Four years ago, when I first wrote about tech trends for the 2020s, it was clear that more than the logos of tech leaders would have to change.
You can’t have a Machine Internet, covering cities, supply chains, or medical systems, without cooperation from government, including on issues of antitrust. In addition, you can’t treat DNA as a programming language without government approval at every step of the way.
But Venture Capitalists weren’t listening then and they’re not listening now. Instead, they went down the rabbit holes of crypto and the metaverse. They ignored complaints from unions and civil society about how the gains from technology were being divvied up.
Instead, they turned inward. Elon Musk sought to control public discourse no one person has any right to control. Peter Thiel sought government power that no small group can be permitted to have in a free nation. Marc Andreessen (above, in his salad days), who helped usher in the Internet era through the browser that became Netscape, lost his ever-loving mind.
Andreessen Declares War
Andreessen’s latest manifesto is nothing less than a declaration of war against the people who built tech’s city. It demands that billionaires not only retain all their wealth, but that they be called society’s benefactors for doing so. The screed attacks all the institutions that make civilization possible – government, education, regulators – as “enemies” who must be escorted out of his way for mankind to prosper.
Never mind that our government has always funded the leading edge of technology, because the short-term thinking of business can’t. Forget the computer, the Apollo program, or the god-damned Internet used to post this drivel. Never mind the subsidies that powered Tesla, and the education sector that gave Silicon Valley its workforce. They all must bow down before the Checkbook of St. Marc.
The real problem is that the 2020s aren’t bringing VCs easy profits. It’s clear now that trickle-down economics never worked, and two generations have figured it out. The real problem is that government is essential to progress, that only “ordered liberty,” with cops on the streets and in the suites, offers any real freedom.
I was wrong, when I started this blog, believing that technology would incline its leaders toward the common good. I assumed that, since the gating factor to growth is now trained, empowered, and (most important) free minds, that tech’s leaders would want to use their platform to build rather than take.
Maybe Bill Gates’ Gates Foundation represented a turning point. He committed his own fortune, and that of Warren Buffett, to making the world a better place. But it’s clear now that private foundations are even less efficient than government bureaucracies at building wealth and looking forward. That realization has caused those who followed Gates in wealth to choose a different course.
As a result, we have a generation of assholes who have declared class war on the rest of us, including their own workforces.
They’re going to need more than one lesson. They’re going to get more than one lesson.
