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Comment by jonathanberger | Hacker News Reader

At this point in the essay, Andreessen is wondering aloud why more building hasn't happened in the United States to solve problems in fields like education, manufacturing, and transportation.

He asks what the reasons could be, and lists several rejecting each of them. One reason that he rejects for why more building hasn't happened is capitalism.

Andreessen thinks capitalism can't be the reason for us not building because the fields he mentions are places where it's profitable ("highly lucrative") for businesses to operate. Replacing capitalism with another system (say communism) wouldn't solve our inability to build, in Andreessen's view.

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I don't disagree with his statement, but I disagree with his expectations. These systems are NOT ripe for capitalism. Capitalism is built to fulfill demand. There was never demand from the government for it to distribute cash, therefore they never built a system for it. There was never a real demand for a vaccine, so we never developed it.

Capitalism is why we're in this mess - we're valuing short-term gains over long-term/far-fetched/society-changing results - and a16z is part of that system. Sure, he's at the edge of that system, but I guarantee you he would not have invested in a coronavirus vaccine in mid-2019 when there was no market for one.

I would not say it's time to build. I would say it's time to change our system of motivation. Money does not, and will not ever, solve these problems BEFORE they become problems.

Indeed. Communist societies build less, and somehow also pollute more.

Citation needed. The USSR and PRC both went from agrarian societies to industrial powers in under 50 years.

You'd need to argue that they did it faster because of communism. In fact, China starting growing when opening up to markets. Oh and tens millions dead each. And the pollution & resource use is worse too. See https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Surprising-Learned-Resource...

No, that would be moving the goalposts. The GP post claimed that communist societies "produced less" (I made no claim about "polluted more," which the GP post also stated). I gave 2 examples showing very large countries that went from zero to world industrial power in 50 years. China is very near the top in world GDP right now. The USSR put both the first human and the first artificial satellite into space in that timeframe. Show me a capitalist country that's accomplished so much so fast.

The reason you are talking about growth over a 50 year span is because your basic capitalistic countries like the USA didn't get to play catch-up, because they were always riding the front edge of technological advancement.

Since the PRC's timespan was post-WWII, it's fair to compare them to the Asian tigers and Japan. It's easy to see which did better. Edit: Same goes if we're talking about "building more" rather than doing better.

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