a16z founder issues a declaration of technological optimism: technology is the only eternal source of growth

Lies

We have been deceived.

We have been told that technology has taken our jobs, lowered our wages, exacerbated inequality, threatened our health, destroyed the environment, degraded our society, corrupted our children, harmed our humanity, threatened our future, and is always on the brink of destroying everything.

We have been told to feel anger, pain, and resentment towards technology. We have been told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus—manifesting in various updated forms like “Frankenstein,” “Oppenheimer,” and “The Terminator”—haunts our nightmares.

We have been told to condemn our inherent rights—our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We have been told to feel miserable about the future.

Truth

Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the vanguard of progress, the realization of our potential. For centuries, we have rightly celebrated this—until recently.

I am here to bring good news. We can progress to a superior way of life and existence.

We have tools, systems, and ideas. We have the will. It is time to raise the banner of technology once again.

Now is the time to become a techno-optimist.

Technology

Techno-optimists believe that society is like a shark: it either grows or dies.

We believe that growth is progress—bringing vitality, expanding life, increasing knowledge, and enhancing well-being.

We agree with Paul Collier: "Economic growth is not a panacea, but the lack of growth is fatal."

We believe that all good things flow downstream from growth.

We think that stagnation leads to zero-sum thinking, internal strife, regression, collapse, and ultimately death.

There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology.

The population in developed countries is decreasing across the globe and across cultures—total population may already be declining. The utilization of national resources is severely restricted both practically and politically.

Therefore, the only eternal source of growth is technology.

In fact, technology—new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne—has always been the primary source of growth, perhaps the only reason for growth, as technology enables population growth and natural resource utilization.

We believe technology is the lever of the world—making more money with less.

Economists measure technological progress through productivity growth: how much product we can produce each year with less input and fewer raw materials. Technology-driven productivity growth is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously liberated to do more important and valuable things than before. Productivity growth leads to lower prices, increased supply, expanded demand, thereby improving the material well-being of all people.

We believe this is the story of our civilization's material development; this is why we no longer live in mud huts, barely scraping by, waiting for nature to ravage us.

We believe this is why our descendants will live among the stars. We believe that no material problem, whether caused by nature or technology, cannot be solved by more technology.

We face hunger, so we invented green technology;

We encountered darkness, so we invented the electric light;

We have cold, so we invented indoor heating;

We faced heat, so we invented air conditioning;

We encountered isolation, so we invented the internet;

We faced pandemics, so we invented vaccines;

We face poverty, so we invented technology to create wealth;

Give us a real-world problem, and we can invent technology to solve it.

Markets

We believe the free market is the most effective way to organize a technological economy. Willing buyers meet willing sellers, prices are agreed upon, and both parties benefit from the exchange; otherwise, it would not happen. Profit is the incentive for producing supply that meets demand, and prices encode information about supply and demand. Markets prompt entrepreneurs to seek high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by lowering prices.

We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence—a exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.

We believe Hayek's knowledge problem overwhelms any centralized economic system. All practical information is on the periphery, held by those closest to the buyers. The center is far from the buyers and sellers, utterly ignorant. Central planning is doomed to fail; the production and consumption systems are too complex. Decentralization leverages complexity for the benefit of all; centralization will starve you.

We believe in market discipline. Markets naturally adhere to rules—when buyers fail to show up, sellers either learn and adapt or exit the market. When market discipline is absent, things become endlessly chaotic. Every monopoly and cartel, every central authority unbound by market discipline, operates under the motto: "We don’t care because we don’t have to." Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.

We believe markets can help lift people out of poverty—indeed, markets are the most effective way to lift large numbers of people out of poverty, and have always been. Even in totalitarian regimes, gradually lifting oppression from the people and their ability to produce and trade leads to rapid increases in income and living standards. Just lifting the boot a little will yield better results. Completely removing the boot, who knows how rich everyone could become.

We believe markets are essentially a way of achieving excellent collective outcomes through individualism.

We believe markets do not require people to be perfect, or even benevolent—which is good, because have you met people? Adam Smith: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

David Friedman points out that people only do things for others for three reasons—love, money, or power. Love does not scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiments have been conducted, but found to be ineffective. Let’s stick with money.

We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they redirect people who would otherwise form armies and establish religions towards the peaceful pursuit of production. In the words of Nicholas Stern, we believe markets are our way of caring for strangers.

We believe markets are the way to create social wealth for everything else we want to pay for, including basic research, social welfare programs, and defense.

We believe there is no conflict between capital profits and social welfare systems that protect the vulnerable. In fact, they are consistent—market production creates economic wealth that pays for everything we want as a society.

We believe central economic planning elevates our worst and drags everyone down; markets utilize our best talents for the benefit of us all.

We believe central planning is a doom loop; while markets are a spiral upward.

Economist William Nordhaus has shown that technology creators can only capture about 2% of the economic value created by that technology. The remaining 98% flows into what economists call social surplus. Technological innovation within a market system is essentially charitable, at a ratio of 50:1. Who derives more value from new technology, the single company that produces that technology, or the millions or billions of people who use that technology to improve their lives?

We believe in David Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage—unlike competitive advantage, comparative advantage holds that even the person who is best at doing everything in the world will buy most things from others due to opportunity costs. Regardless of the level of technology, comparative advantage in a properly free market context ensures high employment rates.

We believe markets set wages as a function of workers' marginal productivity. Therefore, technologies that improve productivity will drive wages up, not down. This may be the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it is true, and we have 300 years of history to prove it.

We believe Milton Friedman’s observation that human desires and demands are infinite.

We believe markets can also enhance social welfare by creating jobs that people can participate in efficiently. We believe universal basic income turns people into animals, fed by the state. People should not be fed; they should be useful, creative, and proud.

We believe technological change has not reduced the demand for human labor; rather, it has increased the demand for human labor by expanding the scope of efficient human work.

We believe that because human desires and demands are infinite, economic demand is also infinite, and job growth can continue indefinitely.

We believe markets are creative, not exploitative; positive-sum, not zero-sum. Market participants build on each other's work and output. James Carse describes finite games and infinite games—finite games have an end, one person wins, and another loses; infinite games never end because players cooperate to discover possibilities within the game. The market is the ultimate infinite game.

The Techno-Capital Machine

Combine technology with markets, and you get what Nick Land calls the techno-capital machine, the engine of material eternal creation, growth, and abundance.

We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation does not stop but continuously spirals upward. Comparative advantage increases specialization and trade. Prices fall, releasing purchasing power and creating demand. Falling prices benefit everyone who buys goods and services, that is, everyone.

Human desires and demands are endless, and entrepreneurs continually create new goods and services to meet these desires and demands, deploying an infinite number of people and machines in the process. This upward spiral has been ongoing for hundreds of years. In fact, as of 2019, before the temporary interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, it resulted in the creation of the most jobs in history, with the highest wages and material living standards.

The techno-capital machine allows natural selection to work for us in the realm of ideas. The best and most productive ideas win and combine to produce better ideas. These ideas manifest in the real world as technology-supported goods and services, which never reappear from scratch.

Ray Kurzweil defined his law of accelerating returns: technological progress often self-nourishes, thereby increasing the speed of further progress.

We believe in accelerationism—consciously and deliberately pushing technological development—to ensure the realization of the law of accelerating returns. To ensure the spiral upward of technological capital continues indefinitely.

We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human—in fact, it may be the most beneficial thing for humanity. It serves us; the techno-capital machine works for us; all machines work for us.

We believe that the cornerstone resources of the technological capital spiral upward are intelligence and energy—creativity and the power to make them a reality.

Intelligence

We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better, and on almost every measurable metric, smart people and smart societies perform better than less intelligent ones. Intelligence is a birthright of humanity, and we should expand it as broadly and comprehensively as possible.

We believe intelligence spirals upward—first, more and more smart people around the world are recruited into the techno-capital machine; second, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines, new cybernetic systems emerge, such as companies and networks; third, AI enhances our machines and our own capabilities.

We believe we are ready for an intelligence takeoff that will extend our capabilities to unimaginable heights.

We believe AI is our alchemy, our philosopher's stone—we are literally making sand think.

We believe AI is best viewed as a general problem solver, and we have many problems to solve.

We believe that if we are willing, AI can save lives. Compared to what we can achieve through human and machine intelligence working together to research new therapies, medicine and many other fields are still in the Stone Age. From car accidents to pandemics to wartime misfires, many common causes of death can be addressed through AI.

We believe any slowdown in AI will result in loss of life; deaths that could have been prevented by AI are a form of murder.

We believe in augmented intelligence, just as we believe in artificial intelligence. Intelligent machines enhance human intelligence, driving human capabilities to expand exponentially.

We believe augmented intelligence can drive marginal productivity, thereby driving wage growth, which in turn drives demand, which in turn drives the creation of new supply… with no limits.

Energy

Energy is life. We take this for granted, but without it, we face darkness, hunger, and suffering. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth.

We believe energy should spiral upward. Energy is the fundamental engine of our civilization; the more energy we have, the more people we can support, and the better everyone’s life becomes. We should raise everyone’s energy consumption levels to our levels, then increase our energy by 1000 times, and then raise others' energy by 1000 times as well.

Currently, there is a huge gap in per capita energy usage between smaller developed countries and larger developing countries. This gap will close—either through massively expanding energy production to improve everyone’s lives or through massively reducing energy production to worsen everyone’s lives.

We believe the expansion of energy need not harm the natural environment. Today, we have almost limitless zero-emission energy panacea—nuclear fission. In 1973, President Nixon called for an independence plan to build 1000 nuclear power plants by 2000 to achieve complete energy independence for the United States. Nixon was right. We did not build those plants at the time, but now we can build them anytime.

Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray stated in 1953: "For years, the split atom contained in weapons has been our main shield against the barbarians. Moreover, now it is the tool given to humanity by God for constructive work." Murray was also right.

We believe the second energy silver bullet is on the horizon—nuclear fusion. We should build it as well. The bad idea of banning fission will also try to ban fusion, and we should not let them do that.

We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Even without nuclear power, the per capita carbon emissions in the U.S. are lower than they were 100 years ago.

We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crises. Technologically advanced societies can improve the natural environment, while technologically stagnant societies will degrade it.

We believe that technologically stagnant societies have limited energy, at the cost of environmental degradation; technologically advanced societies provide unlimited clean energy for everyone.

Abundance

We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop and drive them to infinity.

We believe we should leverage the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to enrich everything we want and need.

We believe that the standard for measuring abundance is falling prices. Whenever prices fall, the purchasing power of those buying it increases, which is the same as an increase in income. If the prices of many goods and services fall, the result is an explosive increase in purchasing power, real income, and quality of life.

We believe that if we let intelligence and energy become "cheap beyond measure," the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite complex and difficult to manufacture, but if you borrow a pencil and do not return it, no one gets upset. We should have the same attitude towards all physical goods.

We believe we should drive down prices across the entire economy through technological applications until as many prices as possible are effectively zero, thereby pushing income levels and quality of life to the highest levels.

We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, "The great thing about this country is that it started the tradition of the richest consumers buying the same basic things as the poorest consumers. You can see Coca-Cola on TV, you can know the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and then think, you can drink Coca-Cola too. Coke is just Coke; you can't buy better Coke than the corner homeless person drinks, no matter how much you spend. All Coke is the same, and all Coke is good." The same goes for browsers, smartphones, and chatbots.

We believe technology will ultimately drive the world towards what Buckminster Fuller called "ephemeralization"—what economists refer to as "dematerialization." Fuller said, "Technology allows you to do more and more with less and less money until eventually you do everything for nothing."

We believe technological progress will bring material abundance to everyone.

We believe the ultimate return of technological abundance may be what Julian Simon referred to as the "ultimate resource"—the massive expansion of humanity. Just as Simon did, we believe people are the ultimate resource—the more people there are, the stronger the creativity, the more new ideas, and the more technological progress. Therefore, we believe material abundance ultimately means more people—more people—bringing more abundance in turn.

We believe our planet's population is severely underrepresented compared to our abundant intelligence, energy, and material products.

We believe the global population can easily increase to 50 billion or more, and this number will far exceed that when we eventually settle on other planets.

We believe that among all these people will emerge scientists, technologists, artists, and dreamers beyond our wildest dreams.

We believe the ultimate mission of technology is to promote the development of life on Earth and in the stars.

Not a Utopia, But Close Enough

However, we are not utopians. We are followers of what Thomas Sowell calls a "constrained vision."

We believe a constrained vision—contrary to the unconstrained visions of utopia and expertise—means accepting the inherent nature of people, testing ideas through experience, and liberating people to make their own choices.

We do not believe in utopia, nor do we believe in apocalypse.

We believe change will only happen at the margins—but a multitude of marginal changes can lead to massive results. While it is not utopia, we believe in what Brad DeLong calls "lazily walking toward utopia"—doing the best we can as fallen humans to make things better as we move forward.

Becoming Technological Supermen

We believe that promoting technological progress is one of the most beneficial things we can do. We believe in consciously and systematically transforming ourselves into people who can drive technological progress.

We believe this certainly means technical education, but it also means getting hands-on, acquiring practical skills, working in teams, and leading teams—desiring to build something greater than oneself, yearning to collaborate with others to build something greater as a team.

We believe the natural drive of humanity to create things, acquire territory, and explore the unknown can be effectively channeled into building technology. We believe that while physical boundaries, at least on Earth, are closed, technological boundaries are open.

We believe in exploring and acquiring the technological frontier. We believe in the romance of technology, the romance of industry. The love of trains, cars, electric lights, and skyscrapers. And microchips, neural networks, rockets, and split atoms.

We believe in adventure. Embarking on the hero's journey, defying the status quo, charting unknown territories, and bringing back spoils for our communities.

To paraphrase declarations from different times and places: "Beauty exists only in struggle. No masterpiece exists without aggression. Technology must be a violent assault on the unknown forces, forcing them to bow before humanity."

We believe we are, were, and will always be masters of technology, not its captives. The victim mentality is a curse in all areas of life, including our relationship with technology—both unnecessary and counterproductive. We are not victims; we are conquerors.

We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of lightning. We are apex predators, and lightning works for us.

We believe in greatness. We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today.

We believe in humanity—both individually and collectively.

Technological Values

We believe in ambition, perseverance, and tenacity—strength. We believe in merit and achievement. We believe in bravery and courage. We believe in pride, confidence, and self-esteem—when earned. We believe in free exploration, practical scientific methods, and enlightenment values, challenging the authority of experts.

We believe, as Richard Feynman said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." And, "I would rather have questions I cannot answer than answers I cannot question."

We believe in local knowledge, where people make decisions based on practical information rather than playing God. We believe in embracing differences and increasing interest. We believe in risk, believing in leaps into the unknown.

We believe in agency, believing in individualism. We believe in radical capability. We absolutely reject resentment, as Carrie Fisher said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We take responsibility; we overcome."

We believe in competition because we believe in evolution. We believe in evolution because we believe in life. We believe in truth. We believe that rich is better than poor, cheap is better than expensive, and abundance is better than scarcity. We believe in making everyone rich, making everything cheap, and making everything abundant.

We believe external motivations—wealth, fame, revenge—are good in themselves. But we believe even more in internal motivations—the satisfaction of building new things, the camaraderie in a team, the achievement of becoming a better self—more fulfilling and lasting.

We believe in what the Greeks said—prosperity through excellence.

We believe technology is universalistic. Technology does not care about your ethnicity, race, religion, nationality, gender, height, weight, or hair. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from around the world, where anyone with a positive attitude and an inexpensive laptop can contribute; technology is the ultimate open society.

We believe in Silicon Valley's principle of "giving," trusting through consistent incentives, and a generous spirit of helping each other learn and grow. We believe technology makes greatness possible and more likely.

We believe in realizing our potential, becoming whole people—for ourselves, our communities, and our society.

The Meaning Of Life

Techno-optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. We care about material for a reason—it opens the door to how we choose to live in material abundance.

A common criticism of technology is that it deprives us of choices in our lives because machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, but the freedom to create life brought by the material abundance we create with machines far outweighs this.

The material abundance brought by markets and technology opens up space for choices in religion, politics, and social and personal lifestyles. We believe technology is liberating, liberating human potential, liberating human souls and spirits, expanding freedom, satisfaction, and the meaning of being alive.

We believe technology opens up the space of meaning for humanity.

The Enemy

We have enemies. Our enemies are not bad people, but bad ideas.

For sixty years, our current society has been suffering from a massive morale-dampening movement—against technology and life—under various names such as "existential risk," "sustainability," "ESG," "sustainable development goals," "social responsibility," "precautionary principle," "trust and safety," "technology ethics," "risk management," "degrowth," and "limits to growth."

Our enemies are stagnation, anti-virtue, anti-ambition, anti-struggle, anti-achievement, and anti-greatness. Our enemies are institutions that were once vibrant and truth-seeking in their youth but are now compromised, corroded, and collapsing—obstructing the efforts of increasingly desperate relevance to make progress, even as dysfunction and incompetence escalate, still madly trying to justify their continued funding.

Our enemies are various forms of control, as well as unbridled utopias. Our enemies are the precautionary principle, which has nearly obstructed all progress since humanity first harnessed fire. The invention of the precautionary principle was perhaps the most catastrophic error society has made in my lifetime, preventing the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power. The precautionary principle continues to cause immense unnecessary suffering in today’s world. This is profoundly immoral, and we must discard it with extreme prejudice.

Our enemies are deceleration, degrowth, and population decline—this nihilistic desire is very popular among our elites, advocating for population reduction, energy reduction, and increased suffering and death.

We will explain to those captured by decayed ideas that their fears are unfounded, and the future is bright. We invite everyone to join our ranks of techno-optimism. Become our allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life.

The Future

Where do we come from? Our civilization is built on the spirit of discovery, exploration, and industrialization.

Where are we going? What kind of world are we building for our children and their children?

A world filled with fear, guilt, and resentment? Or a world filled with ambition, abundance, and adventure?

We believe in the words of David Deutsch: "We have a responsibility to remain optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined, and therefore cannot simply be accepted: we are all responsible for what it has. Therefore, it is our duty to strive for a better world."

We owe it to the past, and we owe it to the future. It’s time to become a techno-optimist. It's time to build.

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