As a common rule, any essay that features the one-sentence paragraph “I’m right here to deliver the excellent news” is written by somebody who needs to take your cash, your vote, or your soul. So far as I do know, Marc Andreessen, the browser pioneer and cofounder of powerhouse VC agency Andreessen Horowitz, isn’t working for workplace. However the Techno-Optimist manifesto he posted this week (it’s a habit with him) is unquestionably bullish on inflating his already bloated pockets—and narrowing the broad arc of human existence with a relentless pursuit of latest and even dangerous know-how.
Andreessen’s bolt from late-stage capitalism’s Mount Olympus—Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Highway—landed this week to a combination of kudos and outrage. He posits that know-how is the important thing driver of human wealth and happiness. I’ve no drawback with that. In reality, I too am a techno-optimist—or at the least I used to be earlier than I learn this essay, which attaches poisonous baggage to the time period. It’s fairly darn apparent that issues like air-conditioning, the web, rocket ships, and electrical mild are safely within the “win” column. As we enter the age of AI, I’m on the aspect that thinks that the advantages are effectively price pursuing, even when it requires vigilance to make sure that the results received’t be disastrous.
However Andreessen’s screed isn’t nearly how nice it’s that we people are a tool-building bunch. It’s additionally an over-the-top declaration of humanity’s future as a tech-empowered tremendous species—Ayn Rand resurrected as a Substack writer. “Expertise have to be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to pressure them to bow earlier than man,” he writes. “We consider that we’re, have been, and can at all times be the masters of know-how, not mastered by know-how. Sufferer mentality is a curse in each area of life, together with in our relationship with know-how—each pointless and self-defeating. We’re not victims, we’re conquerors.” (The italics are his.) If this essay had a soundtrack it might be Wagner’s “Journey of the Valkyries.” Andreessen may need missed out on making an early funding in Uber, however he’s all-in on the Übermensch. He even cites Friedrich Nietzsche as certainly one of his “Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism.”
Maybe a greater title for this essay could be “The Techno-Billionaire Manifesto,” because it makes an attempt to justify not solely an unquestioning pursuit of know-how however the late-stage capitalism that gives out-of-whack rewards for the system’s winners—like Andreessen. In his argument, the market-based “Techno Capital Machine” is the infallible generator of benefit and manufacturing. By no means thoughts the astonishing earnings inequality that has dragged the world down and fomented harmful political unrest. Cash, proclaims Andreessen, is the one motivator able to producing the enormous technological leaps that advance humanity. This can be information to the inventors of the web, who had been civil servants and educational geeks with zero revenue motive. In reality, for a few years they had been adamantly against any commercialization in anyway.
Andreessen does proclaim that he opposes monopolies and regulatory seize. Possibly he believed that when his browser firm Netscape was buried by Microsoft. However that’s a hole declaration from somebody who’s sat on the board of Fb, now Meta, for 15 years. I’d like to peek on the minutes to see how typically he has inveighed in opposition to monopoly and lobbying in board conferences.
Andreessen argues that superior know-how creates abundance that lifts all people. “We consider there isn’t any battle between capitalist income and a social welfare system that protects the weak,” he writes. However although he may not understand it from his home in Atherton, California—the nation’s richest zip code—the nation he lives in presents a counterargument. Whereas the US has essentially the most superior know-how on the earth, the life expectancy of its residents has dropped. Certainly he is aware of of the homelessness drawback in America’s cities, most obvious in close by San Francisco? He may even have learn that the overwhelming majority of common People can’t afford to buy a home, and that 40 p.c would struggle to cover an surprising $400 expense. The Techno-Capital machine doesn’t appear to be working for them. However don’t fear—Andreessen cites an Andy Warhol quote celebrating how effectively our system works as a result of poor individuals and wealthy individuals alike can get pleasure from a Coca-Cola. Let ’em drink sugar water!
