311–320 of 414 posts
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The things which people really want will never be abundant. Social status is a zero-sum game.
Status driven monkeys fighting over tree position That’s why we got Facebook over jet packs. That’s what we are. We need to accept it
Status is one of the main factors that drives innovation.
This was strange and disappointing thing to read. Why such a conspiratorial tone ("we are being lied to", "we have enemies", etc.)? Since this is written by Marc Andreessen, I did a search for "crypto" and "web 3", but no results came up. Isn't that strange coming from someone who was so prominent in promoting and advocating for a crypto-based future? I guess that one didn't pan out… "Our enemy is the ivory tower" is…
I agree with the overall thrust of this, or should be easy to convince, but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” > Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’…
Academic credentials in the US, especially at the 'prestige' institutions, have been hollowed out quite a lot by politics, groupthink, & logrolling. Large government subsidies, & a self-replicating nearly-hereditary elite, have insulated much of their output from accountability to the broader society, and even from accountability to the truth. Even an "uber-wealthy capital allocator" with a big personal-wealth buffer…
Which reality is that again?
In that reality, does this writing warrant more attention, or less?
Presumably we’re reading this to understand what Marc thinks, and to isolate the stated words from their context is naivety, not wisdom.
There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. My point is that everything about this screed — content, context, subtext, and omission — hints at this particular horse being pointed a bit askew.
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I actually agree with the idea that we should judge people based on their popularity with customers rather than their peers. Credential are very often indicative of the former
Who has a better idea whether a lawyer or a surgeon is actually good at their job - their clients or their peers?
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Apple survived thanks to Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs alone. He could've built his vision in any company or startup though, when he took over Apple was a few weeks away from bankruptcy.
Without Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, the Mac would have been dead. Gil Amelio negotiated their continuation (as settlement for the old Look & Feel and QuickTime lawsuits) with Microsoft and Jobs closed the deal by letting up on some of Amelio's demands. Microsoft could have just said no and the Mac would have been useless to both education and business and they would have been dead in weeks as you said. Ne…
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Without Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, the Mac would have been dead. Gil Amelio negotiated their continuation (as settlement for the old Look & Feel and QuickTime lawsuits) with Microsoft and Jobs closed the deal by letting up on some of Amelio's demands. Microsoft could have just said no and the Mac would have been useless to both education and business and they would have been dead in weeks as you said. Ne…
It’s not possible to know what other factors would’ve or wouldn’t have come into play, who would’ve done what else in this alternate history of yours. It’s just speculation.
"The Enemy": “social responsibility”, “tech ethics”...
"Patron Saints": John Galt
which it quite a different thing. You can be tech optimistic without being Randian.
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It’s not possible to know what other factors would’ve or wouldn’t have come into play, who would’ve done what else in this alternate history of yours. It’s just speculation.
And you can't possibly know what would have happened without government Anti-trust pressure on Microsoft.
In a world where abundance reigns, the old structures and the leaders who champion them fade into obsolescence. The energy that once went into seeking more begins to flow into sharing, nurturing, and sustaining. In this transformed landscape, resource hoarding and centralized control are not just out of place; they become barriers to the collective human journey toward wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. When everyone'…
We do not live in a post-scarcity world. Every day people get up, enforce the laws, execute the national defense, bury themselves up to their elbows in humans’ abdomens to heal their broken bodies, and pick your turnips. The world is not self-executing. Market mechanisms coordinate that activity by transmitting information through the price signal. In their absence, the material abundance you mistake for post-scarcit…
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I think that's wholesale falsehood. The wins in the last 200 years are so dramatic for the average person, especially in the West. Infant mortality rate and the chance of survival to adulthood alone are such glorious victories against Death that I would gladly vote for any system that would give us those wins and create a trillionaire. All that wondrous science has come from this system. No. Evidence is evidence. Thi…
We live like Gods compared to people of the 1800s. Some of us do. If you're at the poorer end of society things are still pretty damn bleak. People live with long term treatable illness. People don't have basic necessities like shelter or food or water. People live with very little prospect of escaping a life of drudgery. Sure, those of us who can afford them have lots of shiny gadgets that save us from a bit of manu…
One of the key points made in the book, which is full of wonderful data and is a GREAT read if you’re into that sort of thing, was the idea that *wealth is much more unequal than income*.
From Vox’s coverage of the book:
> You hear a lot about income inequality, but as this chart makes clear wealth inequality is much more severe. In the United States, just 1 percent of the population owns about 35 percent of all the wealth. Even in relatively egalitarian Europe, the top 1 percent owns around 25 percent of the wealth. In both continents, the top 10 percent owns over half the wealth.
It’s hugely important to understand that point, which gets lost frequently.
Wealth inequality > Income inequality.
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/5561608/9-charts-that-explain-...
You can’t argue about the benefits of the system — they are material. You can try to argue about global incomes rising. But it’s a hard argument to win when it comes to global wealth distribution.