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Out-of-Shape, Billionaire Technology Investor Can’t Get Enough Technology, Money
Originally published at https://deepfriedlander.substack.com.
Last week, famed venture capitalist Marc Andreeson published “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” In it, Andreesen boldly claims “there is no material problem -whether created by nature or by technology -that cannot be solved with more technology.” (More tech than what, who knows? Just more.) I commented on Andreesen’s specious reputation as a maverick investor last year in regards to Flow, WeWork co-founder and legendary con artist Adam Neumann’s nebulous housing play, but this manifesto is some next level horseshit.
Before writing further, I must disclose that I did not read all 5,000 words of Andreesen’s poorly-written, illogical manifesto, and my commentary is augmented by TechCrunch’s laudable response post, “ When was the last time Marc Andreessen talked to a poor person? “ [Many other publications have since skewered Andreesen’s turbid tome.] The TC authors do a great job highlighting Andreeson’s bias, ignorance, and chasms in logic, asking zinger questions like:
When was the last time Marc Andreessen walked through the streets of San Francisco, where wealthy tech workers pretend that they don’t see the homeless encampments outside of their companies’ HQ?…When was the last time Marc Andreessen talked to a poor person-or an Instacart shopper struggling to make ends meet, for that matter?
It’s worth noting Instacart is an Andreesen-Horowitz (the name of Andreesen’s venture firm, aka ‘a16z’) portfolio company, as is Postmates, Airbnb, and Lyft, all of which have greatly reduced the number of stable, low skill, living wage jobs and replaced them with inconsistent, wage-slave gig work -work that can quickly disappear if consumer demand disappears, investment money dries up, and/or government regulation undermines their business models, like what is happening with Airbnb in NYC. A16z was also an investor in Facebook and Twitter, tech behemoths responsible for making a good chunk of the world’s population into antisocial, propaganda-spewing, intellectually-stunted, screen-addicted zombies.
Technology’s human costs are only matched by its environmental ones. While not often seen or acknowledged, information technology depends on an…
