Build the right thing
We now have the will to invest in service of ourselves and the planet. The establishment’s slowly taking note of it
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s most recent article has been making the rounds with a bold premise: it’s time to build. The Western world, and the US more specifically, have been systematically under-investing across all sectors of the economy. Both the private and the public sectors have been failing to allocate the fantastical surplus of economic growth into productive investments at home that would enable continued prosperity and welfare — preferring instead to spend on wars, bailouts, trade wars, dividends, share buybacks, and other money sinks.
Andreessen argues that this — a monumental failure of social choice — is at the root of the shortcomings in the healthcare sector that are currently so visible (lack of R&D enabling the development of therapies and vaccines, lack of manufacturing capacity to scale production of tests and medical equipment, etc). It is also at the root of the present lack of housing in our most economically important cities; in the education sector that has been stagnating both in capacity and in ability to deliver outcomes; in the manufacturing sector that only…
