8 ms·

In conversation with Marc Andreessen

138 points by npalli 12y ago

jasonisalive 12y ago
Wow, I liked Marc already, but after reading this, I love him. This should be required reading for everyone. Edit: I really admire the graceful way he handles the hard questions about libertarian philosophy - social welfare and job loss. Even though I don't agree with him, and feel he may be pulling some punches to keep his message broadly palatable, it's still impressive.
- wffurr 12y ago
  By "graceful" you mean dodged the question and the interview let him get away with it? Calling the very real hardship caused by job loss in America the "lump-of-labor" fallacy and calling our welfare state "very advanced" is not very graceful. Some exposure to what that's really like would be highly instructive for Marc. Spoiler: it's demeaning and depressing.
  - jasonisalive 12y ago
    He's a libertarian. A real libertarian argument would be something like this: "People should not expect to receive unconditional support in the event of losing their job or suffering financial hardship. People should factor such risks into their financial planning. Any unconditional support structures will weaken the incentives to prudent financial planning and lead to massive and society-wide problems of systemic dependency and economic maladjustment." Unfortunately the logic behind this argument is poorly understood and widely resisted. People who advance such arguments are typically perceived as arrogant, callous, and entitled. So I think Marc is indeed dodging the bullet by trying to softly suggest alternative ways to perceiving these issues, as well as trying to encourage a change in perspective to notoriously-oblivious Americans on how their polity actually stacks up in global terms.
    - wffurr 12y ago
      >> People should factor such risks into their financial planning. Easy for us to say, with our six-figure salaries and hot job market. How the heck is someone working a minimum wage job supposed to do any financial planning? How does a child without the sort of supportive environment I had escape the cycle of poverty? Libertarianism is great if everyone is equally powerful. I'd be all for it if all people were equally educated, equally wealthy, and equally willing to respect others' property rights.
      - jasonisalive 12y ago
        I work a minimum wage job. Save, save, and save some more. The only people I could reasonably blame for my position in life would be my parents, not wider society. Maybe people should blame their parents more instead of vague shadowy corporations?
vonklaus 12y ago
>There’s this myth that government regulation is well intentioned and benign, and implemented properly. That’s the myth. And then when people actually run into this in the real world, they’re, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t realize.” To his point, you really do get the sense that, on balance, people are becoming more libertarian, and a lot of that has been catalyzed by technology disrupting entrenched business models that have benefitted from regulatory protectionism.
- freshflowers 12y ago
  Funny, because from a European perspective I get the sense that SV libertarianism (accompanied by a complete lack of ethics) is leading to a backlash where people are demanding stronger consumer-, labor- and privacy- protection. I would say the reaction in the real world tends to be "Oh, fuck, those regulations are good for something after all."
  - wakeless 12y ago
    You are right in a sense. I think people are demanding more flexible, realistic and more consumer favourable laws. Rather than the rigid structures that are in currently in place.
    - aptwebapps 12y ago
      I would say that they're just asking for new laws to meet the need of the moment, and I'm not even very libertarian. I mean, I'm sure they'd describe them the way you have but it's not clear to me that there's substance to the characterization.
- rvn1045 12y ago
  Really? Maybe in the Valley they are becoming more libertarian. I think people are becoming less libertarian on main street.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re working on. I would like to hear a lot more about this. Being on the east coast the Silicon Valley crowd or even just the ethos around it seem totally foreign. I will say I am somewhat connected in the D.C. area and I have heard from many Angels and VC's that the east coast will never look like SV simply because the money that is here is not like SV money - it's too tied up, needs too much due diligence and investors are too tightly wound as advisers/board members. I don't know if that is true, and we are seeing huge growth in the Startup scene here, but it certainly feels much more restrictive than what you see on HN and read about how SV money/networks get thrown around.
- saddino 12y ago
  As someone who relocated from DC to SV two years ago, DC has always had a healthy startup scene that is, as you suspect, hampered severely by money flow. That's not to say it's not possible to fundraise where you are, it's just amazingly much harder to do so.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
"I mean, part of it is, I love arguing. No, really? The big thing about Twitter for me is it’s just more people to argue with." You know, that does pretty much sum of the appeal of Twitter for me too.
- innguest 12y ago
  I love arguing and I honestly did not know Twitter was fertile grounds for that. So I appreciate your comment. Now excuse me while I create my first twitter account.
vuldin 12y ago
TIL Mark Zuckerberg didn't know what Netscape was before meeting Marc Andreessen. Zuckerberg may get some slack from the reporter and even Andressen regarding this, but it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon.
- houseofshards 12y ago
  " it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon" >> Even if the assertion (that Zuckerberg did not know about Netscape before meeting Marc) is true, I do not agree that it is a shame. Perhaps just points to how young the tech industry is and how much more opportunity still exists to build great companies.
- ChrisGaudreau 12y ago
  I'm only 19, and even I remember a time when Netscape was still pretty popular, or at least a lot of people had Navigator installed. It was even mentioned or displayed in a lot of programming books, articles, and presentations. I wonder how he managed to avoid knowledge of it for so long.
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    iirc I'm one year younger than Zuck but still remember upgrading to Netscape Navigator 4.0 from a previous version. But then again I grew up in SV and my dad was in the PC industry. Zuck grew up the the East coast, and that's probably the biggest difference.
    - ChrisGaudreau 12y ago
      I grew up on the East coast too. When I was ten or so, it was really common for people around here to have that installed.
  - bluedino 12y ago
    I'm guessing it's just one of those made-up stories by a journalist somewhere. According to Wikipedia Zuckerberg was doing programming in the 90's and would very likely have came across Netscape during that time. But, by the time Facebook was 'invented', Netscape had been basically non-existent in the market for a few years.
jokoon 12y ago
> The American Enterprise Institute, I think, does a lot of good work. meh
gregpilling 12y ago
from the article "The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course? You could hire James Cameron to do it. You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?" ------------------------------- So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?
- nrao123 12y ago
  @pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core. However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron. Here is another post comparing the Education & Entertainment business in the Indian context: http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-entertainment-two-peas-in-a-pod/ http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-e...
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Couldn't Khan Academy be that WB equivalent of education? Are they not doing the same thing, just with a much much smaller production budget?
- sytelus 12y ago
  Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things. For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries. Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
>The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course? This makes me more optimistic about the future than I have been in a while.
- sytelus 12y ago
  No, this doesn't change much. Before MOOCs we still had all the textbooks authored by same professors which anyone can buy for less than $100 and learn the subject on their own. MOOCs are very much a video version of those textbooks. The major missing component of MOOCs is intensive homework problems that often requires you to consult professors in their office hours. And the time professors/TA spend in checking your homework. The core thing to understand is that real learning doesn't happen when you are listening to lectures but it happens when you are working on homework and doing exercises where you struggle through and occasionally have to go back to professor's offices to get insight. But the truth is that the price of education is mostly justified as "certification service". When you have degree from Stanford it means someone very reputable is backing up your claim that you have learned thing or two about something. That's mainly what you are paying as "tuition fees". MOOCs are relatively much weaker as certification services and hence chances of them getting trusted is same as chances of trusting degrees from many other "online universities".
- mercer 12y ago
  I can't wait for the management-stronghold destroying our universities to be 'disrupted' by this, but considering the age and power of such institutions, it's going to be a difficult battle...
hudibras 12y ago
It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people and that women just need to lean in more. It's all a meritocracy, you know, nothing we can do about it. But, hey, maybe Those People can still nab a slot in a MOOC so it's all good...
- Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
  I took that more as "Don't get stuck in lobbying and writing blog posts and generally complaining about the state of things...take some real-life initiative and fight for what you believe you deserve".
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  > It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people It's a lot more disturbing that the interviewer thinks Twitter isn't diverse because it's more than 50% white. How many industries out there are less than 50% white? Why is that an expectation when more than 50% of the population is white? Why is tech being singled out?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Why is tech being singled out? Because tech is wealthy, visible, and weak. This makes tech an easy source of symbolic and financial victories for those who wish to wage a culture war. The real question is why tech rolls over rather than fight back. (There are a few noble exceptions, e.g. Uber, Tesla and AirBnB, but they usually only fight back within their narrow battlezones rather than in general.)
    - speik 12y ago
      How is tech "weak"?
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        They are easily disrupted by any culture warrior with an angle, have demonstrated no real ability to defend themselves, and are part of a media narrative that results in their story not being heard. A simple illustration. Compare two culture war attacks, one on someone in tech, and one on someone in an industry that isn't weak: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-nightmare-1280336916 http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne... http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-michael-bloombergs-public-sexism http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-micha... Similarly: Big news: http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy-frat-emails-of-snap-1582604137 http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy... Funny news, kind of a sideshow: http://www.businessinsider.com/sac-capital-andrew-tong-hormones-sex-allegations-2009-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/sac-capital-andrew-tong-hormo...
mhd 12y ago
"But this is the big story of our time—the elimination of poverty. We have people rising out of poverty at a global level and in the U.S. at unprecedented rates. In 50 years, we’ve gone from hunger being the dominant problem among lower-income people to obesity being the dominant problem." Which is good, as it increased Walmart's share value? I'm really not sure how to read this, this is moving beyond SV techno-libertarianism into straight-forward Onion territory.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  It's good that scarcity of material goods and services has ceased to be a problem, and now the only remaining problems are self inflicted. Similarly it would be a good thing if no one murdered anyone else even if people occasionally committed suicide.
  - moomin 12y ago
    But that's missing the point. There's still plenty of places where it's hard to impossible to eat _healthily_ in the U.S. Yes, we've won the calorific scarcity battle, but regarding obesity as self-inflicted lacks nuance at best and victim blames the poor and disadvantaged at worst. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert#Barriers_and_proposed_solutions_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert#Barriers_and_propos...
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      Places are food deserts primarily because the inhabitants choose not to pay for healthy food. Providing access to food does not change people's consumption choices: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-access-to-healthier-food-isnt-enough/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-ac... (There are lots of natural experiments too - e.g., Jersey City, where I used to live, had lots of fat poor people and lots of svelte yuppies. Strangely, the poor didn't start eating Kale when the yuppies moved in.) Assigning the label "victim blaming" to an idea does not prove it wrong.

138 points by npalli 12y ago

Wow, I liked Marc already, but after reading this, I love him. This should be required reading for everyone. Edit: I really admire the graceful way he handles the hard questions about libertarian philosophy - social welfare and job loss. Even though I don't agree with him, and feel he may be pulling some punches to keep his message broadly palatable, it's still impressive.

wffurr 12y ago
By "graceful" you mean dodged the question and the interview let him get away with it? Calling the very real hardship caused by job loss in America the "lump-of-labor" fallacy and calling our welfare state "very advanced" is not very graceful. Some exposure to what that's really like would be highly instructive for Marc. Spoiler: it's demeaning and depressing.
- jasonisalive 12y ago
  He's a libertarian. A real libertarian argument would be something like this: "People should not expect to receive unconditional support in the event of losing their job or suffering financial hardship. People should factor such risks into their financial planning. Any unconditional support structures will weaken the incentives to prudent financial planning and lead to massive and society-wide problems of systemic dependency and economic maladjustment." Unfortunately the logic behind this argument is poorly understood and widely resisted. People who advance such arguments are typically perceived as arrogant, callous, and entitled. So I think Marc is indeed dodging the bullet by trying to softly suggest alternative ways to perceiving these issues, as well as trying to encourage a change in perspective to notoriously-oblivious Americans on how their polity actually stacks up in global terms.
  - wffurr 12y ago
    >> People should factor such risks into their financial planning. Easy for us to say, with our six-figure salaries and hot job market. How the heck is someone working a minimum wage job supposed to do any financial planning? How does a child without the sort of supportive environment I had escape the cycle of poverty? Libertarianism is great if everyone is equally powerful. I'd be all for it if all people were equally educated, equally wealthy, and equally willing to respect others' property rights.
    - jasonisalive 12y ago
      I work a minimum wage job. Save, save, and save some more. The only people I could reasonably blame for my position in life would be my parents, not wider society. Maybe people should blame their parents more instead of vague shadowy corporations?

vonklaus 12y ago

>There’s this myth that government regulation is well intentioned and benign, and implemented properly. That’s the myth. And then when people actually run into this in the real world, they’re, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t realize.” To his point, you really do get the sense that, on balance, people are becoming more libertarian, and a lot of that has been catalyzed by technology disrupting entrenched business models that have benefitted from regulatory protectionism.

freshflowers 12y ago
Funny, because from a European perspective I get the sense that SV libertarianism (accompanied by a complete lack of ethics) is leading to a backlash where people are demanding stronger consumer-, labor- and privacy- protection. I would say the reaction in the real world tends to be "Oh, fuck, those regulations are good for something after all."
- wakeless 12y ago
  You are right in a sense. I think people are demanding more flexible, realistic and more consumer favourable laws. Rather than the rigid structures that are in currently in place.
  - aptwebapps 12y ago
    I would say that they're just asking for new laws to meet the need of the moment, and I'm not even very libertarian. I mean, I'm sure they'd describe them the way you have but it's not clear to me that there's substance to the characterization.
rvn1045 12y ago
Really? Maybe in the Valley they are becoming more libertarian. I think people are becoming less libertarian on main street.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re working on. I would like to hear a lot more about this. Being on the east coast the Silicon Valley crowd or even just the ethos around it seem totally foreign. I will say I am somewhat connected in the D.C. area and I have heard from many Angels and VC's that the east coast will never look like SV simply because the money that is here is not like SV money - it's too tied up, needs too much due diligence and investors are too tightly wound as advisers/board members. I don't know if that is true, and we are seeing huge growth in the Startup scene here, but it certainly feels much more restrictive than what you see on HN and read about how SV money/networks get thrown around.

saddino 12y ago
As someone who relocated from DC to SV two years ago, DC has always had a healthy startup scene that is, as you suspect, hampered severely by money flow. That's not to say it's not possible to fundraise where you are, it's just amazingly much harder to do so.

waterlesscloud 12y ago

"I mean, part of it is, I love arguing. No, really? The big thing about Twitter for me is it’s just more people to argue with." You know, that does pretty much sum of the appeal of Twitter for me too.

innguest 12y ago
I love arguing and I honestly did not know Twitter was fertile grounds for that. So I appreciate your comment. Now excuse me while I create my first twitter account.

vuldin 12y ago

TIL Mark Zuckerberg didn't know what Netscape was before meeting Marc Andreessen. Zuckerberg may get some slack from the reporter and even Andressen regarding this, but it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon.

houseofshards 12y ago
" it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon" >> Even if the assertion (that Zuckerberg did not know about Netscape before meeting Marc) is true, I do not agree that it is a shame. Perhaps just points to how young the tech industry is and how much more opportunity still exists to build great companies.
ChrisGaudreau 12y ago
I'm only 19, and even I remember a time when Netscape was still pretty popular, or at least a lot of people had Navigator installed. It was even mentioned or displayed in a lot of programming books, articles, and presentations. I wonder how he managed to avoid knowledge of it for so long.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  iirc I'm one year younger than Zuck but still remember upgrading to Netscape Navigator 4.0 from a previous version. But then again I grew up in SV and my dad was in the PC industry. Zuck grew up the the East coast, and that's probably the biggest difference.
  - ChrisGaudreau 12y ago
    I grew up on the East coast too. When I was ten or so, it was really common for people around here to have that installed.
- bluedino 12y ago
  I'm guessing it's just one of those made-up stories by a journalist somewhere. According to Wikipedia Zuckerberg was doing programming in the 90's and would very likely have came across Netscape during that time. But, by the time Facebook was 'invented', Netscape had been basically non-existent in the market for a few years.

jokoon 12y ago

> The American Enterprise Institute, I think, does a lot of good work. meh

gregpilling 12y ago

from the article "The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course? You could hire James Cameron to do it. You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?" ------------------------------- So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?

nrao123 12y ago
@pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core. However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron. Here is another post comparing the Education & Entertainment business in the Indian context: http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-entertainment-two-peas-in-a-pod/ http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-e...
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Couldn't Khan Academy be that WB equivalent of education? Are they not doing the same thing, just with a much much smaller production budget?
sytelus 12y ago
Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things. For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries. Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.

nazgulnarsil 12y ago

>The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course? This makes me more optimistic about the future than I have been in a while.

sytelus 12y ago
No, this doesn't change much. Before MOOCs we still had all the textbooks authored by same professors which anyone can buy for less than $100 and learn the subject on their own. MOOCs are very much a video version of those textbooks. The major missing component of MOOCs is intensive homework problems that often requires you to consult professors in their office hours. And the time professors/TA spend in checking your homework. The core thing to understand is that real learning doesn't happen when you are listening to lectures but it happens when you are working on homework and doing exercises where you struggle through and occasionally have to go back to professor's offices to get insight. But the truth is that the price of education is mostly justified as "certification service". When you have degree from Stanford it means someone very reputable is backing up your claim that you have learned thing or two about something. That's mainly what you are paying as "tuition fees". MOOCs are relatively much weaker as certification services and hence chances of them getting trusted is same as chances of trusting degrees from many other "online universities".
mercer 12y ago
I can't wait for the management-stronghold destroying our universities to be 'disrupted' by this, but considering the age and power of such institutions, it's going to be a difficult battle...

hudibras 12y ago

It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people and that women just need to lean in more. It's all a meritocracy, you know, nothing we can do about it. But, hey, maybe Those People can still nab a slot in a MOOC so it's all good...

Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
I took that more as "Don't get stuck in lobbying and writing blog posts and generally complaining about the state of things...take some real-life initiative and fight for what you believe you deserve".
w1ntermute 12y ago
> It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people It's a lot more disturbing that the interviewer thinks Twitter isn't diverse because it's more than 50% white. How many industries out there are less than 50% white? Why is that an expectation when more than 50% of the population is white? Why is tech being singled out?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Why is tech being singled out? Because tech is wealthy, visible, and weak. This makes tech an easy source of symbolic and financial victories for those who wish to wage a culture war. The real question is why tech rolls over rather than fight back. (There are a few noble exceptions, e.g. Uber, Tesla and AirBnB, but they usually only fight back within their narrow battlezones rather than in general.)
  - speik 12y ago
    How is tech "weak"?
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      They are easily disrupted by any culture warrior with an angle, have demonstrated no real ability to defend themselves, and are part of a media narrative that results in their story not being heard. A simple illustration. Compare two culture war attacks, one on someone in tech, and one on someone in an industry that isn't weak: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-nightmare-1280336916 http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne... http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-michael-bloombergs-public-sexism http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-micha... Similarly: Big news: http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy-frat-emails-of-snap-1582604137 http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy... Funny news, kind of a sideshow: http://www.businessinsider.com/sac-capital-andrew-tong-hormones-sex-allegations-2009-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/sac-capital-andrew-tong-hormo...

mhd 12y ago

"But this is the big story of our time—the elimination of poverty. We have people rising out of poverty at a global level and in the U.S. at unprecedented rates. In 50 years, we’ve gone from hunger being the dominant problem among lower-income people to obesity being the dominant problem." Which is good, as it increased Walmart's share value? I'm really not sure how to read this, this is moving beyond SV techno-libertarianism into straight-forward Onion territory.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
It's good that scarcity of material goods and services has ceased to be a problem, and now the only remaining problems are self inflicted. Similarly it would be a good thing if no one murdered anyone else even if people occasionally committed suicide.
- moomin 12y ago
  But that's missing the point. There's still plenty of places where it's hard to impossible to eat _healthily_ in the U.S. Yes, we've won the calorific scarcity battle, but regarding obesity as self-inflicted lacks nuance at best and victim blames the poor and disadvantaged at worst. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert#Barriers_and_proposed_solutions_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert#Barriers_and_propos...
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Places are food deserts primarily because the inhabitants choose not to pay for healthy food. Providing access to food does not change people's consumption choices: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-access-to-healthier-food-isnt-enough/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-ac... (There are lots of natural experiments too - e.g., Jersey City, where I used to live, had lots of fat poor people and lots of svelte yuppies. Strangely, the poor didn't start eating Kale when the yuppies moved in.) Assigning the label "victim blaming" to an idea does not prove it wrong.