Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (wayyy back in April of 2020) the well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz penned a now-well-circulated article "It’s Time to Build".
The general premise - sort of channeling the sense of Institutional failure that brought us to that point (i.e. with society essentially shut down as a result of the pandemic) - was that America (and perhaps the world) had forgotten how to build; we had lost our ability (and perhaps our desire?) to get big things done, to execute large-scale, far-reaching, high-impact plans & ideas for the benefit of all. Somehow, it seemed, we could no longer dream big, embrace change, look to the future, and get busy building it - via whatever political methods might get us there (i.e. leaving our "right" vs. "left" arguments aside) the way previous generations (it seems) were once able to do.
And being stuck at home on lockdown without much better to do - what better time to start thinking about where we are, how we got here, and what comes next?
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 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, in new industries, in new factories, in new science, in big leaps forward.
The left starts out with a stronger bias toward 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!
Marc Andreessen
Here in Doowopolis, we also spent a good chunk of time thinking about such things while on lockdown. In fact, we wrote an entire 12+ page manifesto about it during the Omicron wave (yes, we had some extra time on our hands - but we think it was time well spent - especially if it helps inspire what comes next!).
We share Marc Andreessen's inclination toward building (if not the incidental bout of NIMBY-ism he got caught up in earlier this year 🤦). The difference? Our scope is perhaps a bit less lofty (though that's perhaps in the eye of the beholder?) We're not specifically aiming to cure deadly diseases, or solve world poverty, or revamp education, or overcome a national housing crisis, or re-invent global transportation. But we are aiming to do something we feel is equally important in the grand scheme of things, if any of the former ideas are to actually get done - and that's to provide hard-working people all over the world (the ones whose help we'll need with all the "building") an opportunity to have a little fun while they imagine the better future they actually want to live in (or at least escape to...) 😉
It's always been "time to build" in Doowopolis. Without a "builder" mentality, the Wildwoods would have never evolved to be home to the world's once-largest collection of working & middle-class oriented, mid-century-modern resort architecture anywhere in the world. The question now is - what exactly should we build next, and for whom? And where will all the builders come from? (Hint: anywhere & everywhere)
If there's one thing we think we can do better with the tools & technologies available to us in the 2020s & beyond versus what the original builders of Doowopolis were able to do in the 1950s & 60s - is invite everyone along to participate. After all, the future is always brighter when you're free to imagine it, and invited to help build it...
Read full article by Andreessen Horowitz:
It’s Time to Build
https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
Then also read:
The New Doo Wop Manifesto