Valley's VC growth machine.

In other words, the aspiring founders look at Google, Facebook, Tesla, etc. and think "how can I become one of them", not "how can I be different from them"? If you can find me examples of successful startups that think fundamentally different from those big techs, I'm very happy to be wrong and be corrected here.