They Just Don't Get It

probably because we don't either

According to Marc Andreessen the Come to Jesus moment for Big Tech was when they went to the White House in May 2024 to discuss AI and learned that the Biden people had a Plan.

We are going to make sure that A.I. is going to be a function of two or three large companies. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups.

That’s when the tech bros went out into the parking lot at the White House and looked at each other and said: “Yep, we’re for Trump.”

Because for the Tech Bros that’s no how the world works.

Nearly 200 years after Marx’s manifesto, and a century after the Soviet Five Year Plans and 70 years after Mao’s Great Leap Forward, it really is time for politicians to realize that politicians and their advisers and their civil servants cannot manage and direct the economy. You can have the smartest people in the world on your Planning Staff and still get it wrong.

It’s the Science! From adaptation to prices regulatory capture.

And we have it from the examples in of surprises in history. Power looms: which government planned that? Steam engines: which two or three large companies came up with that? Automobiles: which government bureacrats planned that?

The reason that the tech bros went out of the White House and shook their heads is that they live the reality of invention and innovation and the marketplace. They know that you can’t tell which startup is going to hit the jackpot.

I guess the question for me is how to get the word out that you can’t direct the economy from the top, can’t predict the winner, can’t tell what is going to happen next.

I suppose the answer is that we humans will never learn that lesson. We are too much invested in the idea that we can control the world, if only we had the right leader. That we can create a just and secure society with a wise leader directing from the top.

And we voters will always vote for someone that will promise us heaven on Earth.