Yglesias focused on attacking blind optimism, which makes sense.
Karpf is engaging in character attacks. It’s okay to not like Andreeson, not trying to say otherwise. But this essay reads more like a class warfare piece than a good argument for why techno optimism is bad. Hollowing out of the American middle class isn’t Google’s fault.
My read, anyway.
First off, the thing I really connected to with Karpf's piece was how this techno-optimist manifesto might have made sense in the mid 90s, but it seems baffling to write this with 30 years of hindsight. And as someone who was a techno-optimist in the mid 90s, I don't just see how you couldn't be at least moderately disillusioned with the promise of tech.
But to your point specifically, "Hollowing out of the American middle class isn’t Google’s fault" - yeah, it kinda is, at least partially. Tech isn't the only reason for the decline of the middle class, but the Internet specifically has made markets huge and is directly responsible for "winner take all" dynamics in these larger markets. There used to be "regional winners" in lots of different retail categories, for example, and thus there were many smaller and midsized cities with vibrant main streets where the money went back to local proprietors. Now most of that goes to Amazon (or Walmart before that, but Walmart is still tech).
Equating global companies with tech a reduction that dilutes it to meaninglessness. That’s like saying standard oil was a tech company.
With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about. Walmart famously invested a ton in their logistics management software, which was widely considered to have given them a huge edge over competitors. Here's one recent article I found that gives a good overview of the topic, https://www.elkner.net/static/UoPeople/LogisticsAndPlanning_.... One quote from that article (among many good ones): "In 1987 it completed the largest private satellite communication system in the United States at the time, linking all of the company's operating units with two-way voice, data and one-way video communication."
But, for one specific example, Google vacuumed up a huge amount of advertising dollars that used to support local journalism and advertising jobs. The death of local journalism has been written about many, many times, so no need to rehash that. I'm also not saying Google is "evil" for being a better advertising platform than local classifieds, but I'm just saying a natural consequence of this tech change is more concentration of wealth (small number of high paid Google employees but way less middle class newspaper and support jobs).
> What makes Andreesen’s 90’s retread so odd is the way he frames it as a challenge to the status quo. Technological optimism has been the dominant paradigm throughout my adult life.
> The most powerful people in the world (people like Andreessen!) are optimists. And therein lies the problem: Look around. Their optimism has not helped matters much.
> The Internet isn’t just the realm of the future anymore. It is also our present and has a substantial past. It is worth examining how the past promises of those 90s techno-optimists worked out.
> What do you get for the tech billionaire who has literally everything? The cherished startup vibes of his youth. It’s literally the only thing he doesn’t have anymore.
(That may be too speculative/personal but I think it's a really interesting point: the tech elite are approaching mid-life crisis age)
> that “manifesto of a different time and place” is the Futurist Manifesto, written in 1909 by Italian poet F.T. Marinetti. A decade later, Marinetti would be a principal author of the Fascist Manifesto.
> Andreessen spends 4,000+ words warning about the plague of pessimism that is sweeping the land, and then he finally lists the villains who are responsible and… a lot of them are tech workers, employed by Silicon Valley, but focused on the type of hard practical questions that bum him out.
> You can't claim the mantle of Bayesian rationalism without learning a single thing from the failures of your own dominant philosophy over the past 30 years.
All these direct quotes are pretty focused on the Techno-Optimist Manifesto itself and raise some legitimate doubts IMO
But he's certainly not saying "disregard what he's saying, it's a midlife crisis", he gives countless other reasons why Andreeson should be disregarded... not least because he's already profited enormously off of the techno-optimism of the past and doesn't give any reasons why trusting him with future techno-optimism will turn out any different.
IMHO Karpf is saying we had lots of techno-optimism starting in the 1990s (cf. Wired), but in the 2020s we now the advertiser-monitoring complex: so why is Andreeson surprised that there's push-back against tech? Why is Andreeson surprised that folks are expressing concern at possible negative side-effects of tech?
I think this paragraph is a good summary of Karpf:
> 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.
"Optimists" may just be inevitable. But we need a few generations of intentional stewards. We need to engineer resilience and sustainability in our systems. Else we would have to rely on "Apollo missions" in the future (government setting the specific moonshot goals and creating highways to achieve those); rather than on "optimists" inside the macroeconomic structures to achieve those.
totally unrelated but still, heard this recently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Because you might form your own thoughts and realize all of the people spilling ink over a billionaire’s pro capitalist position are mainly overblown to generate clicks and “contrarian thought lead” from the side lines?
Technological Pragmatism is an ethos I can probably get behind [1]. It ties in well with the book [2] that's had the most impact on me, which basically says that the best path to increasing self-esteem is to honestly appreciate your good side and honestly reckon with your bad side. I also like this approach because it acknowledges that good / bad / ugly all contain information. Andreesen, with his refusal to look at bad / ugly, is basically blocking himself off from two sources of information. The same goes for toxic positivity people who block out painful emotions. My best chance of success in general is to stay open to all the info available to me.
[1] If there was a way to also work in the idea that I believe I'm better off leaning optimist rather than pessimist then it would be perfect for me. But that's probably too complicated / nuanced.
[2] The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem. I'm aware the author has some dubious historical connections himself (he was "Ayn Rand's lover", his own words) but nonetheless I still stand firm in saying that this book had the most positive impact on my life of any book I've read.