Closing out my Croatia travel notes:
Dubrovnik is not memorable in the way great cities like Rome and Istanbul are. But it’s every bit as beautiful in the way beautiful cities like San Francisco and Lisbon are. The “city” of 40,000 is defined by its Old Town, a sunlit quarter encircled by massive stone ramparts on the edge of the Adriatic, now filled with shops, restaurants, and tour groups. First built by Greeks, later settled by Slavs, and developed by the Venetians, Dubrovnik never truly belonged to anyone in particular. Defended across centuries by mercenaries loyal only to the highest bidder, it traded hands repeatedly until history largely passed it by. Its modern resurrection came when an HBO crew arrived, filling the historical vacuum with the mythical lore of King’s Landing. The city was suddenly conferred global prestige overnight.
There is a certain manufactured element to Dubrovnik’s status and its newfound wealth and that got me thinking about a couple of articles I read recently, one in The Wall Street Journal and another in The Economist.
The Age of Millionaires
America has three million individuals worth at least a million dollars each, and collectively worth 65 trillion dollars. They are not your celebrity founders. Rather, they are your neighborhood veterinarian who expanded his office to a regional network. Or an HVAC contractor whose ubiquitous trucks you see everywhere. Ordinary people whose unglamorous businesses are woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The Wall Street Journal has dubbed this “the Age of Millionaires.” There have never been more of them in America. The number of Americans worth more than a hundred million dollars has quadrupled in the last 25 years, far more than the handful of billionaires we hear about daily. They are the real rich in America. And yet, the American dream is fading. Or at least the faith in it is. Many doubt that the next generation will achieve lives better than their parents.
The secret to becoming rich in America has always been hidden in plain sight: Own a business. The correlation between elite SAT scores and wealth has been weak. Amid the panic over what AI will automate next, this reality may offer a clue: find an unglamorous business and drag it into the modern era. Whatever software gets built, we will still need seamless gutters, ambulances, plumbing, and logistics. Things will still need to be transported, installed, and repaired. AI may replace knowledge workers, but it will enrich the people who own the machines and the infrastructure.
Status-Death
If this is the Age of Millionaires, it is also the age of “Status Death,” per The Economist. If you are a rising star on Wall Street, you may be suddenly dismayed to find your peers making triple your carry in frontier AI labs. The rat race has reached an unbearable pitch. The biggest winners of the knowledge economy are feeling abruptly “status-mugged.” They fear they are sinking fast. Universities and newspapers once conferred prestige. They no longer do so. Yet, the modern worker is hopelessly status-obsessed. Even bosses of giant companies find time to post on LinkedIn and X. Literally everyone is obsessed with their relative standing, not just in their firm, but in the world at large. An intricate currency of fictitious titles has flooded the market. Banks are the worst culprits, inflating fragile egos by minting hundreds of “Managing Directors” and “Vice Chairmen.”
Silicon Valley once prided itself on being egalitarian and classless. Today, is there an industry whose workers fear status-death more? A handful of scruffy software coders with unkempt hair got lucky and find themselves at the epicenter ironically dubbed “The Frontier,” claiming god-like powers, and others left on the periphery, fearful of the snake swallowing its own tail.
Misunderstanding the power of status has got to rank as the AI-tech-bros’ biggest failure so far. We don’t fear AI killing us all. An earthquake or a tsunami could do that to us in an instant. We fear the demotion to irrelevance. A species wide status-death in which we are relegated to lower than the machines we operate. That wound stings far deeper.
I grew up in 1970s India, where status wasn’t measured by where you studied or how much money you had. Sure, those were nice but real status was measured by who you KNEW. It was the logical outcome of a corrupt system where talent and merit meant little. It’s happening here in America in 2026. President Trump is the grim reaper of status-death. He has attacked individuals, universities, media and other institutions into oblivion. And he has replaced old status with a new one: access to the White House. The logic of corruption is closely tied to the logic of status-death. The former owes it strength to the latter.
Maybe this is just a spur to greater things. The loss of old status often forces us to build something new. There is a nauseating sense today that we have arrived late to a party that is winding down. Maybe that’s the push we need to start our own.
It is, as ever, the best of times. And arguably the worst of times.
Have a good week ahead.
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