The Techno-Optimist Manifesto with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

If you don't believe that you can be successful in life or with the new technology or with kind of moving the world forward, then you can't. I think like a lot of artists, I aspire to have a better class of product. What do you do about tech companies getting so big and becoming monopolies? What do you do about banks getting so big and becoming monopolies? Do we want more Manhattans and Apollos? On the one hand, it's hard to say no. On the other hand, do I want a society that is that much more militarized, if that's what's required? I don't know. Be really careful when somebody goes, oh, this is a problem with a new technology, so therefore, we have to stop the new technology. Look. There's the other scenario, and I would just call that one the Cheetos and Meth scenario. And PlayStation. And PlayStation. Right? And, like and I like Netflix. I'm a fan of Netflix, but, like, maybe not twelve hours a day. That's the existence of a cow. Cows are great, but, like, I don't think we should be cows. Following the publication of his essay, The TechnoOptimist Manifesto in October 2023, Margand Rieson sat down with his a sixteen z cofounder, Ben Horowitz, to talk through what sparked the piece and why he felt compelled to write it. Along the way, they take on audience questions, including whether there's such a thing as effective pessimism, why victimhood so often dominates the conversation, how dependent we risk becoming on technology, the difference between being pro business versus pro market, the role of private and public capital in driving progress, and which part of the essay Mark thinks was the most controversial. Let's get into it. Hello, and welcome to the Mark and Ben podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about a post that Mark recently wrote called the techno optimist manifesto. And like all good manifestos, many people loved it. Many people hated it, and so that's given us a lot to talk about. I just wanna actually point out my favorite of the people that hated it was an article that was published in TechCrunch called, when's the last time Marc Andreessen has spoken to poor people or a poor person or something like that? And the thing that's so funny about it is that Marc, of all the people I know, I probably don't know anybody who's more self made than Mark because he grew up in a tiny town in Wisconsin. He went to public schools, like, not good public schools, like, probably some of the worst public schools in the country, and, like, never got any money, you know, from home, not because his parents didn't love him. They didn't have any money to give him. And then the people who wrote the article all went to, like, the fanciest schools I've ever heard of and, you know, Ivy Leagues and wonderful private high schools and these kinds …