In October 2023, Marc Andreessen — founder of a16z, investor in half the companies currently enshittifying the internet — published a "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" explaining why his class's seizure of the economy is actually good for everyone. This post reads it carefully, in its own words, and responds.
Andreessen's text appears verbatim in monospace. Commentary is in serif. The question being answered: is this a manifesto for humanity, or a manifesto for the techno-Lords?
The Techno-(Lord) Optimist Manifesto.
Marc Andreesen wrote the Techno-Optimist Manifesto to convince you he knows where the stairway to heaven is.
But all I've seem from him is the highway to hell.
He insists he should be able to continue to enshittify any industry he desires in order to make more billions from it. (what the techno-Lords' actual AI progress looks like from an engineer's perspective)
He claims this is a great bargain for the world. Why?
Why does a billionaire in the richest most stratified society in the history of the world, where his technology has created the most economically unequal society ever; worse than France in 1789, worse than the US Gilded Age in the 1890s; want to continue raping the American economy?
Because he can.
He's on the right side of the inequality gap, and if you don't let him continue to steal from the peasants, he's going to be very, very mad.
This Manifesto is not for the peasants for they wouldn't understand why they must be sacrificed.
The "Manifesto" is verbatim and in courier, the comments are mine alone and in Times.
