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> Sure, Marc added some bite to the piece — he called it a manifesto, after all — but most of it was grounded in economics: if you can do more with less, you ge

> Sure, Marc added some bite to the piece — he called it a manifesto, after all — but most of it was grounded in economics: if you can do more with less, you get more for less. Sadly, in the dozen responses from outlets like the New York Times and Gizmodo, that got zero airtime. Both the economic and editorial observations are true, and miss the points by a wide margin. Without rehashing all of them here, it's simply that this wasn't the point of the manifesto. It was that everything only gets super better for everyone with no social or ecological downsides, and it's wrong to question what gets created how for whom, and everyone should just get out of his way and let him run everything.

EricButton 3y ago
The manifesto had many disjointed themes, and some of the arguments Marc made seem intentionally inflammatory or oversimplified (and it has to be intentional polemicism, he's too smart -- and it's too on the nose -- for it to be an accident). (And if his goal was to create a stir, well, mission accomplished...the NYT ran two op-eds reacting to it.) I was galvanized to focus on the deflationary part after reading an opinion piece that suggested that government price controls were more effective...
- quantified 3y ago
  Hey, thank you for responding, it's cool to find the author here. Fundamentally, I mostly don't disagree with you. (I do wonder at his purpose.) I didn't read that piece, was it from one of the credentialed elite? There are 8 billion people in the world, if you read enough of their writing you'll see lots of bad ideas. Tuning out the noise is work. The fact that better tech to do something drives down the cost of it is, to me anyway, almost tautological, that's part of the definition of better tech. There a 0-to-1 inflection point where something wasn't possible at all before, therefore the price was effectively infinite, but after that it's by definition better if it lowers all the costs that matter. Debates ensue when the financial cost is lower and the other costs get raised, which is usually the case. No one argues when the financial cost is same or lower, the pollution is demonstrably lower, and the performance is the same or better. Iphone assembly workers don't commit suicide as much as they once did, that's progress. For some miltech, it functions similarly to consumer tech but doesn't break as easily, that's why it's better tech at 10x the financial cost of consumer tech. Tech is tech. It doesn't solve people. If you wear eyeglasses, they are expensive because of people (monopolies, Luxxotica). Fundamentally, he was writing about people. The first words of his are in a section titled "Lies". And one such "lie" is that technology threatens the environment. Yeah, show me miltech that doesn't?

EricButton 3y ago

The manifesto had many disjointed themes, and some of the arguments Marc made seem intentionally inflammatory or oversimplified (and it has to be intentional polemicism, he's too smart -- and it's too on the nose -- for it to be an accident). (And if his goal was to create a stir, well, mission accomplished...the NYT ran two op-eds reacting to it.) I was galvanized to focus on the deflationary part after reading an opinion piece that suggested that government price controls were more effective...

quantified 3y ago
Hey, thank you for responding, it's cool to find the author here. Fundamentally, I mostly don't disagree with you. (I do wonder at his purpose.) I didn't read that piece, was it from one of the credentialed elite? There are 8 billion people in the world, if you read enough of their writing you'll see lots of bad ideas. Tuning out the noise is work. The fact that better tech to do something drives down the cost of it is, to me anyway, almost tautological, that's part of the definition of better tech. There a 0-to-1 inflection point where something wasn't possible at all before, therefore the price was effectively infinite, but after that it's by definition better if it lowers all the costs that matter. Debates ensue when the financial cost is lower and the other costs get raised, which is usually the case. No one argues when the financial cost is same or lower, the pollution is demonstrably lower, and the performance is the same or better. Iphone assembly workers don't commit suicide as much as they once did, that's progress. For some miltech, it functions similarly to consumer tech but doesn't break as easily, that's why it's better tech at 10x the financial cost of consumer tech. Tech is tech. It doesn't solve people. If you wear eyeglasses, they are expensive because of people (monopolies, Luxxotica). Fundamentally, he was writing about people. The first words of his are in a section titled "Lies". And one such "lie" is that technology threatens the environment. Yeah, show me miltech that doesn't?