Silicon Valley capitalist Marc Andreessen has released a manifesto that decries efforts to restrain the genius of tech billionaires. Drawing heavily from Nietzsche and Hayek, it’s the same old right-wing elitism in new packaging.

In earlier eras, the manifesto was an important organ of radical political and aesthetic movements; prominent examples in the history of the genre include of course those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, André Breton, or, more recent, the Dogme 95 group. These days, in which radical political ideas of the Left or the Right have only recently begun to become mainstream again, it is unsurprising that the manifesto seems to be a historical relic.

But the genre received a new entry with Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” published last October on the website of Andreessen Horowitz, perhaps the very bluest of Silicon Valley’s blue-chip venture capital firms. That apparently radical manifestos are now being produced by billionaire technocapitalists might be cause for alarm among our nineteenth- and twentieth-century ancestors. But it really shouldn’t surprise us, at least those who pay attention to the kind of rhetoric coming regularly from Sand Hill Road and its environs. Hardly content with the accumulation of fortunes unprecedented in history and their resulting political power, a small number of our new ruling overlords clearly want to be taken seriously as thinkers, too…

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261Y

This dude and his wannabe Big Think needs to just shut the fuck up. He is antithema to everything technology would naturally bring us. It should be a good thing to unshackle us from labor. Him and his slimy ilk have held us back for the last fourty years just to ensure the pipelines are directed to their wallets and ideologies. I wholeheartedly believe that if he and his friend group vaporized into the unknown tomorrow the world would become a better place.

What I hate the most is that they are literally stealing science, technology and progress to enforce their techno-feudalism.

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21Y

More eloquent than i could ever hope.

haui
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31Y

I really enjoyed reading this. But you all do know that reading this and nodding while not forming or joining a political movement to get those scumbags convicted for making everyone else suffer is wasted potential, right? Can someone please link a global movement against megacorps and billionaires? I would sign up in a heartbeat.

The Doctor
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41Y

They want to rule as god-kings.

So they’re acting like god-kings.

Pretty soon, people will elevate them to god-kings because power perceived is power achieved.

I just thought of a better word for their ideology: techno-feudalism. They are not optimist or humanist, they crave for power and controle.

We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.”

We believe everything good is downstream of growth.

So Techno-Optimism is just a minor flavor of Neoliberalism I guess?

That’s unfortunate. I consider myself a technooptimist, but I am anything but a believer of liberalism or capitalism.

CurlyWurlies4All
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31Y

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