Enterprise capital large Andreessen Horowitz has introduced its intent to start lobbying the US authorities, and their plan is as tone-deaf and obtuse as this summer season’s dreadful “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Basically, they are going to give to anybody — literally anyone — who “supports an optimistic technology-enabled future.”
That is what’s known as being a single-issue voter, and whereas co-founder Ben Horowitz (who penned the weblog put up) appears to suppose saying themselves as such offers their lobbying a child-like purity, it’s fairly the alternative.
The actual fact is that they’re wealthy ideologues saying their intent to pay any politician who will advance their agenda, no matter that politician’s different views. It truly is that straightforward!
That tech is extra vital than folks is key to their method. They’d argue that they’re pro-people by the use of being pro-tech, for instance as they write, “Artificial Intelligence has the potential to uplift all of humanity to an unprecedented quality of living.”
Subsequently, being pro-AI is being pro-people, proper? And in reality, if you concentrate on it, if AI may result in a 100x enchancment within the human situation long run, it justifies taking actions that produce worse outcomes within the brief time period. As an illustration, supporting politicians who oppose primary civil rights simply because they’ve a extra hands-off tech regulation proposal.
Would Andreesen and Horowitz help a politician proposing a nationwide abortion ban, for example, or widespread banning of “woke agenda” books, if that particular person stated they’d belief AI corporations to do what’s finest for everybody? Effectively, in keeping with A16Z’s assertion of function right here, that abortion stuff is none of their enterprise! They’re “non-partisan, one issue voters.”
However that’s simply bullshit, proper?
Within the first place, the concept that this one difficulty is non-partisan is risible. Pressured beginning advocates would in all probability say they’re non-partisan, one difficulty voters too. It’s not about politics, it’s about the proper to life, in spite of everything. That just one political occasion has cynically tied this and different “traditional values” to each different coverage proposal for many years is irrelevant!
No, no — you don’t get to only declare non-partisanship in a weblog put up. Tech regulation has turn out to be a partisan difficulty like all the things else. The debates on internet neutrality, on Part 230, on TikTok, on disinformation in social media, and on A16Z’s pet techs AI, cryptocurrency, and biotech — all partisan! That’s merely the character of politics now. Even not collaborating in lobbying is in a approach a partisan determination as a result of it indicators that you’re not keen to take a aspect.
However that non-partisan language is simply the standard dressing for this sort of announcement. Everybody claims it as a result of it’s a meaningless high quality and may’t be proved or disproved. The issue with A16Z’s philosophy right here is that it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothes: a nakedly deregulatory and pro-capital agenda superficially draped with the language of empowerment.
You must think about that some cigarette trade government wrote the same weblog put up within the ’60s: We’re a non-partisan, single difficulty voter on the misguided regulatory regime unfairly stopping Individuals from having fun with the good style and well being advantages of our all-natural tobacco merchandise.
Similar for plastics, meals components, leaded fuel, all the things else. All they cared about, and all Andreesen Horowitz cares about, is clearing the board of a hard impediment to enrichment.
If they really cared in any respect about folks and the way politics or this lobbying effort would possibly have an effect on them, “people” in all probability would have been talked about as greater than summary ideas which may theoretically get “uplifted” or harmed in an imaginary future.
It’s unrealistic to suppose that by donating to a politician who helps their deregulatory imaginative and prescient, A16Z won’t even be supporting the opposite insurance policies that folks really vote on proper now. Issues like voting rights, reproductive care, training. This apparent battle of pursuits is conveniently averted. Is any place, any proposal vile sufficient for them to withdraw help, or will they stick by their ideas, if they are often described as such?
They’ll’t anticipate us to imagine that their understanding of lobbying and politics is that this naive. There are good folks at that agency. We should take their assertion at face worth that they really don’t care about something however rising the sector they put money into. However what they’re declaring just isn’t, as they recommend, an idealistic pro-humanity stance, however a cynical self-interested stance that’s basically anti-people.
However A16Z doesn’t care about folks — it cares about humanity.
And humanity will certainly be grateful when, as we enter this golden age of expertise, we enter a darkish age of civil and social coverage, proper? Women like Kate Cox may not have bodily autonomy, however no less than they are going to have the blockchain.
