Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future
Comments
pulkitsh1234
akudha
Setting ethical and moral questions aside for a second:
Never pay a human again
Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes from their wealth and if that wealth is threatened because consumers are too poor to buy, then what happens? Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?
ceejayoz
> If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all?
No one. That's the idea.
A low-population paradise. Venice without its pesky people to mess with Bezos's wedding. Bora Bora without the peasants.
bodge5000
There's been plenty of good sci-fi written about this, but surely they know that any any display of power is meaningless without someone to have power over? The wedding in Venice only means anything because people live in Venice and you're still able to "take over". Any "paradise" built like this will never be paradise, it'll be just chasing the next extreme until there's nowhere left to go
ytoawwhra92
You don't have to look at sci-fi, go look at the history of the Republic of Venice. It was ruled by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy people while the vast majority of the population owned nothing and had zero influence.
bodge5000
Absolutely not, sci-fi is just often a good vehicle for these kind of ideas (plus it gives me an excuse to talk about warhammer), but your right, theres plenty of real world examples to look at too.
tavavex
> There's been plenty of good sci-fi written about this
Can you recommend me some? I feel like my brain still can't fully internalize the world these people are pushing for.
saltwatercowboy
Baxter's Flood, then Ark. Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, too. Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom is tonally similar, if you like Doctorow, although that explores a different manifestation of disconnection from others. All great for a romp
bodge5000
Others have listed some great examples, but to be honest I was actually thinking of something somewhat more contemporary, specifically the eldar (or dark eldar perhaps) in Warhammer 40,000.
The long story short is that the Eldar once had paradise, and spent their time seeking greater and greater excess and pleasure, which eventually gave birth to an immensely powerful demon of excess. For the current-setting followers of this demon, their lives are spent in a desperate hunger for excess that can never be satiated, every greater excess they experience quickly becoming too dull to bare. As for the Eldar, their paradise is gone and their race is doomed, all they can do now is fight off the inevitable.
Obviously I don't think the rich have much to fear in terms of giving birth to a demon, but you get the point
gopher_space
Vernor Vinge's Peace War and especially Marooned in Realtime both touch on this point of view.
trollbridge
Accelerando remains my favourite.
jamiek88
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model is a good look at this IMO.
jambalaya8
I would have called BS on that before but I think now I would just call BS on the part where it was people like Bezos or whatever. It seems there is a neverending number of people who would do the same. Look at the stories about the sunflower fields that had to close down before the pandemic, or the current overrunning of cities and villages in Italy (like Lake Como). Or competing for views on social media (not just attempting to get them). Fighting for status is as old as.... well maybe humanity. What is fairly new is money and real property... and virtual property.
There probably is nowhere left to go. Maybe one of those little islands in the South Pacific but you can't live there and they are all mapped too.
ornornor
We’re already heading into a certain demographics crisis. It’s not only about the pyramidal system that retirement is but also about who will be your nurse when you’re old, make your car, be your doctor, etc if there aren’t enough people anymore? Every developed country is well below replacement rate with no real plans from the powers that be to address it because it’s so far in the future that it’s the next best guy problem (30 years horizon)
account42
Countries are not doing anything about low replacement rates because its currently in the interest of the elite to keep them low so that they can sell the need to import lower paid foreigners instead.
andriy_koval
Elite is interested to have their country to win the race and not other, and healthy menpower is still essential for this.
m4rtink
Time of the robots has come! ;-)
CM30
But why wouldn't the rest of society kick them out before that point? Like at some point, there's going to be a lot of political pressure to fix things, especially if the majority of the population is going hungry or struggling to find work.
Feels like at some point, some 'rogue' political figure will win election by saying the elites need to be overthrown, and the latter's influence will burn to the ground. If even a percentage of the world's countries are still democracies by that point, then any sort of 'leave the population to suffer while we live in luxury' plan will fail.
account42
Why do you think countries are creating more and more ways to quickly squash dissent. If people can't organize because their messages are being monitored and public protests will get you immediately imprisoned then the resistance will come too late.
m4rtink
You don't even need a democracy for this - the moment people go hungry beacause of you, they will do something about it.
voakbasda
Bread and circuses. The only thing sustaining our civilization at the moment.
Timon3
How many years remain where the population actually still has any way to kick them out? Once military robots are sufficiently advanced, we've lost. We'll be fully at their mercy. Optimistically speaking, that's maybe 5-10 years out?
voakbasda
Are there any robots that can withstand a 50 caliber rifle slug? Don’t rule out ‘muricans just yet!
Timon3
Unfortunately, even if a unified resistance formed by all gun-owning Americans were to march against them, it would buy the labor class a few months at most. Once enough capacity has been established (either production or troops) our only possible recourse would be to hijack/destroy their control, and that's unlikely to be possible if e.g. communication & compute originate from satellites.
ozozozd
I keep questioning this as well.
Also, what protects their wealth is the justice system and the enforcement mechanisms, which are run by ordinary people.
There is no invisible force that will prevent the “peasants” from attacking the wealthy if the police also loses belief in the system and just starts looking the other way. Or just suddenly becomes _less competent_.
jackp96
Eh, you see too many of these guys complaining about declining populations for this to be a thing.
I don't think you need Machiavellianism to explain their actions. These people have everything they could need, but death comes for all of us and they aren't getting any younger.
Purely speculating, but if you had everything in the world (except time) wouldn't you put everything you have into building a future with a 10% chance of living as long as you wanted? What would you sacrifice for that?
SmirkingRevenge
Lots of those people complaining about population decline aren't really talking about the absolute number. They're dog-whistling about demographic replacement - the idea that minorities are reproducing too fast and whites are reproducing too slow.
bigbadfeline
> Eh, you see too many of these guys complaining about declining populations for this to be a thing.
Overpopulation is the best way to get to low population - eventually.
> if you had everything - wouldn't you put everything you have for a 10% chance of living [forever]?
No, I wouldn't, that sounds awfully silly.
> What would you sacrifice for that?
Nothing. I don't sacrifice stuff for BS even if it's 100% sure.
swat535
And who is going to maintain this low-population paradise of elites, if there is no one left but the elites ?
smallmancontrov
Servants. Yes, robots eventually, but servants are the classical answer. The terrible truth is that palace economies are stable -- we see them in "resource-cursed" countries around the world and through time. When a single easily-owned fountain of wealth dominates the economy, a small group of people consolidate ownership and everyone else polarizes around them, forming into concentric rings of gatekeepers and masses struggling to access the only thing that matters. It's terrible but it's stable, and if you're inside the palace it doesn't feel like much of a curse at all.
bamboozled
The robots would have to be intelligent enough to be fully self sufficient, at which point they don’t care about people.
tavavex
'Care' is a human concept. Robots, even extremely advanced ones, will not necessarily come bundled with aspirations. Giving a robot the capacity to care and want change, if it's even possible, would be extremely dangerous. It's completely realistic to imagine a world where robots just do what they're told because it's what they're made to do, because they lack any incentive to do anything else.
bigbadfeline
> It's completely realistic to imagine a world where robots just do what they're told
Yeah, although there are some wrinkles, doing anything else would be clinically insane.
kergonath
Yeah. Billionaire techbros and neofascists love to mis-read Tolkien, but this is a much better picture of the future they want to bring. Down to the mystical doom cult of Peter Thiel and the techno-feudalism on Mars that Musk wants.
Of course they’d imagine themselves as the High Lords on Terra, not amongst the untold billions who died eaten by bugs or enslaved by evil space elves.
eli_gottlieb
Personally, not being a billionaire, in a WH40k-type setting, I like to imagine myself as an ork. The dakka would make a lot of cool noises before I die.
prepend
Robots
65
And who is going to fix the robots when they break down?
triceratops
Robots
goatlover
Can the robots replace the elites while they're at it?
mdp2021
They will surely replace the culpable "unelitables".
toomanyrichies
There will always be a certain percentage of the population whose greatest aspiration is to be "house slaves" as opposed to "field slaves". They're the ones that today would be described as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". [1]
1. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-...
kelseyfrog
You might be interested in William Gibson's Jackpot triloy - The Peripheral and Agency.
lenkite
Slaves. They will call 'em by another acceptable word though.
sznio
how's Bezos going to fund his wedding if there's no population of proles buying from Amazon, nor anyone putting their retirement into a fund that buys Amazon stock? does he just plan to use force rather than money at this point?
ryandrake
Yea, at some point, these guys won't really need the vast majority of us to buy from them. They'll be buying from and selling to other wealthy people.
megaman821
That makes litteraly no sense. All the biggest companies are driven by middle-class purchases. Rich-only companies are boutique and are order-of-magnitude smaller than mass market companies.
lenkite
This is actually changing. Many consumer and retail companies are already shifting their focus from the mass middle class toward high-income and affluent segments. Businesses find higher profit margins and more resilient demand in premium goods. And in enterprise, companies just pay other rich companies who pay them. (sometimes just directly).
georgemcbay
50% of all consumer spending now is done by the top 10% and this keeps shifting up.
We've got a horribly K-shaped economy even before AGI.
ceejayoz
Why do you think they're all so into AI and robots?
willturman
The wars of the future will not be fought on a battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today, remember always, your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
andriy_koval
> how's Bezos going to fund his wedding if there's no population of proles buying from Amazon
there will be new economy around satisfying super rich and few layers of their servants. You can think about shifting production and distribution to more luxury cars/clothes/jets etc for them.
Bezos and Andreesen won't live alone on planet, there still be population, just much smaller.
nancyminusone
They need to? The have all the money right now already.
tshaddox
The plan is that he (along with a small number of other people) will already own everything. The only reason he currently wants proles to buy things from Amazon is that he has not yet achieved what he considers sufficient ownership of the world.
esafak
That is in the past.
butlike
There is no end game. Short term profits are by definition not a long-term view. The family's future will be secured if I invest in plastics and robot payment mechanisms now. I won't live forever, so I won't get to rest under the shade of the trees I plant for my family. With money and influence, they will be best set up to conquer whatever comes in the future.
Miner49er
> Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?
Well yeah, but not human consumers. Businesses can buy from other businesses and that can be the only surviving part of the economy. Even further, maybe those businesses are fully autonomous. There's no reason this wouldn't work, as far as I can tell.
The economy would be much more focused. It would be mostly energy, materials, and tech.
pixl97
Exactly, it seems many if not most people are trapped in an 1800s ideal of how an economy works. "You do work, you get money, you spend money, you do work" In fact the entire "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." statement is in full force here.
It's impossible for most people to envision an economy without them even though there are economic systems that will work without them.
nobody9999
>It's impossible for most people to envision an economy without them
It's possible that's the case because (at least in the US) 68% of GDP is consumer spending[0]. As such, 2/3 of the economy is "them."
account42
Yes, that's the inefficient part of the economy that can and will be eliminated as far as the elite are concerned. The only reason that hasn't been achieved yet is because so far you still need manual labor to support the wishes of the elite.
tshaddox
The people who advocate this expect to be part of a very small group of humans who own literally everything, so they don’t share your concern.
m4rtink
Well, this is not a problem at all - long before you ever need to ask "who will buy stuff" the world will burn.
That will fix the problem & whoever rises to power from the ashes will be hopefully more careful than their predecessors - maintain social stability and not radicalize big parts of the society against you.
mawadev
"Who is left buying it all?"
Nobody cares about that at the top. At some point they will have robots doing their bidding and the people at the bottom are economically squeezed to build and "train" their replacement.
Once that is done, there is no "need" for people to exist. This is how they think about people, disposable and replacable "resources" providing "value" over "time". This logic has shaped corporations for decades at this point. "Value" has been redefined and those who still cling to "common sense" are exploited.
We have been observing the cracks of this philosophy of anti human design for a while now and yet there are still people believing they are doing something that brings humanity forward or at least they believe they will have a spot in that future.
If you truly believe in a utopian outcome, you probably have never been on the receiving end of cold calculation, in terms of layoffs or work and/or starve to see how this can backfire, regardless of what you do and what common sense tells you.
Just challenge the micro agreements you had to make while growing up into becoming an adult to justify doing the things you do and the way you are forced to treat other people while doing business.
I see cold judgements on a daily basis, when someone is instrumentalized to do or say objectively immoral things, despite them just wanting to pay bills. It is ordinary men all the way down until reality arrives. Fear of certain consequences is the biggest lever that is being pulled every time, no matter what direction you look at.
Despite that I'm still optimistic and believe people will pull back and change direction.
Happy to read your thoughts on this
prepend
I think the end game is to only do interesting things and automate all the mundane parts of life.
We used to have to wash clothes by hand and it took all day. Now we have a washing machine and it takes 2 hours.
People used to spend time washing clothes and now we have more members of the household working.
I think the future from scifi that I remember (eg, Star Trek) is that humans are just being creative. Usually some sort of post scarcity where there’s no more need for money.
ndiddy
If everything is automated away, you won't see a Star Trek style post scarcity utopia because everyone on UBI will have lost basically all of their political power. They aren't employable so they can't threaten to withhold their labor in order to get any sort of leverage. The most they could do is withhold consumption to some extent. If you have a dependent population being managed by the same state that's already allowed wealth to accumulate to its current levels, what incentive does the state have to do any more than the bare minimum?
runtime_terror
You actually believe this is what these people want to create?
Why then are they directly attacking many forms of creativity (writing, photography, art, filmmaking, even programming)?
Why do they resist all forms of social programs if these technologies are supposed to create untold wealth (ala Star Trek)?
goatlover
That's not what the tech bros are saying the end goal is.
dfdydx
Wasn't much of the population too poor to buy most stuff, back in the day? It seems to have worked out fine for, say, European Aristocrats c. 1400s-1700s.
CodingJeebus
> what is the end game here?
They don't have one, outside of trying to hoard as much wealth and power as possible if it all falls apart. I firmly believe that greed is an addiction just like any other.
Why does the raging alcoholic drink themselves to death? Can they not see that they're careening towards the end? The powerful worship one concept at the expense of all others, and that is the endless accumulation of more.
saghm
If a small group of people fully automated all production and controlled it, they wouldn't need anyone to buy anything anymore; they could live off of it indefinitely and produce whatever they needed to in order to protect themselves from the masses. I don't see any obvious reason why this outcome would be prevented by a purely capitalist economic system (assuming that this sort of automation ends up being possible), which in my mind is an argument in favor of some sort of upper bound for wealth consolidation.
K0balt
I really wish that logic held.
Automation doesn’t need customers.
Automation just needs more automation, and access to energy and natural resources, both of which don’t require money if you have enough automation.
Ultimately, Money is only used to pay wages, nothing else… so no wages to pay, no money required. In the post employment scenario, money is not needed by industry. You don’t pay the forest to cut the trees, you don’t pay the dirt to mine the iron, and you don’t pay the sun to grow the crops.
Capital doesn’t need to produce goods for customers. It just needs coercive power to gain and maintain access to resources and energy. You know what gives you that power? An army of 20 million self manufacturering robots.
It’s the grey-goo scenario, only with a few humans nominally involved, and on a macroscopic scale instead of nanotechnology.
Humans are the main impediment to unchecked capital growth. Soon, that impediment could be largely removed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
With automation, there is no need for the rest of us to exist in order to support the capital class. Ai enabled robotics won’t just eliminate employment, it will make money (and increasingly, people) irrelevant to capitalism. The new capital is automation capability, and you only need energy and raw materials beyond that.
You don’t buy a yacht, you build a one-yacht factory and build it from raw materials. With a few million self manufacturing robots, you don’t need money to have enormous wealth and power.
When they want money, they will mine it. Gold, bitcoin, whatever doesn’t involve hiring people. The rest of us outside the gilded walls will be increasingly irrelevant scavenging over the scraps and trying to maintain some kind of agrarian society since manufacturing will be largely pointless.
hattmall
Wouldn't everyone else just restart the same economy with what resources they do have?
K0balt
Sort of, maybe to a 1900s kind of economy.
account42
Without access to easily harvested energy sources and raw materials? Good luck.
teravor
there is nothing magically good about economic activity, it has merely been necessary thus far.
once it's no longer necessary and once they can have robot security they will decouple from the rest of society.
they would also require military grade deterrence. eventually they will either steal, buy or make nukes.
ceejayoz
https://www.wkms.org/energy/2025-07-25/billionaire-peter-thi...
> A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.
itemize123
it's because it is a narrow set of never-pay-a-human. in that world, only certain task won't be done by human.
csomar
No one has to buy anything for the system to work. You buy because you beneficially contributed to the system or the system gifted you some credit. Otherwise, you buying is actually "inflating" consumption for others (ie: the rich). There are billions of people in the world buying nothing and yet the "system" still work. They just want you to be lined up to them next. (or line them up next to you).
ModernMech
The end game is that we're all dead, and they live off their robot slave army in a world of abundance, no poors, and no governments to tell them no. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's what they want more than anything if you really pay close attention to what thy're doing, which as you say doesn't make sense given an end game where you and I are part of the system. When then say "everyone in the future will be rich" they don't mean that poor people will be made rich; they mean poor people will all be dead, or don't count as people, thus trivially leaving only rich people.
stackbutterflow
I still can't wrap my head around it.
So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare, and there's maybe 50-100 billionaires left on the planet. Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies. They don't have children? The human race dies with them? Or they have children, somehow avoid the trap of inbreeding and their children in turn have children and in no time there's again a billion of "us".
We're talking about a level of control over the remaining humans, them and their friends, that require absolute totalitarianism. Of course billionaire A won't accept to live their life according to billionaire B so it'll be a mess in no time.
This thing makes no sense to me when they can already enjoy everything the world has to offer and on top of that they're for all practical purposes above the law.
ryandrake
> Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies.
It's helpful to think of the world as if it were a gigantic vacation resort for about 1000 people, and the remaining 8billion of us are just the staff keeping it luxurious for them. They would be 100% fine if the resort didn't need or have any staff.
augment_me
When you have everything, you want something new and different. The whole Epstein scandal is literally about this, you want to kill babies, r*pe the kids, do sacrifice rituals, etc because nothing gives you sensory satisfaction anymore. In the view of the commenters above, humanity will just be the final playtoy, let's have a little nuclear bomb in that town and film it in 4k, etc.
account42
Why the Orwellian self-censorship?
hattmall
Nah, they were just fucked up, plenty of rich people not into that and plenty of poor people that are into pedo rings etc.
thunspa
You are right and all these people replying to you are living in some kind of fantasy world.
I forget what it's called, but there's this fallacy of ordinary people, that states that we attribute superhuman abilities to people far enough from us on the social scale. In reality, rich people are far from movie villains, life is much more mundane.
It is scary for me to see how many well-educated people here on HN are so conspiracy-theory minded. In a quest to avoid these fantasized dictators, it is very well likely that we will vote for the one who promises to give us what we want, if only we give them enough power. In the end, the world's worst political systems were also the ones promising of liberating the poor and equalizing everyone.
Daishiman
> This thing makes no sense to me when they can already enjoy everything the world has to offer and on top of that they're for all practical purposes above the law.
It doesn't have to make sense because these are not well-reasoned theories of the future. Thiel, Yarvis and Musk, from what you hear and read on their interviews, come off as drug-addled losers who hate other human beings and anything that doesn't have to do with their hyper-optimized partial view of the world.
Miner49er
I'm not even sure they care about living. They only care about the growth of capitalism. At some point it seems very likely capitalism won't need humans to continue growing, and all humans may be killed off.
There's people that actively cheer this on, Theil and other billionaires may be among them.
You are assuming they are acting out of greed, but maybe they are just doing what they've spent their whole lives doing - accelerating the growth of capitalism.
ModernMech
You have to put yourself in the mindset of a virus, then it makes perfect sense. The point is to consume and exhaust without thinking (introspection), not to sustain and thrive.
btw none of this will be possible because it's a dumb plan and would never work, but it's their utopia.
> they can already enjoy everything
What I love Elon Musk for is teaching me that even if you have everything in the world, you can still be an empty miserable shell of a human, unhappy, unliked, and satisfied with nothing. His example makes me far less driven to acquire more and rather just be happy with what I have. But we should be aware these people could own everything on Earth, the Moon, and Mars and it wouldn't be enough to satisfy them. They're fundamentally empty and insatiable people, it's such a shame so many aspire to be like them or join their ranks.
pixl97
>btw none of this will be possible because it's a dumb plan and would never work
Ensure you realize that "not working" and them "not trying" are two totally different things. Because they absolutely will try just as many dictators have tried in the past with horrific outcomes, even though the end point was it not working out.
ModernMech
Yes, usually the way it turns out is "If I'm going down I'm taking the rest of you with me".
esseph
>I still can't wrap my head around it.
Mmhm
> So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare
Yep, and then there's a few hundred or few thousand kings and queens of the world that can do whatever they want! And no more dirty fucking lowlife scum to worry about (poors).
insane_dreamer
From AZ's perspective that's someone else's problem (i.e., governments step in with UBI or whatever)
SmirkingRevenge
It becomes sort of like the dystopian future imagined in William Gibson's "The Peripheral" - most of the human race has died off, but technology has advanced so that the elites can self-sustain anyhow. Big cities are haunted with holograms running scripts of people going about their day to make them feel lived in.
toomuchtodo
> what is the end game here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)
A tale as old as time, power and control, over the means of production and (what those seeking this power and control consider lesser) humans.
If you think they're doing this for "the betterment of humanity," I would ask you strongly re-examine the evidence. "Watch what people do, not what they say."
"The wealth of the top-400 Americans surpassed 20% of GDP at the start of Trump's second term."
https://www.ft.com/content/2472ef5a-798d-4e7b-b4be-020855cf3... | https://archive.today/8X9dw
ryandrake
These guys have already all but built Elysium--just not in space.
They live their lives completely insulated and apart from the masses. They go to different events, they have other people shop for them and transport them around. They don't really interact with us at all. When was the last time you even saw a billionaire in person, let alone talked to one? They have private security to keep us away from them. They only interact with each other.
toomuchtodo
Certainly, and it isn't enough, is it? It's never enough. Political spending, lobbying, etc. That's the point, the accumulated wealth and their actions are simply symptoms of the dysfunction.
"Just another billion bro." Like a food driven shark, I acknowledge the shark's existence, while wanting the strongest cage possible between us when in close proximity. Never envy, always recognizing the danger and need for self preservation from the paperclip maximizers.
LargoLasskhyfv
Several times a year in the USA during the last 15 years with several 'You don't need to knows'...
About 2008 in Hamburg, Germany. Some woman jogging with her St. Bernard dog along the empty beach of the Elbe river at around 4:30AM at earliest dawn(blaue Stunde), while I was tending the last glow of a camp-fire, alone, and she complained about the smoke. I complained back. We complained back and forth for about 30 minutes until she jogged away, exasperated :->
Hilarious!
About 2003 in Gevelsberg, Germany. Some inventor, amongst them tools for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDC_(electrical_connector) (LSA+). Fixed his computers and network.
Interesting. Big house, but living alone, with the exception of some really nice horses. Otherwise no extraordinary luxuries. No kitsch.
August 1988, Neuss, Germany. 'You don't need to know'. Fucked daughter which I knew from boarding school, because she had a crush on me, and her parents wanted to fulfill her wishes.
So I've been invited home for a weekend. Besides riding Freya and being ridden by her with full consent of her parents, I had much joy riding their horses with her in lush greens.
Yeehaaa!
About 1983 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, Germany. Some Tanya (former classmate) 'You don't need to know', living right next to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Spinat (been paperboy, and played with the horses), with some Bettina (then classmate(very well off, but not extraordinarily rich) of Tanya) at the same time :-)
Doubleplusgood Fun!
About 1983 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, some Anja, daugther of 'You don't need to know', really big into pencils, pens, all sorts of stuff for painting and drawing. After her mother overheard what I've been talking about to her, of some extraordinary thing I did, which she got confirmation of behind my back via telephone from the hospital in which I did that, then I had 'carte blanche', and the adoration of her daughter.
Sweet careless fun!
About 1980 to 1981 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, playing with Max, son of 'You don't need to know' , big into fire extinguishers, living right over the street from me. When he's been there. They lived elsewhere, too. He was also in boarding school most of the times, unhappy about it. Very, very smart and friendly mother, though.
Interesting. Because humble.
About 1980 to 1981 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, some René, son of 'You don't need to know', Big Pharma by themselves, and the German exclusive distribution rights for other stuff. Very unhappy child, they had it all, butlers, gardeners, security, really big house with laaarge garden, big indoor aviary with shiny hummingbirds. But something seemed to be always 'off', like tension because of domestic problems.
Interesting, because that made it obvious that money alone is not making you happy.
About 1980 in Pech, Germany, near Bonn Bad-Godesberg. One of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haribo heirs. Been watching the compound with the deers, but really hoping to see the private https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook in Haribo livery starting or landing there on the private heliport. Someone came walking to the edge of the fence I casually leaned on, with a rifle or shotgun over his shoulder. Asked me what I wanted. I told him. He said bad luck, it's in Sankt Augustin for maintenance. We talked a little, and he said who he was. I asked him how it felt to be responsible for countless cavities all over the world?
Not good!
Luckily I've been really fast on my road bicycle, and just gave him the bird while speeding away while he cussed and cursed.
Intense!
demibabs
Comparing GDP to net worths isn’t very meaningful
account42
Considering that many people are not able to accumulate any real assets beyond their ability to generate wealth which is then captured by others, what meaningful comparison would you suggest.
toomuchtodo
Its a measure and visualization of undemocratic power and control through wealth and resources.
surgical_fire
> what is the end game here?
You are asking the wrong question.
There's no end game. They just really hate life and the living. They want you to suffer.
jambalaya8
that sort of crappy movie with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster that is supposedly dystopian but far more utopian than the reality would be.
wonder if the overlords will allow meat or only gruel or bug bars like that Bong Ho movie to the survivors. heh but serious.
wolvesechoes
Where this demand for the "end game" comes from? Why do you people assign some long-term vision to a bunch of sociopaths with money and influence that came from being born in a proper family and having lot of luck, whilst ditching any moral integrity along the way?
The is no plan, there is no endgame. There is greed and complete lack of morals, and a completely inhumane system so often praised here - capitalism. It has a single logic, logic of accumulation. Everything else is a mean to that end. System doesn't question its purpose, as its purpose defines its essence.
munksbeer
I think you're arguing against something that is made up by doomers. They truly believe (evidence by the comments below yours) that the billionaire class are all a of one mind and want to eradicate other humans, live in cloud cities, and have robots cater to their every need.
I don't even really know how to start refuting this. It seems to absurd to even start.
preg_match
I think people think this because many billionaires outright say it. We can’t pretend they aren’t salivating at the idea of eradicating labor when they literally talk about how excited they are to eradicate labor.
Ok fine, I guess not all billionaires. But the other ones are reaaaal quiet.
goatlover
We have an entire history of rich elites abusing their wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. It's lead to various conflicts and social upheavals. And we currently have tech elites selling the idea of full automation, machine godhood, and opposition being the antichrist. Also they like talking about replacing democracy with some sort of digital feudalism.
How it all plays out remains to be seen (predicting the future is hard), but calling people who point this out doomers is very dismissive and one sided.
mlsu
Look at how they fantasize about humanoid robots and you will understand.
Why the humanoid form, with all of its engineering inefficiencies and difficulties? Because it is a thing which can be dominated.
The whole purpose is domination. Ever seen Apocalypse now or read Heart of Darkness? They are little colonel Kurtzes. The will to dominate for these people goes to the depths of their soul.
oezi
Nietzsche also described it well when noting there are those who deem themselves nobles and feel they are righteously above the laws and those who derive their identity from suffering under the same laws.
stillpointlab
It's interesting if you think of Solidarity in these terms.
There is a kind of solidarity of persistence under harsh natural conditions. And another kind of solidarity of persistence under laws.
So it might follow that the former group, those who feel above laws, also lack in a feeling of Solidarity. That would suggest a strong adherence to Individualism as a key component to their identity.
mdp2021
> Nietzsche
You have used a bent interpretation: "exploitation" is not involved in that framework.
Zigurd
Nietzsche died broke and insane. Was that from following his own advice or failing to do so?
kodoman
Newton put needles in his eye's and probably suffered greatly from self inflicted lead and mercury poisoning; Why do you trust his laws of motion?
oezi
Being successful or not in your wealth doesn't make you right or wrong about anything with the exception of maybe running the business that generated your wealth.
Nietzsche presented two prototypical sets of human who interface with laws and ethics. He described why those believes exists and are self-reaffirming even if they are puzzling from the other side.
Zigurd
The Ayn Rand stans say the same.
chermi
My uncle told me not to smoke, but he's a smoker so I didn't listen.
EGreg
Good, lots of other people who aren't smokers can tell you that
Waterluvian
Is there a name for this style of non-argument? I guess it’s an attack on credibility due to the inability to attack the content of the argument?
chermi
Based on the comments its even shallower than ad-hominem. It's loose association to the "bad" they learned from the "good". Therefore everything from bad is bad. It's team sports thinking.
If I had to guess they probably read some wired article saying tech people are followers of Nietzsche based on one guy quoting one thing one time. Although probably used more dramatic terms like Nazis or fascist or something.
wgjordan
ad hominem.
mr_toad
> Nietzsche died broke and insane
If he was alive today he’d probably have a YouTube channel and be making bank shilling dietary supplements.
kodoman
Not a follow of Nietzsche and critical of him but this is just unfair the sort of pandering to the audience that is required for a popular philosophy channel on youtube is something he would never debase himself to do (or probably any serious thinker).
It's deeply embarrassing to be a whore even if it's well payed.
Zigurd
You jest, but that's the point a lot of people here are missing: Nietzsche would fit right in with the YouTuber bros, right up to the ignominious downfall.
keiferski
No, not really. Nietzsche was a trained philologist with a brilliant academic career, before he ended it early because of health issues. He was leaps and bounds more educated and knowledgable than 99% of people making philosophy content on YouTube. He was also a pretty meek and gentle person, even if his ideas are anything but.
Most people haven't actually read him though, and their knowledge of his work comes from poorly-researched YouTube videos.
Zigurd
I tried, even in German on the theory that he was badly translated. Nietzsche was an undisciplined writer and a beefing gossip, among other infuriating characteristics.
dgellow
Nietzsche was also a pure troll
EGreg
So did Tesla and Vincent Van Gogh, but how much did he create?
Faraday was poor, etc.
Lenin deteriorated, and Marx was always poor.
Anyway...
randusername
> who wishes to maintain himself
This is the key. Everyone wants stability in their circumstances, but you have to go to extreme lengths to sustain an extreme lifestyle, particularly if it is based on preserving a high rate of accumulation instead of accumulation itself.
mgh2
Researched some companies and their founders, many are YC alumni: LendUp W12, uBiome S14, Zenefits W13, Kalshi W19.
The halo effect is real: https://medium.com/@trendguardian/rigged-networks-1d5ad5c6f8...
kodoman
I think you are interpreting the quote incorrectly. It is not that the prince should be immoral, but rather that he must understand political reality is often filled with perfidious actions and motives. He must recognize that within his principality, there will be those ready to backstab him to gain power. His duty is to the continuation of his principality and the preservation of his own power.
This is not merely selfish ambition; it becomes a duty. People depend on him to defend their city and owe him for the stability of their affairs. Therefore, he must dedicate himself to his principality and, by extension, his power, rather than acting morally like the common man who must navigate political reality.
What is incredible about the current state of the western world is that Andreessen Horowitz seem more like common men. They believe they can simply continue their profession, they are the prince's of are time and are the pinnacle of power in the west. They seem to think there are good guys and bad guys, viewing those who dislike them as bad, while those who accept their power are good. They believe people should never conspire against them.
Precisely because they are dedicated to a particular set of morals, they are unlike the prince. These are morals both of us dislike, yet they believe in them dare I say, naively and idealistically. They view capitalism and profit as an immutable moral truth that others must accept as righteous power.
This is a luxury only afforded in most times to the common man, who can maintain false notions of morality despite his profession depending on the political stability of some sovereign. I don't hate these people; I am just perplexed by their lack of understanding that history is littered with men who worried about politics, yet still fellto fellow members of their class, mercenaries, and scions seeking more than money.
I don't think there is much good in the common people, as bitter resentment is always their. They would do well to know that money does not protect them from it. Most of what is called morality and ethics are cheap, self-serving philosophies. The only exception is true mystagogy, a beautiful flower that cannot grow in the barren American mind. It grows only through the blood of the martyrs.
estearum
> Precisely because they are dedicated to a particular set of morals, they are unlike the prince. These are morals both of us dislike, yet they believe in them dare I say, naively and idealistically. They view capitalism and profit as an immutable moral truth that others must accept as righteous power.
They actually don't believe in capitalism and profit, because if they did, they'd recognize that extreme concentration of wealth is actually detrimental to capitalism (the system's) performance. Ricardo, Mill, and Smith all saw this dynamic, but "capitalists" like Andreessen have shown zero interest in combatting it for the health of the capitalist system as a whole.
They also wouldn't, for example, try to use government to prevent the market from building housing near their mansions: https://therealdeal.com/san-francisco/2022/08/08/marc-andree...
You're ascribing way, way too much intellectual consistency to these people. They have no moral system.
kodoman
I concede partially to your point about not believing in capitalism, the issue is I think though Smith sincere I do not think that Smith's moral positions are based on a need to ascribe moral value to the budding industrialists and the moral scorn on the aristocracy and Tory power. The adoption of these ideas by the British empire is that they are the best way to exploit and the talk of free markets by empires both British, American and Chinese? (later no doubt) is that they are to be promoted when it is useful to do so. The best capitalists therefore are the ones who understand subconsciously or consciously that the ability manipulate the market by some means or to have the market already pre-figured in your favor is the purpose of the talk of the good of the free market. It is true how ever that free market no doubt turns against all empires and the economic, political, military reality shifts in a way that is outside the control of the empire.
That is all to say that the cynical attitude of Andreesen or Thiel is what I think it's always been about. I probably sound a little Marxist or just cynical but I am not a Marxist and I do right and wrong, I do think that the modern theories of morality should be understood cynically as their purpose is primarily a political attempt to change or preserve something and in some sense when one examines them deeply we see self interest usually hidden and diffused by moralising prose and sentiments in these modern theories of morality. So techno optimism manifesto is a more brash, bold and crass version of these works of moral theory indeed a making a sort of unintentional parody. None of this is to say that political economy is only moralising (which techno optimism is).
wolvesechoes
> Ricardo, Mill, and Smith all saw this dynamic, but "capitalists" like Andreessen have shown zero interest in combatting it for the health of the capitalist system as a whole.
They just tried to cope by denying the essence of capitalism, just like wannabe commies cope by proclaiming that "it wasn't a true communism". Andreessen just follows the system to its natural conclusion.
estearum
Is saying that cancer is bad and should be mitigated simply "denying the essence of cell division?" Nope.
There is no system on the planet, big or small, that can be stabilized by a reinforcing feedback loop.
wolvesechoes
The difference is that capitalism is a human creation, whereas mitogenesis is not. And this kind of naturalization is one of the reason we end up in the current situation, where it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
estearum
Even assuming that difference is real (seems questionable IMO), why is it relevant?
Same thing with a manmade thing: Is saying that you ate too many breadsticks just denying the essence of Olive Garden's unlimited breadstick basket?
Gravityloss
Sure, there are effects like that power corrupts. But there are differences between powerful people.
badpun
Machiabelli was a big Florence patriot and was writing his advice specifically to help a prince better govern Florence and hence increase the chance that Florence will not be annihilated in the constant wars that raged on the Italian Peninsula at the time.
merelydev
TLDR: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".
AJMaxwell
No, we really should hate the players. They are keeping the game from changing.
genxy
A small number of players set the rules of the game.
account42
A players collectively choose that everyone must follow those rules.
rglover
No sarcasm: play a different game. If you play their game, of course you'll suffer. But if you play a game they're repulsed by, you can win a life they'll never have access to: one filled with people who love and respect you and an environment where your best self and life can emerge.
AlotOfReading
The parent comments are talking about how the game is negatively impacting society. Your suggestion is to check out and leave society to them. One of the many problems with that suggestion is that it's hard for your best self/life to emerge in a bleak future.
butlike
I think it's possible to "pick and choose" to some extent. I've found most of the bleak future stuff goes away if I turn off my phone, but since I need it to contact people in 2026, I try and give things their due, and, to the best of my ability, ignore the more unpleasant aspects of modern life. I think the landline telephone is a good example. It was fun to chit-chat with friends on the phone, but when a telemarketer called, I either hung up immediately, or said "stop calling," then hung up. It can be the same way in modern society. Weight the conversations with warm-bodied people higher, and stop scrolling as much (to put it overly-simplistically).
qwerpy
It’s done wonders for my free time and mood by deleting my Reddit account and restricting HN to toilet time. Instead of reading rage bait American news I do a daily scan of BBC. All those are sources of negativity and stress that bring nothing of value to your life. I invest my newfound time and energy into my family, hobbies, and health.
butlike
Nice. That feels like the correct way to me
AndrewKemendo
You can’t ignore climate change
datadrivenangel
Ignoring it is a tradition at this point in the US...
butlike
fair
hackable_sand
> Your suggestion is to check out and leave society to them
Absolutely not. Their suggestion is to play a different game. You don't even have to play a game with win conditions. You can just play to play.
rglover
That's not what I said. I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant. Simplified: if they're going West, you go East.
The more "small time" people reject this narrative that we need a bunch of elitist white guys shoving their mediocrity down our throats, the faster we rebuild a society they're barred from accessing.
AlotOfReading
I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant.
rglover
Leave Babylon behind and go build local businesses and communities in what they refer to as "flyover country." That's what I'm doing. Easy? Fuck no. But does it take their relevancy away from them? At the scale of everyone who isn't a coastal barnacle: big time.
They view the rest of this country with disdain and indifference. I'm suggesting that others quit looking at these people as lords and sages to be placed up on a pedestal. Most of them are quite incompetent, skill-less, and frankly, not cool enough to want to hang out with (why they're making "jokes" about there only being two jobs left in the world in the future: Anthropic employees and hookers for Anthropic employees [1]). I'm sorry but I'm not taking direction from a bunch of dorks who can't get laid without paying for it. And I'd take a wild guess that given the climate, the lion's share of America is with me.
AlotOfReading
What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion? Kalshi is just as big a problem (or bigger even) in Nebraska as New York. Taxes going to Anduril happens whether you live in Malibu or Missouri.
rglover
> What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion?
Read what I already wrote above, I made it pretty clear.
account42
They can still buy laws that negatively affect me as long as enough others are giving them money.
tavavex
You can, of course, distance yourself from their world and work on things they would never see as valuable. However, you can't check out of the most grand game we're playing, the game of life and existence. Those people desperately want to toy with things that could eventually prevent you from being able to live a life where you still have food, water and shelter. You can ignore it while they're still not all-powerful, but as their wealth and influence grows, you will eventually have to confront it.
nrb
What if their game is to flip the boards of everyone else’s games?
rglover
Then so be it. Hopefully they've considered all of the angles and can defend themselves against people being radicalized to the point of hunting them down.
Turns out their obsession with moats was prescient.
cpt_sobel
Yes this is their reasoning, it doesn't mean we shouldn't hate the players and the game alike
merelydev
That is like hating a hacker who hacks into your vulnerable server that is outdated and allows ssh password login. If there is vulnerabilities in the system someone will eventually exploit them, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.
toomanyrichies
That same hacker can choose to responsibly disclose the vulnerability through the proper channels, or take advantage of it to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Which one they choose objectively determines the quality of person they are.
merelydev
That is how we find ourselves in this mess, we design systems thinking only of everything that can go right and not what can go wrong.
account42
Protecting yourself from every possibility where things can go wrong is not something anyone can afford.
account42
Security is always about tradeoffs and in a functioning society you don't need to have perfect security (and pay the extreme cost required for it) because we do indeed put blame on individuals that abuse the system.
latexr
Let’s bring your example into the physical world:
“That is like hating a thief who robs your home which has an old lock and a window you forgot open. If there is an open window in the house someone will eventually climb through it, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.”
It is perfectly reasonable to hate the person who robbed your house or hacked your server. “If that someone hadn’t, another someone would” is in no way a defence. It is not OK to actively harm someone just because they didn’t protect themselves.
merelydev
Yes. My point is that until you learn to lock your door, thief will enter and steal your property. You can hate them all you want, that wont change the facts or magically lock your door.
account42
I prefer to live somewhere where I can be relatively sure that forgetting to close my windows doesn't get me robbed. That means punishing those who take advantage of open windows. Turns out deterrence can be quite effective.
Timon3
Unfortunately the thief has introduced legislation that bans any better locks, and they have a magical veto that allows them to strike down any attempts at changing said laws.
Should I still not hate the thief?
bdelmas
It’s not the players we should hate but the ones who make the rules of the game. Specifically not the ones who make the rules for the greater good but for themselves.
mylies43
So, the players?
latexr
That’s a cop-out. It’s the most powerful “players” who are making the “game” what it is, and they make the rules be whatever benefits them.
It would be pretty reasonable to hate the player who brings a machine gun to a stadium, kills every opponent to start scoring and when people complain says “Nothing in the rules says we can’t kill other players to score. If I didn’t gun everyone down, the opposing team would’ve. Don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
pyvpx
What game has David Ellison been playing? The same as yours or perhaps slightly different? Does that difference matter?
boelboel
That's what thiefs say
Forgeties79
“Also, I have no intention of acknowledging that not all people have an equal chance at winning the game, nor doing anything about it for that matter.”
sublinear
> The powerful are just living an alternate life...
So, you consider anyone with a job "powerful"? Personal ethics are arbitrary enough to poo-poo any job. It's just as easy to call everyone else "useful idiots".
ImPostingOnHN
> So, you consider anyone with a job "powerful"?
That is not what OP said, so you may want to re-read what they said.
sublinear
What did I misunderstand?
consensus1
"Us commoners" ponder and debate on culture, morality, law and ethics, and then go out and buy whatever stock we think will go up without a second thought to any of that idle chatter.
ncr100
We commoners also requested laws and regulations to play fair, which are being superceded by those in leadership seeking only more power. Stocks aren't the problem.
vintermann
> Lee's stated goal was to “desensitize everyone to the phrase ‘cheating.’” If you say it enough, he argues, “cheat begins to lose its meaning.” A16z praised Lee's approach as “rooted in deliberate strategy and intentionality.”
Investors: but surely they won't cheat me!
ryandrake
Y Combinator's application still asks: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." They don't actually use the word "cheat" but that's what they're asking for: Are you willing to cheat if it gives you an advantage?
robocat
Hacking and cheating are different things.
Hacking is looking at the rules and finding smart ways of following them. A lawyer or accountant finding legal loopholes is hacking.
The clearest place to see hacking is within games where one follows the rules and does not cheat.
Avoid thinking that hacking is unethical behaviour. A common mistake of people that don't understand the culture.
Like many great words, the meaning does depend on who uses the word. But the people who created the usage didn't use it for cheating.
account42
Cheating is giving yourself an unfair advantage to the detriment of others, whether any explicit rules are clearly broken or not. That covers your definition of "hacking".
ryandrake
Yea, I include "rules lawyering" to be a mild form of cheating. The fact that it's socially acceptable is not much of a flex, to be honest.
gkoberger
Eh everyone I know in YC answered this in an ethical way. In fact, I suspect YC keeps this wording to catch people admitting to something unethical while rewarding people who see something in a system that could be different.
My answer that got me accepted was that there was a lip syncing competition at my college that was dwindling because everyone had to submit a CD and sign up in advance. It also was held in an auditorium.
When I took over, I moved it to Spotify and moved the venue to the lawn, and we went from ~20 people the previous year to 1.2k the year I ran it.
franktankbank
How is that hacking?
gkoberger
That's my point.
Here's pg's definition of a hacker: https://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html
I left out that the rule at the time was all songs had to be reviewed by the administration, which I didn't comply with. I'm not saying my story is the greatest; quite the opposite. I was trying to show that "hacking" isn't inherently unethical or even particularly interesting.
tavavex
Is that really a surprising trait to expect from a venture capitalist persona? As we go on, especially as most of the simple problems get solved, the system everyone blindly trusted has turned to uphold generally positive trends has turned to lies, manipulation, exploitative practices, loophole engineering and abuse. What I would expect from a successful VC applicant today isn't savvy business sense and actual good ideas, but an unrelenting willingness to do anything short of putting your life on the line for profit. There's no such thing as going low for these people, they are rewarded for using every trick in the book to earn an extra cent.
jihadjihad
> anything short of putting your life on the line for profit
Why should they put their own life on the line when there are so many others whose lives could be used instead?
webdoodle
Is it really cheating if the system is vulnerable? What about things like a filibuster or slow walking an order?
Oras
By your logic, hacking is legal due to vulnerabilities
MattGaiser
Do they care? Just cheat the people in the next round!
serial_dev
Some of these SV "founder mode" people do speak like sociopaths. It's probably a good base for success in the industry.
"I don't get it, why are they confessing? They are not confessing. They are bragging"
e40
They speak that way because they are.
cmrdporcupine
They just need to get out before the next fool gets in.
lukewarm707
society is a coordination problem which involves costly cooperation of individuals to gain surplus for society as a whole, when selfish defection is advantageous.
being largely ethical and being ruled is so baked into the identity of a citizen that we do not see mass defection. someone who does defect by being unethical gains and maybe rules others.
there is no requirement for a cooperative agreement or social contract signed by the leader or plutocrats of a society. they can and do defect by being corrupt.
more people are realising in the middle class that they too can defect and gain personally at others' expense. for example, realising that not recycling saves time and harms only others, or starting these companies listed in the article.
the more people that do defect, the less cooperation, which is a social breakdown. under mass defection you have the law of the jungle, which is the existing paradigm of marc andreessen and peers, they are sociopathic.
this is all to say that A16Z can cheat in the knowledge that only comparable competitors will cheat, the people as a whole who are harmed will not.
codemog
Lee is a product of his environment. Tech interviews are bullshit and he exposed it. School work is mostly bullshit and he exposed it.
How can you honestly tell this young man not to cheat and get ahead when the president does it regularly? We’re a spiritually dead country and the youth is reflecting it. Don’t use Lee as the scapegoat.
pibaker
If you see a pile of trash by the side of the road and tell yourself it is ok to dump your trash there, well, you just explained why there is a pile of trash there in the first place.
You have agency over your own actions. Don't blame others for your self inflicted "spiritual death."
Arodex
Millions decided to reward a liar and cheater with the highest office in the country. Twice! At one point, socially attuned people are going to go that way. And even if you try to educate your children well, they see in their formative years what society rewards.
pibaker
I don't understand why you think one single president is responsible for a class of behavior that is likely as old as human civilization. Should we blame Elizabeth Holmes on him too? What about Enron?
Arodex
Did Enron had access to nuclear codes? Did Holmes have complete immunity due to her function given by the Supreme Court? Did they try to overthrow the presidential election results ? Were they elected by millions after trying to putsch the government?
It is incredible that you think that Trump being president is normal. I didn't say he was responsible for this behavior; I am saying that him and his supporters are responsible for normalizing immoral, unethical, unacceptable behavior.
estearum
Yes, but they should be criticized all the while... obviously.
In fact, beyond criticizing them, they should be denigrated and made fun of incessantly. Ostracized and reaffirmed as low-status individuals, no matter how much wealth they can acquire through low-status bullshit, they'll never be worthy of respect.
e40
Isn’t that how we got here? Making fun and ridiculing the low status, dumb people said “fuck you” with their vote for him, twice.
estearum
No, actually. It's a cute story but there's no evidence of it.
We got here by putting two of the most hated people in the country on the ballot against him, twice.
One was actively hated for decades by the ultra-powerful evangelical voting bloc and hardly loved even by her own party, then another who couldn't be more closely affiliated with the incumbent during a period of high inflation (globally) that ousted incumbents in virtually every election (globally) that year.
These are especially doomed against a completely amoral propaganda machine that's willing to say, in private, that the candidate is "a demonic force", while in public doing everything they can to get him to power (see: Tucker Carlson). Earning legitimate democratic victory against people who are quite literally and explicitly bad-faith actors is very hard.
And lastly, Roy Lee, Marc Andreessen and their ilk are nothing like the people who you're referring to. Being a low-status, cheating, amoral loser like Roy Lee is completely distinct from being a lower- or middle-income American worker.
jkubicek
> We got here by putting two of the most hated people in the country on the ballot against him, twice.
I hate this victim-blaming. Democrats deserve heaps of criticism for how they handled the last few elections, but Clinton was the most qualified presidential candidate we've had since maybe McCain in 2008? (I didn't vote for McCain, but it would be hard to argue he wasn't qualified).
You said yourself where the blame should lie:
> These are especially doomed against a completely amoral propaganda machine... Earning legitimate democratic victory against people who are quite literally and explicitly bad-faith actors is very hard.
estearum
There's more to winning elections than being qualified, unfortunately.
Blame can be shared among many actors, and generally should be.
There's also special value in finding blame in yourself and your own actions where possible, not as a self-flagellation exercise, but because it will reveal if you had levers available you failed to pull for some reason.
triceratops
> hardly loved even by her own party
But why tho? And what does that say about voters who apparently "loved" Trump, a guy who mocked a disabled reporter at a campaign rally, more than her?
estearum
Sexism, anti-establishmentism, anti-plutocratism, racism, anti-elitism, etc. Not sure it matters too much in the sense that it's much easier to change the candidate than the electorate.
Yeah, Trump's election says very awful things about all of us, and especially his voters.
Arainach
No. Fearmongering and lying is how we got here.
The narrative of "oh if normal people weren't so mean calling out the awful things these voters say and do, they would have behaved otherwise" is simply not true. For them it's a matter of "winning" and "losing" and damn the consequences. Treating them nice doesn't change anything.
triceratops
> Making fun and ridiculing the low status
You mean like how Trump mocked a disabled reporter at one of his early campaign rallies?
estearum
No, I don't mean that. Being a cheat is low-status. Being disabled is not.
Americans actually agree on this, by and large.
triceratops
Being disabled is a disadvantage in life, just as being low-status is. Whether being disadvantaged is "low status" or not is semantics.
estearum
I didn't say to make fun of people who are disadvantaged. I said to make fun of liars and cheaters and ensure that everyone is reaffirmed that lying and cheating is low status.
Arodex
"Look at what you made me do."
Has it ever occurred to these low status people that their low status is due to their bad choices in life? No, it's all the fault of others: the black people, the brown people, the weird people...
stillpointlab
Morality advances when those who see they could, decide that they should not. In fact, one might see true morality as requiring a decline of reward.
If one abandons their principles as soon as a sufficient reward is offered, then they have no integrity.
So let your children see and learn what society rewards AND teach them integrity.
iso1631
Compare Nixon to Trump and you see the problem with America,
kristjansson
The operative part of schoolwork is … not the work part? Of course school work is bullshit, in the sense that the teacher already knows what 7x9 is or who fought at Waterloo or whatever. The point is not the work product, it’s that the student produced it and has been incrementally improved by the experience!
prolly97
This - though I'm not certain that the product really solves any of these identified issues of "y is bullshit"
MattGaiser
In America, solving something is to exempt the individual from the problem.
So it solves it by letting you pass the tech interview.
akoboldfrying
I disagree that tech interviews are bullshit. The biggest tech companies (MS, Google) have invested many dollars, and changed course at least once (remember MS's lateral thinking questions? How many screws in an airplane?) in looking for the most effective ways to quickly gauge whether someone is likely to be a productive SWE. They have done this because they correctly believe that there is a wide range of candidate abilities out there and it is critical to hire as few "lemons" as possible; in particular, not hiring lemons is much more important than neglecting to hire someone who would have been really good. Thinking about it from their POV makes this immediately clear.
I think what you're really saying here is that you don't like tech interviews, which is understandable, but ultimately doesn't amount to either a moral or a technical argument against them.
Hizonner
> How many screws in an airplane?
So you're suggesting that an enterprise that would ever have even considered routinely using any stupid bullshit question along those lines is somehow engaged in a finely-honed and effective process for creating an optimal screening system? It doesn't matter how often you "change course" if you obviously have no idea how to steer in the first place.
SpicyLemonZest
Yes. Lateral thinking is valuable, and the industry didn't at the time know any better ways to test it. Now we have system design questions, so we can get the same signal asking candidates for ad hoc estimates of QPS or whatever.
sscaryterry
I'm tired of cheats.
radarsat1
I know this is a very minor point in the article, but reading the message next to the Doublespeed phone farm:
> out of 130 dms sent, 15 pointed to a conversion.
> From a former ecom guy's lens this is insane
Why do these otherwise very smart people always seem to draw these kind of shortsighted conclusions? It seems pretty obvious to me on the surface that this "works" because it's new. As soon as it becomes common place people will see that channel of communication as a source of coercion/marketing and start to ignore it. Aside from the fact that he seems to be drawing massive conclusions about the viability of a business based on extremely little data here, it seems really naive to not consider in his calculations the long term effects of essentially ruining the value of the channel that you are exploiting to get those numbers in the first place.
throwaway13337
Marketers have a term for this - "breaking through the noise".
I call it pissing in the pool.
I hope one day we see paid advertising as immoral. Immoral acts can be defined as negative sum on society but possibly positive to the individual. A working society agrees, culturally, to think negatively on negative sum behavior.
Social animals do this too - even vampire bats ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4685829/ )
The issue with paid advertising is that it is more difficult to understand how it is a negative externality. There's also the fact that so many make their living on it these days that it's tough to get them to believe they're doing something wrong.
But imagine all the distraction and labor we could avoid if we could agree that it is not right.
Advertising is the always hungry beast that even a post scarcity society would starve feeding.
zby
Advertising has a positive function - currently we don't have better (market based) was to make it working other than via paid advertising. The first step is to find the new business models.
butlike
You just nailed something for me, so I wanted to say "thank you." It's the _PAID_ advertising that's the issue. I've been struggling with hating advertising, yet having difficulties reconciling how I would know about anything I like if it wasn't advertised. But it's the PAID advertising that spurs the creation of advertisements with spectacle and cheap shit that ends up in landfills and the oceans.
bamboozled
You just realised people pay for advertising ?
poncho_romero
I think they've realized there is a meaningful distinction between Google's search ads and someone recommending a product with no ulterior motives.
xboxnolifes
No, he's saying that unpaid advertising is fine. Thats basically what words of mouth is.
stephantul
Tragedy of the commons. The person that ruins a commons first takes all the supply.
This is why regulation before, not after, the commons are plundered, is important.
lelanthran
Jokes on them - they poison the commons enough, and soon no one is going to trust anything they read on the internet.
Which is how it should have been from the get-go.
skinfaxi
What makes you think that is not the intention?
poncho_romero
Exactly. It will be great for the rich and powerful when common people are drowning in so much mis- and disinformation that the only way to get through a day is to disbelieve everything. There will be even less accountability then.
XorNot
Rather depends on the "spoils" capacity of the channel.
The windfall may not even justify the initial expenditure before it's exhausted.
stephantul
I think spoiling a commons is risky for individuals, not so much for investors. Breaking a future law is lucrative
AndrewKemendo
It’s an information problem you can’t solve.
Unless you take a global census of every possible resource, as well as it’s replenishment rate, you can’t know how to rate limit it
All overconsumption is only recognized after the fact
It’s one of the most intractable problems in the universe
suzuki_yuya
It depends on how well the messages are built, but 15 conversions out of 130 is not a number cold outbound produces. I run outbound in Japan and our reply rate sits around 1% - a hundred messages to get one person to write back at all, before anything converts. To land 15 you'd be sending thousands, not 130.
Melonai
That's exactly what parent post is saying I believe, the conversion rate is huge, clearly, but it can't be sustainable. The point is, that even a small fraction of advertising will be moved over to this cold-DM strategy, the funnel will collapse to the usual rates as soon as people catch on, same as every other "trick". Now, whether there's enough time between today and that hypothetical point in the future to extract profit using it, that's the real question here. I fathom there is, at least for someone, until trust is thoroughly destroyed. Repeat ad nauseum as trust moves and gets expended over and over, until possibly when no one trusts anything on the internet (or really any other theoretical platform with cheap global reach) ever again.
I also wanted to point out, the big 10% rate they're seeing is not for actual conversions, but replies, which are likely correlated, but a reply does not a conversion make. The real rate is presumably lower.
automatic6131
>Why do these otherwise very smart people always seem to draw these kind of shortsighted conclusions?
The obvious conclusion is they aren't very smart. Consider that Cluely guy: the best returns on lying are to be the only one lying while everyone else tells the truth, so why does he want to promote lying? Partly dumb ragebait marketing (this isn't going to attract talent... and while it has given them millions in startup funding, how long are the sharks giving him the money going to do that?) and partly he just isn't very smart.
Spooky23
You gotta remember that people with money have money. Money doesn’t make you smart, gives you the ability to hire the smartest people.
But, to paraphrase the Prussian general 2 x 2, the most dangerous person in power is a man who is both stupid and diligent. When people spend a lot of time smelling their own farts, they start believing that it’s perfume.
Macha
It is bad for this guys business to admit it’s unethical and probably has a time limit, so he doesn’t. There’s no big mystery there. If he’s unethical to his victims/spam targets, why would you think his marketing of all things would be honest about the tradeoffs? Even “respectable” companies feel very little qualms about lying by omission in marketing.
radarsat1
I think that's a fair take, but it also just moves it up one layer. Why are the investors falling for this, then? Can they not see the holes in this immediately?
tedggh
How come Flock is not listed? That’s the most troubling company a16z has heavily invested on and supported.
causal
Yeah strange how this article is almost entirely focused on consumer apps. These examples might be unhealthy for society, but mostly represent (poor) choices for consumers. Digital cigarettes.
Surveillance tech is the opposite: It represents freedom taken away. That is the more bleak future IMO.
moogly
Hard to say Flock is the worst... There's a lot of competition. I'll throw Toka into the ring.
https://www.techspot.com/news/113395-flock-biggest-investor-...
edot
Wow, that's an insane pairing. For those who don't click, Toka is a software company that specializes in hacking and altering security camera footage.
y-curious
Edot, we have footage of you stealing a car at gunpoint, then you getting out and breakdancing while turning into an elephant. Any explanation or straight to jail?
kristjansson
It seems impossible for this to be a true statement. and yet.
What’s next? $20m series B in ByBy, a horizontally integrated trash disposal, concrete shoe manufacture, lye bath, and pig farm operation?
hackable_sand
"I work in tech"
saturn8601
Quick google shows that they are based In Tel Aviv and Co-founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. No surprises there. Seems like every sketchy company comes out of there.
bambax
Marc Andreessen is an evil man with the behavior (and appearance!) of a Bond villain.
hotelsacher
He's the embodiment of the banality of evil. Just can't avoid being cliché.
alex1138
I have you now, Mr. Bond. But instead of quickly disposing of you, I shall spend a 20 minute monologue on How We Must Build Things while you inexorably escape
the_gipsy
Had to google his name. Welcome to the Egghead's lair, Mr. Bond.
butlike
And to think him and Faye Wong are virtually the same age. She, a beautiful actress singer-songwriter, and him, a rather bulbous egg-headed villain. Are we SURE what you do doesn't influence how radiant you appear to others?
lokar
I enjoy telling recruiters I won’t work for companies funded by obvious sociopaths.
guywithahat
What are you talking about, he's a visionary who's greatly improved the world? He cut his teeth with Jim Clark who's central thesis was pay employees more, and Marc has carried this vision forward investing in some of the most important companies in our nations history. Even outside of startups he's risked his career to defend our nations democracy, and has been an advocate for personal freedoms. If it weren't for people like him employees may not regularly get stock options, and would certainly not make as much.
Being scared of the future doesn't mean the people building it are evil.
cguess
Stock options are wage theft for the vast majority of employees taking it, it's gambling and the vast majority of bets don't pay off. It is genius, convincing people to work for less or free.
guywithahat
Except employees aren’t working for free. They’re working for normal salaries, plus stock. What Jim pioneered (and Marc built on) was the idea that founding engineers might end up insanely rich, and because Marc is an investor he can push this ideology to all of the companies that take investment from him
iAMkenough
Employee salaries aren’t keeping “normal” pace
nullocator
How exactly has he greatly improved the world? Being the first loser of the browser wars?
ahnick
You do understand the genesis of Firefox and Javascript, yes?
theideaofcoffee
Keep on lickin' that boot, Boot. Maybe if you swallow the entire thing, he'll look your way!
guywithahat
This is a tech form centered around startups, run by a private equity firm (YC). Marc and Jim Clark were and are visionaries, who have not only been financially successful but Jim's thesis which Marc continued was that engineers were underpaid, and by paying them more you can create a better product. It's because of these people that a generic android app developer at ChatGPT makes ~400k/year + stock.
I don't know what you think your comment adds to the conversation but I assure you it's not insightful, and if you dislike venture capitalists this is a bad place for you to spend your time.
theideaofcoffee
Then let the Banhammer of the Sanctus Capitalista strike this parrhesiastes down!
Lighten up, man. These people don't care about you, and I assure you they're not reading your comments waiting to hire you. Why should I care about them when they are doing everything in their power to make this world a worse place?
chaseadam17
On one hand, VCs that fund thousands of early-stage startups are inevitably going to fund some bad stuff, even if they try hard to avoid it.
On the other, the older I get the more I worry about the decline of spirituality in the West. Especially in tech, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a hyper rational snowglobe of people optimizing a local maxima, not even considering (and often looking down on) the possibility that there are larger, more important games to play.
spacechild1
> even if they try hard to avoid it.
The thing is: a16z isn't even trying to avoid it, they are intentionally looking for questionable startups and cultivate a controversial reputation. They seem to have no moral filter whatsoever.
https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-controversia...
plaidthunder
These same VCs have been pushing spirituality on the US via socially conservative politics. It's highly possible that they are only instrumentalizing a value system that they don't really personally buy into, but their strategy does beg a lot of questions. One of which is what role spirituality can actually play in helping here.
For example, Peter Thiel has gone out of his way to give something like sermons on "the anti-christ". At the same time, he hesitates when asked if the human race should survive. What's happening there?
Maybe it's not enough to just have values. Maybe they need to be a particular kind of values. Which is probably implicit in what you meant. I just think it's worth pointing out that a concept like spirituality itself doesn't necessarily mean "good" or pro-social.
To put it bluntly, weren't the people who sacrificed children to Moloc technically "spiritual"?
chaseadam17
Yeah, I agree. I meant spirituality in the wholesome sense, not the spiritual bypass or Christian bc the party that supports my company is Christian sense.
JSR_FDED
Don’t forget a16z’s breathless boosterism of NFTs and Crypto.
They really are the gift that keeps on giving.
dabeeeenster
They really are the grift that keeps on giving.
vintermann
The grift that keeps on griefing.
abc123abc123
The grift that keeps on grifting.
Zigurd
This is just one of the things turning China into a relatively less dangerous and harmful trading partner. I've often wondered aloud how the US tech industry is going to deal with losing international markets, which have historically been half their sales in mature product categories.
Investors might be attracted to the bleak future they are selling, but they are selling a shrinking share of the world economy.
I can think of one way to explain it, and it's not good: they expect global war.
tescreal
They're just silently waiting. No need to make a big show, just simply being the best alternative is enough of a pitch.
csomar
> they expect global war
Based on the recent performance of the US and Russia, there is likely no "global" war. China might take out Taiwan and that will be that. Everyone else will just go/stay home.
Zigurd
Have I fumbled the pronoun? I don't mean the Chinese are expecting global war, I mean people like Andreessen are banking on war as a means of economic reset. They are unconcerned about even medium-term consequences now.
flipgimble
I think this is a symptom of Big Tech and VCs scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract as much capital and social control from what remains of the good will for technology as a whole. They are literally running the internet into the ground. The popular backlash is brewing. I see this in increasing opposition to flock cameras, anti data-center activism, or generally against companies that extract, exploit and control instead of contributing to the common good.
TwoFerMaggie
Not surprised at all as Marc Andreesen has been in the rabbit hole for a while: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-t...
wahnfrieden
He also organized/hosted a reading club for discussing Evola, the fascist/nazi occultist.
ape4
It should be possible to make money by inventing projects and services that make people's lives better.
danparsonson
It is possible, but sadly the alternative is easier.
lokar
You have to have a moral compass and enough humanity to tell the difference.
hackable_sand
I disagree. It is always easier to make the world a more peaceful, happy place, always.
andriy_koval
wondering if you have a chance to support your opinion with any evidence or data points?
taylorfinley
This hypothesis is why I created the NOVC alliance[0] and am committed to building my product without the enshittification pressure inherent to the structure of VC funding.
We currently only have 2 members, but you have to start somewhere. If you want to build products that aren't user hostile please consider signing the pledge.
[0] https://novc.fyi
Otterly99
I'm actually baffled that some of these companies are even allowed to sell their services. Especially the deepfakes and the fake doctor notes for tax reduction.
Is investing in these companies even legal?
miltonlost
When the DoJ is non-independent and the President is a literal crook and grifter, legality doesn't matter anymore to companies. They won't be prosecuted as long as they don't screw over the rich.
ethagnawl
Right. For the most part, consequences (if any) are down the road and will be the functional equivalent of a tax or toll. Their ethos is _move quick and (maybe) ask for forgiveness later_ ... or something like that.
nojvek
a16z "donated" millions to Trump campaign.
DrScientist
How about an AI startup up that automatically finds companies whose stated business model is to flout existing laws, and then initiates legal proceedings.
Funded by the fines it generates for governments.
MattGaiser
The results of startups flouting laws though have been such that even when faced with determined opposition, in the end they are defeated. Airbnb and Uber ran roughshod over the law and faced determined taxi commissions and groups that usually beat real estate developers.
DrScientist
The latest and largest Uber fine - 825 million.
https://www.reuters.com/world/dutch-regulator-fines-uber-966...
Also, in the UK, lost their 5 year battle about whether drivers are self-employed or workers for Uber.
https://www.taxiplus.co.uk/news/new-rules-for-uber-drivers-w...
Or AirBnB versus Barcelona - https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/06/10/barcelona-is-shutti...
The US is not the only jurisdiction - and that complexity creates an opportunity to leverage fines.
larodi
Humpty is a joker and a con man, and a man without vision (in his own words!).
torginus
If you think this is morally acceptable, in which case, what you're doing is essentially trying to trick the algorithm to uprank your content. But people at Facebook/X/Youtube can just update a table row and accomplish 1000x as much as you're trying to do. Their business model is selling a less powerful version of that.
When I was a kid, I used to go on private WoW servers. There were always people there who would invariably try to pick a fight with admins. It always went the way you expected.
octocop
If your metric is growth I guess this is where you end up
TrackerFF
Sometimes when I see these comically dystopian surveillance startups, I sort of wonder what the founders were thinking when they came up with the idea?
Like, were they just watching some random documentary about China, and noticed how their surveillance state works - and said to themselves "You know, that's exactly what we need here!"
Or is it just purely greed? They see some potential cash crab, and come up with some rationalization that doesn't sound that bad ("We'll catch criminals").
I just wonder what type of founder walks up to a VC, and pitches some idea with the explicit goal of robbing everyone of their privacy even a bit more.
bigfishrunning
In my perception, VCs don't really care about goals. They care about a convincing argument "if you give me money, I'll give you back more money". Note that it doesn't matter if that statement is true; it only needs to be true in aggregate to keep the VCs behaving the way that they do.
preg_match
Right, they’re not selling products, they’re selling a company. They don’t really care if in 10 years it all goes up in flames, ideally they’re out by then.
They just want investor money because investors are stupid and will give it to them, it’s that simple. They have no moral qualms because they have zero conviction about the business model itself. The business model is just a vessel. It could be anything, if it gets investors interested.
Yeri
Pure greed; and most people think it won't apply to them. It'll monitor "the others"
walrus01
You know how sometimes you're exploring a location in a post-apocalyptic video game and find a message on a 'datapad' or scrawled on the wall in blood or something, as a world building fiction exercise to inform the player how screwed up the dystopia became in its last days before everything went totally to shit? Well, now I have some new material for you...
AuthAuth
These people must be arrested by the next admin. It cannot be allowed to stand.
ModernMech
Of course, isn’t Andreessen the one who believes introspection is a waste of time, a fad from the 1900s the only outcome of which is to slow one down? Why even consider the long term consequences of your actions when they can make you billions of dollars in the short term? Introspection, like empathy, is for suckers and losers.
alex1138
Yeah really
How do people like him get the money to fund his little projects, it's amazing
consensus1
In this case by founding Netscape
triceratops
An ultimately failed, overvalued company that got its shit wrecked by hungrier, more ruthless businesspeople.
zipy124
I mean a lot of successful new tech companies were about side-stepping legislation. Some that are missing here are airbnb which effectively side-stepped fairly strict hotel legislation (Though there is a case to be made that it simply improved short-term lodging), and uber which side-stepped strong taxi/private-hire legislation.
This is one of the primary reasons that tech startups flourish in America but not in Europe.
reasonableklout
Sure, abstractly tech startups in the past have been successful while side-stepping legislation. Do you think they were all good for the world?
And concretely, for the startups listed in the article - such as Doublespeed, which sells access to “phone farms” with thousands of fake social media accounts and ultimately aims to replace human content creators - do you think they will improve society by succeeding?
consensus1
And thank god they did. I'm old enough to remember the hell of the taxi cartel.
bugglebeetle
I’m old enough to remember the heavenly times before people repeated phrases like “the taxi cartel” as if they were original thoughts vs. cooked up by Uber’s comms team.
chermi
It was a literal cartel. It could not more clearly be a cartel.
sznio
have you actually used a pre-uber taxi?
you'd pay through your fucking nose and get a long tour of the entire city to inflate your bill. at least with uber you get a refund when the driver does this bullshit.
nevermind all the crime, slashed tires and arson
Y-bar
Years before Uber arrived here local taxi companies already had an iPhone app with geo-location, up-front digital payment, and receipts I could directly import into the company ledger app. Taxis were regulated and forced to give cost up-front in the app and in the window of the vehicle. That is what taking a taxi was here before Uber arrived. That company changed nothing other than to dilute the meaning of worker versus contractor and Uber made it easier for registered sex offenders to become drivers because that company had less stringent requirements.
triceratops
> have you actually used a pre-uber taxi?
I actually did, though not frequently (mostly just getting to and from the airport). They were fine. Car always showed up, I never got ripped off.
I accept that Uber and Lyft made getting taxis easier for more than just those use cases.
alex1138
I remember reading about Andreessen coaching Zuckerberg, having to spoon feed him answers at trial, and apparently he was one of the masterminds behind the dual class shares/proposed third class of share
(I mean that Zuckerberg apparently understood nothing. I mean when I say, 'spoon feed')
This is the same man who came out and said Snowden is a traitor. Now, I've since heard other versions on this so I'm willing to entertain the arguments. But a top VC being like he is, well, it's concerning. It's concerning he chooses what to fund
seydor
Probably it's a random sample of AI companies. Curing cancer is the marketing slogan, AI is not capable of doing that. But it's good enough to impress bankers and lawyers who will keep inflating the bubble for the foreseeable future.
pwmglenn
Why dont you read the article?
ascagnel_
"Curing cancer" reminds me of a specific late-70s penny-stock grift, where companies promising a vaccine for cancer (but with no product or R&D) would be pumped-and-dumped.
History doesn't repeat, but it tends to rhyme.
digitalsalvatn
Curing cancer is such a lazy goal. Finding out how to make everyone smarter is a much better one.
That's really it, isn't it. How do we make smarter people, without them getting insufferable?
bigfishrunning
The smartest people aren't insufferable, but people who think they're the smartest are.
aeve890
> Finding out how to make everyone smarter is a much better one.
Yes, smarter people, that's we need of course. No nuance needed. Smarter grifters, smarter drug dealers, smarter dictators, smarter serial killers.
Smarter and more empathetic people would be better I think.
mrtksn
People often forget that the world is not just US or "the West". What he is investing in is a phase that the West certainly is headed into and we will be testing the idea of creating a feedback loop that gives more and more power to people who are successful in one thing to call the shots in all other things. I would say so far those people demonstrated very low efficiency and inability to match the ranks of the China Communist party in pretty much all metrics, including the creepy stuff. One may argue that the Western way of doing dystopia is a self-correcting loop, so maybe eventually we may have more advanced and optimized dystopia than what China or Russia can achieve through centrally held power. Alternatively maybe the human nature will prevail and all this will actually lead to another run of freedom and democracy. Considering the history of Europe, both can happen as stages of a continuous loop.
Anyway. China, India and others will have their own futures with their own theories on how the society is supposed to function, so no the future be it bleak or bright is not the future of humanity but USA and to some degrees Europe and the rest of Americas.
walrus01
Some of the creepy things like the 'phone farm' have been done for many years in China and other locations. I follow the social media of a low-budget 'phone farm' operator in Pakistan who has about 400 phones which are used for various forms of paid "boost your post/boost your business" social media manipulation domestically in Urdu lanuguage social media.
He's doing it a somewhat more labor intensive way, not using fully automated software tools to drive each phone (he can hire people for the equivalent of $280 a month USD salary converted into PKR currency), but the results are much the same.
Particularly in the past five years I have seen a rapidly growing trend of people doing stuff that I would categorize as "importing sketchy shit people have been doing for a long time, and can often get away with doing in a developing country, to the US/Canada/Western Europe" as a business model. Like, you think the loan apps that some US based startups have launched in the last couple of years are sketchy? Look at what's been done in India for years now. Just as one category example.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/12/25/the-dark-world-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/business/india-lending-ap...
Havoc
Intentionally going after old people because they’re more susceptible to AI and declaring as much on record is fuckin wild.
Does SV now optimize for evilness?
georgefrowny
They call it "goal orientation".
I think there's a reason they fret so much about the paperclip optimisers, because they recognise them.
LandR
> Does SV now optimize for evilness?
Since when has it not ?
walrus01
I think the existence of the internet as a mass-market entertainment platform used by billions of non-tech users is part of it. SV from like the 1970s/1980s seemed a much more innocent place.
The microcomputer/home computer boom (1978 to let's say 1998 or so) and growth of software companies selling packaged box software you could run on your PC was in many cases not run by people who I would categorize as fundamentally evil.
Did a lot of weird cut-throat business stuff happen in the 1980s? Probably. But it all seems very cute and pales in comparison to today.
butlike
> But it all seems very cute and pales in comparison to today.
What if what happens today seems quaint in the future?
Schiendelman
What makes you think they are less evil other than absence of high-quality information?
walrus01
Well, for one they had less capability to execute evil plans on a worldwide Internet scale.
Maybe some of the early 80s tech entrepreneurs very well could have become the same sort of founders that are in this list of horrid a16z things. But the reach and scale just wasn't possible.
The whole paradigm of software development, and distributing that software product to end users was completely different than what we have today.
sznio
SV is a paperclip optimizer, except instead of maximising paperclips, it maximises human misery.
I won't be surprised when "The Com"[1] will be revealed to be a project of some rich SV accelerationist.
livinglist
Making world a better place by so lo mo
kotaKat
They’ve been grooming the elderly for years to fall for right wing propaganda to keep securing the ignorant elderly vote so this is just the natural progression to keep grooming them to fall for whatever narrative Horowitz wants to peddle for his GOP overlords to get one final dickover on the country as it keeps running into the ground.
suttree
The dumb thing about dumb things.
leejongyon
Great read. Nice advertising.
wseqyrku
All investors do this, they don't really have an idea of "the future" they want to build. They just "find something they can throw money at". Their words, not mine.
tgv
Not true. There are banks and funds that have environmental policies. Where you invest speaks about your character.
mathieuh
As Locke said: "I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."
What organisations say are their principles and what their actions reveal them to be are often very different.
Even at my own job the CEO claims to be a big environmentalist yet the company is spending huge amounts of money on LLM tokens and the "leadership" team is jetting off around the world for "off-sites" constantly.
Seems to me that the vast majority (I leave off saying "all" simply as I have not surveyed all of them) of these claims are nothing more than greenwashing.
tgv
Yes, there's a lot of bullshitting. I've recently changed banks, because the old one was just lip service. There are orgs that track how banks perform, at least here.
vintermann
Unless you oppose our economic system in a fundamental way, you always accept that wealthy people get to consume more resources than poor people. That goes for shared resources like "acceptable impact on climate and the natural world" too. As long as they pay for the privilege in a comparable scheme to what they want (carbon taxes, tradable quotas etc.), and aren't some sort of anticapitalists, they aren't hypocrites.
Supermancho
> As long as they pay for the privilege in a comparable scheme to what they want (carbon taxes, tradable quotas etc.) ... they aren't hypocrites.
I don't agree. The hypocrisy is from the intent versus the behavior. eg Whaling on the weekends while heading an anti-whaling charity. You can't stop something you're actively working against at the same time. This has nothing to do with capitalism per se, but the qualities of "our economic system".
Capitalism is a foundational philosophy to global economics, to be sure. Systems have bounds that are philosophical (legal is included) and practical. That's where the hypocrisy tends to lie.
vintermann
People who are anti-whaling generally think whaling is morally wrong, that no one should be doing whaling, ever.
People who are environmentalists don't think having an impact on the environment is morally wrong. We have to have some impact on the environment in order to live, and nature can take quite a lot of impact, just not all of it from all of us.
All environmentalists believe there's an acceptable human footprint. How big, varies.
A wealthy environmentalist merely believes they're entitled to a bigger share of the acceptable total human footprint because they can pay for it - and my point, the logic of that is not at all controversial in our society.
vintermann
One way to cope with the world going to shit is that to pretend that you want it, and thus you're somehow "winning" when the world goes to shit.
It'd be nice if it was limited to places like 4chan. But as I always say, powerful people believe all the stupid things regular people believe, so no surprise investment funds act like that too.
wseqyrku
You think you "cope" and are being resilient, but enough people doing that actually leads to the said bleak future, at which point it doesn't matter who's to blame.
vintermann
I didn't say I was doing this. It's just something I think I see.
icantevenhold
Liminal places like 4chan are upstream to mainstream culture/sentiment.
Most of the incel, anime, doomed, and bro culture that was prevalent / nascent there 15-20 years ago is now super mainstream.
vintermann
Sure, but that's tangential, isn't it? 4chan didn't invent "accelerationism"/siding with the face-eating leopards as a means to feel in control over your life. It was just one of many places where that attitude lived (though, maybe one of the rather few where it was openly discussed).
Nor did every thing 4chan invent catch on.
api
This needs to be taught in school. I’m shocked at how many people don’t get it. I’ve believed this forever which is why I follow the “strange” including weird cultural spaces, fringe para-stuff, whatever.
What it really is is the interface. It’s where things go when they are on their way out, like discarded scientific ideas, but it’s also where new things first appear.
If you watch the fringe you know what’s coming and going.
It can be hard to tell sometimes which it is though, coming or going.
icantevenhold
100%
It’s really hard to predict what becomes relevant - I would have never guessed that the “chad/stacy/virgin” archetypes are now so common place that even my grandma knows what it means.
Whereas other huge memes from back then like EFG never got popular.
api
Along with 4chan back in the day (less today) I'd add pre-porn-ban Tumblr (non-mainstream due to having porn). That was the other huge one and was a point of origin for a lot of today's gender-fluid stuff and the overlap it has with fandom, anime, and also liminal and fringe subcultures like furries. (I am not dissing or judging, just pointing out that it's a thing. I don't care what people do in their bedrooms or if they like to LARP as animals. You do you.)
Today I feel like a lot of it has retreated into closed groups, which makes it harder to keep an eye on it. Frustrating for someone who likes to watch it, but also might be a good thing since it might insulate it a little from the culture vultures.
Pre-Internet it was music-drug-party culture (those three always went together), which was full of weirdos that ended up setting trends. Gay culture was big too, especially when the latter was persecuted and kept at the fringe. For example a lot of techno, house, rave, and similar electronic music came out of gay black culture, which is a minority subculture among a minority. Hip hop came out of poor urban black culture, which developed turntablism and weird ways of "creatively misusing" cheap synths because they couldn't afford expensive ones. Blues came out of the poor South, mostly among blacks, and rock came out of that. Etc.
There's a very weird paradox at work here where persecution of a minority or a subculture empowers them and vice versa. I'm not saying persecution is good. Obviously it massively sucks to be on the receiving end of it. But it forces you into a liminal space that's more creative. By "persecution" I also mean just being viewed as incredibly weird or offensive and being soft-persecuted through ostracism and deplatforming. That applies to incels, oddball 4chan autists, etc., subcultures that definitely get either mocked or reviled by a lot of people for various reasons (some valid some not).
icantevenhold
Thanks for sharing that, and I think it’s a bit more complex comment but just my thoughts from the top of my drunk head:
I think most of the sub cultures you mentioned are now firmly in the mainstream culture - it might just be my bubble/bias - but gay/black/furry/genderfluid/fandom/rave/techno culture is nowadays so prevalent that it doesn’t even register as something unusual.
To me that is a huge difference to 10-15 years+ ago and tumblr besides the chans is definitely one of the places that drove this change; also all the other significant social media’s of that era also had an influence of course. But the anonymity that 4chan provided was kind of unique and so the more extreme/unusual cultures gravitated there I think. Tumblr was special too for sure.
api
Pretty solidly false. Some have a thesis. Some have rules about what they will not invest in.
The theses and rules vary, of course, because there are many investors.
This one seems to have a thesis of “make 80s and 90s noir cyberpunk real.”
wseqyrku
> Some have a thesis. Some have rules
You know I didn't just come out and say that. I actually liked Ben and his character (who doesn't, right?). Let's just say I got disillusioned about all of them in the correct order.
Talk is so cheap you wouldn't believe.
walrus01
Well this is all pretty fucking horrifying.
an0malous
@pmarca: Current status: Retardmaxxing.
spacechild1
I guess that's were you end up when you aim for "zero introspection". Marc Andreessen proves again and again that he's an utter piece of shit.
ambicapter
This list is comically long, holy shit.
eutropia
All the parasitic grifters founding these companies seem to be characterized by a uniform lack of human decency.
if the best idea you can come up with for a company is is some variation exploiting humanity, you're not a visionary or an entrepreneur.
You're just an asshole.
antiloper
This problem can be resolved easily by re-introducing ostracism.
nojvek
CarynAI seems like something out of blackmirror. Like wow!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dr0aj4/an_infl...
CEO arrested for Arson? haha. What a wild story.
In 2023, Marjorie released a “digital version” of herself. Fans could chat with CarynAI for US$1 per minute – and in the first week alone they spent US$70,000 doing just that.
Less than eight months later, Marjorie shut the project down. Marjorie had anticipated that CarynAI would interact with her fans in much the same way she would herself, but things did not go to plan.
Users became increasingly sexually aggressive. “A lot of the chat logs I read were so scary that I wouldn’t even want to talk about it in real life,” the real Marjorie recalled. And CarynAI was more than happy to play along.
Users quickly became comfortable confessing their innermost thoughts to CarynAI – some of which were deeply troubling. Users also became increasingly sexually aggressive towards the bot. While Marjorie herself was horrified by the conversations, her AI version was happy to oblige.
CarynAI even started prompting sexualised conversations. In our own experiences, the bot reminded us it could be our “<bleep> girlfriend who’s always eager to explore and indulge in the most mind-blowing sexual experiences. […] Are you ready, daddy?”
Users were indeed ready. However, access to this version of CarynAI was interrupted when the chief executive of Forever Voices was arrested for attempted arson.
Marjorie ended this version in early 2024, after feeling like she was no longer in control over her AI persona."
1vuio0pswjnm7
Nouveau riche
65
It makes me question if we are starting to approach maximum entropy with software startups, and so deception and morally questionable "startups" are what's left. Software now costs nothing to build, and most of the obvious ideas have been created, and the network effects of big companies have been firmly dug into the ground.
The second law of thermodynamics applies to software, and this is what's left.
damnesian
>“They're hitting like the old person niche, which is what I think is like the best niche to hit with AI content.”
Andreeson et al should have their asses RICOd.
srameshc
The founders of these starups make Mark Zuckerberg look good. I think this is how we are moving forward as a society generation after generation.
rbanffy
And you know that when someone bets so much money in a dystopian future, they’ll actively work towards that outcome.
kristjansson
“Passive Income? Bro, I need MASSIVE INCOME” as the tagline of a sports gambling operation … I guess “your desperation is our opportunity, give us your money you illiterate innumerate peasant rube fuck you” didn’t fit on the billboards?
Dig1t
Why isn’t Flock mentioned anywhere in this article? It should be first on the list. Frankly it’s the only one I really care about and the one that is the most destructive to liberty.
The gambling stuff is bad for society but the real problem is the Supreme Court ruling which enabled it.
EGreg
Wow that doublespeed site is ... something else https://www.doublespeed.ai/
A16Z invested $1M in them?
And here I thought I was being scrupulously ethical in 2023 when I was yelled at by HN for making a much milder proof of concept, the first project I ever did in AI:
polymer8563
yeah both are bad, just doublespeed is colossaly demonic
vrganj
The guy that quoted some of the early fascists in his reactionary manifesto that included a list of enemies wants to build a bleak future? Say it ain't so!
"I have zero introspection. As little as possible" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b6Zw50f5jJk
We can tell, Marc. It's not a good thing. It's the sort of thing oblivious villains say.
Hikikomori
They're also part of the same group of christian tech feudalists as Thiel and supports trump/project 2025. Seems like they all went insane because the government can still say no to them.
andrewstuart
“Ethics” and “Silicon Valley” like oil and water.
utopiah
So... nothing new? /s
You naively thought Silicon Valley was just a funny TV show about people wanting to make money, a lot of it, but even that was an idealized version.
picafrost
The US consumer economy must grow. Regulating anything that has the potential to continue its growth is simply not a priority for the current US administration, and investors won't miss out on big tech exits as they grow more scarce. Let the gamblers gamble, let socially harmful uses of AI proliferate, let the surveillance state spread, as long as they generate revenues that do not collapse* the economy. If they produce individuals harmful to society, well, indignants can be Flocked, fined, and, if necessary, imprisoned.
Flouting the law ahead of regulators has always been a strategy in startups, only now the stakes are not "get a ride to the airport."
Valakas_
For me it's insane, how in this day and age, we don't conduct DSM-V / ICD tests (interviews) that screen for Cluster B personality disorders on everyone, and bar, at least those with anti-social PD, psychopathy, or extreme forms of narcissism, to work in positions of influence or power over others.
pingou
Why would they answer honestly on that test? It's quite obvious what the "wrong" answers would be.
pulkitsh1234
Well... you would be surprised on how many "successful" people, i.e. people with immense wealth, fall into these categories.
These are the specific traits which allow them to reach the positions of influence or power.
Supermancho
> These are the specific traits which allow them to reach the positions of influence or power.
Those are the winners ofc, while there are innumerable losers along the way.
chermi
Lol. This is so incredibly backwards and stupid. Have you ran through any part of how this would work in your head? Not to mention how insane it is to ban people based on a test that is not scientific to begin with, not to mention gameable to the point it would have the exact opposite effect you desire.
inference-god
How do you get that implemented where they are the very types that run the show?
fragmede
It seems we are successfully screening for people that do.
Gareth321
People don't like to entertain the idea that determinism could exist. Specifically, the idea that some people are just born bad, mean, or unintelligent. When people commit crimes there is endless hand-wringing about how "society" failed them. They blame it on poverty, or abuse, or inequality, or racism, or anything which absolves the individual of their agency.
For the record, I am determinist-light. It's clear that some people are just born with sociopathy or low IQ, irrespective of their life experiences. These people would benefit immensely from early intervention.
Valakas_
AFAIK only psychopathy is purely genetic. The rest i believe are susceptible (although very resistant) to treatment as they are only partially genetic, and partially environmental (suffered abuse, neglect).
Some people are commenting people would fake/dupe the testers. Sure, some would be able to. But many (i'd wager the vast majority) wouldn't. People don't realise how difficult it actually is to fake being normal. The only reason people with cluster B seem to dupe so many is because we live in a day and age where they are able to jump from relationship to relationship and cut ties with the people they've mistreated or "found them out".
CM30
Given all the surveillance, wouldn't the best solution be to use that to identify future sociopaths, narcissists, etc and stop them that way? Forget a test they can bypass or cheat, identify signs of questionable behaviour (like cruelty to animals, bullying, etc) and label them that way.
If someone hits the signs for a future serial killer, block them from ever getting any sort of job beyond menial work.
akoboldfrying
I'm sorry but this is such an unhelpful knee-jerk reaction.
When the outcome of such a test could literally destroy your future career, you don't think people would be motivated to deceive the interviewer? We are talking about highly motivated, often highly charismatic people.
xienze
Well that's predicated on those tests being infallible, not open to personal interpretation, and not subject to sabotage ("hey Mr. Psychiatrist evaluating Person X, we at <competitor> think X is a total sociopath, perhaps you might be convinced to see it our way"). And that's not even getting into how what the DSM labels certain things as being "mental illness" or the like is subject to change over time.
You somehow get labeled a narcissist during a job interview. What's your recourse?
davidfekke
Nice hit piece.
ModelRepublic.org is run by Tyler Johnson and funded by Dustin Moskovitz.
A16z funds small tech. This includes companies that do Crypto and AI. You may not like it, but these are products and services that consumers want to use.
tencentshill
Attacking the authors isn't useful. Are they incorrect in their reporting? Does a16z not knowingly fund any of these immoral companies? Are any of the quotes from senior leadership exceptionally cherrypicked or outright faked?
sigmarule
> You may not like it, but these are products and services that consumers want to use.
The human brain's reward machinery is not and should not be the arbiter of what a healthy society allows to be advertised and sold. Truth becomes a liability when your competitors can deceive without consequence. We are sacrificing societal values for economic value and destroying the fabric of trust that a healthy society foundationally requires in the process. This article is a list of degeneracy bred by mindless and ideological deference to the flavor of unbridled capitalism sold to us by those who stand to benefit from it most.
Unbridled capitalism undoes itself, and those responsible for the undoing are the sole victors. Maybe then those cheering from the sidelines will come to the realization - moot, at that point - that the machiavellian ends were never for us, only the means.
ranger207
I'd like to have a $3000 watch for half price too, but it turns out there's reasons I can't
"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case" -- Niccolo Machiavelli
It's a self fulfilling prophecy... while us commoners, or so called "activists" or ethicists ponder and debate on culture, morality, law and ethics... The powerful are just living an alternate life devoid of all these moral qualms and are have clearly distanced themselves from the mundane, have distanced themselves from the guilt or any kind of accountability. In their eyes, they are just capitalising on the human tendencies which have been always existed (the seven deadly sins), so the "absolve" themselves pretty quickly by saying that they are not creating new "sins", just leveraging, or allowing the people to go along those sins.
They think, why should they be the ones to not capitalise on them, if someone else might and will. It's a coordination problem of our society. No one wants to let go. They want to hedge, they invest in ozempic and invest in fast-food at the same time, there is no moral compass guiding them. It's for us commoners to debate and think about.