Writing
Recent work
After a long hiatus, I’m back, starting with a new, free Substack, Agency Effects.
Get the latest post.
A recent take on the real estate industry in the Commercial Observer.
Click here to read the complete article.
The US Department of Justice has been prosecuting an antitrust war against the National Association of Realtors since the 1940s. Last year, NAR was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud consumers in a landmark case brought in Missouri. Most organizations would have been brought to their knees by the court’s assessment of $1.8 billion in damages and demands for decoupling commissions between buyer and seller brokers. Not NAR. Its culture is noted for its resistance to any innovation that might damage its monopoly status. Read the complete article.
Additional recent articles on real estate and its discontents:
Fixing Real Estate’s Fear of the Future
Call It What It Is: NAR’s Lowball Offer
Critical writing and Journalism
Why critical thinking is a marketing superpower
Critics don’t just evaluate quality, form, function—they identify systems. When I wrote about performance art and punk rock in the ’80s, I wasn’t reviewing art; I was documenting how that culture challenged institutional power. How it performs. How it gets us out of our seats. How it guides us to take or cede agency. Likewise, when I write about real estate today, I’m not complaining about brokers; I’m analyzing how information asymmetry protects incumbents from disruption and creates frictions that prevent consumers from inefficency and excessive costs.
That’s what makes critical thinking invaluable in product marketing: the ability to see the system, name the assumptions, and design interventions that shift power dynamics to customers and citizens.
Over 40 years, I’ve written 175+ articles for publications including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York, and many others as well as magazines I’ve edited, such as Samsung’s Digitall. (Read a complete copy of Samsung’s Digitall.) I’ve also written product marketing collateral, whitepapers, annual reports, and thought leadership for Time Warner, Disney, Samsung, and startups, including (of course) Homesy.
Explore 175+ articles across art, technology, and business (click here or on image.)
A few magazine layouts. Full articles (when linked) can be found in the database.
Click here for a searchable database of 175+ articles from 1980 to the present.
The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren
In 1990, Harper & Row Perennial Library in the US and Omnibus Press in the UK published my biography, The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren, of the manager of the Sex Pistols, BowWowWow, Adam Ant, Boy George, and the husband of fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood.
Read more about The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren and read the full book as a PDF.
