a16z founder issues a declaration of technological optimism technology is the only eternal source of growth

A16z Founder Releases Declaration of Technological Optimism Emphasizes Technology as the Sole Eternal Source of Growth

You are living in a crazy age – crazier than usual. Despite the enormous progress in science and technology, humans have no clue about who they are or what they are doing.

Original Title: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Original Author: a16z

Original Source: a16z

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Translation: StartupBoy

I’ve always thought that a16z represents the techno-optimists in the VC world, with its co-founder Marc Andreessen being the epitome of that. Recently, a16z published a long article claiming that the current AI revolution is ushering in the third era of computing.

Today, Marc Andreessen officially released the Techno-Optimist Manifesto on the a16z website. This manifesto is almost 10,000 words long, providing explanations from various perspectives such as lies, truth, technology, and the market. It’s full of passion and enthusiasm.

In this manifesto, Marc Andreessen says, “There are only three sources of economic growth: population growth, resource use, and technology. The only eternal source of growth is technology. And free-market capitalism is the most efficient way to organize the technology economy. Market economies are discovery machines, intelligent forms – exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive systems.”

Below, I’ve done a simple AI-based translation and edited some parts. If you’re interested, you can read the original article on the a16z website.

You are living in a crazy age – crazier than usual because despite the enormous progress in science and technology, humans have no clue about who they are or what they are doing. By Walker Percy

Our species has a history of 300,000 years. For the first 290,000 years, we lived by gathering, a lifestyle still seen in the Kalahari Desert’s Bushmen and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after the advent of agriculture, progress was extremely slow. Someone born in Sumer 4,000 years ago would be familiar with the resources, jobs, and technology of England during the Norman Conquest or the Aztec Empire during Columbus’ time. Then, starting from the 18th century, the living standards of many people skyrocketed. What brought about this tremendous progress, and why? By Marian Tupy

There is a better way. Find it. By Thomas Edison

Lies

We have been deceived.

We have been told that technology is stealing our jobs, lowering our wages, exacerbating inequality, threatening our health, destroying the environment, undermining our society, corrupting our children, damaging our humanity, endangering our future, and perpetually on the edge of destroying everything.

We are told to feel anger, pain, and resentment towards technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms such as Frankenstein, Terminator, and Altered Carbon – haunts our nightmares.

We are told to condemn our inherent rights – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to feel bleak about the future.

Truth

Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the vanguard of progress, the realization of our potential. We have been appropriately celebrating this for centuries – until recently.

I’m here to bring good news. We can progress to a superior way of living and existing.

We have the tools, the systems, and the ideas. We have the will. It’s time to raise the banner of technology once again.

Now is the time to become techno-optimists.

Technology

Techno-optimists believe that society is like a shark, either it grows or it dies.

We believe that growth is progress – bringing vitality, expanding lives, increasing knowledge, improving well-being.

We agree with Lianguaiul Collier’s assertion: “Economic growth is not a panacea for all ailments, but a lack of growth is deadly.”

We believe that all good things are downstream from growth.

We believe that stagnation leads to zero-sum thinking, internal strife, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death.

The sources of growth are only three: population growth, utilization of natural resources, and technology.

The populations of developed countries are declining globally and across cultures – the total population may already be decreasing. National resource utilization is severely restricted both realistically and politically.

Therefore, the only eternal source of growth is technology.

In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – has always been the primary source of growth, maybe even the only reason for growth, as technology enables the growth of population and utilization of natural resources.

We believe that technology is the lever of the world – making more money with less money.

Economists measure technological progress by productivity growth: how much output can we produce each year with fewer inputs and fewer raw materials. Technology-driven productivity growth is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and job opportunities, as people and capital are continually freed up to do things that are more important and valuable than before. Productivity growth leads to lower prices, increased supply, expanded demand, thus improving the material well-being of all people.

We believe this is the story of our civilization’s material development; this is why we no longer live in mud huts, barely surviving and waiting for nature to prey on us.

We believe this is why our descendants will live among the stars. We believe that no matter if it’s caused by nature or technology, there is no material issue that cannot be solved with more technology.

We face hunger, so we invent green technology;

We encounter darkness, so we invent electricity;

We have cold problems, so we invent indoor heating;

We face heat issues, so we invent air conditioning;

We encounter isolation problems, so we invent the internet;

We face epidemic problems, so we invent vaccines;

We face poverty issues, so we invent technology to create wealth;

Give us a real-world problem, and we can invent the technology to solve it.

Markets 市场

We believe that free markets are the most efficient way of organizing a technoeconomic system. Willing buyers meet willing sellers, prices are agreed upon, and both parties benefit from the exchange, otherwise it wouldn’t happen. Profit is the driving force behind the production of supply that satisfies demand, and prices encode information about supply and demand. Markets incentivize entrepreneurs to seek higher prices, signaling opportunities to create new wealth by lowering costs.

We believe a market economy is a discovery machine, an intelligent form – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.

We believe Hayek’s knowledge problem overwhelms any centrally planned economic system. All relevant information is at the periphery, in the hands of those closest to the buyers. The center, far from buyers and sellers, knows nothing. Central planning is bound to fail, as the production and consumption systems are too complex. Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of all; centralization will starve you.

We believe in market discipline. Markets naturally enforce rules – when buyers fail to show up, sellers either learn and change, or exit the market. When market discipline is lacking, things go crazy. The motto of every monopoly and cartel, every centrally unaccountable institution is, “We don’t care because we don’t have to.” Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.

We believe markets can help people escape poverty – in fact, markets have been the most effective way to lift a large number of people out of poverty, ever. Even under authoritarian regimes, gradual release of oppression on people’s production and trade capabilities leads to rapid increases in income and living standards. Lifting the boot a little higher yields even better results. Taking the boot off completely, well, who knows how wealthy everyone can become.

We believe that markets are fundamentally an individualistic way to achieve collective excellence.

We believe that markets do not require people to be perfect, or even benevolent – which is good, because have you met people? As Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

David Friedman pointed out that people do things for others for only three reasons – love, money, or power. Love does not scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. We have tried the force experiment, and it did not work well. Let’s stick with money.

We believe that the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they redirect the people who would otherwise form armies or establish religions towards peaceful production. In the words of Nicholas Stern, we believe that markets are our way of caring for strangers.

We believe that markets are the way to create social wealth for everything else we want to pay for, including basic research, social welfare programs, and national defense.

We believe that there is no conflict between capital profits and social welfare systems that protect vulnerable groups. In fact, they are aligned – the production of the market creates economic wealth to pay for everything we want as a society.

We believe that central economic planning empowers the worst among us and burdens everyone, while the market uses our best talents to benefit everyone.

We believe that central planning is a cycle of doom, while the market is a spiral of upward progress.

Economist William Nordhaus has shown that the creators of technology only capture around 2% of the economic value created by that technology. The remaining 98% flows into society in the form of what economists call social surplus. Technological innovation in the market system is essentially charitable, with a ratio of 50:1. Who gains more value from new technology, the single company that produces it, or the millions or billions of people whose lives are improved by using it?

We believe in David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage – different from competitive advantage, comparative advantage posits that even the person in the world who is best at doing everything will still buy most things from others due to opportunity cost. Regardless of the level of technology, comparative advantage in an appropriate free market setting ensures high employment rates.

We believe that markets set wages as a function of workers’ marginal productivity. Therefore, technologies that increase productivity will drive wages up, not down. This may be the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it is a fact, and we have 300 years of history to prove it.

We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human desires and needs are infinite.

We believe that markets can also enhance social welfare by creating efficient opportunities for people to participate. We believe that universal basic income would turn people into animals in a zoo, raised by the state. People should not be raised, they should be useful, creative, and proud.

We believe that technological advancements have not decreased the demand for human work, but instead have increased the demand by expanding the scope of efficient human work.

We believe that due to the infinite desires and needs of humans, economic demand is also infinite, and employment growth can continue indefinitely.

We believe that the market is creative, not exploitative; positive-sum, not zero-sum. Market participants base their work and output on each other. James Carse described finite games and infinite games – finite games have an end, with one person winning and the other losing; infinite games never end because players cooperate to discover possibilities within the game. The market is the ultimate infinite game.

The Techno-Capital Machine

When technology is combined with the market, you get what Nick Land calls the Techno-Capital Machine, an engine for perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.

We believe that the market and the innovative Techno-Capital Machine will not stop, but rather continue to spiral upwards. Comparative advantage leads to specialization and trade. Price decreases unleash purchasing power, creating demand. Price decreases benefit everyone who buys goods and services, meaning everyone.

Human desires and needs are endless, and entrepreneurs continuously create new goods and services to satisfy these desires and needs, deploying an infinite number of personnel and machines in the process. This upward spiral has been ongoing for hundreds of years. In fact, as of 2019, before the temporary interruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has resulted in the creation of the highest number of jobs, highest wages, and highest material standard of living in the history of the Earth.

The Techno-Capital Machine allows natural selection to operate in the realm of ideas. The best and most effective ideas win and combine to produce even better ideas. These ideas materialize in the real world as technologically supported goods and services, which never start from scratch.

Ray Kurzweil defines his Law of Accelerating Returns: Technological progress tends to feed on itself, increasing the rate of further progress.

We believe in accelerationism – consciously and intentionally pushing for technological development – to ensure the realization of the Law of Accelerating Returns. Ensuring the perpetuation of the spiral ascent of technological capital.

We believe that the Techno-Capital Machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most beneficial thing for humanity. It serves us, works for us, and all machines work for us.

We believe that the cornerstone resources for the spiraling rise of technological capital are intelligence and energy – creativity and the power to turn ideas into reality.

Intelligence

We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better, and in almost all measurable indicators, smart individuals and societies outperform those who are not as intelligent. Intelligence is a birthright of humanity, and we should strive to expand it as comprehensively and widely as possible.

We believe that intelligence is spiraling upward – firstly, more and more smart people are being recruited into the technological capital machine worldwide; secondly, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines, new cybernetic systems are being formed, such as corporations and networks; thirdly, AI enhances both our machines and our own capabilities.

We believe we are ready for the takeoff of intelligence, which will expand our abilities to unimaginable heights.

We believe AI is our alchemy, our philosopher’s stone – we are essentially making sand think.

We believe AI is best viewed as a general problem solver, and we still have many problems to solve.

We believe that AI, if we allow it, can save lives. Compared to the achievements we can make through joint human and machine intelligence research, medicine and many other fields are still in the Stone Age. From car accidents to epidemics to casualties of war, many common causes of death can be addressed through AI.

We believe that any deceleration of AI would result in loss of life, as those deaths preventable by AI would be considered a kind of murder.

We believe in augmented intelligence, just as we believe in artificial intelligence. Intelligent machines enhance human intelligence and drive the exponential expansion of human capabilities.

We believe augmented intelligence can boost marginal productivity, leading to wage growth, which in turn drives demand, and hence creates new supply… with no upper limit.

Energy

Energy is life. We take this for granted, but without it, we would face darkness, hunger, and suffering. With it, we have light, security, and warmth.

We believe that energy should spiral upward. Energy is the fundamental engine of our civilization, and the more energy we have, the more people we can support, and the better lives everyone can lead. We should raise the energy consumption levels of everyone to our own, then increase our energy by a factor of 1000, and then raise the energy of others by the same factor.

Currently, there is a huge gap in per capita energy consumption between smaller developed countries and larger developing countries. This gap will either narrow – either through massively expanding energy production, improving the lives of everyone, or through massive reduction of energy production, worsening the lives of everyone.

We believe that the expansion of energy does not have to harm the natural environment. Today, we have the magical cure of practically unlimited zero-emission energy – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Nixon called for the implementation of the Independent Energy Program, aiming to build 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000 to achieve complete energy independence for the United States. Nixon was right. We didn’t build those plants back then, but now we can build them anytime.

Commissioner of Atomic Energy, Thomas Murray, stated in 1953: “For years, the splitting atom in weapons has been our primary shield against barbarians. Furthermore, now it is a tool bestowed upon humanity by God for constructive work.” Murray was also right.

We believe that the second energy silver bullet is on its way – nuclear fusion. We should build it too. In fact, banning fission is a bad idea that would also attempt to ban fusion, and we shouldn’t let them do that.

We believe that there is no inherent conflict between technological capital machines and the natural environment. Even without nuclear power, the carbon emissions per capita in the United States are lower now than 100 years ago.

We believe that technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crises. A technologically advanced society can improve the natural environment, while a technologically stagnant society will destroy it.

We believe that in a technologically stagnant society, energy is limited, and the cost is environmental damage. In a technologically advanced society, clean energy is unlimited for everyone.

Abundance

We believe that we should put intelligence and energy into a positive feedback loop and drive them to infinity.

We believe that we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to enrich everything we want and need.

We believe that the measure of wealth is a decline in prices. Whenever prices fall, the purchasing power of those who buy it increases, just like an increase in income. If the prices of many goods and services decline, the result is an explosive growth of purchasing power, actual income, and quality of life.

We believe that if we make intelligence and energy “cheap to the point of being immeasurable,” the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually technically complex and difficult to manufacture, but if you borrow a pencil and don’t return it, no one will be upset. We should have the same attitude towards all physical goods.

We believe that we should drive down the prices of the entire economy through technological applications until as many prices as possible are actually zero, thereby pushing income levels and the quality of life to the highest level.

We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coca

We believe that technology will eventually lead the world towards what Buckminster Fuller called “ephemeralization” – what economists call “dematerialization.” Fuller said, “Technology allows you to do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

We believe that technological progress will bring material abundance to everyone.

We believe that the ultimate reward of technological abundance may be what Julian Simon called the “ultimate resource” – the massive expansion of human beings. Just as Simon argued, we believe that humans are the ultimate resource – the more people there are, the stronger the creativity, the more new ideas, and the more technological progress. Therefore, we believe that material abundance ultimately means more people – more people, in turn, bring more abundance.

We believe that compared to our planet’s population with abundant intelligence, energy, and material products, our global population is severely lacking.

We believe that the global population can easily increase to 5 billion people or more, and when we eventually settle on other planets, this number will far exceed that figure.

We believe that among all these people, there will be scientists, technology experts, artists, and dreamers who surpass our wildest dreams.

We believe that the ultimate mission of technology is to foster the development of life on Earth and in the stars.

Not utopia, but close enough

However, we are not utopians. We are followers of what Thomas Sowell called the “constrained vision.”

We believe that the constrained vision – in contrast to the unconstrained vision of utopians and experts – means accepting people’s true nature, testing ideas through experience, and liberating people to make their own choices.

We do not believe in utopias, nor do we believe in revelations.

We believe that change only happens at the margins – but significant marginal changes can lead to tremendous results. While not utopias, we believe in what Brad DeLong calls “stumbling towards utopia” – doing the best we can to make things better as we move forward.

Becoming Technological Supermen

We believe that one of the most beneficial things we can do is to drive technological progress. We believe in consciously and systematically transforming ourselves into individuals who can drive technological progress.

We believe that this certainly involves technological education, but it also means getting hands-on experience, acquiring practical skills, working in teams, and leading teams – striving to build something greater than ourselves and eager to collaborate with others to build something greater as a team.

We believe that human creativity, the desire to acquire territory, and the impulse to explore the unknown can effectively be channeled into building technology. We believe that while there may be physical boundaries, at least on Earth, technological boundaries are open.

We believe in exploring and acquiring cutting-edge technology. We believe in the romance of technology, the romance of industry. The love of trains, cars, electric lights, and skyscrapers. And also microchips, neural networks, rockets, and split atoms.

We believe in adventure. Embarking on heroic journeys, resisting the status quo, charting uncharted territories, and bringing treasures back to our community.

To paraphrase manifestos from different times and places: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece without aggression. Technology must be a violent assault on unknown forces, forcing them to bow before humanity.”

We believe that we are masters of technology, both now, in the past, and in the future, rather than being controlled by technology. The victim mentality is a curse in all aspects of life, including our relationship with technology – unnecessary and counterproductive. We are not victims, we are conquerors.

We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitive people cowering in fear of lightning. We are top predators, and lightning works for us.

We believe in greatness. We admire our great technology experts and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud today.

We believe in humanity – both individual and collective.

Technological Values

We believe in ambition, perseverance, and unremitting – power. We believe in accomplishments and achievements. We believe in bravery, courage. We believe in pride, confidence, and self-esteem – when earned. We believe in the freedom to explore, practical scientific methods, and enlightenment values that challenge the authority of experts.

We believe that, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” And, I would rather have unanswered questions than unquestioned answers.

We believe in local knowledge, people making decisions based on real information rather than playing God. We believe in embracing differences, adding to the richness of life. We believe in taking risks and leaping into the unknown.

We believe in agency, in individualism. We believe in the power of radicalness. We believe in categorically rejecting hatred, as Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We take responsibility, we overcome.”

We believe in competition because we believe in evolution. We believe in evolution because we believe in life. We believe in truth. We believe in wealth over poverty, cheapness over expense, abundance over scarcity. We believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

We believe in extrinsic motivation – wealth, fame, revenge – in and of itself is good. But we believe more in intrinsic motivation – the satisfaction of building something new, camaraderie within a team, the fulfillment of becoming a better self – more fulfilling and long-lasting.

We believe in what the Greeks say – through excellence comes prosperity.

We believe that technology is universal. Technology doesn’t care about your nationality, race, religion, nationality, gender, height, weight or hair. Technology is built by talents from around the world, a virtual United Nations, and anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can make a contribution. Technology is the ultimate open society.

We believe in the Silicon Valley principle of “giving back,” where trust is built through consistent incentives, and a generous spirit helps each other learn and grow. We believe technology makes greatness possible, and more likely.

We believe in unlocking our potential to become complete individuals – for ourselves, our communities, and our society.

The Meaning of Life

Technological optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. We focus on the material for a reason – it opens doors to how we choose to live in material abundance.

A common criticism of technology is that it deprives us of agency in our lives, as machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, but the freedom to create a life, made possible by the material abundance created by machines, far outweighs this point.

The material abundance brought by the market and technology opens up space for choices in religion, politics, and social and individual lifestyles. We believe that technology is liberating, liberating human potential, freeing the human soul, the human spirit, expanding freedom, fulfillment, and the meaning of being alive.

We believe technology opens up the space for human purpose.

The Enemy

We have enemies. Our enemies are not bad people, but bad ideas.

For sixty years, our current society has been under a large-scale morale decline movement – against technology and life – under different names such as “existential risk,” “sustainability,” “ESG,” “sustainable development goals,” “corporate social responsibility,” “precautionary principle,” “trust and security,” “technology ethics,” “risk management,” “degrowth,” “limits to growth.”

Our enemy is stagnation, against virtues, against ambition, against striving, against achievement, against greatness. Our enemy is the institutions that were once vibrant and truth-seeking in their youth but are now compromised, corroded, and crumbling – hindering the efforts of ever-desperate relevance, despite continual dysfunction and incompetence, still desperately trying to prove the rationality of their continued funding.

Our enemy is all forms of control, as well as unbridled utopia. Our enemy is the precautionary principle, which has hindered nearly all progress made by humanity since our first use of fire. The invention of the precautionary principle was meant to prevent the widespread deployment of civilian nuclear power, perhaps the most catastrophic mistake society has ever made in my lifetime. The precautionary principle continues to inflict immense unnecessary suffering on the world today. It’s deeply immoral, and we must discard it with extreme prejudice.

Our enemies are slow-down, degrowth, and population decline – a nihilistic desire that is very popular among our elite, that is, population decrease, energy decrease, and increase in suffering and death.

We will explain to those captured by decadent thoughts that their fears are unfounded and that the future is bright. We invite everyone to join our ranks of technological optimism. Become an ally in our pursuit of technology, prosperity, and life.

The Future

Where do we come from? Our civilization is built on discovery, exploration, and the spirit of industrialization.

Where are we going? What kind of world are we building for our children and their children?

A world filled with fear, guilt, and resentment? Or a world filled with ambition, abundance, and adventure?

We believe in the words of David Deutsch: “We have a responsibility to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined, and therefore, we cannot simply accept it: we all have a role in shaping it. Therefore, striving for a better world is our duty.”

We owe it to the past, and we owe it to the future. It’s time to become a technology optimist. It’s time to build.

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