Time & Perspective Quote by Esther Dyson

Disgust is doing double duty here: it’s a moral judgment and a power map. Esther Dyson isn’t offering a dreamy civics lesson; she’s admitting a reluctant conversion. She’s seen “disgusting excess” in two temples Americans love to contrast - the private sector’s greed and Washington’s corruption - and she refuses to pretend one is uniquely rotten. That symmetry matters. It punctures the comforting myth that markets are clean while government is filthy, or vice versa. Dyson’s point is that both are incentive machines, and both will overindulge when no one’s watching.

Then she pivots to the real message: “Washington matters.” The phrasing is blunt, almost annoyed, like someone reporting an inconvenient fact. The subtext is practical rather than pious: you can hate the spectacle and still be governed by it. In telecom, that’s not abstract. Telecom is built on scarce resources (spectrum), gatekeeping infrastructure (rights-of-way), and rules that decide who can connect, at what price, and under what standards. Regulation isn’t a side quest; it’s the terrain.

Dyson’s intent reads like advice to tech and business leaders who cosplay as apolitical innovators: stop pretending you can “disrupt” your way around policy. If your product touches networks, you’re already in politics, whether you show up or not. The cynicism isn’t despairing; it’s strategic. Disgust doesn’t absolve you from engagement. It just tells you the stakes are real.