It’s Time to Build
&gt; The problem is desire. We need to <i>want</i> these things. The problem is inertia.<p>I agreed with most of the essay until I got to this point, at which point I rolled my eyes and briefly skimmed the rest.<p>It&#x27;s akin to people who say that the reason there are so many overweight people is that they lack willpower and motivation. Look at pictures from middle-America in the late 1940s - virtually <i>everyone</i> is thin, whereas today you basically the vast majority of a similar population is overweight-to-obese.<p>Did we all just magically lose willpower over the last 70 years? Of course not, there were huge structural changes over that time in lots of areas (design of our cities, rise of the automobile, industrialized food and agriculture, etc.) that caused the person with &quot;average&quot; willpower to become obese.<p>Similarly, it&#x27;s not as though people have less &quot;desire&quot; than before. There are large structural changes, many of which Andreesen doesn&#x27;t address at all, such as the forces that have led to so much inequality and a hollowing out of the US manufacturing capacity.<p>I don&#x27;t fundamentally disagree with Andreesen&#x27;s goals, but &quot;try harder&quot; is the sort of platitude that rarely brings about real societal change.