A man whose software ate the world
This is toxic garbage.  Let me explain some problems with the main points:<p>1. This guy did Netscape, which ate the world.  But actually, someone else came up with browsers and the web and shortly after Netscape other browsers buried it.  No, not so much the guy who&#x27;s software ate the world as someone who briefly made large amounts of money from an intermediate stage development.<p>2. Time to build essay about not being ready for COVID-19.  Actually, we were ready but political games blocked execution of plans that had been prepared in advance as well as most creative adaptation.  Failing to acknowledge or take responsibility for the political mess only makes it worse.<p>3. Recollection of radical train transport development fails to take into account that much of that development was subsidized, built so badly that it had to be rebuilt in the short term, and the practice of charging what traffic would bear severely limited the positive impact of rail technology for decades.  Again, politics was a huge part of what went on.  Also in this case the progress was far less impressive when viewed in detail.<p>4. China, China, China, so far ahead except not.  China is facing a demographic implosion, a national political implosion, huge environmental problems, and many problems with their vaunted developments.  The last high speed train collision cost many lives but was never properly investigated.  Dams and bridges all over China are failing catastrophically or operating in a severely risky in degraded state.  Now their economy is melting down before their consumers can support it and this is held up as an example?<p>5. Hippies and environmental movements made a softer culture in the 60s and 70s?  Actually, they rejected endless war without reason and want to make a peace with the environment which is harder than merely considering only through the economic magic of externalization.  People joke about the Cuyahoga catching fire, but that was a nasty tragedy that made a lot of people sick.  Wanting to move on from that is wanting to take responsibility and solve the hard problems instead of simply flushing toxic chemicals into rivers and calling that progress.<p>6. Use nuclear power for eliminating emissions?  That is a nonstarter at two critical levels.  First, solar and wind are already cheaper and have lower negative impacts.  Second, the public has been completely turned off to nuclear power by all of the hype and the lies.  Keep in mind that we still have no actual plan for phasing out radioactive plants at end of life and the nuclear waste is piling up.  But it is the spreadsheet facts that are the most damning.  How can anyone claiming to be interested in business and commerce fixate on an unworkable expensive solution?<p>7. We can&#x27;t make our own medical equipment?  Probably because we did not try.  The usual thing is to smooth out any regulatory problems and make sure that financing is available preferably through commercial entities but by government if necessary.  Instead people at the top (politics again) played games with statements about the effectiveness of masks instead of being honest and working to figure out production details.  We absolutely chose to not even bother trying to make our own medical equipment.<p>8. California High Speed Rail is expensive and not done yet.  This, if you look at the many published details, is because of the scale of the project and the robustness of the solution.  The stretch currently being constructed has a grade separation roughly every one and two third miles which is a huge amount of complication that results in better safety and less environmental impact, both things that build oriented capitalists apparently do not care about.<p>9. High cost of infrastructure revealed by the Second Avenue Subway--except not.  If you actually investigated that situation you would find that roughly 100 years ago the Second Avenue Subway was proposed and it was found that already at that time the huge amount of infrastructure and other subway lines already installed in that area would make the project too expensive to make sense.  Over the next hundred years the subway line was repeatedly proposed and ruled out.  Then eventually we decided that cost was no obstacle and moved forward and amazingly enough the project turned out to be hugely expensive.  The only thing that this shows is the tremendous contempt that politicians and capitalists have for science, knowledge, research, and basic spreadsheet economics.<p>10. COVID-19 vaccine could have been had earlier, but instead we insisted on extremely rigorous safety trials because this would be administered to millions of people who needed to be convinced taking it would be the right move.  So mister build build build capitalist wants to take a big risk?  Sorry, the medical community does not operate by stripped down companies for shareholder profit view of what is important.<p>11. IBM died because their management got conservative?  Sort of.  Probably the best way to view this is from the study of the lifetimes of corporations which have been revealed to have a youth, middle age, and old age leading to death just like organisms.  This is how development and building and economics works and this is why even small slices of modern corporate offerings such as Oracle and AWS offer far more than IBM could ever have conceived.<p>12. Government spending is now at WWII levels and what did we get?  This is an indirect endorsement of austerity economics which we have now proven through much experience is a colossal failure.  Government spending in a downturn limits the duration and severity of the downturn.  Of course a fantastically rich developer of a browser that briefly mattered does not need to care about either of these things, at least not until the revolution comes.  The Hamptons are not a defensible position.<p>13. &quot;We spent the last 20 years like putting broadband everywhere&quot; Translation: I do not travel outside of coastal US cities.<p>This covers points to around halfway through, but I think it makes the point relatively well. This man is not an enlightened leader, but dangerously deluded with a lack of understanding of reality and a lack of respect for basic spreadsheet economics.