Put another way, anybody who matters in the consumer world is for Apple. Young Democrats (millennials with college degrees) didn’t just inherit the Earth, they conquered it, led by engineering grads from MIT and Harvard dropouts. They are growing their income, spending it irrationally, as young people do, and have a facility with technology that makes them influential and important to business. 4 They sided with Apple, as the firm embodies their own maverick, antiestablishment, progressive ideals—and conveniently ignored the fact that Steve Jobs gave nothing to charity, almost exclusively hired middle-aged white guys, and was an awful person.

As a species, we are weaker and slower than a lot of our competitors. Our developed brain is our competitive differentiation. Empathy is what makes us more human. The explosion in images distributed on social media platforms has led to more empathy, which should make us less likely to gas children, or at least inspire us to hunt down those who do these things. It’s common knowledge that countries that trade with one another are less likely to go to war with one another. As deaths from violence continue to decrease (and they are decreasing), I believe we will discover that one of the causes for the decrease is more people feeling closer to … more people. 12

Amazon has also effectively conspired with half a billion consumers to use algorithms to starch the margin brands used to garner and deliver those savings to their ally, consumers. A retailer leveraging its power to grow a higher-margin private label is not new. We’ve just never seen anybody this good at it. Just as U.S. allies were “shocked” we were listening in on world leaders’ phone calls, they all knew we spied on each other. What pissed them off is how much better we, the United States, are at it. This alliance between Amazon, consumer, and algorithms gives consumers enormous value, and Amazon’s resultant (blistering) growth garners hundreds of billions in shareholder value for employees and investors. As consumers we benefit enormously from a relationship with the most powerful allies you could ever have on your side. As citizens, wage earners, and competitors, we know we are being abused but just can’t break up with the hot girl.

First, I say something in my talks. I highlight that Apple is the largest tax avoider in the world because lawmakers treat it like the hot girl on campus—if she pays a little attention to them, they swoon and are willing to enter into an abusive relationship. I say that Uber is fomenting an ethos in business that’s terrible for society. Four thousand Uber employees and their investors will split $80 billion (or more) as the 1,600,000 drivers working for Uber will see their wages crash to a level that makes them the working poor. We used to admire firms that created hundreds of thousands of middle-and upper-class jobs; now our heroes are firms that produce a dozen lords and hundreds of thousands of serfs.

As such, Alibaba carries a lot of water on its path to global domination. First, there is no historical precedent for a consumer brand emerging from China. The world is used to global brands from the United States and Europe, and more recently from Japan and South Korea, but not from China. Chinese firms face associations (legitimate or not) of labor exploitation, counterfeit goods, patent infringement, and governmental interference. Those characteristics are inconsistent with the Western values that underpin aspirational brands. And it hasn’t helped that Alibaba’s early reputation was tainted by claims that many of its small retailers were disreputable.

In sum, the parent brand “China” provides an unwelcome halo of “We may not be cool, but we are corrupt.” In high school, the “Bad Boy” who was also lame did not get laid.

Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent . Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don’t have to love it, just don’t hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.