Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Why can't our tech billionaires learn anything new?

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is a response to Marc Andreessen's "techno-optimist manifesto", covered here previously. It quite correctly points out that the techno-optimists have been in charge over the last 30 years. What do we have to show for it? "What we've been left with is the largest wealth gap since the 1920s. It turns out that when we stopped taxing the billionaires' preferred investment vehicles, we ended up with a lot more billionaires.... Economic inequality does not solve itself. Markets are not perfect, self-correcting mechanisms." The multiple crises we face today, from inequality to war to environmental degradation, represent the failure of this pro-capitalist manifesto. Interestingly, the article also refers back to the old Wired pro-business techno-optimist turn that I criticized at length here in 1998.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 04, 2024 7:44 p.m.

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