Weekend edition—IPO cash-out, Trump opera, strawberry bots

The business strategy that will land Uber on the NYSE hinges on a key element: staggering sums of venture capital money. These investments let Uber and similar tech startups collect users by undercharging them. That’s great for well-off city-dwellers, who have benefitted from deep discounts on everything from pet-sitting to grocery shopping and laundry delivery to watermelon apportionment. [Quartz Daily Brief]( Sponsored by Good morning, Quartz readers! The business strategy that will land Uber on the NYSE hinges on a key element: staggering sums of venture capital money. These investments let Uber and similar tech startups collect users by undercharging them. That’s great for well-off city-dwellers, who have benefitted from deep discounts on everything from [pet-sitting]( to [grocery shopping]( and [laundry delivery]( to [watermelon apportionment](. But beyond contributing to the VC hipster-subsidy complex, the Uber IPO reflects a larger problem besetting the US economy. Silicon Valley-led entrepreneurship is supposed to be the engine of American innovation and future prosperity. Instead, the VC industry and the cash-burning startups it favors waste money and human capital—resources the rest of America needs to grow. Mind you, a few startups dominate their industry because they sell customers an entirely new service, as with Facebook and (arguably) Airbnb. Others’ success comes from an innovative breakthrough that lets them provide a service more efficiently than competitors—Netflix, for example. Most of the current crop of tech startups, however, thrive only because Silicon Valley funding lets them undercut competitors. The market power bought by VC cash lets them thrust costs on local businesses, which must slash prices to compete, with workers forced to accept less money and more risk. Why would VCs bet so much on startups without a sustainable competitive edge? Because there’s big money in selling people tales of the future according to Silicon Valley—thanks to the IPO. Public listings are the ultimate way VC funds cash out, unloading (overpriced) shares on herd-following retail investors. A few quarters later, when the now-public company fails to report a profit (again), stock prices snap back to reality—sticking the little-guy investors with the losses. When financial manias end, wealth vanishes. It’s not all bad, though. Throughout history, they have also left behind innovations that revolutionized the economy—America’s railway network, for instance, or the late 1990s fiber-optic cable network. This bubble, too, shall pop. Surely, given the unprecedented scale of VC investment and Valley ingenuity, its bursting will reveal groundbreaking new technologies. Surely something more than how to feed, clothe, and transport urban hipsters. Surely. —Gwynn Guilford Sponsor content by Harvard Business School Could your company’s finances be managed better? A leader with financial expertise can set realistic goals, fund competitive salaries, and strengthen their company’s bottom line. This HBS program teaches executives how to put the fundamentals of finance to work. [See what you could learn](. Five things on Quartz we especially liked FEMA put hurricane survivors’ data at risk. After Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey, and the California wildfires, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency improperly shared disaster survivors’ banking data and other personal information with a government contractor. In a Quartz scoop revealing previously redacted information, [Dave Gershgorn identified]( the contractor as CLC Lodging, whose sister company Stored Value Solutions had been hacked while CLC stored that private data. A graphic deception. In Quartz at Work, [Lila MacLellan reports]( on new research unraveling the origins of one of the world’s most famous infographics, Maslow’s pyramid. Its emergence is traced to a misinterpretation of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s work, with far-reaching consequences, as the pyramid all but invites elites to dismiss the higher-order needs of everyone else. How Trump can save Cantonese opera. Trump on Show, opening in Hong Kong, tells the story of Trump and Mao Zedong as two men whose destinies are intertwined. As [Vivienne Chow explains]( the story is an intriguing mix of history, fantasy, geopolitics, culture, and numerology. The playwright, a former feng shui master, hopes it will convince contemporary audiences that this ancient art form is as relevant and compelling as ever. Don’t search for meaning in your job. Burnout and overwork are dominating the discourse about work, so [Cassie Werber went looking]( for a way to combat them. We humans need to feel that our situation has meaning. But rather than toiling in the hope of uncovering our purpose, we must claim our power to create it. Establishing the “because” behind your actions can lead to a deep sense of freedom. Should pregnant women ever be sent to prison? Siwatu-Salama Ra was sent to Michigan’s overflowing prison when she was six months pregnant. [Zoë Schlanger writes]( of Ra’s experience, noting that the US incarcerates more women than any other country, with adverse effects on innocent children. In several states, women are shackled to a hospital bed while giving birth—but that’s not the only way being pregnant in prison is the trial of a lifetime. Five things elsewhere that made us smarter Paperwork from the future. Few people enjoy dealing with bureaucracy, but the forms we fill out reveal much about the society we live and work in. So what will official documents of the future look like? Rose Eveleth [explores this question in Slate](. One hypothetical form demands corporate managers justify hiring a human instead of using a robot, for example, while another asks patients where their brain should be uploaded in the event they die during surgery. Global warming bodes well for Pinkerton. In the years ahead, sea-level rise and extreme weather will fuel escalations in crime, political unrest, and resource conflict around the world. That spells opportunity for Pinkerton, a provider of corporate security that benefits from surge pricing during disasters. For the New York Times Magazine, Noah Gallagher Shannon profiles an increasingly data-driven company ramping up for [a world made more dangerous by climate change]( (paywall). “Alexa, is someone else listening to us?” The Amazon Echo smart speaker wakes upon hearing “Alexa,” the name of its virtual assistant that “is always getting smarter,” according to marketing materials. Helping Alexa better understand human speech are workers who listen to recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes. Sometimes they hear things those owners would no doubt prefer remain private, as Matt Day, Giles Turner, and Natalia Drozdiak [report for Bloomberg]( (paywall). Why private education is on the rise. Independent school enrollment has risen around the world—and not only, or even primarily, in rich countries. In [a special report for the Economist]( (paywall), Emma Duncan explains why: Incomes are rising as birth rates are falling; job opportunities favor the educated; education begets more education by preparing teachers; technological advancement means new skills are in demand. So investors, and big companies, are rushing in. Robots down on the farm. When it comes to harvesting wheat and corn, mechanization has long since replaced human pickers in modern farming. But that isn’t the case for collecting delicate fruit, a task often performed by immigrants. For the New Yorker, [John Seabrook examines]( efforts, some close to fruition, to replace laborers with AI-powered robots. Some strawberry varieties, he notes, are now bred specifically to be easier for robots to pick. Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, revealing paperwork, and discreet smart speakers to hi@qz.com. Join the next chapter of Quartz by[downloading our app]( and[becoming a member](. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Steve Mollman and Holly Ojalvo. Enjoying the Daily Brief? Forward it to a friend! They can [click here to sign up.]( If you click a link to an e-commerce site and make a purchase, we may receive a small cut of the revenue, which helps support our ambitious journalism. See [here]( for more information. To unsubscribe from the Quartz Daily Brief, [click here](.