Barrett Brown

I quit The Atlantic having raised 0 dollars because I felt it was inappropriate to raise money while working for another magazine -- others have made different choices but that was mine. Emergent Ventures, which is run by Tyler Cowen, exists to empower young people who think they can do big things. Tyler gave me a grant of $100,000 from this fund to build @TheArgumentMag. I then raised $4 million from an array of investors with various backgrounds and interests to build a liberal magazine where people could debate big questions. Zach, who has recieved direct or indirect funding from the founder of eBay, Charles Koch, Exxonmobil, Chevron, BP, JP Morgan Chase, AWS, Meta, and Google, is, I suppose, telling on himself about the nature and origin of his views. Personally, I think Zach came by his flawed viewpoint honestly but if you follow his logic he's an agent of Big Oil and Big Tech. I find it galling when those who have been funded by tech billionaires and the failsons of the wealthy have the temerity to cast stones at anyone else for trying to make something of themselves despite not having access to institutional wealth. Perhaps if I had been born the daughter of a billionaire and devoted myself to the cause of making the left historically unpopular, I would have Zach's respect. Alas, I think I'll live without it.