Billionaire Vinod Khosla has dealt with actual extortion before. So he should know better than to throw around the word "blackmail." But the venture capitalist insists that he's the real victim in his fight to close off public access to Martins Beach.

In a feature story from the October issue of San Francisco magazine, Farhad Manjoo—the Wall Street Journal’s new tech columnist—offers a forcefully optimistic vision of how the tech industry’s growth “can benefit us all.”

San Mateo County holds a population of over 700,000. More importantly, it holds the headquarters of Facebook. According to new government figures, the county earns more than anywhere else in America—$168,000 per year on average. Facebook employees have singlehandedly skewed the whole area.