Yay. Another "I got mine" article from an Internet celebrity.<p>He's got no idea what middle class means.<p>He's throwing out the usual conservative talking points about deregulation. (How'd that work for the banking system? In, say, 1929, 1989, 2007? Electricity in CA? The environment before 1970?)<p>He's of course in favor of manipulating IPO prices, because that's where he makes money, after all.<p>He's completely delusional about AirBnB.<p>And he's just a plain lunatic when he says he'd take eye cancer to have Glass.<p>It certainly makes you sit up and listen. And then shake your head sadly that you wasted time on the article.
Either the author or Andreesen completely misunderstands or misrepresents the concept of network neutrality. Network neutrality doesn't mean users don't pay for the bandwidth they consume. It means they pay the same price for that bandwidth regardless of what it's used for.
He's wrong about the middle class and the fact that we should pay cheaper wages. In theory, this sounds like it would be correct, however the middle class is born out of a balance between supply and demand. When Supply is too high or demand is too high, the middle class states to disappear, whether from lack of funds to buy things or from lack of a job. However, in a healthy service based economy, where people are needed to create more supply, then businesses are more likely to hire and train someone with less experience and take the risk because the risk may pay off. When there is a demand problem, companies will not take the risk (thus what we have now, people need experience to start working). Lowering the wage will cause a demand problem, and will simply put us in the same position we are in now because people will not be able to afford goods. It sounds good, businesses creating things cheaper, but that really only helps people who have money already, and they aren't the ones that need the help.
His comments on the middle class, environmental regulation, and net neutrality paint a picture of an out of touch elitist. His comments on AirBnB "eating [all] real estate" just make him sound delusional.<p>I'm disappointed, I always liked that guy.
He was in the right place at the right time and now he's rich. And that's the only reason why anybody is listening to him now, certainly not for anything else he's done.<p>Cheaper labor? How about a more effective labor force? Ugh.
Say what you will about his actual opinions, I think it's refreshing to hear someone who is willing to say what he believes despite popular concurrence with his opinions. Very tired of the echo chamber in the tech community.<p>As for the article, many of these seem like realistic perspectives, even if they discomfort the typical listener.
AirBnB will eat nothing. AirBnB is thriving because of non-enforcement of existing laws, which were put in place by cities to protect the consumer, and because the IRS is not collecting taxes.<p>Relevant:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/your-money/a-warning-for-airbnb-hosts-who-may-be-breaking-the-law.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/your-money/a-warning-for-a...</a><p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-27/airbnb-to-tax-or-not-tax-a-rented-bed" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-27/airbnb-to-ta...</a><p>As soon as the hotel industry perceives AirBnB as a legitimate threat --we're getting there in NYC-- it will take action/lobbying to the next level, and it won't be pretty. For starters, they could ask the IRS to demand a full DB dump of all hosts to tax their (mostly illegitimate) income, which I suspect is not reported as such. The pool of available inventory will dry up in no time.<p>That said, I am wondering if he means that they can pivot and buy their own buildings to become full-fledged hoteliers.
I'm in full agreement with his comment about timing and many of the ideas of the dotcom bubble. I wouldn't go as far as saying that all of them were good. But, many of them were excellent and were just very poorly timed. Even when you just think about the infrastructure cost of building something during the bubble vs now, it is astounding how much more affordable it is.
"...but it is harder to do business in most states in the US than it is to do business in a lot of places around the world.”<p>And yet, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation's ranking on ease of doing business the U.S. as a whole came in a respectable 10th, and I'm going to make a wild guess that the places he is talking about in that quote aren't many if any of the countries ahead of the U.S.<p>[<a href="http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking?src=home" rel="nofollow">http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking?src=home</a>]
Out-of-touch elitist, like most of SV brats. If darpa did not exist, there would be no internet. The middle-class existed because once-upon-a-time people believed a rising tide lifted all boats.
qz.com will not render with Ghostery enabled.<p>Also, what's with that qz.com headline? Why, exactly, do we care about the gonzo-reaction of a tech blogger (the "sit up and listen" bit.) It's just a fluffy throw-away expression and comes across as the reddit equivalent of "shit just got real." I understand: they're summarizing 8 insights from Andressen, but strictly speaking, the headline is about the reporter instead of Andressen. How about: "Andressen predicts massive changes to housing, mobile, and the middle class." I don't write headlines, but at least this refers to the material in the article.<p>As for the content: on the one hand, I appreciate a bulleted list for its quick readability, but the headline sounds to me like an excuse to make a list instead of a narrative...
My understanding of the middle class is that they were the mid-small businessmen - merchants - of Europe since the 1600s. Checking wikipedia, it agrees with me.<p>There's also the idea that the middle class is the high-school degreed people who make "decent" money, perhaps by being in the trades (i.e., plumber) or working in a factory. Edit: this idea is not unique, I've heard it in a variety of places.<p>These two ideas don't really connect too well (although business-minded tradespeople can grow their business to be fairly lucrative).<p>I have no particular comment regarding Marc's statements, but I wanted to point out the varying definitions.
Andreessen is gone. The transformation is complete. He has lost all legitimacy beyond being a fat cat that manipulates markets by sheer power of money and influence in the inefficient way that monopolists do.
Rich guys says we should destroy the environment, people should be enslaved in sweatshops to make widgets to make him richer and talks some complete idiocy about AirBNB.<p>News at 11.