Marc Andreessen, who is perhaps the most important VC and forecaster right now, like more soft-spoken Peter Thiel, is correct about many things such as Web 2.0 not being a bubble and being skeptical of democracy. The later point agrees with the NRX (Neo Reaction) ideology, showing that one need not be directly affiliated with NRX to be an intellectual ally. He’s also correct about free market capitalism and being pro-STEM immigration, and I’m sure he also thinks IQ is important and congenital (although I can’t find any reputable source to support this – but being that IQ is such an important part of high-tech, it doesn’t seem implausible.)
Here’s a good tweet by Marc Andreessen about the left’s incessant whining about bubbles:
This more than anything else explains all the screaming/moaning/crying about putative new tech bubbles since 2005: http://t.co/LvImnDMFas
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 28, 2015
The left keeps predicting doom and gloom and keeps being wrong.
As someone who follows Marc Andreessen on Twitter, what I find interesting is how he is able to court a diverse spectrum of views – something you don’t typically see on political sites. Often what happens is pundits only associate with direct ideological allies, resulting in an uninteresting echo chamber, but Mr. Andreessen is like the hub of a wheel with each spoke representing a differing view/perspective that links back to him, creating a symbiosis of sorts between the hub (Andreessen) and all the people (spokes) he interacts with. But also, Mr. Andreessen cannot be pigeonholed as either being resolutely ‘left’ or ‘right’, as his views encompass the full-range of the political spectrum.
And maybe that’s my approach, too.
For example, although Brad Delong and Noah are technically liberals, I agree with their view that the US debt is not that a big of a deal or about fed policy being effective and not hyper-inflationary, or about the dollar not collapsing – as many predicted incorrectly it would. Noah occasionally hits the nail on the head, and that’s probably why Marc Andreessen and others on the ‘right’ follow him. And Dr. Delong is right about US post-WW2 foreign policy being mostly a success – and even if such views (such as being pro-fed or pro-globalization) are unpopular among the welfare left, Delong’s temerity to challenge the liberal party line is not only admirable but intellectually honest, and that’s why I follow him on twitter.