At first glance, Marc Andreessen seems to have all sorts of contradictory beliefs. From a distance, the venture capitalist speaks your words Standard brand of right-wing libertarianismbut he is also somehow a big fan of the Pentagon. He is a big fan of “America” but most Americans don’t seem to particularly like it. His VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has claimed that the US government is being strangled by special interests and lobbying, but last year he Spent an incredible amount of money Lobbying the same government.
Even though Andreessen is completely ideologically inconsistent, when you consider his core beliefs, they seem pretty simple. He is a big fan of power. This is power for certain people – for example, for people like him. In other words: rich people. I used to think Andreessen was kind of a jerk – a guy who had been so rich for so long that it was driving his head crazy. His love for investing in bad ideas Convinced me of it. Now, however, I think a more accurate description would be “madman.” He appears to be an avid supporter of anything that helps maintain or increase the accumulation of power by the American elite, not to mention all other considerations.
A current Forbes story about Andreessen Horowitz’s relatively new American Dynamism fund, which consists of defense startups, sheds new light on this. Here, too, one would think of someone who frequently railed against it big governmentFeeding the American war machine might be a bit taboo. But no, he seems completely okay with it. The story focuses on the “Gundo Bros,” a group of patriotic software developers affiliated with defense startups backed by a16z. Said “brothers” sound like they are mostly based on action films from the 1980s:
They pump iron while programming, have weekly bonfires on the beach, and drink shotgun energy drinks. They call for a return to America’s hardware roots in El Segundo, where pioneers like Jack Northrop and Allan Lockheed built the pillars of America’s arsenal. And they hug each other Effective accelerationisma philosophy that calls for the advancement of technology regardless of cost (and counts Andreessen as its poster supporter).
A16z’s American Dynamism fund is undeniably fun at first glance. At his website, a storied timeline that lays claim to a host of impressive historical events – the Wright brothers’ first flight, the invention of the transistor, the Manhattan Project, the moon landing – and places them all as part of the American Dynamism “movement” whether A16z has something to do with it. “American Dynamism embodies the spirit of innovation, progress and resilience that drives the United States forward. This powerful force is exemplified by groundbreaking achievements in technology and innovation that are shaping both our country and the global landscape,” the website says. A website visitor reading through this garbage might be so distracted that they forget it’s about the fund Promoting a variety of private defense, surveillance and weapons companies will hoard the breakthroughs for themselves.
Taken as a whole, Andreessen’s interests exhibit a certain chaotic uniformity. The attitude seems to be: throw anything at the wall as long as it accelerates your money and power – deregulation, technological disruption, crazy AI, rockets and bombs – it’s all good stuff! Some tenets of Andreessen’s belief system were outlined last year in his “Manifesto of the Techno-Optimist,” which he posted on his venture capital firm’s blog. This “manifesto” is essentially a spastic apology for corporate greed and the accumulation of wealth by a technocratic elite. It reads like a strange mix of the keynote speeches of Gordon Gekko and Steve Jobs with a bit of rhetoric from Patrick Bateman.
Given his cartoonish, wealthy worldview, it makes sense that Andreessen doesn’t like to think about the parts of society that don’t conform to his superhuman ambitions. That is, The American Prospect was published a personal essay from author Rick Perlstein last week, which seems to provide further evidence of Andreessen’s hopelessly elitist outlook.
According to Perlstein, in 2017 he was invited to a truly unbearable party at one of Andreessen’s multi-million dollar mansions. During this event, amid annoying pseudo-intellectual ramblings from the dinner attendees, Andreessen is alleged to have said something truly idiotic about rural Americans. Here is that exchange as Perlstein describes it:
I touched on the common amenities of kinship, friendship, crafts, memory, legends, lore, skills passed down through generations, and other benefits that small towns offer: Things that make people human. I pointed out that there must be something in the places where he grew up that needs to be preserved. I ventured that it is always worth mourning when a venerable human community leaves the earth; that people are perhaps more than just numbers that find their right price in the balance of life…
And then the man in the castle with the seven chimneys said it.
“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to silence these people.”
Or something similar. Perlstein is somewhat doubtful about the exact wording Andreessen used, claiming:
I’ll take the liberty of putting it in quotation marks, although I’m not sure those were his exact words. Marc, if you’re reading, feel free to contact me and refresh my memory. Maybe he said “quiet” or “docile” or maybe “powerless.” Something along those lines, certainly.
Still, it sounds like something he would say.
From what I can tell from his previous comments, Andreessen doesn’t have much of a preference for anyone who doesn’t have a huge bank account. Among the charming things he has reportedly said over the years is the American middle class was an “accident of history” that the American middle class is “a myth” and/or an “artifact” and that it was a “Experiment [that] was done and it was a disastrous failure.” Another funny thing Andreessen said: “I’m not saying we should have sweatshops in the United States, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t have environmental regulations, but it is harder to do business in most states in the United States than in many other places.” the whole world.”
If the American middle class was an accident and regulations are bad for business and the best thing rural Americans can do is take painkillers and play video games, but the American war machine is absolutely great… it feels like could paint a pretty clear picture of what Andreessen thinks about the majority of Americans and where he thinks our country should be heading. You’d be forgiven if you weren’t as excited about it as he was.