“IT’S TIME TO BUILD”
by Marc Andreessen | Andreessen Horowitz | April 18, 2020
Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it’s not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it.
personal reflection
Money and capitalism isn’t the issue.
A lack of vision, political will and massive over spending on an outdated militarism philosophy is.
When interest rates are zero as they are right now, how are we not modernizing everything around us? How are we not investing in education? In a better health care system?
For Heaven’s sake, government technology is so old it can’t even process a few thousand people trying to fill out an unemployment application. We just sent $1,200 to anyone making less than $75k (which isn’t anywhere near enough) to everyone because we don’t have the systems in place to send it to the 30% of people who lost their job. That’s ridiculous. Why didn’t we send $6,000 to the people who needed it most?
And, finally, why don’t we put our ingenuity to better use? Do we really need TikTok? Another video social sharing platform? There are better things we can be doing with our brains and capital.
This is an opportunity to grow and to build. Not only can we be better, it’s imperative we become better.
I’ve never felt our politicians were the brightest bulbs available, but I also feel it’s time for a new generation. When we have 70 to 80 year olds running the country, their paradigm is one that was formed in the 50s-70s. The world is different. The threats are different. Technology is different.
We still need to get rid of the two parties and the eternal war they continue to wage. When we have a vision and a plan, differences begin to dissipate and become smaller and less relevant because we are focused together on where we’re going.
With no leader that can create a vision and get others to buy into it, we are left with petty, little and intense hyper-partisanship. The only vision the two parties have right now is how to win the next election cycle.
It’s critical we are better. We don’t lack the resources needed to be great. We lack leadership.
