Albert Wenger recently penned an interesting post about the “R” word.

It’s about health insurance and why redistribution is a toxic word in U.S. politics, but also why much of what we do as a society – from public roads to insurance – is actually about redistribution. What I like about the post is that he cuts through a lot of the noise and gets right at the crux of things.

Here’s part of his conclusion:

So what should you take away from this? There always is some element of redistribution to insurance – at a minimum ex post and generally also ex ante. The “why should I (usually some healthy person) pay for x (usually some payment for someone from a different demographic)” objection to health insurance is about redistribution. We should acknowledge this openly and not pretend that it is otherwise, because then we can move forward and say “you should, because that is your contribution to how our society works.”

The point of his post, which he reiterates in the comment section, is that “insurance is a commons more than it is a market.” Too much individual choice – for instance, rich people opting out because they don’t need it – actually weakens the system.

But you should really read his entire post. It’s good.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

I have largely avoided commenting on politics and Trump on this blog, but at this stage it is almost impossible to do that.

Donations are starting to pile up for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the tech community, and many others, begin to respond to Friday’s executive orders. Lyft announced a $1 million contribution to the non-profit group.

Today, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote: Make America Hate Again. And yesterday, his business partner Albert Wenger wrote: Misleading the World on Immigration.

At 6 AM this morning, Richard Florida started a tweet storm where he argued that “Trump’s immigration insanity” will fundamentally threaten the core of America’s innovation hegemony. 

(He also argued that Canada, and more specifically Toronto, serve to “gain substantially”, as there will no doubt be a doubling down on tolerance to attract the best talent from around the world.)

The Canadian tech community penned an open letter to reinforce the message that, here in Canada, diversity is our strength. This echoes similar messages from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mayor John Tory.

Mass protests have broken out at US airports (links to photos) spanning San Francisco to New York. 

And I am seeing folks from Toronto offer up their homes (publicly on Twitter) to anyone who might be stranded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the orders. Many have even tweeted out their phone numbers.

Everywhere I look this weekend I am seeing these sorts of messages. So while I could remain quiet, that doesn’t feel right. And that’s because what is happening is not right.

When I met with all of the lovely folks from Amsterdam last week, one of the things that I mentioned about intensification is that it is almost certainly a contributing factor towards innovation, agglomeration economies, and the overall startup ecosystem here Toronto. 

I don’t know to what extent, but I feel it happening. And there’s lots of research correlating urban density with innovation. 

The continued densification of Toronto means it is constantly becoming easier to schedule that morning coffee before going into the office or to pop into that meetup after work. And those sorts of things are hugely valuable in today’s economy.

I talked about a number of local startups in my presentation, including 500px, Wattpad and Wealthsimple. But I didn’t show any hard data. So I’d like to do that today. Below is a chart showing total venture funding (internet/software) and the number of deals (Seed to A/B/C/D) in Toronto since 2009:

It was taken from this Medium post. Supposedly this places us 12th in the world as far as startup cities go.

Again, who knows how much of this venture growth has been helped along by intensification. After all: “Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl.” But I would bet money that it’s moving the needle in the right direction.

Here is another relevant post by venture capitalist Albert Wenger where he talks about the great startup ecosystem that Toronto is growing. He posted it earlier today.

All of this is important because some of these deals will spawn big companies. And those companies will the hire lots of people, as well as consume space. 

Real estate developers like to talk about how they create jobs. And we do. But we can’t have a city of people just building buildings. People and businesses need to fill that space and that hinges on entrepreneurs who are willing to go out there and forge something new for themselves. Fortunately, Toronto seems to have a growing number of those kinds of people.