The Dubrovnik Interviews: Marc Andreessen
niccolo.substack.com
niccolo.substack.com
I find this thesis enormously compelling and largely optimistic. I predict that we -- the West -- are going to WEIRDify the entire world, within the next 50 years, the next two generations. We will do this not by converting non-WEIRD people to WEIRD, but by getting their kids. Their kids, and their kids' kids, are going to grow up on the Internet at least as much as they grow up in the real world, and the pull of WEIRD culture will overwhelm all existing non-WEIRD cultures. I realize this is a very strong claim, but this process is already underway; at this point I think it's inevitable.
I think he is about 5 years behind on this. While WEIRD culture has definitely been influential worldwide since ~the collapse of the USSR, I think it has reached its local peak. American culture is increasingly seen as something entertaining or strange, not as an aspirational role model. Democracy is losing its prestige and other nation states are starting to construct their own Great Firewalls to keep WEIRD out.
Instead, I think we will see something more akin to the Middle Ages. Distributed authorities and sources of power, each with its own internally developing cultures. There will be connections between them, but not the universalizing homogenization he claims.
Just my opinion as an American that has been living abroad for the last ~6 years.
Anyway as a parent of 11 and 13 year olds this is the vibe I get. They are much more familiar with memes and internet "things" than anything I would call 'traditional' culture in my country (Finland). Of course we are in the west, so not sure what the situation is elsewhere. But it sure looks like getting more WEIRD (I mean rural folk not speaking english creating youtube channels to present their traditions to a global audience - how can you hold it back (unless you are a large authoritarian nation state).
Andreessen’s mistake seems similar to the one pundits made about China in the 80s and 90s. “Once they adopt markets and our communications technology, they’ll inevitably think like us.”
There will be influence of the West for a while, but I think other countries are using these mediums also to push their own thought simultaneously. I have watched more spanish TV shows via netflix that I ever would if there was only cable (for example)
This is true.
But the USA isn't the only WEIRD nation.
Other WEIRD nations think of the USA as over its zenith too.
I live in Hong Kong when up to recently I found people Americanized, at least per my definition (Im French, I dislike Americanization): but since Trump and the protest, it seems this american influence made people more violent, enraged, nationalist and totally counter productive.
We were able to compete quite a lot in the world before, but now we have to be tamed by the country because we went too far in the "violent uprising / get freedom with weapon" bullcrap american culture seem to promote here. There's a net negative in following western tactics in asian contexts which I think young people forgot, while elder raise their hands at the sky lamenting the years of compromise, discussion and cross border exchange they patiently built around the city.
For instance, the story about the US's fear of the Japanese owning the flat screen tech in the 90's.
and...
"Total foreign imports are only about 11% of American consumption, and Chinese imports are 3%."
"We've lived in a cultural and intellectual space just as much as we've lived in a physical space for thousands of years."
much like the internet itself, you gotta read through lots of hay to find those golden needles.
The comments from folks about how bad the interview was, probably stopped reading after the first couple of paragraphs and missed the meat of the interview.
What sort of evidence does he cite for those numbers?
The denominator in a percentage matters. Once you take out housing, food, fuel, insurance, education, etc. -- how much of our remaining expenditures are goods (mostly) made in China?
While less than 3% of my household expenditures are electronic goods, the vast majority of those goods are made in China -- this despite a concerted effort to buy domestic products.
You seem to have forgotten the core expenditures of a household: Shelter, Food, Personal Care and Entertainment.
Very little in there is coming from China. Certainly not food and most likely basic goods like stationery, toys, electronics, furniture and clothes. Seems reasonable to think that chinese goods fit the 3% figure based on the expenditure in those categories.
Unless he is using these numbers to suggest we need to prioritize driving down land prices and rentier practices etc more than worrying about trade imbalance. But this certainly does not seem like his intent.
At any rate, the numbers 11% and 3% are as fictional as the Taylor Lorenz quote but the amount of skepticism differs greatly. This hints more of ideology based beliefs than fact based.
so music, movies, television, video games, internet, cellphones plans, healthcare, schooling, food, gas, sporting events are all included in this equation. So importing Chinese goods isn't that much money when factoring the entire US consumption. That's a novel idea, that I never thought about before reading that article.
They literally spend paragraphs saying “retard” as much as possible. Total edgelord stuff.
At some point a metric doesn't really make any sense anymore.
I'm not sure why Andreeseen would associate publicly with someone like that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Social_Republic#In_p...
> Two of your latest investments are in highly successful ventures: Substack and Clubhouse.
Yeah, citation needed on that one.
He means brands. And that says enough about the intellectual depth of the interviewing.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale...
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1358463935771516928?la...
Dunno who this guy is (Nicollo) or why should care but can we stop sharing these lame ass substack newsletters like they're decent content? They're newsletters silo'd away so these people and their readers can stay hidden away from the rest of us.