I agreed with most of your assessments until Markets. Andreson is a financier. For him progress is growth in the size of his portfolio. And under SP culture this is the objective of American capitalism.
But a rising S&P 500 index is not the same thing as progress as I (or I believe you) see it. Market-based capitalism *can* be a major source of progress, but only if the capital it accumulates is the productive sort (i.e. that which when combined with labor produces higher productivity). Capital defined as "that which is valued by the stock market) produces nothing, does nothing, and cannot be a route to progress as you see it.
And this latter kind of capital is what SP culture accumulates.
My response is not about Marc Andreesen personally, his portfolio, or his chosen career path. I am only reacting to what he wrote on the page. He does not mention the stock market.
Yes, but he is an investor and financial gains are his objective. His manifesto in about how hard his business is today. The big successful firms are doing fine, but the new issues are not fetching the valuations they got in the nineties. There are probably no startups fetching the 6000 multiple on Ebay back in the day. Granted that this was an artifact. but it was a fact that the market tolerated Amazon's losses for years before then ever earned a profit. Andreesen is bitter that his new companies haven't gotten that sort of tolerance for losses.
What he is ignoring with his "growth manifesto" is that firms like Amazon, Uber or Airbnb were not innovators in the way that Google, Facebook, or Twitter were. These first three were middlemen who inserted themselves into an existing business (mail order sales, taxis, or hotel rooms) and then used their monopsony power to extract wealth from their suppliers. There is no economic creation here, just a rechanneling of and existing income stream from one firm to another. There is no economic growth here. There may be an efficiency gain in that bricks and mortar stores, taxi drivers or motels may now have less business and those formerly involved in such activities can now do something more productive. But is this realistic. Progress in the past always included both firms who increased efficiency and those who produced new stuff. Is is from the latter that progress came.
I agreed with most of your assessments until Markets. Andreson is a financier. For him progress is growth in the size of his portfolio. And under SP culture this is the objective of American capitalism.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-capitalist-crisis
But a rising S&P 500 index is not the same thing as progress as I (or I believe you) see it. Market-based capitalism *can* be a major source of progress, but only if the capital it accumulates is the productive sort (i.e. that which when combined with labor produces higher productivity). Capital defined as "that which is valued by the stock market) produces nothing, does nothing, and cannot be a route to progress as you see it.
And this latter kind of capital is what SP culture accumulates.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
My response is not about Marc Andreesen personally, his portfolio, or his chosen career path. I am only reacting to what he wrote on the page. He does not mention the stock market.
Yes, but he is an investor and financial gains are his objective. His manifesto in about how hard his business is today. The big successful firms are doing fine, but the new issues are not fetching the valuations they got in the nineties. There are probably no startups fetching the 6000 multiple on Ebay back in the day. Granted that this was an artifact. but it was a fact that the market tolerated Amazon's losses for years before then ever earned a profit. Andreesen is bitter that his new companies haven't gotten that sort of tolerance for losses.
What he is ignoring with his "growth manifesto" is that firms like Amazon, Uber or Airbnb were not innovators in the way that Google, Facebook, or Twitter were. These first three were middlemen who inserted themselves into an existing business (mail order sales, taxis, or hotel rooms) and then used their monopsony power to extract wealth from their suppliers. There is no economic creation here, just a rechanneling of and existing income stream from one firm to another. There is no economic growth here. There may be an efficiency gain in that bricks and mortar stores, taxi drivers or motels may now have less business and those formerly involved in such activities can now do something more productive. But is this realistic. Progress in the past always included both firms who increased efficiency and those who produced new stuff. Is is from the latter that progress came.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-leading-sectors
One of the rules of this column is that you must stay on the topic of the post. I clearly stated that you are off topic.