1,000 Pilots or 1 Platform?

A regenerative economic engine is only possible with the creation of a flywheel effect. You need people to take risks—to put in the sweat equity or investment before success is guaranteed—to set economic activity in motion. It’s about structure and capital flow, and using these flows to reward risk takers. But true abundance only comes when risk and value creation are distributed across a broader network—not just the first to leap.

Large entities benefit from economies of scale and can leverage network effects to grow exponentially. Profitability and scalability are essential to investability in the private sector. The public sector operates on a different calculus, not as easily translated into the financial markets, because social benefit is ultimately a political decision. How much homelessness is acceptable in an affluent society? How much should we invest in public infrastructure, education, and healthcare?

Here in the U.S.—a nation with 4% of the world’s population and 25% of its wealth—we defer to the private sector. Our model favors free enterprise as the superior growth engine. And to be fair, it’s delivered enormous wealth, a world-class university system, and robust nonprofit and philanthropic ecosystems that smooth out some of capitalism’s hard edges. It has also helped build a middle class capable of tempering the political extremes of rich and poor.

But this delicate balance only works when the federal government plays its part—serving as a mediator between markets and the public good. When it doesn't—and when public investment becomes a political weapon—the inherent weakness of the business model of the social sector is exposed. The entire model is built not to use public funding to compete against the private markets, yet public funding is what enables the private sector to generate tremendous value. When we blur the lines between the public and private sectors, and hold the public sector accountable to private sector efficiency and ROI, we are basically privatizing our civic infrastructure. If that is the case, our schools and healthcare institutions, our non-profits and community organizations, need to pivot. For too long, civic institutions have relied on tax-exempt status and public/philanthropic funding to sustain the safety net. There are risk takers in this space—but no financial reward. And worse, the billions in assets accumulated by these sectors are invested in private markets, rather than leveraged to advance their own social missions.

We need to use business capital structures for social benefit. The failure to build shared, scalable economic infrastructure may be one of the greatest missed opportunities of the past 50 years.

Outside of government, institutions of higher education, large nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations form the backbone of our public infrastructure. Their power lies in their balance sheets. When federated, they can access private markets in ways that mirror the public sector. Their assets, tax records, and cash flow can all be collateralized—and mobilized into an economic engine that reduces reliance on public dollars.

It's time for local communities to lead and show the larger institutions how to collaborate, and repurpose the markets for shared prosperity.

What this means, practically, is that small business owners, community organizations, intermediaries, and aggregators across ecosystems must learn how to work together—and ensure mutual growth. We've been trained to compete: for grants, clients, contracts, visibility and oxygen. When times get tough, we dig in, and hold onto what we have. When we get stuck in this scarcity mindset, we feel threatened by the success of others instead of embracing and celebrating our collective progress.

But everyone we know is sitting on assets—social, financial, intellectual. We just don’t know how to put our puzzle pieces together.

We don’t know how to create network effects, even when they’re within reach.

Multiply that missed opportunity a million times. That’s the cost of our fragmentation. That’s the weight of missing infrastructure. That’s the price of our current crisis of trust.

We don’t combine forces the way J.P. Morgan did when he consolidated U.S. Steel. Not the way Elon builds his interlocking empire. Not like Warren Buffett with his Berkshire Hathaway snowball.

Those models work because they build networked assets—self-reinforcing systems that grow stronger over time.

Meanwhile, we—the vast majority—are fragmented, focused on survival, caught in our egos, talking a good game but failing to come together and build something enduring.

Yes, I’m frustrated. Because we could be in a much stronger position.

We can create our own market. Our own flywheel.

But not without trust, and not without skin in the game.

We don’t need 1,000 pilots.

We need to commit to building one platform—together.