A16z co-founder: Technology is the only eternal source of growth

I’ve always felt that a16z is a representative of the technical optimists in VC, and its co-founder, Marc Andreessen, is even more typical. Some time ago, a16z just released a 10,000-word long article, believing that the current AI allows us to enter the third era of computing.

Today, Marc Andreessen officially released the techno-optimist manifesto “The Techno-Optimist Manifest” on the a16z official website, which is close to 10,000 words, and explains it from the perspectives of lies, truth, technology, and markets.

In the manifesto, Marc Andreessen argues that there are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource use and technology. The only eternal source of growth is technology. And the free market is the most efficient way to organize a technological economy, which is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence—an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system. **

Below I used AI to briefly compile, and also deleted some of the content, interested friends can go to the a16z official website to read the original article.

You live in crazy times – even crazier than usual, because despite the tremendous advances in science and technology, humans have no idea who they are or what they are doing. By Walker Percy

Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we lived by gathering, a lifestyle still visible among the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and the Sentinar of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was extremely slow. People born in Sumer in 4000 BC will be very familiar with the resources, work, and technology of England during the Norman conquest or the Aztec Empire during the Columbus period. Then, from the 18th century, the standard of living skyrocketed for many. What brought about this huge progress and why? By Marian Tupy

There is a way to do better. Find it. By Thomas Edison

Lies lies

We were deceived.

We are told that technology has taken our jobs, lowered our wages, exacerbated inequality, threatened our health, damaged the environment, lowered our society, corrupted our children, damaged our humanity, threatened our future, and was forever on the verge of destroying everything.

We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful of technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various newer forms such as Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and The Terminator – haunts our nightmares.

We are told to condemn our birthright—our wisdom, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to feel miserable about the future.

Truth

Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the vanguard of progress, and the realization of our potential. We’ve been rightly celebrating this for hundreds of years — until recently.

I’m here to bring good news. We can progress to a more superior way of life and existence.

We have tools, systems and ideas. We have the will. It’s time to raise the tech flag again.

It’s time to be a techno-optimist.

Technology

Techno-optimists believe that society, like sharks, either grows or dies.

We believe that growth is progress – bringing vitality, expanding lives, increasing knowledge, and improving well-being.

We agree with Paul Collier: “Economic growth is not a panacea, but lack of growth is fatal.” ”

We believe that all good things are downstream of growth.

We believe that not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal struggle, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death. **

**There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource use and technology. **

The population of developed countries is shrinking across cultures around the world and across cultures — and the total population may already be decreasing. The use of national resources is severely limited, both practically and politically.

Therefore, the only eternal source of growth is technology. **

In fact, technology — new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks call techne — has been the main source of growth, and perhaps the only reason for it, because it has made possible population growth and the use of natural resources.

We believe that technology is the leverage of the world – making more with less.

Economists measure technological progress in terms of productivity growth: how much we can produce each year with fewer inputs and fewer raw materials. Technology-driven productivity growth is a major driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and jobs, as people and capital are constantly freed up to do more important and valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth leads to lower prices, higher supply, and higher demand, thereby improving the material well-being of all people.

We believe that this is the story of the material development of our civilization; That’s why we no longer live in mud huts, barely subsisting on a meager subsistence, waiting for nature to plunder us.

We believe this is why our descendants will live in the starry sky. We believe that there is no material problem, whether caused by nature or technology, that cannot be solved by more technology.

We faced hunger, so we invented green technology;

We had a problem with darkness, so we invented the electric light;

We had the problem of cold, so we invented room heating;

We had a problem with heat, so we invented the air conditioner;

We had isolated problems, so we invented the Internet;

We had an epidemic problem, so we invented vaccines;

We face poverty, so we invent technology to create affluence;

Give us a real-world problem that we can invent to solve it.

Markets

We believe that the free market is the most efficient way to organize a technological economy. A willing buyer meets a willing seller, the price is reached, and both parties benefit from the exchange, otherwise it would not have happened. Profit is the driving force behind the production of supply that meets demand, and prices encode information about supply and demand. The market prompts entrepreneurs to seek high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving down prices.

We believe that the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence—an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.

We believe that Hayek’s intellectual problems overwhelmed any centralized economic system. All the actual information is at the edge, in the hands of those closest to the buyer. The center is far away from buyers and sellers, knowing nothing. Centralized planning is doomed to failure, and production and consumption systems are too complex. Decentralization uses complexity for the benefit of all; Centralization will starve you to death.

We believe in market discipline. The market naturally follows the rules – when the buyer fails to show, the seller either learns and changes, or withdraws from the market. When market discipline is missing, things go crazy and endless. The motto of every monopoly and cartel, every central institution that is not subject to market discipline, is: “We don’t care because we don’t have to.” "The market prevents monopolies and cartels.

We believe that markets can lift people out of poverty – in fact, markets are by far the most effective way to lift large numbers of people out of poverty, and always have been. Even in totalitarian regimes, the gradual lifting of the repression of the people and their ability to produce and trade leads to a rapid increase in income and living standards. Lift the boots a little and the effect will be better. Take off your boots completely, who knows how rich everyone can become.

We believe that the market is inherently an individualistic way to achieve exceptional collective outcomes.

We believe that the market doesn’t require people to be perfect, or even well-intentioned – and that’s great, because, have you ever met people? Adam Smith: “Our dinner does not come from the kindness of the butcher, the winemaker, or the baker, but from their consideration of their own self-interest.” We focus not on their humanity, but on their self-love, never talking to them about our own necessities, but about their strengths. ”

David Friedman points out that people do things for others for only three reasons – love, money, or power. Love has no scale, so the economy can only be run by money or force. Force experiments have been carried out, but found to be ineffective. Let’s stick with money.

We believe that the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who would otherwise form armies and create religions to the pursuit of peaceful production. In the words of Nicholas Stern, we believe that the market is our way of caring for strangers.

We believe that the market is a way to create social wealth for everything else we want to pay for, including basic research, social welfare programs, and defense.

We believe that there is no conflict between the profits of capital and the social welfare system that protects the vulnerable. In fact, they are consistent – the production of the market creates economic wealth and pays for everything we want as a society.

We believe that central economic planning will elevate the worst of us and drag everyone down; The market uses our best talent for the benefit of us all.

We believe central planning is a doom cycle; And the market is spiraling upward.

Economist William Nordhaus has shown that technology creators only receive about 2% of the economic value created by that technology. The other 98% flows into society in the form of what economists call a social surplus. Technological innovation in the market system is charitable in nature, with a ratio of 50:1. Who gets more value from the new technology, the single company that makes it, or the millions or billions of people who use it to improve their lives?

We believe in David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage – unlike competitive advantage, which holds that even the people in the world who are good at everything buy most of it from others because of opportunity cost. Comparative advantage in an appropriate free market context guarantees high employment rates, regardless of skill level.

We believe that the market sets wages as a function of a worker’s marginal productivity. As a result, productivity-enhancing technologies drive wages up, not down. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it’s true, and we’ve proven it for 300 years. **

We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human desires and needs are infinite.

We believe that markets can also enhance social well-being by creating jobs in which people can participate effectively. We believe that universal basic income will turn people into zoo animals, raised by the state. Man should not be raised, man should be useful, creative, proud.

We believe that instead of reducing the need for human work, technological change has increased the demand for human work by expanding the scope of human productivity.

We believe that since human desires and needs are limitless, and economic needs are infinite, job growth can continue forever.

We believe that markets are creative, not exploitative; Positive sum, not zero sum. Market participants build on each other’s work and output. James Carse describes finite games and infinite games – finite games have an ending, one person wins and the other loses; Infinite games never end as players collaborate to discover what’s possible in the game. The market is the ultimate unlimited game.

The Techno-Capital Machine

Combine technology with the market, and you get what Nick Land calls the technology capital machine, the engine of material eternal creation, growth, and abundance.

We believe that the technological capital machine of market and innovation will not stop, but will continue to spiral. Comparative advantage increases specialization and trade. Prices fall, unleashing purchasing power and creating demand. Falling prices benefit everyone who buys goods and services, that is, everyone.

Human desires and needs are endless, and entrepreneurs have been creating new goods and services to satisfy them, deploying an unlimited number of people and machines in the process, a spiral that has been going on for hundreds of years. In fact, as of 2019, before the temporary suspension of the pandemic, the result was the creation of the largest number of jobs in the history of the planet, with the highest wages, and the highest material standard of living.

The technological capital machine makes natural selection work for us in the realm of ideas. The best, most productive ideas win and combine to produce better ideas. These ideas are realized in the real world in the form of technology-enabled goods and services that never emerge from scratch.

Ray Kurzweil defined his law of accelerating returns: Technological progress tends to nourish itself, increasing the rate of further progress. **

We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate push for technological development – to ensure that the law of accelerated returns is realized. Ensure that the spiral of technology capital continues forever.

We believe that the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most human-friendly thing. It works for us, technology capital machines work for us, all machines work for us.

We believe that the cornerstone resources of the spiral of technological capital are wisdom and energy – ideas – and the power to make them reality. **

Intelligence Intelligence

We believe that intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better, and on almost every measure we can measure, both smart people and smart societies perform better than less intelligent people and societies. Intelligence is a birthright of human beings, and we should expand it as comprehensively and broadly as possible.

We believe that intelligence is spiraling – first, more and more intelligent people around the world are being recruited into the technological capital machine; Second, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines, new cybernetic systems are formed, such as companies and networks; Third, AI augments the capabilities of our machines and ourselves.

We believe that we are ready for the intellectual take-off, which will expand our capabilities to unimaginable heights.

We believe AI is our alchemy, our philosopher’s stone – we’re actually making the sand think. **

We believe AI is best seen as a general-purpose problem solver, and we still have a lot of problems to solve.

We believe that AI can save lives if we want to. Compared to what we can achieve through the joint research of new therapies by humans and machines, medicine, and many other fields, are in the Stone Age. From car accidents to epidemics to wartime injuries, many common causes of death can be solved by AI.

We believe that any slowdown of AI results in the loss of life, and those deaths that can be prevented by AI are murder.

We believe in augmented intelligence just as we believe in artificial intelligence. Intelligent machines augment human intelligence, pushing human capabilities to expand exponentially.

We believe that augmented intelligence can drive marginal productivity, which in turn drives wage growth, which in turn drives demand, which in turn drives the creation of new supply… There is no upper limit.

Energy

Energy is life. We take this for granted, but without it, we would face darkness, hunger and suffering. With it, we have light, security, warmth.

We believe that energy should spiral. Energy is the basic engine of our civilization, and the more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s life will be. We should increase everyone’s energy consumption level to our energy consumption level, then increase our energy by 1000 times, and then increase the energy of everyone else by 1000 times as well.

Currently, there is a huge gap in per capita energy use between smaller developed countries and larger developing countries. This gap will narrow – either by massively expanding energy production to make everyone’s lives better, or by massively reducing energy production that makes everyone’s lives worse.

We believe that the expansion of energy does not have to harm the natural environment. Today, we have a panacea for virtually unlimited zero-emission energy – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Nixon called for the implementation of the Independence Plan, which would build 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000 to achieve full independence of American energy. Nixon was right. We didn’t build these plants then, but now we can build them at any time.

Thomas Murray, Commissioner of Atomic Energy, said in 1953: "For many years, the splitting atom in weapons has been our main shield against the barbarians. Moreover, now it is a tool that God has given humanity to work constructively. Murray is right, too.

We believe a second energy silver bullet is coming – nuclear fusion. We should build it too. The bad idea of actually banning fission will also try to ban fusion, and we shouldn’t let them do that.

We believe that there is no inherent conflict between the technological capital machine and the natural environment. Even without nuclear power, the United States now has lower carbon emissions per capita than it did 100 years ago.

We believe that technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. Technologically advanced societies can improve the natural environment, while technologically stagnant societies destroy the natural environment.

We believe that technologically stagnant societies have limited energy at the cost of environmental destruction; The technologically advanced society provides unlimited clean energy for everyone.

Abundance Rich

We believe that we should put our intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop and drive them to infinity.

We believe we should use feedback loops of intelligence and energy to enrich everything we want and need.

In our view, the measure of affluence is falling prices. Whenever the price falls, the purchasing power of the people who buy it increases, which is the same as the increase in income. If the prices of many goods and services fall, the result is an explosion of purchasing power, real income, and quality of life. **

We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to be measured,” the end result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technically complex and difficult to make, but no one will be offended if you borrow a pencil and don’t return it. We should take the same attitude towards all physical commodities.

We believe that we should push prices down across the economy through the application of technology until as many prices as possible are actually zero, thus pushing income levels and quality of life to the highest level.

We believe Andy Warhol is right, saying, “The great thing about this country is that it has pioneered the tradition that the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest consumers.” You can see Coca-Cola while watching TV, you can know that the president drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and then think about it, you can drink Coca-Cola too. Coke is Coke, and you can’t buy a better Coke than a street corner homeless man drinks for much money. All Coke is the same, and all Coke is good. "The same goes for browsers, smartphones, chatbots.

We believe that technology will eventually move the world toward what Buckminster Fuller calls “ephemeralization” — what economists call “dematerialization.” “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less money, until eventually you don’t have to do anything,” Fuller says. ”

We believe that technological progress will bring material abundance to everyone. **

We believe that the ultimate return of technological abundance may be what Julian Simon calls the “ultimate resource” – the massive expansion of people. As Simon does, we believe that people are the ultimate resource – the more people, the more creativity, the more new ideas, and the more technological advances. Therefore, we believe that material abundance ultimately means more people – more people – which in turn leads to more abundance.

We believe that our planet is grossly underpopulated compared to our population rich in intellectual, energy and material products.

We believe that the global population could easily grow to 50 billion people or more, and that number will be far beyond that when we finally settle on other planets.

We believe that among all these people will be scientists, technologists, artists and dreamers who have exceeded our wildest dreams.

We believe that the ultimate mission of technology is to promote life on Earth and stars.

Not utopian, but close enough

However, we are not utopians. We are followers of what Thomas Sowell called a “limited vision.”

We believe that a constrained vision – as opposed to an unfettered vision of utopia and expertise – means accepting people as they are, testing ideas through experience, and liberating people to make their own choices.

We don’t believe in utopia, nor do we believe in Revelation.

We believe that change only happens at the margins – but a large number of marginal changes can have huge results. While not utopia, we believe in what Brad DeLong calls “lazy toward utopia” – doing the best thing that fallen humans can do to make things better as we move forward.

Becoming Technological Supermen

We believe that advancing technology is one of the most beneficial things we can do. We believe in consciously and systematically transforming ourselves into people who can drive technological progress.

We believe that this certainly means technical education, but it also means being hands-on, gaining practical skills, working in teams and leading teams — a desire to build something greater than yourself, a desire to work with others, to build something greater as a team.

We believe that the natural drive of humans to create things, gain territory, and explore the unknown can be effectively channeled into building technology. We believe that while physical boundaries, at least on Earth, are closed, technological boundaries are open.

We believe in exploring and gaining access to the technological frontier. We believe in the romance of technology, the romance of industry. Trains, cars, electric lights, skyscrapers. There are also microchips, neural networks, rockets, splitting atoms.

We believe in risk-taking. Embark on a heroic journey to rebel against the status quo, map uncharted territory, and bring loot to our community.

To paraphrase the manifestos of different times and places: “Beauty exists only in struggle.” There is no masterpiece that is not offensive. Technology must be a violent attack on unknown forces, forcing them to bow before humanity. ”

We believe that we are, were and will be the masters of technology, not the control of it. The victim mentality is a curse in all areas of life, including our relationship with technology – both unnecessary and self-defeating. We are not victims, we are conquerors.

We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitive people, cowering in fear of lightning. We are apex predators and Lightning works for us.

We believe in greatness. We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today.

We believe in humanity – individually and collectively.

Technological Values

We believe in ambition, persistence, perseverance - strength. We believe in merit and achievement. We believe in bravery, courage. We believe in pride, confidence and self-esteem – when winning. We believe in free inquiry, practical scientific methods and enlightenment values that challenge the authority of experts.

We believe, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” And, “I’d rather have unanswerable questions than unquestionable answers.”

We believe in local knowledge and people make decisions with actual information, not playing God. We believe in embracing differences and adding fun. We believe in risk and in leaps into the unknown.

We believe in agency, we believe in individualism. We believe in the ability to be radical. We believe in absolute rejection of resentment, and as Carrie Fisher says, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” We take responsibility and we overcome. ”

We believe in competition because we believe in evolution. We believe in evolution because we believe in life. We believe in the truth. We believe that rich is better than poor, cheap is better than expensive, and abundance is better than scarcity. We believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, everything abundant.

We believe that extrinsic motives—wealth, fame, revenge—are good in themselves. But we believe more in intrinsic motivation—the satisfaction of building new things, camaraderie in a team, the achievement of being a better version of ourselves—more fulfilling and lasting. **

We believe what the Greeks say - prosperity through excellence.

We believe that technology is universalist. Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, nationality, gender, height, weight, or hair. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world, anyone with a positive attitude and cheap laptops can contribute, technology is the ultimate open society.

We believe in Silicon Valley’s “giving” principle, helping each other learn and grow through consistent incentives, trust, and generosity. We believe that technology makes greatness possible and more likely.

We believe in unleashing our potential to become whole people – for ourselves, our communities, and our communities.

The Meaning Of Life

Technological optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. We care about material things for a reason—opening the door to how we choose to live in material abundance.

A common criticism of technology is that it takes away choices in our lives because machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, but the freedom to create life that comes with the material abundance created by our machines more than offsets this.

The material abundance brought about by markets and technologies opens up space for religious, political, and social and personal lifestyle choices. We believe that technology is liberating, liberating human potential, liberating human souls, human spirits, and expanding the meaning of freedom, contentment, and life.

We believe that technology opens up the space of meaning for humanity.

The Enemy

We have enemies. Our enemy is not bad people, but bad ideas.

For six decades, our current society has been suffering from a massive demoralization campaign – against technology and life – under different names such as “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “precautionary principle”, “trust and safety”, “ethics of technology”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “limits to growth”.

Our enemy is stagnation, anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-struggle, anti-achievement, anti-greatness. Our enemies are institutions that were vibrant and truth-seeking in their youth, but are now compromised, corroded and crumbled – holding back progress in efforts for continued relevance that are increasingly desperate, and frantically trying to justify their continued funding despite escalating dysfunction and incompetence.

Our enemy is all kinds of control, but also unfettered utopia. Our enemy is the precautionary principle, which has hindered almost all progress since humans first used fire. The precautionary principle was invented to prevent the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power, perhaps the most catastrophic mistake I have seen society make in my life. The precautionary principle continues to inflict enormous and unnecessary suffering on today’s world. This is very immoral and we must abandon it with extreme prejudice.

Our enemies are deceleration, degrowth, depopulation - this nihilistic desire is very popular among our elite, that is, depopulation, reduced energy, increased suffering and death.

We will explain to those captured by rotten ideas that their fears are unfounded and that the future is bright. We invite everyone to join us in technological optimism. To be our allies in the pursuit of technology, affluence and life.

The Future

Where do we come from? Our civilization is built on the spirit of discovery, exploration and industrialization.

Where are we going? What kind of world are we building for our children, their children?

A world of fear, guilt and resentment? Or a world of ambition, richness and adventure?

We believe David Deutsch’s words: "We have a responsibility to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined, it cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it has. It is therefore our responsibility to strive for a better world. ”

We owe the past and we owe the future. It’s time to be a techno-optimist. It’s time to build。