There's really nothing in this that you can latch on to. It's rambling and at times paranoid. (He approvingly cites the bonkers claim that "...some of these kids are joining the company not with the intent of doing things for us but destroying us.")
The one thing that struck me is that Andressen doesn't see himself as an 'activist'. This is a pejorative that he applies to the little people who have the effrontery to express political views when they ought to be sucking up to him, like in the good old days ("When do I get promoted, and how much do I get paid, and when do I end up running the company?").
Looking at institutions across the West I can't say he's wrong.
I forget who's law it is but "Any institution that isn't explicitly right wing will become left wing".
I don't think it's a real drive to destroy, but the outcome of people identifying that the left cannot succeed democratically, so the form of leftism that ends up prevalent is one that is very enticing to progressives inside powerful extrapolitical organisations.
You could argue that tech was just caught in the tsunami but it was an enormous social revolution — Google are still running Pixel ads of men/amab in dresses iirc
I don’t understand the claim that the left can’t succeed democratically. If the ‘left’ is the Democrats then the country is split roughly 50/50. The Democrats sometimes win and sometimes lose, just like the Republicans. If the ‘left’ are people who broadly support LGBTQ rights then they’re a fairly clear majority in the US, and absolutely have the potential to succeed democratically (as indeed they have many times). There is currently somewhat of a moral panic around trans people specifically, which is not so very different to the resurgence of homophobia in the 1980s.
As for the Google ad: society is (slowly) making progress on trans rights and that’s reflected in advertising. You’re of course right that that has nothing specifically to do with tech, or with anything that Andressen is preoccupied with. You may not like it that trans people are gaining increased acceptance, but it’s not threatening Andressen’s bottom line or forcing him to vote for Trump.
By the left I don't mean democrats (they aren't left wing other than when convenient socially), I mean the theory-reading new leftists of a few decades ago i.e. a relatively tiny group of post-marxists that came up with new terminology and became quite dominant in most academic departments of that nature.
No one will openly vote for this stuff, so they gave up and ended up in institutions (amongst other things).
I'm writing from a British perspective, so the joke that comes to mind is "I'm old enough to remember when judges were right-wing".
I had to attend lectures about decolonizing the physics curriculum for example, in a university founded almost in the 70s (i.e. after the revolution). This is late Soviet or antiquity levels of bizarre rituals and practices.
The ad I'm thinking of I don't think featured any trans people, or at least if it was they don't pass. I don't really want to dwell on this other than it stuck out like a sore thumb as something from 2021 or '22. The point is just that it's clearly evidence of some massive cultural shift inside Google.
Anyway, back to Andreesen, the east Coast declared war on the west, and lost. Tough shit IMO.
I’m also British. I can’t say that your perspective makes any sense to me.
Andreessen is talking about why he voted Republican instead of Democrat. If the Democrats aren’t particularly left wing then the ‘left’ in your sense isn’t relevant here. I certainly don’t think lectures in British universities have any connection to his voting choices.
>The point is just that it's clearly evidence of some massive cultural shift inside Google.
I haven’t seen the ads, so sorry if I got the wrong idea about them featuring trans people. But if they just show men wearing dresses, who could really take issue with this? Are there really people who believe that men should not be permitted to wear dresses and that tech companies need to take a strong stance on what men should or shouldn’t wear? And if you’re British, would you not have seen a man in a dress every time you went to see the Christmas panto? It’s hardly a brand new cultural phenomenon, nor a harbinger of the end of days.
> I certainly don’t think lectures in British universities have any connection to his voting choices.
To me this reads like you either cannot reason abductively at all or you're being deliberately obtuse. I was giving an example of the cultural revolution he referred to.
There are two strands here:
One is tech drifting away from the left and/or actively being attacked by the form that popular leftism takes.
The other is the Democratic insiders declaring war on tech / the east coast in general.
The latter is what really drove someone like Andreesen towards Trump, but the former tee-ed it up.
Macro: This isn't really about voting, it's about the different parts of the US establishment putting the brakes on the way the executive was going for the last few years. They wanted Trump to win, Kamala was a just there to see it out.
As for Panto, I have indeed and this is completely different. I think you know it, at least if you don't you're a frog being boiled. You might think it's just the next chapter of progress; you have every right to do so, but to say it's not at least in some way novel is just strange.
It really is a new cultural phenomenon. This type of marketing would be an anachronism in even in the first Trump term let alone 2012 or so, the recent election was basically a referendum on it, and they lost, badly. Trump post-assassination is a unity candidate to take some power back, make the federal gov less activist, undo woke etc.
I don't think a lecture that you attended once in one country is a great example of a cultural revolution in another country; it's especially not a good example of anything Democrats are advocating for in the US. In general, your posts contain a lot of free association between events and ideas that are linked from your psychological point of view, but which don't necessarily have a great deal of logical connection.
"Democratic insiders" have not "declared war on tech". The interview is full of this sort of hyperbole, but there's no need to repeat it uncritically here. If we leave aside the fantasy "war on tech" and try to find whatever sense we can in Andreessen's responses, it essentially amounts to the following: he voted for Trump because he likes what Trump stands for and thinks Trump will be better for his bottom line. In other words, he voted based on perceived self interest, just like lots of voters do every time there's an election. As Andreessen appears to have no very fixed political or moral convictions beyond those expected of his class, it is rather difficult to understand him as he wishes to be understood, i.e. as an instinctive Democrat "driven" to vote for the other side by a shadowy conspiracy against his livelihood.
I've now looked up the Google ad you referred to. It actually involves a nonbinary person who uses he/they pronouns (so not really a man dressed as a woman). As you yourself acknowledged previously, such ads merely reflect a broader cultural shift in the acceptance of trans and nonbinary people. Tech can perfectly well survive such changes, just as it survived gay marriage and countless other cultural shifts.
Nonbinary people appearing in commercials wasn't a big election issue. The election certainly wasn't a referendum on this (or on the broader associated cultural changes). The economy was the top issue for most voters.
Biden literally closed out his term speaking about the "tech-industrial complex"...
The "Trump is for you, Kamala is for They/Them" ad was extremely effective if I'm remembering the polling data correctly.
> In general, your posts contain a lot of free association between events and ideas that are linked from your psychological point of view, but which don't necessarily have a great deal of logical connection.
Look at the election of William McKinley Vs William Jennings Bryan and what happened in the following 2 two elections. Very useful to understand what happens to Gilded Age Oligarchs.
What they say and think has nothing to do with how the universe works
> The most privileged people in society, the most successful, send their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists.
It's funny to compare this with the Powell memo from the seventies.
> A chilling description of what is being taught on many of our campuses was written by Stewart Alsop:
> “Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores of bright young men who are practitioners of ‘the politics of despair.’ These young men despise the American political and economic system . . . (their) minds seem to be wholly closed. They live, not by rational discussion, but by mindless slogans.”A recent poll of students on 12 representative campuses reported that: “Almost half the students favored socialization of basic U.S. industries.”
>A visiting professor from England at Rockford College gave a series of lectures entitled “The Ideological War Against Western Society,” in which he documents the extent to which members of the intellectual community are waging ideological warfare against the enterprise system and the values of western society. In a foreword to these lectures, famed Dr. Milton Friedman of Chicago warned: “It (is) crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack — not by Communist or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.”
This bit is particularly interesting when you realise the guy writing it is later installed in the supreme court by Nixon:
> The American Civil Liberties Union is one example. It initiates or intervenes in scores of cases each year, and it files briefs amicus curiae in the Supreme Court in a number of cases during each term of that court. Labor unions, civil rights groups and now the public interest law firms are extremely active in the judicial arena. Their success, often at business’ expense, has not been inconsequential.
> This is a vast area of opportunity for the Chamber, if it is willing to undertake the role of spokesman for American business and if, in turn, business is willing to provide the funds.
>By 2013, the median newly arrived Harvard kid was like: “[expletive] it. We’re burning the system down. You are all evil. White people are evil. All men are evil. Capitalism is evil. Tech is evil.”
Interesting that he points to perceived attacks upon his whiteness and maleness as the turning point that caused his move towards Trump. A billionaire with an ego so fragile he was incapable of intellectualizing the historical struggles of women and people of color.
As a white male 20 years his senior, I am saddened by the existence of forces that create people like Marc Andressen.
The one thing that struck me is that Andressen doesn't see himself as an 'activist'. This is a pejorative that he applies to the little people who have the effrontery to express political views when they ought to be sucking up to him, like in the good old days ("When do I get promoted, and how much do I get paid, and when do I end up running the company?").
I forget who's law it is but "Any institution that isn't explicitly right wing will become left wing".
I don't think it's a real drive to destroy, but the outcome of people identifying that the left cannot succeed democratically, so the form of leftism that ends up prevalent is one that is very enticing to progressives inside powerful extrapolitical organisations.
You could argue that tech was just caught in the tsunami but it was an enormous social revolution — Google are still running Pixel ads of men/amab in dresses iirc
As for the Google ad: society is (slowly) making progress on trans rights and that’s reflected in advertising. You’re of course right that that has nothing specifically to do with tech, or with anything that Andressen is preoccupied with. You may not like it that trans people are gaining increased acceptance, but it’s not threatening Andressen’s bottom line or forcing him to vote for Trump.
No one will openly vote for this stuff, so they gave up and ended up in institutions (amongst other things).
I'm writing from a British perspective, so the joke that comes to mind is "I'm old enough to remember when judges were right-wing".
I had to attend lectures about decolonizing the physics curriculum for example, in a university founded almost in the 70s (i.e. after the revolution). This is late Soviet or antiquity levels of bizarre rituals and practices.
The ad I'm thinking of I don't think featured any trans people, or at least if it was they don't pass. I don't really want to dwell on this other than it stuck out like a sore thumb as something from 2021 or '22. The point is just that it's clearly evidence of some massive cultural shift inside Google.
Anyway, back to Andreesen, the east Coast declared war on the west, and lost. Tough shit IMO.
Andreessen is talking about why he voted Republican instead of Democrat. If the Democrats aren’t particularly left wing then the ‘left’ in your sense isn’t relevant here. I certainly don’t think lectures in British universities have any connection to his voting choices.
>The point is just that it's clearly evidence of some massive cultural shift inside Google.
I haven’t seen the ads, so sorry if I got the wrong idea about them featuring trans people. But if they just show men wearing dresses, who could really take issue with this? Are there really people who believe that men should not be permitted to wear dresses and that tech companies need to take a strong stance on what men should or shouldn’t wear? And if you’re British, would you not have seen a man in a dress every time you went to see the Christmas panto? It’s hardly a brand new cultural phenomenon, nor a harbinger of the end of days.
To me this reads like you either cannot reason abductively at all or you're being deliberately obtuse. I was giving an example of the cultural revolution he referred to.
There are two strands here:
One is tech drifting away from the left and/or actively being attacked by the form that popular leftism takes.
The other is the Democratic insiders declaring war on tech / the east coast in general.
The latter is what really drove someone like Andreesen towards Trump, but the former tee-ed it up.
Macro: This isn't really about voting, it's about the different parts of the US establishment putting the brakes on the way the executive was going for the last few years. They wanted Trump to win, Kamala was a just there to see it out.
As for Panto, I have indeed and this is completely different. I think you know it, at least if you don't you're a frog being boiled. You might think it's just the next chapter of progress; you have every right to do so, but to say it's not at least in some way novel is just strange.
It really is a new cultural phenomenon. This type of marketing would be an anachronism in even in the first Trump term let alone 2012 or so, the recent election was basically a referendum on it, and they lost, badly. Trump post-assassination is a unity candidate to take some power back, make the federal gov less activist, undo woke etc.
"Democratic insiders" have not "declared war on tech". The interview is full of this sort of hyperbole, but there's no need to repeat it uncritically here. If we leave aside the fantasy "war on tech" and try to find whatever sense we can in Andreessen's responses, it essentially amounts to the following: he voted for Trump because he likes what Trump stands for and thinks Trump will be better for his bottom line. In other words, he voted based on perceived self interest, just like lots of voters do every time there's an election. As Andreessen appears to have no very fixed political or moral convictions beyond those expected of his class, it is rather difficult to understand him as he wishes to be understood, i.e. as an instinctive Democrat "driven" to vote for the other side by a shadowy conspiracy against his livelihood.
I've now looked up the Google ad you referred to. It actually involves a nonbinary person who uses he/they pronouns (so not really a man dressed as a woman). As you yourself acknowledged previously, such ads merely reflect a broader cultural shift in the acceptance of trans and nonbinary people. Tech can perfectly well survive such changes, just as it survived gay marriage and countless other cultural shifts.
Nonbinary people appearing in commercials wasn't a big election issue. The election certainly wasn't a referendum on this (or on the broader associated cultural changes). The economy was the top issue for most voters.
The "Trump is for you, Kamala is for They/Them" ad was extremely effective if I'm remembering the polling data correctly.
> In general, your posts contain a lot of free association between events and ideas that are linked from your psychological point of view, but which don't necessarily have a great deal of logical connection.
As I said, you cannot reason abductively
What they say and think has nothing to do with how the universe works
It's funny to compare this with the Powell memo from the seventies.
> A chilling description of what is being taught on many of our campuses was written by Stewart Alsop:
> “Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores of bright young men who are practitioners of ‘the politics of despair.’ These young men despise the American political and economic system . . . (their) minds seem to be wholly closed. They live, not by rational discussion, but by mindless slogans.”A recent poll of students on 12 representative campuses reported that: “Almost half the students favored socialization of basic U.S. industries.”
>A visiting professor from England at Rockford College gave a series of lectures entitled “The Ideological War Against Western Society,” in which he documents the extent to which members of the intellectual community are waging ideological warfare against the enterprise system and the values of western society. In a foreword to these lectures, famed Dr. Milton Friedman of Chicago warned: “It (is) crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack — not by Communist or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.”
This bit is particularly interesting when you realise the guy writing it is later installed in the supreme court by Nixon:
> The American Civil Liberties Union is one example. It initiates or intervenes in scores of cases each year, and it files briefs amicus curiae in the Supreme Court in a number of cases during each term of that court. Labor unions, civil rights groups and now the public interest law firms are extremely active in the judicial arena. Their success, often at business’ expense, has not been inconsequential.
> This is a vast area of opportunity for the Chamber, if it is willing to undertake the role of spokesman for American business and if, in turn, business is willing to provide the funds.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-me...
Interesting that he points to perceived attacks upon his whiteness and maleness as the turning point that caused his move towards Trump. A billionaire with an ego so fragile he was incapable of intellectualizing the historical struggles of women and people of color.
As a white male 20 years his senior, I am saddened by the existence of forces that create people like Marc Andressen.