Yesterday, Marc Andreesen published a Techno-Optimists Manifesto. You can find it here. It’s pretty clear from reading it that Andreesen does not understand that he’s picking a pretty extreme position with his stances. He claims he’s neither left nor right, but he’s very far right. He may actually support some leftist leaning candidates, but all the candidates he would support are neo-liberal far right capitalists.

He’s pretty open about this as he quotes Milton, Hayek, Von Mises, and Mokyr in his manifesto. Milton is the intellectual force behind Ronald Reagan’s policies. Von Mises is a force for austerity. Along with Hayek, these three thinkers were the reason we had austerity and sequestration in the 2010’s. These thinkers, they are the reason why our scientific efforts in the National Labs and in universities slowed to a crawl. We had fewer PhDs, Post Docs, and other positions for fundamental research as a result.

A techno-optimist should not support policies that stop basic research in new ideas. They should not support policies that encourage basic research. They should not support policies that force people to chose jobs in industry rather than continue to move their research from the lab into a start up. It’s antithetical to what technologists or innovators want.

Andreesen is against a very specific set of ivory tower academics. He might think, you know what it’s fine, let’s push all these academics out of the university and get real jobs. They can get jobs at start ups, or get money from me to start their new venture. The problem is there’s always a strong selection bias in VC’s that lean towards the latest hype. This is evidenced in Andreesen supporting Web3, Generative AI, and Crypto still.

In fact, some of his enemies, Tech Ethics, are rightly pointing out that Generative AI can cause significant harm. Writers like Timnit Gebru, Ruja Benjamin, and many more are right to argue we need intersectional thinking around technology development.

Technology has never been a neutral force.

Technology has never been a force for good.

Technology has always been used in a way to reflect the people that wield it.

Luddites, didn’t want to destroy technology because it was bad. Luddites wanted a fair share of the profits gained through automation. Automation can be used as a tool to liberate employees to work on more complex tasks. Automation can be used as a tool to control employees to drag their work to the least complicated and simplest. So they can be eliminated and removed.

Marc Andreesen’s techno-optimism is full of dog whistles. Two stick out to me almost immediately. The first, like Musk, he argues that the world population is declining. This is patently untrue. All evidence points to steady increase in population past 2100 at the least and likely well beyond. However, if you know, you know. He means, white population. Western Population is in decline. That’s the cause for concern. The great replacement.

The second is a title, “Technical Supermen.” This sounds like he’s arguing the VC’s in Silicon Valley are the Ubermensch. That they are the superior thinkers. That the techno-optimists will be the ones to save humanity. This is, yet another white supremacist line of thinking.

Finally, his list of enemies are the last dog whistles. Tech Ethics, is first and foremost driven by intersectional thinkers. Black women. People of Color. Tech Ethics forces technologists to answer questions like

“What sort of bias did you instill in your technology that causes the car to drive INTO black people?”

“Why does the soap dispenser not see a black person’s palm?”

“Why does Generative AI produce sexualized images of women of color?”

These are the people that he believes are enemies of technology. People that ask questions about why technology is causing harm.

He believes the Trust and Safety organizations at companies like Twitter are the enemy. Trust and Safety keeps the Nazis out. If you do not want your social platform to become the Nazi bar, then you use Trust and Safety to allow people to remove the Nazis. If you do not, then your social media platform is for Nazis. This is what’s happening at Twitter. Twitter has become the platform for racists. For Neo-Nazis.

All this is bad. It’s doubly bad, because Andreesen has a lot of money. It’s triply bad, because he is the person that will fund the next round of entrepreneurs. He is a very influential Venture Capitalist. If these are the ideas he’s espousing that his next round of funded CEOs must adhere to, Tech is only going to be more dangerous. It’s only going to get whiter. It’s only going to get less ethical. It is only going to be a weapon for the future that Marc Andreesen wants.

I don’t want to live in that world.