We Don’t Deserve Builders
medium.com
medium.com
I think this is one of the most important points that is missing from the overall discussion about how to re-open the economy. A lot of what is happening now is happening because the people demand it.
This same idea explains the staying power of the TSA, ongoing NSA data collection, and the current administration's success curtailing immigration.
It's easy to blame the government and just assume a change in political party will solve the problem. But the only permanent solution to many issues is educating fellow citizens and teaching them how to think about them.
(Every nation gets the government it deserves.)
There is a concept of "sense of life" that I've found useful. Each person has a certain view of the world around them--its affected by their experiences, the ideas they are taught, and how they observe and act about reality.
Imagine if, in the aggregate, people have a positive sense of life--that is, they believe they are efficacious and can work to improve their lives, without fear that the universe is to get them. They will demand one kind of government. They won't stand for certain political leaders.
But if they hold the opposite sense of life--one dominated by fear (of others, of their ability to provide, of a universal evil)--they will demand an entirely different kind of government.
First, Watkins throws out examples of politicians who have very legitimate complaints which he fails to address. And BTW, none of those enumerated complaints prevent "building" -- they are fairly targeted at specific offenses or specific companies and are not relevant to build his point. These examples aren't likely to create a Venezuela-style problem (where the petro-state fired the expert oil business people and replaced them with cronies). Warren, Cruz, and Bernie (to a lesser extent) have specific complaints about the hybrid capitalist/socialist system we currently have in the USA.
Our average standard of living in the USA is remarkably high (we are at/near the highest point historically+globally of those hockey stick graphs). We are constantly told we are an "exceptional" nation and it makes us complacent.
We have become a nation of NIMBYs because we have seen the damage that bad "builders" choices can cause to us. Citizens of developed nations don't want industrial smoke stacks or Sriratcha factories on their block. They don't want the toxic land of semiconductor manufacturers near their parks. Our national psyche doesn't encourage our kids to aim to pick fruits in the vast fields alongside migrant workers. Building things with bits scales better than building with atoms and our society both aspires and rewards as such. Perhaps Andreessen should look inward at his own VC firm to see what types of businesses his investment portfolio incentivizes.
Andreessen's university example is strange. He fails to see that he specifically wants to replicate the "building" of top-tier Ivy League / research universities, but we have plenty of physical colleges and universities (maybe not enough, but far more than he admits). He actually wants to copy the quality of those elite universities, but that doesn't come with building -- that's about the quality of the learning experience.
Getting buy-in for CapEx is relatively easy; OpEx is terribly difficult. The US government spent the $0.5 trillion on the interstate highway system, but it is in disrepair because states are saddled with 10x-100x that cost in total maintenance/upkeep. If you run a {university, non-profit} and want a donation? Expect the donors to demand it be earmarked for something new and sexy (a new building, department, or char), but not for "normal operating expenses".The more of those initial CapEx projects you take on, the heavier the burden to sustain your upkeep.
My take is that we are the victims of our own success and this has slowed our ability to build. Our parents and grandparents had the ability to buy education and housing for much more affordable rates because (among many reasons) people used to be willing to buy tiny bungalows made of cheap materials the government cared enough about the future to fund universities. Our average standard of living is so high that we don't feel the urgency to work in a manual megafactory like a FoxConn iPhone factory. Each of us wants to have a car (or two) and a smartphone and plenty of time. Nobody wants to move to a run down rural factory town after the factory has already left. We aren't willing to move across state boundaries nearly as much as our forefathers. 1st/2nd generation immigrants are 2x+ more likely to create businesses as 3rd+ generation Americans. Our affluence has made us comfortable and risk-averse.