It's time to build by Marc Andreessen. You can also find and share this essay at a six and z.com built.
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 many of us would like to pin the cause on one political party or another on one government or another
But the harsh reality is that it all failed. No Western country or state or city was prepared and despite hard work and often extraordinary Sacrifice by many people within these institutions. So the problem runs deeper than your favorite political opponent or your home nation.
Part of the problem is clearly foresight a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn't do in advance and what we're failing to do now and that is a failure of action and specifically are widespread inability to build we see this today with the things the urgently need but don't have we don't have enough coronavirus tests or test materials including a maze.
Lee cotton swabs and common reagents we don't have enough ventilators negative pressure rooms and ICU beds and we don't have enough surgical masks. I Shields and medical gowns. As I write this New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical
gowns.
rain ponchos in 2020 in America
We also don't have therapies or a vaccine despite again years of Advance warning about bat born coronavirus has our scientists will hopefully invent Therapies in a vaccine, but then we may not have the manufacturing factories required to scale their production. And even then we'll see if we can deploy therapies or a vaccine fast enough to matter. It took scientists five years to get regulatory test.
Approval for the new Ebola vaccine after that scourges 2014 outbreak at the cost of many lives.
In the u.s. We don't even have the ability to get Federal bailout money to the people and businesses that need it tens of millions of laid-off workers and their families and many millions of small businesses are in serious trouble right now and we have no direct method to transfer them money without potentially disastrous delays a government that collects money from all its citizens and businesses each year has never built a system to distribute money.
Us when it's needed most why do we not have these things medical equipment and financial conduits involve no rocket science whatsoever at least therapies and vaccines are hard making masks and transferring money are not hard. We could have these things but we chose not to specifically we chose not to have the mechanisms the factories the systems to make these things we chose not
How to
build
you don't just see this smug complacency dissatisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build in the pandemic or in health care. Generally you see it throughout Western life and specifically throughout American
life.
You see it in housing in the physical footprint of our cities. We can't build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco.
Making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future.
We also can't build the cities themselves anymore. When the producers of HBO's Westworld wanted to portray the American city of the future. They didn't film in Seattle or Los Angeles or Austin they went to Singapore. We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels Way Beyond what we have now, where are they?
You see it in education. We have top 10 universities. Yes, but with the capacity to teach only a microscopic percentage of the four million new 18 year olds in the u.s. Each year or the 120 million new 18 year olds in the world each year. Why not educate every 18 year old isn't that the most important thing we can possibly do why not build a far larger number of universities or scale the ones we have way up.
The last major innovation in K through 12 education was Montessori which traces back to the 1960s. We've been doing education research this never reach practical deployment for 50 years sense. Why not built a lot more great K through 12 schools using everything we know now.
We know one-to-one tutoring can reliably increase education outcomes by 2 standard deviations the bloom to Sigma effect. We have the internet why haven't we built systems to match every young learner with an older tutor to dramatically improve Student Success.
You see it in manufacturing contrary to Conventional wisdom American manufacturing output is higher than ever, but why has so much manufacturing about offshore to places with cheaper manual labor? We know how to build highly automated factories. We know the enormous number of higher-paying jobs. We would create to design and build and operate those factories. We know and we're experiencing right now the Strategic problem of relying on Offshore Manufacturing of key Goods.
Why aren't we building Elon musk's alien, dreadknots giant gleaming state-of-the-art factories producing every conceivable kind of product if the highest possible quality and lowest possible cost all throughout our country.
You see it in transportation. Where are the supersonic aircraft? Where are the millions of delivery drones? Where are the high speed trains The Soaring monorails the hyper loops and yes the flying cars.
Is the problem money that seems hard to believe when we have the money to wage endless wars in the Middle East and repeatedly bailout and come at Banks Airlines and carmakers the federal government just passed a two trillion dollar coronavirus rescue package in two weeks is the problem capitalism. I'm with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people. We don't know.
All of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stopping grounds for capitalists investment good both for the investor and the customers who are served is the problem technical competence clearly not or we wouldn't have the homes in skyscrapers schools and hospitals cars and trains computers and smartphones that we already have.
The problem is desire. We need to want these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things even if incumbents don't like it. Even if only to force the incumbents to build these things and the problem is will we need to build these things?
And we need to separate the imperative to build these things from ideology and politics both sides need to contribute to building the right starts out in a more natural albeit compromised place. The right is generally Pro production, but is too often corrupted by forces that hold back market-based competition and the building of things the right must fight hard against crony capitalism regulatory capture ossified oligopolies risk inducing off.
Offshoring and investor friendly Buybacks in lieu of customer friendly and over a longer period of time even more investor friendly Innovation. It's time for full-throated Unapologetic uncompromised political support from the right for aggressive investment in new products and new Industries in new factories in new science and big leaps forward the left starts out with a stronger bias for the public sector in many of these areas to which I say prove the superior model.
Demonstrate that the public sector can build better hospitals better schools better transportation better cities better housing stop trying to protect the old the entrenched the irrelevant commit the public sector fully to the Future Milton Friedman once said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results instead of taking that as an insult take it as a challenge build new things and show the results.
Show that new models of public sector Healthcare can be inexpensive and effective. How about starting with the VA when the next coronavirus comes along blow us away even private universities like Harvard are lavished with Public Funding. Why can't a hundred thousand or 1 million students a year attend Harvard why shouldn't regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard built solve the climate crisis by building energy experts say that all carbon-based electrical power generation on the planet.
Could be replaced by a few thousand new zero-emission nuclear reactors. So let's build those maybe we can start with 10 new reactors then 100 then the rest.
In fact, I think building is how we reboot the American dream the things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs grab rapidly and price the things we don't like housing schools and hospitals skyrocketing price. What's the American dream the opportunity to have a home of your own in a family you can provide for we need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing education and health care to make sure that every American can realize the dream in the
Way to do that is to build.
Building isn't easy or we'd already be doing all this. We need to demand more of our political leaders of our CEOs our entrepreneurs our investors. We need to demand more of our culture of our society and we need to demand more from each other. We're all necessary and we can all contribute to building.
Every step of the way to everyone around us. We should be asking the question. What are you building? What are you building directly or helping other people to build or teaching other people to build your taking care of people who are building if the work you're doing isn't either leading to something being built. We're taking care of people directly. We failed you and we need to get you into a position an occupation a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems.
We need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have and I'm building the answers to these problems. I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here's a modest proposal to my critics instead of attacking my ideas of what to build conceive your own. What do you think? We should build there's an excellent chance. I'll agree with you.
Our nation and our civilization were built on production on building our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains farms and factories, then the computer the microchip the smartphone and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted that are all around us the Define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren and that's to build
