5 ms·

Marc Andreessen Is Wrong About Everything

69 points by CharlesW 3y ago

nullindividual 3y ago
When the bourgeoisie speak, they are not speaking for the benefit of the proletariat. I do enjoy the byline!
- heyodai 3y ago
  [flagged]
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Andreeson is hardly bourgeoisie.
  - vb6sp6 3y ago
    [dead]
  - MrRolleyes 3y ago
    [dead]
  - leoszliard 3y ago
    In what respect?
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    Perhaps you're looking at the 18th century definition of 'bourgeoisie', which commonly means middle class. 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.
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      Yep. 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)
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Perhaps you're looking at the 18th century definition of 'bourgeoisie', which commonly means middle class. 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.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  There is wealth and power accumulation in every known human social system. Capitalism just makes the wealth and power contingent on having delivered value to a large number of people, were “value” is judged by those same people. The problem comes when the people do not judge value correctly, such as when they weigh positive first order effects over much worse Nth order effects (for example obesity inducing foods). Tearing down the current system would not address the problem of wealth or power concentration, it would just change where it is concentrated. Better regulation is needed. Definitely removing the ability of the wealthy to directly influence regulation is needed.
vcryan 3y ago
This is what happens when someone gets super rich from a lucky investment, we have to hear their dumb ideas for the next 30 years...
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  To be fair, this happens to Nobel Prize laureates as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  At least the gas station lottery ticket winners don’t dress it up as individual exceptionalism. Not a hot take, not flippant. Enjoy the luck if you have it, but call it what it is. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    Seriously? 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.
    - Turskarama 3y ago
      If you won lotto you _are_ lucky though (though note: descriptive rather than prescriptive). Past performance does not indicate future performance goes several times stronger for luck.
- pstuart 3y ago
  Many years ago HN had a post about Andreessen giving advice and I drunk posted that "the only reason people listen to him is because he's rich", only to have the honor of our lord and savior pg stating that my comment was "the dumbest thing he's ever heard". 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 ;-)
cwillu 3y ago
Writing a bad take-down of a bad idea is doing a service to the bad idea.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  I enjoy the service you’ve done to the article with this post
  - oatmeal1 3y ago
    Ha.
- dboreham 3y ago
  That said, I wouldn't have known about and read (skimmed) the bad idea without the reference via the bad take-down.
- fijiaarone 3y ago
  It’s sounds like Andreessen and the Accelerationists are foolishly optimistic and out of touch, but the author seems to be trying his best to make you take their side by offering the worst counter-arguments in the most disingenuous way. Everyone in heaven is an Accelerationist these days. I like to think Sam gave up his crusade and went sailing with Jan and Renfrew.
  - CurtHagenlocher 3y ago
    Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam.
hindsightbias 3y ago
He should talk about his feats at the AMC theaters back when he was a coop at IBM. The staff certainly did.
someonehere 3y ago
He’s out of touch. I imagine he’s like Mr Burns taking money out of the ATM: https://youtu.be/oWJlPhZP6lc https://youtu.be/oWJlPhZP6lc
fdschoeneman 3y ago
I'm sure there are intelligent criticisms of Andreesson's manifesto, but this piece doesn't seem to contain any. I stopped reading after the second straw man argument it made. 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.
- LewisVerstappen 3y ago
  The fact that this is on the front page shows how steep the decline in intelligence of the average HN reader has been. People literally don't read articles anymore. They just upvoted based on the title (and if they agree with it)
  - fdschoeneman 3y ago
    Well it did catch my eye. I need to publicize an open source project I'm working on soon, so perhaps I can learn from the techniques used. Maybe I will write badly on why my project will fail, encouraging rubberneckers...
    - LewisVerstappen 3y ago
      No seriously, when you write your title, base it on something the HN community agrees with even if it's completely irrelevant to your article. 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.
  - rmah 3y ago
    Indeed. I'm sure a reasonable case can be made to oppose Andressen's screed. But this author doesn't make one. The entire article can be summed up as: I disagree, and Andreessen is a poo poo head! It's sorta ironic that the author writes for gizmodo, literally living off the backs of what tecno-utopists built (or at least financed). The lack of self-awareness is just... I can't find the words.
  - deleted 3y ago
atlgator 3y ago
I've been observing Marc for years now. He is a pump-and-dump extraordinaire. Any and every technology he can shill to the average (dumb) American to squeeze a penny (or their life savings) out of them he will do it. Rinse and repeat. The snake oil salesman of our time.
- drcongo 3y ago
  He's the tech bros' Alex Jones. Odious.
s5300 3y ago
[dead]
erulabs 3y ago
A foaming-at-the-mouth screed punctuated only by short quotes, which, even in their brevity and without context, are a hundred times more interesting than the article's replies to them. "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. Ah yes, "that's not true", the hallmark of considered economic thinking. 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!
Barrin92 3y ago
What stood out to me about the original piece was how much it sounded like a less articulate version of the Italian Futurist Manifesto[1], which today primarily is relevant for the not so great ideologies it influenced, to put it mildly. 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/manifesto_futurista.pdf https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manif...
- timfsu 3y ago
  “Beauty exists only in struggle” “We want to glorify war” “We want to demolish museums and libraries” 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.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    that is fair, the futurism of the Italian variety was a lot more explicitly martial. But I think the parallels are still pretty noteworthy. > 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.
oatmeal1 3y ago
> This is one of the most prevalent and destructive delusions of the libertarian ideology: that the marketplace and the private sector are actually better at delivering important services to the public than the government. Drivel.
krohling 3y ago
"We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything." 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.
bhawks 3y ago
While you won't win rationale arguments with ad hominem attacks and theatrics you certainly will get lots of clicks and ad impressions. The irony being that the author would have had an incomprehensibly different life if Marc Andreessen and others like him acted the way the author would want them to act. Society really should have a reasoned and thought through discussion on the impacts of AI specifically and technology generally. The author is not helping.
marcus_holmes 3y ago
I use the Fire service as an example. This is something that always works massively better as a tax-funded government service rather than a market-driven service. The thought of 3 different fire trucks turning up to your burning house and then pitching for your business, or refusing to save your burning house because you didn't pay for some optional add-on, or only saving your burning house but not rescuing your pets because of some contract clause, is horrifying [0]. 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.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  If 3 different companies showed up to put out the fire, you'd get a fair deal for the cost of putting out the fire, because they'd have to bid against one-another, but I take your point otherwise.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    But that's the point, really. If my house is on fire, what I want is a single fire truck to turn up as soon as possible and do whatever it takes to save as much of my stuff (without endangering anyone) as possible. 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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fdschoeneman 3y ago
  Did Andreesson argue that fire services should be privatized in his manifesto? Damn. Now I must read it immediately.
causality0 3y ago
The reasons we're not going to live in a technological utopia in the future are the reasons we aren't living in one now: money goes up, not down. When you create a robot to do the job of five men you haven't given five men a life of leisure, you've given them a pink slip and their boss a higher profit margin. We're not happier than we used to be. We're not healthier than we used to be. We are lonelier yet more crowded, sicker despite medical advancement, and miserable, so what the fuck are we doing this all for?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mvncleaninst 3y ago
> Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness. 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
- aurareturn 3y ago
  >much better metric would be life expectancy 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.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  GDP is a gameable metric. Life expectancy is not everything we want, but it’s not bad. “The Federal Reserve announced today that life expectancy was up 0.1% this quarter. Stocks rallied on the news.” If we want to do that though we still need merit, ambition, striving, achievement, and greatness.
  - krainboltgreene 3y ago
    > 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.
    - cameldrv 3y ago
      We still need all of those things though so I’m putting out a Request for Metrics on merit, ambition, striving, achievement, and greatness.
matt_daemon 3y ago
Why is this flagged? It's a genuine article from a known website - sure the take is critical but it isn't saying anything particularly offensive.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  Because the analysis is terrible
- leoszliard 3y ago
  The Glorious Leader will tolerate no dissent!
Fluorescence 3y ago
It's notable that this is flagged and that the Andreesen advocates are just so... low wattage... attacking people when they clearly have not read or understood what they are defending. 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.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]

69 points by CharlesW 3y ago

nullindividual 3y ago

When the bourgeoisie speak, they are not speaking for the benefit of the proletariat. I do enjoy the byline!

heyodai 3y ago
[flagged]
readthenotes1 3y ago
Andreeson is hardly bourgeoisie.
- vb6sp6 3y ago
  [dead]
- MrRolleyes 3y ago
  [dead]
- leoszliard 3y ago
  In what respect?
- nullindividual 3y ago
  Perhaps you're looking at the 18th century definition of 'bourgeoisie', which commonly means middle class. 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.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    Yep. 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)
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Perhaps you're looking at the 18th century definition of 'bourgeoisie', which commonly means middle class. 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.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
There is wealth and power accumulation in every known human social system. Capitalism just makes the wealth and power contingent on having delivered value to a large number of people, were “value” is judged by those same people. The problem comes when the people do not judge value correctly, such as when they weigh positive first order effects over much worse Nth order effects (for example obesity inducing foods). Tearing down the current system would not address the problem of wealth or power concentration, it would just change where it is concentrated. Better regulation is needed. Definitely removing the ability of the wealthy to directly influence regulation is needed.

vcryan 3y ago

This is what happens when someone gets super rich from a lucky investment, we have to hear their dumb ideas for the next 30 years...

marginalia_nu 3y ago
To be fair, this happens to Nobel Prize laureates as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
toomuchtodo 3y ago
At least the gas station lottery ticket winners don’t dress it up as individual exceptionalism. Not a hot take, not flippant. Enjoy the luck if you have it, but call it what it is. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Seriously? 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.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    If you won lotto you _are_ lucky though (though note: descriptive rather than prescriptive). Past performance does not indicate future performance goes several times stronger for luck.
pstuart 3y ago
Many years ago HN had a post about Andreessen giving advice and I drunk posted that "the only reason people listen to him is because he's rich", only to have the honor of our lord and savior pg stating that my comment was "the dumbest thing he's ever heard". 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 ;-)

cwillu 3y ago

Writing a bad take-down of a bad idea is doing a service to the bad idea.

jrflowers 3y ago
I enjoy the service you’ve done to the article with this post
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  Ha.
dboreham 3y ago
That said, I wouldn't have known about and read (skimmed) the bad idea without the reference via the bad take-down.
fijiaarone 3y ago
It’s sounds like Andreessen and the Accelerationists are foolishly optimistic and out of touch, but the author seems to be trying his best to make you take their side by offering the worst counter-arguments in the most disingenuous way. Everyone in heaven is an Accelerationist these days. I like to think Sam gave up his crusade and went sailing with Jan and Renfrew.
- CurtHagenlocher 3y ago
  Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam.

hindsightbias 3y ago

He should talk about his feats at the AMC theaters back when he was a coop at IBM. The staff certainly did.

someonehere 3y ago

He’s out of touch. I imagine he’s like Mr Burns taking money out of the ATM: https://youtu.be/oWJlPhZP6lc https://youtu.be/oWJlPhZP6lc

fdschoeneman 3y ago

I'm sure there are intelligent criticisms of Andreesson's manifesto, but this piece doesn't seem to contain any. I stopped reading after the second straw man argument it made. 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.

LewisVerstappen 3y ago
The fact that this is on the front page shows how steep the decline in intelligence of the average HN reader has been. People literally don't read articles anymore. They just upvoted based on the title (and if they agree with it)
- fdschoeneman 3y ago
  Well it did catch my eye. I need to publicize an open source project I'm working on soon, so perhaps I can learn from the techniques used. Maybe I will write badly on why my project will fail, encouraging rubberneckers...
  - LewisVerstappen 3y ago
    No seriously, when you write your title, base it on something the HN community agrees with even if it's completely irrelevant to your article. 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.
- rmah 3y ago
  Indeed. I'm sure a reasonable case can be made to oppose Andressen's screed. But this author doesn't make one. The entire article can be summed up as: I disagree, and Andreessen is a poo poo head! It's sorta ironic that the author writes for gizmodo, literally living off the backs of what tecno-utopists built (or at least financed). The lack of self-awareness is just... I can't find the words.
- deleted 3y ago

atlgator 3y ago

I've been observing Marc for years now. He is a pump-and-dump extraordinaire. Any and every technology he can shill to the average (dumb) American to squeeze a penny (or their life savings) out of them he will do it. Rinse and repeat. The snake oil salesman of our time.

drcongo 3y ago
He's the tech bros' Alex Jones. Odious.

s5300 3y ago

[dead]

erulabs 3y ago

A foaming-at-the-mouth screed punctuated only by short quotes, which, even in their brevity and without context, are a hundred times more interesting than the article's replies to them. "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. Ah yes, "that's not true", the hallmark of considered economic thinking. 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!

Barrin92 3y ago

What stood out to me about the original piece was how much it sounded like a less articulate version of the Italian Futurist Manifesto[1], which today primarily is relevant for the not so great ideologies it influenced, to put it mildly. 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/manifesto_futurista.pdf https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manif...

timfsu 3y ago
“Beauty exists only in struggle” “We want to glorify war” “We want to demolish museums and libraries” 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.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  that is fair, the futurism of the Italian variety was a lot more explicitly martial. But I think the parallels are still pretty noteworthy. > 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.

oatmeal1 3y ago

> This is one of the most prevalent and destructive delusions of the libertarian ideology: that the marketplace and the private sector are actually better at delivering important services to the public than the government. Drivel.

krohling 3y ago

"We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything." 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.

bhawks 3y ago

While you won't win rationale arguments with ad hominem attacks and theatrics you certainly will get lots of clicks and ad impressions. The irony being that the author would have had an incomprehensibly different life if Marc Andreessen and others like him acted the way the author would want them to act. Society really should have a reasoned and thought through discussion on the impacts of AI specifically and technology generally. The author is not helping.

marcus_holmes 3y ago

I use the Fire service as an example. This is something that always works massively better as a tax-funded government service rather than a market-driven service. The thought of 3 different fire trucks turning up to your burning house and then pitching for your business, or refusing to save your burning house because you didn't pay for some optional add-on, or only saving your burning house but not rescuing your pets because of some contract clause, is horrifying [0]. 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.

oatmeal1 3y ago
If 3 different companies showed up to put out the fire, you'd get a fair deal for the cost of putting out the fire, because they'd have to bid against one-another, but I take your point otherwise.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  But that's the point, really. If my house is on fire, what I want is a single fire truck to turn up as soon as possible and do whatever it takes to save as much of my stuff (without endangering anyone) as possible. 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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fdschoeneman 3y ago
Did Andreesson argue that fire services should be privatized in his manifesto? Damn. Now I must read it immediately.

causality0 3y ago

The reasons we're not going to live in a technological utopia in the future are the reasons we aren't living in one now: money goes up, not down. When you create a robot to do the job of five men you haven't given five men a life of leisure, you've given them a pink slip and their boss a higher profit margin. We're not happier than we used to be. We're not healthier than we used to be. We are lonelier yet more crowded, sicker despite medical advancement, and miserable, so what the fuck are we doing this all for?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mvncleaninst 3y ago

> Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness. 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

aurareturn 3y ago
>much better metric would be life expectancy 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.
cameldrv 3y ago
GDP is a gameable metric. Life expectancy is not everything we want, but it’s not bad. “The Federal Reserve announced today that life expectancy was up 0.1% this quarter. Stocks rallied on the news.” If we want to do that though we still need merit, ambition, striving, achievement, and greatness.
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  > 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.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    We still need all of those things though so I’m putting out a Request for Metrics on merit, ambition, striving, achievement, and greatness.

matt_daemon 3y ago

Why is this flagged? It's a genuine article from a known website - sure the take is critical but it isn't saying anything particularly offensive.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago
Because the analysis is terrible
leoszliard 3y ago
The Glorious Leader will tolerate no dissent!

Fluorescence 3y ago

It's notable that this is flagged and that the Andreesen advocates are just so... low wattage... attacking people when they clearly have not read or understood what they are defending. 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.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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