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Chasing Greatness - by Jihad Esmail - Native

nativestudio.substack.com · 1,129 words · saved by 1 readers

What’s the right way to be great?

Let me tell you a little about how last year went for me. I began 2025 with a short piece called “Markets and Morality” that set the tone for my thinking throughout the year. I argued that markets depend on moral foundations they can’t generate themselves. Without people who believe in something beyond profit, capitalism corrodes into pure extraction. Soon after I published it, Timothée Chalamet’s SAG speech went viral—”I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” he said, “I know people don’t usually talk like that”—and outside of tech circles, I was surprised to see people calling him arrogant.…

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