President Trump, Please Fulfill Your Promises, Enact Your Vows

echopulse · Nov 27, 2024

Tuxan said:
Marc Andreessen’s (that knob head on Joe Rogan) Techno-Optimist Manifesto envisions a world where wealthy technologists, unencumbered by ethics or social responsibility, shape the future as quasi-monarchs.

It promotes unrestrained technological acceleration while dismissing democracy and egalitarianism, aligning with far-right neoreactionary ideals. Critics view it as both a self-serving defense of Silicon Valley elites and a reflection of broader societal values that prioritize productivity and wealth over collective welfare. Despite its contradictions, the manifesto reveals the mindset of tech leaders who see innovation as the highest virtue, regardless of its societal costs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/marc-andreessen-manifesto-techno-optimism.html

By Elizabeth Spiers
Ms. Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and digital media strategist.

It takes a certain kind of person to write grandiose manifestoes for public consumption, unafflicted by self-doubt or denuded of self-interest. The latest example is Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the top-tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and best known, to those of us who came of age before TikTok, as a co-founder of the pioneering internet browser Netscape. In “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” a recent 5,000-plus-word post on the Andreessen Horowitz website, Mr. Andreessen outlines a vision of technologists as the authors of a future in which the “techno-capital machine” produces everything that is good in the world.
In this vision, wealthy technologists are not just leaders of their business but keepers of the social order, unencumbered by what Mr. Andreessen labels “enemies”: social responsibility, trust and safety, tech ethics, to name a few. As for the rest of us — the unwashed masses, people who have either “unskilled” jobs or useless liberal arts degrees or both — we exist mostly as automatons whose entire value is measured in productivity.
The vision has attracted a good deal of controversy. But the real problem with Mr. Andreessen’s manifesto may be not that it’s too outlandish, but that it’s too on-the-nose. Because in a very real and consequential sense, this view is already enshrined in our culture. Major tent-poles of public policy support it. You can see it in the work requirements associated with public assistance, which imply that people’s primary value is their labor and that refusal or inability to contribute is fundamentally antisocial. You can see it in the way we valorize the C.E.O.s of “unicorn” companies who have expanded their wealth far beyond what could possibly be justified by their individual contributions. And the way we regard that wealth as a product of good decision-making and righteous hard work, no matter how many billions of dollars of investors’ money they may have vaporized, how many other people contributed to their success or how much government money subsidized it. In the case of ordinary individuals, however, debt is regarded as not just a financial failure but a moral one. (If you are successful and have paid your student loans off, taking them out in the first place was a good decision. If you haven’t and can’t, you were irresponsible and the government should not enable your freeloading.)
Would-be corporate monarchs, having consolidated power even beyond their vast riches, have already persuaded much of the rest of the population to more or less go along with it.

As a piece of writing, the rambling and often contradictory manifesto has the pathos of the Unabomber manifesto but lacks the ideological coherency. It rails against centralized systems of government (communism in particular, though it’s unclear where Mr. Andreessen may have ever encountered communism in his decades of living and working in Silicon Valley) while advocating that technologists do the central planning and govern the future of humanity. Its very first line is “We are being lied to,” followed by a litany of grievances, but further on it expresses disdain for “victim mentality.”

It would be easy to dismiss this kind of thing as just Mr. Andreessen’s predictable self-interest, but it’s more than that. He articulates (albeit in a refrigerator magnet poetry kind of way) a strain of nihilismt hat has gained traction among tech elites, and reveals much of how they think about their few remaining responsibilities to society.

Neoreactionary thought contends that the world would operate much better in the hands of a few tech-savvy elites in a quasi-feudal system. Mr. Andreessen, through this lens, believes that advancing technology is the most virtuous thing one can do. This strain of thinking is disdainful of democracy and opposes institutions (a free press, for example) that bolster it. It despises egalitarianism and views oppression of marginalized groups as a problem of their own making. It argues for an extreme acceleration of technological advancement regardless of consequences, in a way that makes “move fast and break things” seem modest.
If this all sounds creepy and far-right in nature, it is. Mr. Andreessen claims to be against authoritarianism, but really, it’s a matter of choosing the authoritarian — and the neoreactionary authoritarian of choice is a C.E.O. who operates as king. (One high-profile neoreactionary, Curtis Yarvin, nominated Steve Jobs to rule California.)
There’s probably a German word to describe the unique combination of horrifying and silly that this vision evokes, but it is taken seriously by people who imagine themselves potential Chief Executive Authoritarians, or at the very least proxies. This includes another Silicon Valley billionaire, Peter Thiel, who has funded some of Mr. Yarvin’s work and once wrote that he believed democracy and freedom were incompatible.
Singularity future, any harm they’ve done to the planet or to other people is necessary collateral damage. It’s the delusion of people who’ve been able to buy their way out of everything uncomfortable, inconvenient or painful, and don’t accept the fact that they cannot buy their way out of death.
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Did you actually read The Techno-Optimist Manifesto? Or, are you just a mindless sheep that regurgitates biased hit pieces of propaganda? Do you hate capitalism? Are you a communist?

Also, libtards were 100% behind technocrats as long as they were suppressing free speech, canceling anyone who disagreed with the dem party, and were aligned with the libtard overloads.

Tuxan said:
unencumbered by ethics or social responsibility, shape the future as quasi-monarchs.
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Where did it say that in the Techno-Optimist Manifesto?

mervyn · Nov 27, 2024

Tsing Tao said:
This looks encouraging right from the get-go. Likely the threats of tarriffs (which is what was actually meant here) are doing the work.

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knowing the mexicans, you think this lady can do anything with the money making machine, assuming she is not proftting from it.

Nine_Ender · Nov 28, 2024

echopulse said:
Oh, Trudeau submitted like a little bitch.

HAHAHAH. Counter measures!? Canada is a little piss ant meaningless country that literally no one gives a shit about. Its counter measures will be duds. All Canada is good at is contributing massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.

US = 27.36 trillion GDP
CA = 2.14 trillion GDP
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You are an ignorant fuck who literally understands nothing about the world. Any intelligent person with an ounce of common sense can't take a dumbass like you ( or Trump ) seriously. Seriously, put on the 25% tariffs it'll be fun watching Americans discover what that means to them.

echopulse · Nov 28, 2024

Nine_Ender said:
You are an ignorant fuck who literally understands nothing about the world. Any intelligent person with an ounce of common sense can't take a dumbass like you ( or Trump ) seriously. Seriously, put on the 25% tariffs it'll be fun watching Americans discover what that means to them.
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You're the idiot. You don't understand how the world works.

Trump is so good that he has you believing that he will impose a 25% tariff.

There is currently a low probability that there will be a 25% tariff. Trudeau, if that communist bastard is around much longer, will be made to fully submit. If he tries to call a bluff, Trump will impose the tariff and then Trudeau will submit like the little bitch that he is.

Canada has no leverage whatsoever. None.

Ricter · Nov 28, 2024

Please, Trump, please cut government spending by $2 trillion! I'm serious, do it!

wildchild · Nov 28, 2024

Ricter said:
And, please see that your appointments do as well—you're in charge now and you've made yourself quite clear. America is watching.
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He is. Its time that you are going to have to pay your fair share. The free ride is over, Canadian.

Trump vows new Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

wildchild · Nov 28, 2024

Ricter said:
Of course I'm referring to the promises and vows he's made about "Day 1" (his words). Don't be pedantic.
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You know Kamala Harris is still VP. She has spent the last 4 months bitching about a bunch and all the improvements that she was going to make. Instead of doing anything she is taking it easy and hanging out with family and friends. Why is she completely blowing off the final 2 and half months of her Vice Presidency. She really let you down.

Ricter · Nov 28, 2024

wildchild said:
You know Kamala Harris is still VP. She has spent the last 4 months bitching about a bunch and all the improvements that she was going to make. Instead of doing anything she is taking it easy and hanging out with family and friends. Why is she completely blowing off the final 2 and half months of her Vice Presidency. She really let you down.
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Harris let too many dems down over Gaza. It only took a couple of million disgusted stay at homes to swing this election, and over 6 million stayed home.

Ricter · Nov 28, 2024

Slither slither...

Trump Claims Border Win After Call With Mexico's President. She Says Nothing's Changed.
Trump likened Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's pledge to "effectively closing our Southern Border.”

El OchoCinco · Nov 28, 2024

wildchild said:
He is. Its time that you are going to have to pay your fair share. The free ride is over, Canadian.

Trump vows new Canada, Mexico, China tariffs
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Well you are aware that if trump.imooses tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico....WE pay for it....