In an ideal world, blitzscaling organizations would embody all the virtues that society might desire from its businesses—a diverse and inclusive workforce, a strong sense of responsibility to shareholders and stakeholders, an ample supply of well-paying jobs, and executives who serve as moral role models and leaders of society. The unfortunate truth is that for all the good that blitzscaling produces, blitzscaling organizations can be guilty of the same sins committed by other types of companies, and face some inherent challenges even when trying to behave responsibly.

Skeptics might argue that the kind of scale that blitzscaling produces is inherently bad, and that society should simply prevent companies from growing too big. Testifying before Congress in 1911, future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis argued, “I think we are in a position, after the experience of the last twenty years, to state two things: In the first place, that a corporation may well be too large to be the most efficient instrument of production and of distribution, and, in the second place, whether it has exceeded the point of greatest economic efficiency or not, it may be too large to be tolerated among the people who desire to be free.”

We disagree with this position on the harmfulness of scale in today’s world. First, Brandeis was speaking during the era of “trusts,” when figures like J. P. Morgan consolidated American industry into powerful, giant companies like U.S. Steel. But we believe that today’s blitzscalers are qualitatively different than Gilded Age trusts. Those trusts held virtual monopolies over the supply of key physical resources like steel and oil. Consumers had no alternatives and were forced to do business with them. In contrast, companies like Apple and Amazon have to win their customers every day, and if they fail to do so, those consumers can simply buy Dell laptops and order books from Barnes & Noble.

Second, we believe that while big can sometimes be bad, big can also be great. Scale creates dominant companies, but scale also creates enormous value. The smartphones we love, for example, are mass-market consumer electronics that depend on economies of scale. While Brandeis is right that society needs to prevent monopolies that block technology or business innovation in the way that the old AT&T monopoly suppressed the progress of telecommunications, today’s largest companies have actually enabled innovation and the creation of even more value by providing a platform for everything from business productivity software (Slack) to entertainment (Netflix). Even the concentration of capital that scale has produced isn’t all bad; it has allowed blitzscalers to tackle “moonshots” like space travel (SpaceX) and autonomous vehicles (Google’s Waymo) that may dramatically improve our lives.

Responsible blitzscaling matters because successful blitzscalers often reach a point where they are more than just a business; they actually affect the fabric of the society in which they operate. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have changed how we consume information and how we communicate. Marketplaces like Alibaba and eBay provide economic opportunity—some dedicated sellers even rely on them for their livelihoods. Sharing economy services like Airbnb can bring more tourism and diversity into the cities in which they operate. And Amazon is changing the entire retail industry, which affects everyone. As Spider-Man teaches us, with great power comes great responsibility.

Applying this analysis shows that a number of common fears about blitzscaling are actually nonsystemic risks. For example, one common fear is that blitzscaling will produce an oligarchy of powerful technology executives with too much power over our government and our society. But even today, with technology firms dominating the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies, traditional business moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers have had a far greater influence over public policy than tech leaders such as Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, or Mark Zuckerberg.