Tech Billionaire Tears and Kidnapped Kids
Hey, I have a great idea for a new business.
I am going to kidnap a bunch of middle-class kids. Hundreds of them. I won’t ransom them for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, that’s too much of a hassle. Instead, I am going to disrupt the kidnapping business by only charging a hundred bucks a pop. People can pay that easily, and the whole thing runs a lot smoother. I’ll make up an app to facilitate tracking payment and the release of your kid — imagine the peace of mind knowing that your child will be delivered between the hours of 10am and 9pm. And hey, the kids will get out of homework and school for at least a day, so win-win all around! And after I do this enough to be a billionaire, I will give away a bit of my money to an effective altruism scam, er, charity. Doesn’t that sound great? Doesn’t that sound like a visionary? Doesn’t that mean I should be applauded?
Marc Andreesen apparently thinks so. And he thinks that so deeply that the general publics’, and Democrats specially, rejection of the praise businessmen regardless of their impact ethos turned him, and his Silicon Valley cohorts, into Trumpers.
Ross Douthat interviewed Andreesen, allegedly about how the mean old democrats drove Andreesen and his other tech billionaires into the arms of Trump. No personal accountability here — backing the racists, misogynistic, brain-worm infested Trump was forced on poor little Andreesen against his will. Why? Well, he rambles for quite a bit, spilling a lot of bullshit along the way (no, Andreesen, 90s and 2000s Silicon Valley was not entirely Democratic. The Ayn Rand was strong in that time period and its ability to co-opt organizations like the EFF goes a long way to explaining why things are so screwed up now.), but the meat of the argument is that no one respects The Deal — his capitalization, by the way — anymore.
The Deal, in Andreesen’s mind, is that you form a company, make some jobs, you get rich, you give away a lot of your money, and when you die, all your sins are washed away. today, that deal has been broken. People want things like accountability and for companies to not hurt people in pursuit of their money. To Andreesen, all of that is a violation of the deal. People are supposed to praise you for getting rich and then praise you for giving away a slice of that money to help the poors.
Why oh why can’t the little people just be grateful???
Andreesen is right that in the 90s and early 2000s, Democrats were more favorable to business, tech businesses in particular. It was the height of the neoliberalism era and Democrats saw this up-and-coming industry as a way to achieve their goals with little work. Plus, the initial internet was not the hive and scum and villainy that Andreesen’s investments have helped make it. Andreesen was an early investor in Facebook and is a big supporter of crypto — perhaps the two largest destructive forces on the internet.
Obviously, things changed. But the issue is not that people don’t respect businesspeople anymore. It is that people are noticing that the tech industry is making things worse. If my opening business plan about kidnapping a ton of children seems an unfair metaphor for Andreesen’s mindset, please keep in mind that Facebook facilitated a genocide, that Meta knows that its Instagram algorithm harms children, that Uber broke a ton of laws to get where it is, and that Google has just told the EU that it will not comply with its fact-checking in search requirements. If Andreesen has called for punishment for any of these companies, I can find no record of such condemnations.
Remember, The Deal in Andreesen’s own words requires not that the business be helpful to humanity or treat employees well (Andreesen is also incensed that employees dare to want the place they spend most of their waking hours — work — to not be destructive forces on the planet in general) or be ethical or create more, better jobs than the ones you destroy, or not harm their customers or any of that woke crap. No, all Andreesen seems to care about is that the company be successful. Andreesen is more likely to invest in my Uber for Kidnapping app than condemn it.
At their core, people like Andreesen are just infuriated that their lessors — you, me, politicians, the people they crush in their rush to make more money than God — would attempt to hold them accountable in any way for anything they have done. No, our place is merely to admire their facility for making money, regardless of the costs to others, to us, and praise them as they do so. Even if they help facilitate genocide. Even if it harms children. Even if, I suspect, it involves kidnapping. Andreesen’s problem is not with Democrats, it’s with his own ego.
Democrats demand that business be accountable to society. Trump, if you bribe him enough and flatter him enough, will not. And to Andreesen, having his ego stroked is more important, apparently, than anything — democracy, decency, human kindness.
Also, please don’t create Uber for Kidnapping. How ever much seed funding Andreesen offers you.