so Andreessen Horowitz posted another manifesto just over a week ago and it’s the most banal fash shit you can imagine:

Regulatory agencies have been green lit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries, such as Blockchain.

Regulatory agencies are being green lit in real time to do the same to Artificial Intelligence.

does this shit ever get deeper than Regulation Bad? fuck no it doesn’t. is this Horowitz’s attempt to capitalize on the Supreme Court’s judiciary coup? you fucking bet.

here’s some more banal shit:

We find there are three kinds of politicians:

Those who support Little Tech. We support them.

Those who oppose Little Tech. We oppose them.

Those who are somewhere in the middle – they want to be supportive, but they have concerns. We work with them in good faith.

I find there are three kinds of politicians:

  • those who want hamburger. I give them hamburger.
  • those who abstain from hamburger. I do not give them hamburger.
  • those who have questions about hamburger. I refer them to the shift supervisor in good faith.
  • blakestacey@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    4 months ago

    “The time has come to stand up for Little Tech” —venture capital firm with $42 billion in assets under management

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      4 months ago

      tbf how much of that is real money and how much of that is overhyped stock, cookie cutter shitcoins, and other SV innovation in financial crimes

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        4 months ago

        On the other hand, by the time you’re spelling billion with a “B” any appreciable fraction of that is still going to be enough money to functionally remove you from the normal economy. Too big to fail in that even if all the bullshit collapses they’d still probably have more money than God.

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 months ago

          if you can cut it down by 4 orders of magnitude, maybe less depending on his spending rate, he’ll spend all of it before he dies, all on his own (i vaguely remember that people in the west spend something like $4M over their entire lives)

  • kbal@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    4 months ago

    new industries, such as Blockchain.

    While resisting the morbid curiosity that might otherwise tempt me to follow the link, I paused to consider that one phrase, with the capital B and all. How did it come to this? What is it about this cumbersome and inefficient type of database that makes people go crazy for it? Or could they have just as easily picked some other algorithm to glorify? It would be quite a world if every data structure we invented got people believing that there’s going to be a whole new industry devoted to it. Yeah, I’m working on a new project in the Hash Table industry. We’re going to combine it with Sorting Algorithm technology to deliver revolutionary new techniques for optimizing pizza delivery. I would like a hundred million dollars please.

    • Jayjader@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      4 months ago

      Bitcoin enables the fantasy of becoming a rent-seeking plutocrat that cannot have their wealth seized by a government nor a popular uprising.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      I didn’t “read” read, but I skimmed through it, and the core premise doesn’t seem that much better.

      I’m anti regulatory capture, which shouldn’t be a complicated stance, but the government just isn’t actively suppressing new tech industries. They’re slow and reactionary.

      They didn’t regulate junk crypto shit until way after people got scammed out of millions of dollars, and that regulation is mostly about exchanges involved real money being documented and taxed.

      They are trying to regulate “AI”, (and mostly shouldn’t, except energy use) but again, after it became a massive industry with billions of dollars thrown around. And it’s a pretty weak response, way after massive amounts of noise about IP and heavy lobbying from the “new industry” they’re supposedly trying to prevent.

      There’s also a fucking bunch of noise that doesn’t actually say anything.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    4 months ago

    just one more manifesto bro, just one more and we’ll get an unregulated free market, just one more bro

  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    4 months ago

    Another manifesto? Considering the high percentage of people who first write a manifesto and then do a terrorism/shooting I’m now scared.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      4 months ago

      considering that his previous manifesto was titled “It’s Time To Build” and he did not, in fact, built anything, makes me think that the only thing he can fill a pipe bomb with is hot air

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        4 months ago

        They are VC’s they would never dirty their hands building something themselves. They would invest into an enterprising startup (making pipebombs with a LLM) they inspired.

        The only people really at risk is the people who end up holding the bags.

  • V0ldek@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Regulatory agencies have been green lit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries, such as Blockchain.

    Wow, Andreesen Horowitz, guy who wouldn’t acknowledge government repression if a working class person was being bludgeoned with police batons in front of his eyes, thinks he was persecuted for Blockchain.

    Makes it sound as if The Gobment sent SWAT teams to sieze the Means of Tax Deduction out of SBFs bloodied hands and then set fire to his luxurious Bahama mansion, whereas the reality is that they… Mostly looked at all the fraud for years until they had enough pages of stern words to warrant an indictment after it all collapsed to shit and people couldn’t get their money back.

    This guy would’ve been on Madoff’s side, crying persecution on his arrest, wouldn’t he?