Marc Andreessen Is Wrong About Everything
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
if you run with this attitude, it sort of destroys society. Everyone is too focused on being better than everyone else. It essentially sacrifices culture on the altar of economic growth
And I seriously think this GDP-worshipping attitude is outdated. Net economic output means very little if people like horowitz come in and steal most of it for themselves
A much better metric would be life expectancy, or average level of educational attainment. Imo instead of prioritizing GDP at the expense of everything else, we should prioritize having a functioning society where people are happy, healthy, and the system is sustainable
I think that's a good start. Perhaps it's a combination of life expectancy, sustainable birthrate, and some sort of quality of life measurement.
Basically, measuring health, society health, and happiness.
If we want to do that though we still need merit, ambition, striving, achievement, and greatness.
We will die to heat death before anyone in the current ruling class is able to measure merit, much less striving, achievement, and greatness.
Thankfully educational attainment is also way up
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literate-and-illiterate-w...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-having-attaine...
[1] https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/why-cant-our-tech-billionai...
> Economic inequality does not solve itself. Markets are not perfect, self-correcting mechanisms. At one point, Andreessen writes “The market naturally disciplines (…) Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.” I take this as evidence that he doesn’t read any actual economists. One could make an argument that the 90s techno-optimists did not yet know any better (we were just trying global capitalism for the first time, maybe it’d work great!). But, for a Silicon Valley set that likes to pretend at being hardcore Bayesian rationalists, there is something downright comical about how they have managed, across the past thirty years, not to update a single one of their priors.
The best I can say of this piece is that it made me aware of the existence of this manifesto. I don't think I'll be able to sleep without finding and reading it.
People literally don't read articles anymore. They just upvoted based on the title (and if they agree with it)
Maybe I will write badly on why my project will fail, encouraging rubberneckers...
It'll do a lot better since HN readers now just upvoted based on the title without looking at the article.
Been my observation at least as I've noticed a steady drop in HN quality and more politics BS on the front page.
Pretty clear strawman starting at the third paragraph. I'm sure we could dig up many more.
This article is just a snarky rant. Embarassing.
The manifesto starts with this as a defining motif. Growth is life, no-growth is death. Homeostasis be damned!
I'll raise a strawman of my own: pretty indicative to see one of the co-authors of the Fascist Manifesto listed in Andreessen's list of "patron saints".
Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.
We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being.
We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.”
...
Our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.
It's all in for unlimited growth, unlimited consumption, unlimited population, zero regulation, magic free market will fix things.
You can argue for or against that vision, but you can't claim that the above is not his manifesto.
You may benefit from reading about what straw man arguments are before commenting further.
You also might benefit from further education.
I'd strongly suggest you start with reading the full manifesto and not rely on technical point scoring on the basis of short quotes.
Hint: All I have to do to prove the rebuttal relies on a straw man is to show that it mischaracterized or meaningfully distorts the ideas in the manifesto. I have done that.
That's definitely the model we should be aiming for.
It doesn't actually demonstrate how Marc is wrong about anything, it's sort off thought as a given I suppose.
All it does it just amplifies my general distaste for so called "journalists".
In this case the writer is distorting what Andreesson wrote in order to attack it. Here's an example:
"...it’s part of a broader movement that seeks to take all the guardrails off of technological development and push forward with “progress,” whatever the cost may be."
One thing I can say with almost 100% certainty - even though I have not read the manifesto -- is that Andreesson would never make such a stupid argument. Only an idiot would make such a dumb and absolutist argument, and only a politician or other dishonest person would try to assign such a dumb argument to her ideological opponent.
I've no doubt that readers of gizmodo, big government socialists, and many of their fellow travelers found this piece and it's writer to be a fresh new voice for the deep state and managerial classes. But I'm underwhelmed.
Just go read the damn thing, friend. Sheesh.
I have since read the manifesto and while it was always obvious even without reading the manifesto that the author of this piece distorted it, I can now say for sure that he distorted it.
It's a straw man.
Everyone in heaven is an Accelerationist these days. I like to think Sam gave up his crusade and went sailing with Jan and Renfrew.
Society really should have a reasoned and thought through discussion on the impacts of AI specifically and technology generally. The author is not helping.
And obviously, if there are some things that are better delivered as tax-funded government-provided services, there are others. Where you draw that line is arguable. But it's definitely not at "markets are universally better for everything". Because Fire Service.
[0] and outside the USA, we think like this about healthcare too, but it's less obviously simple and straightforward.
Three fire trucks is unnecessary (and inefficient). Wasting time arguing about pricing is counter-productive. If all my stuff is burning then it's reasonable to assume that any savings I might get from a better price is going to be outweighed by the extra damage done in the time it takes to agree the price.
Damn. Now I must read it immediately.
"We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy." - is what I'm paraphrasing, and the first sentence in that section.
but there's more:
"Markets prevent monopolies and cartels." - provably wrong. Anti-trust regulations are needed to interfere in markets to prevent monopolies and cartels.
"We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes." - see Fire Service for counter-argument
"We believe there is no conflict between capitalist profits and a social welfare system that protects the vulnerable. " - laughably wrong in the face of US healthcare vs everywhere else in the world
"We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us." - again, Fire Service
I do enjoy the byline!
However, the clue was the use of 'proletariat' which is the wage-earning class while 'bourgeoisie' would be the class which owns the means to production, in a Marxist context.
Though he's not really rentier, either--he's more like meta-rentier, and probably closer to aristocracy (though I don't know marks isn't well enough to know if he had that as a separate group)
Its the same class that became the capitalist ruling class; just prior to the effective displacement of the titled nobility as a center of power as a distinct class the bourgeoisie was a relatively narrow elite that was the middle class between the titled nobility and the peasantry, in much the same way that the petit bourgeoisie under capitalism is a relatively narrow elite when looking at society as a whole, but still the “middle class” between the haut bourgeois pure/major capitalist and the wage-labor-dependent proletariat.
"We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life."
Lower prices are always nice, sure, that’s true. But it’s also true that totally unfettered capitalism of the kind Andreessen envisions does not lead to falling prices. Actually, one of the best ways to lower prices on goods (some of them, at least) is to subsidize them through public funding.
I hate articles like this, because I want to defend folks like Andreessen like I want a hole on my head, but here I am!
That also gives the entire thing accidentally a completely retrofuturistic tone. It's ironic that a movement if you can call it that which claims to be aligned with the future, has adopted the tone and imagery of a 20th century World Fair.
[1]https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manif...
Tone aside, these documents are pretty different in what they’re advocating for. There’s a shared looking toward the future but I read futurism as a desire for violent overthrow of the past.
> We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom.
> We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath
> We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength.
> We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
Even the "we .." rhetoric is weirdly similar. But the broader point is really the marriage of technological modernity with a sort of reactionary cultural attitude. The essay The Californian ideology even noticed this a few decades ago. And as far as militarism is concerned, it is noteworthy that this manifesto comes at a time when people seem pretty eager to advocate fusion of the defense sector and tech. This is quite different from the futurism of say, Sergey Brin at early Google, quite a bit darker.
The real danger is not the warmed up trickle-down deregulation shite. That is nothing new and already a cause of current problems. It's that it's in furtherance of a techno-authoritarian fascist cult of the twitter poisoned. God knows where that will take us but given the vast wealth and power of the people losing their minds, it's a greater threat to democracy than Q.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
Have you never met anyone who thinks they're "lucky?" Whether they are the big lotto winners or "just missed it" you constantly hear from them how "lucky" they are.
Past performance does not indicate future performance goes several times stronger for luck.
Yeah, I was drunk and bitter about a guy who was at the right place and the right time and sold out and is a bazilionaire. But Netscape's success really was only in making him and others rich. Ning failed too.
No longer drunk and trying to be less bitter but I remain unimpressed.
Thank you for the validation, for what it is ;-)
But also once you've got your first millions and network of investors, entrepreneurs, and talent then starting a new company is now in a pipeline that was predicated on the element of luck of the first success that started the pipeline.
The man pitched NFTs as a worthy investment vehicle, for crying out loud. That is a solid case of him being wrong, ergo, his advice should not be considered indisputable.
I don’t agree with everything in his manifesto, but I think he’s achieved more than enough for people to refrain from painting all of his success as pure luck.
If you disagree, make a counter argument!
It's not that all of it is pure luck -- it's that it was a significant factor. The dotcom bubble was awash with cash and the distribution of same was not exactly merit based. And a fair chunk was being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.
Going back to the OP title, perhaps its overly harsh but we can meet in the middle that his success is not a guarantee that he's a savant. The fact that he pushed NFTs tarnishes his reputation in my eyes.
Well if it addressed their fundamental insecurity, it might be an argument with at least some validity. Sadly, I suspect they'll remain insecure irrespective.
Ok, fair enough. I wouldn't pin any of these issues on "technology". I lay them at the feet of "businesses" specifically operating within a capitalist landscape. Unfortunately "technology" is tightly coupled to "businesses" in the Western world and I don't think that removing constraints on the latter will benefit anyone except, you know... rich people.
"We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward. Comparative advantage increases specialization and trade. Prices fall, freeing up purchasing power, creating demand. Falling prices benefit everyone who buys goods and services, which is to say everyone. Human wants and needs are endless, and entrepreneurs continuously create new goods and services to satisfy those wants and needs, deploying unlimited numbers of people and machines in the process."
Calls for further doubling down on Capitalism given the dire inequality and our inability to meet even basic needs for so many people in our already rich society strikes me as the utmost expression of societal tone deaf.
Drivel.