Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 22, 2021 19 tweets 7 min read Read on X
1/Some thoughts on my interview with Marc Andreessen!

noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ma…
2/Most interviews I do are back-and-forth, but this one was just me sending him a list of 10 questions, so I didn't respond in the interview itself! So here are some responses.
3/I think his libertarian perspective on the pandemic is more right than we'd care to admit (and similar to a point I made here: noahpinion.substack.com/p/climate-chan…).

But it does ignore the incredibly successful Operation Warp Speed, and the extremely fast vaccine rollout under Biden.
4/His idea that technology needs to drive down the prices of big-ticket service sector items is interesting (and similar to @elidourado's post here: medium.com/cgo-benchmark/…).

But ironically I think that in housing, regulation, not lack of technology, really is the big barrier!
5/I think he's absolutely right about Substack. I've never seen such a Cambrian explosion of good writing! Not sure if it can last, but it's pretty exhilarating.
6/Interesting that he's sounding a note of caution on A.I., an area of tech that many techies I know have probably been over-optimistic about.
7/I would just like to point out what a power move these two sentences are.
8/Marc's economic optimism is...actually warranted! How weird is it to be able to say that, in America? We were so obsessed with the Trump Wars that we overlooked a really solid period of economic progress for regular Americans.
9/His view of blockchain technology goes in the "I wouldn't ignore this if I were you" category.

He's skeptical of the "Bitcoin as hard money" orthodoxy, and optimistic about blockchain as a general-purpose technology.
10/I really disagree with the "Left=centralized, Right=decentralized" idea here. In terms of the culture wars, it's the Right that's centralized and the Left that's decentralized!

The idea of A.I. as Allende's Project Cybersyn is interesting, but I doubt that's how it works.
11/Marc's idea that West Coast VC could eventually usurp much of the big corporate finance function of the East Coast is among his more radical ideas!
12/His characterization of today's tech industry as a "Navy that acts like a pirate" is pretty spot-on, I think. I see this as an acknowledgment that the "techlash" isn't entirely wrong.
13/I really like Marc's call for revisiting the ideas of early tech thinkers. For my part, I've been reading a lot of @kevin2kelly!
14/I agree with Marc's ambivalence toward the Chinese tech sector.
15/Marc's characterization of the U.S. government handicapping U.S. private-sector tech in the race against China is going to sound to some folks like libertarian boilerplate, but I really don't think it is.

I think there's a good and important point here...
16/The good and important point is that while government and the private tech sector don't always have the same goals, their fundamental goal of an economically and industrially powerful U.S.A. is well-aligned!

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
17/Finally, I really like Marc's advice against "following your passion". Too often, following your passion is just an excuse for employers to underpay you. Seek fulfillment and interest in your family, your friends, and your hobbies. For your job, get PAID.
18/Anyway, despite the lack of back-and-forth, this was a really fun and interesting interview, and I hope you enjoy it!

(end)

noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ma…
Oh, and here's the obligatory reminder to sign up for my Substack's free email list!

noahpinion.substack.com

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More from @Noahpinion

Jun 10
Russia's empire is a nested hierarchy. At the center is Moscow. Under them are mid-tier Russian cities and rural areas, then subject peoples like the Buryats, Sakha, and these African folks.

The closer you are to the center, the less fighting you do, and the more money you get. Image
In fact, the circles of Russian hierarchy don't stop at Moscow. There are privileged subgroups of Muscovites, then more privileged groups inside that circle, all the way up to the Tsar himself.

The principle still holds: Closer to the center = less fighting, more money.
The advantage of this organizational structure is that the more power you have, the less likely you are to ever suffer negative consequences from adverse shocks or bad decisions. All the losses from failed wars, bad economic decisions, etc. get taken by the less powerful.
Read 16 tweets
Jun 3
In fact, it's not law even now. This executive order is (sadly) AGAINST the law and will probably be struck down, because our asylum law says we can't discriminate against asylum claimants for crossing the border illegally. That law needs to be changed by Congress.
The problem is that the U.S. is a party to the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, which says that your asylum system can't discriminate against people for being in the country illegally. We wrote our domestic law to comply with that treaty.
The non-discrimination provision is obviously stupid, so what we need to do is flout the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, and simply amend our domestic law to say "You can't claim asylum if you crossed illegally". But this would require an act of Congress.
Read 5 tweets
May 7
I'm incredibly bored of talking about the Palestine protests, but here are some results from the recent Generation Lab survey.

Key fact #1: College students just don't care about the Palestine issue that much.

axios.com/2024/05/07/pol…
Image
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).

collegepulse.com/blog/8-in-10-c…
Image
Only about 1/8 of students blame Biden for the conflict. 34% blame Hamas, and 31% blame either Israel in general or Netanyahu specifically. Image
Read 6 tweets
May 2
The Palestine protesters have created a dream Palestine that is almost entirely disconnected from the real place, in which all of their fantasies of a perfect society are realized.

This is a bit like what weebs do with Japan.
FromTheRiverToTheSeaboos
Most weebs don't actually want to live in Japan. They want to live in a local subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on gentleness and romance -- the ideals that attracted them to Japanese fantasies and made those fantasies resonate.

noahpinion.blog/p/weebs
Read 9 tweets
Mar 24
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
Read 10 tweets
Jan 19
Here are some countries that did catch up to other countries.

Poland caught up to Portugal: Image
South Korea caught up to Japan: Image
Ireland caught up to the UK

(graph ends before major Irish tax shenanigans begin) Image
Read 13 tweets

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