The Mail

Sam Altman, the tech wunderkind profiled by Tad Friend, is quoted as saying, “Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail” (“Adding a Zero,” October 10th). Doomsday prediction aside, democracy is a tool that people use to make decisions together. You can find democracy at your local PTA, at community meetings and block parties—wherever people are free to decide among themselves what happens next. To suggest that democracy relies on economic growth to exist is to forget that social change is created not by big companies backed by venture capitalists but by actual human beings.