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This brainless asshole is one of the main architects of our shitty present [View all]
Last edited Mon Nov 10, 2025, 11:23 PM - Edit history (2)
This is well worth a read:
https://www.salon.com/2025/11/10/tech-billionaire-marc-andreessen-bet-big-on-trump-its-paying-off-for-silicon-valley_partner/
Of particular concern to Andreessen was federal regulators’ targeting of the freewheeling crypto industry under President Joe Biden — an effort that legal experts said would have planted a costly roadblock in the path of several companies’ rapid growth. The investor’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, told the CFPB last year it planned to put more than $7 billion in crypto funds. So in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the longtime Democrat shifted his allegiance to Donald Trump, donating more than $5 million to groups supporting the Republican candidate, and even volunteered to help Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In short order, the Trump administration has hollowed out the CFPB — the primary regulator with jurisdiction over increasingly ubiquitous financial technology companies and the only one looking out for consumers in the rapidly expanding crypto marketplace. Lawsuits have been dropped, settlements have been renegotiated in favor of companies and a proposed consumer-friendly crypto regulation was killed outright.
Virtually all investigations have also ground to a halt, including three probes into Andreessen-backed companies, according to the records and the people familiar with the cases, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Among those frozen: inquiries into the popular cash advance app EarnIn and Point Digital Finance, one of the country’s largest providers of so-called alternative mortgages.
For those eager to reimagine a financial system free from regulation, the new approach is a boon.
But for the tens of millions of struggling Americans who rely on such apps for loans, cash advances and other financial products, it could be a bust, consumer advocates said.
“There are lots of ways that this breaks bad for families, and it all flows downstream from this moment we are now in,” said Mike Pierce, a former bureau official who now runs the advocacy group Protect Borrowers. “If there’s no watchdog, people are going to get hurt.”
In short order, the Trump administration has hollowed out the CFPB — the primary regulator with jurisdiction over increasingly ubiquitous financial technology companies and the only one looking out for consumers in the rapidly expanding crypto marketplace. Lawsuits have been dropped, settlements have been renegotiated in favor of companies and a proposed consumer-friendly crypto regulation was killed outright.
Virtually all investigations have also ground to a halt, including three probes into Andreessen-backed companies, according to the records and the people familiar with the cases, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Among those frozen: inquiries into the popular cash advance app EarnIn and Point Digital Finance, one of the country’s largest providers of so-called alternative mortgages.
For those eager to reimagine a financial system free from regulation, the new approach is a boon.
But for the tens of millions of struggling Americans who rely on such apps for loans, cash advances and other financial products, it could be a bust, consumer advocates said.
“There are lots of ways that this breaks bad for families, and it all flows downstream from this moment we are now in,” said Mike Pierce, a former bureau official who now runs the advocacy group Protect Borrowers. “If there’s no watchdog, people are going to get hurt.”
Rohit Chopra, the official mentioned in that piece, is one of those rare public figures whom I actually respect. He mentored my all time favorite public official, Lina Khan. (Lina Khan/Aoc 2028? My fantasy ticket ;-/. Mamdani can’t run for prez - born in Uganda).
Anyway I am posting some background on this dimwit. He is one of the main architects of our present shitty reality and anyone who cares about anything worth caring about should know who this fucking asshole is. Pardon my French, but he is one of the worst human beings alive. I can rarely talk about him without profanity.
He is also incredibly fucking stupid. Nicholas Carr (a pretty decent tech critic) dissects him elegantly here:
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=9020
You might remember the colorful interview Andreessen gave to Substack trickster Niccolo Soldo last spring. At one point in the exchange, the high-browed venture capitalist sketches out his vision of the metaverse and makes a passionate case for its superiority to what he calls “the quote-unquote real world.”
In Andreessen’s view, society is condemned, by natural law, to radical inequality. In a world where material goods are scarce and human will and talent unequally distributed, society will always be divided into two groups: a small elite who lead rich lives and the masses who live impoverished ones. A few eat cake; the rest get, at best, crumbs. The entire history of civilization — Andreessen’s “5,000 years” — bears this out. Any attempt, political or economic, to overcome society’s natural bias toward extreme inequality is futile. It’s just magical thinking. The only way out, the only solution, is to overturn natural law, to escape the quote-unquote real world. That was never possible — until now. Computers have given us the chance to invent a new world of virtual abundance, where history’s have-nots can experience a simulation of the “glorious substance” that history’s haves have always enjoyed. With the metaverse, civilization is at last liberated from nature and its constraints.
Andreessen is not actually suggesting that the metaverse will close the economic gap between haves and have-nots, it’s important to note. At a material level, there’s every reason to believe that the gap will widen as the metaverse grows. It’s the Reality Privileged, or at least its Big Tech wing, who are, as Andreessen emphasizes, building the metaverse. They will also be the ones who own it and profit from it. Andreessen may expect the Reality Deprived to see the metaverse as a gift bestowed upon them by the Reality Privileged, a cosmic act of noblesse oblige, but it’s self-interest that motivates him, Zuckerberg, and the other world-builders.
Not only would the metaverse expand their wealth, it would also get the Reality Deprived out of their hair. With the have-nots spending more and more of their time experiencing a simulation of glorious substance through their VR headsets, the haves would have the actual glorious substance all the more to themselves. The beaches would be emptier, the streets cleaner. Best of all, the haves would be able to shed all responsibility, and guilt, for the problems of the real world. When Andreessen argues that we should no longer bother to “prioritize improvements in reality,” he’s letting himself off the hook. Let them eat virtual cake.
Even within the faux-rich confines of the metaverse, there’s every reason to believe that inequality would continue to reign. The metaverse, as envisioned by Andreessen and Zuckerberg, is fundamentally consumerist — it’s the world remade in the image of the experience economy.
In Andreessen’s view, society is condemned, by natural law, to radical inequality. In a world where material goods are scarce and human will and talent unequally distributed, society will always be divided into two groups: a small elite who lead rich lives and the masses who live impoverished ones. A few eat cake; the rest get, at best, crumbs. The entire history of civilization — Andreessen’s “5,000 years” — bears this out. Any attempt, political or economic, to overcome society’s natural bias toward extreme inequality is futile. It’s just magical thinking. The only way out, the only solution, is to overturn natural law, to escape the quote-unquote real world. That was never possible — until now. Computers have given us the chance to invent a new world of virtual abundance, where history’s have-nots can experience a simulation of the “glorious substance” that history’s haves have always enjoyed. With the metaverse, civilization is at last liberated from nature and its constraints.
Andreessen is not actually suggesting that the metaverse will close the economic gap between haves and have-nots, it’s important to note. At a material level, there’s every reason to believe that the gap will widen as the metaverse grows. It’s the Reality Privileged, or at least its Big Tech wing, who are, as Andreessen emphasizes, building the metaverse. They will also be the ones who own it and profit from it. Andreessen may expect the Reality Deprived to see the metaverse as a gift bestowed upon them by the Reality Privileged, a cosmic act of noblesse oblige, but it’s self-interest that motivates him, Zuckerberg, and the other world-builders.
Not only would the metaverse expand their wealth, it would also get the Reality Deprived out of their hair. With the have-nots spending more and more of their time experiencing a simulation of glorious substance through their VR headsets, the haves would have the actual glorious substance all the more to themselves. The beaches would be emptier, the streets cleaner. Best of all, the haves would be able to shed all responsibility, and guilt, for the problems of the real world. When Andreessen argues that we should no longer bother to “prioritize improvements in reality,” he’s letting himself off the hook. Let them eat virtual cake.
Even within the faux-rich confines of the metaverse, there’s every reason to believe that inequality would continue to reign. The metaverse, as envisioned by Andreessen and Zuckerberg, is fundamentally consumerist — it’s the world remade in the image of the experience economy.
I can no longer access this piece but I do remember it as an eyeroll fest:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/tomorrows-advance-man
This is almost too cringey for even an Andreessen hater like yours truly:
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-dubrovnik-interviews-marc-andreessen
I have also been posting this everywhere since Christopher Ketcham is really cool and that book sounds awesome. This interview again is truly worth a read (as is Ketcham’s work as a rule):
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/
The Mad Religion of Technological Salvation
AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable of.
AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable of.
Pretty much every serious tech critic/journalist I follow has taken the time to dedicate at least one post to trashing Andreessen.
Here is Yasha Levine (though Levine didn’t even bother with a serious post on the moron):
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/made-in-the-usa-a-little-slice-of
Ed Zitron:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/everything-looks-like-a-nail/
Marc Andreessen, a man worth nearly two billion dollars, a man who lives in a $177 million compound in Malibu, a man who has been on the board of Facebook and Hewlett-Packard and who likely hasn’t experienced a struggle in decades, wants you to believe he’s a victim.
His 5000-word screed — the “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” — is a sprawling list of grievances and demands from society, claiming that “the free markets are the most effective ways to organize a technological economy” and that “markets cause entrepreneurs to seek out high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving prices down based on supply and demand.”
This is Andreessen’s dream — a continual race to the bottom where the tech industry is incentivized not to solve problems, but to find ways to make already-solved problems cheaper to solve so that venture capitalists can make money. His ugly, spurious logic phrases his “solutions” as utopian, claiming that ‘markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty” without couching that with any citation or proof, other than the fact that “even in totalitarian regimes, an incremental lifting of the repressive boot…leads to rapidly rising incomes and standards of living…[and if you] take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get.”
Andreessen’s thinking is equal parts outdated and childish, hinging heavily on the idea that the world needs more technology, and the way that we get more technology is through removing any barriers that might stop the tech industry and venture capitalists from monetizing every aspect of the modern world. Andreessen reserves an entire part of his essay to list those entities and concepts he deems “The Enemy,” naming “authoritarianism” alongside “social responsibility,” “sustainable development” and “tech ethics.” Andreessen believes that “risk management” is the enemy in the same year that Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse decimated the ability for tech companies to raise money, and “trust and safety” as the enemy as Twitter crumbles directly as a result of firing a team with the very same name.
His 5000-word screed — the “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” — is a sprawling list of grievances and demands from society, claiming that “the free markets are the most effective ways to organize a technological economy” and that “markets cause entrepreneurs to seek out high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving prices down based on supply and demand.”
This is Andreessen’s dream — a continual race to the bottom where the tech industry is incentivized not to solve problems, but to find ways to make already-solved problems cheaper to solve so that venture capitalists can make money. His ugly, spurious logic phrases his “solutions” as utopian, claiming that ‘markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty” without couching that with any citation or proof, other than the fact that “even in totalitarian regimes, an incremental lifting of the repressive boot…leads to rapidly rising incomes and standards of living…[and if you] take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get.”
Andreessen’s thinking is equal parts outdated and childish, hinging heavily on the idea that the world needs more technology, and the way that we get more technology is through removing any barriers that might stop the tech industry and venture capitalists from monetizing every aspect of the modern world. Andreessen reserves an entire part of his essay to list those entities and concepts he deems “The Enemy,” naming “authoritarianism” alongside “social responsibility,” “sustainable development” and “tech ethics.” Andreessen believes that “risk management” is the enemy in the same year that Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse decimated the ability for tech companies to raise money, and “trust and safety” as the enemy as Twitter crumbles directly as a result of firing a team with the very same name.
I couldn’t make this post more readable as I am posting it in haste here out of a disgusted sense that people should be aware of this creep and of similar sleazebags (they are reminiscent of the scurrying, beetle-like men from 1984).
Do take a look if you get a minute. He is truly one of the worst..and a significant enough reason for why life sucks in general in 2025 that he deserves negative attention commensurate with his culpability.
And again he is really stupid-meritocracy faugh..the man is a complete moron
…
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