
Marc Andreessen interview - jger15
https://www.theobservereffect.org/marc.html
======
lifeisstillgood
The true secret to productivity is dealt with in the first paragraph :-)

>> without the help of my amazing and indefatigable assistant Arsho Avetian.
She's been my secret weapon for more than 20 years.

All the other stuff is just gravy :-)

~~~
qznc
There is also no commute in his calendar. Thursday and Friday morning is free?

~~~
bretpiatt
I'll toss out a few hypothesis...

Might be COVID-19 calendar.

I believe Marc lives in Palo Alto so 15-20 minutes of commute on surface
streets to a16z on Sand Hill Road. Commute could happen before scheduled
items.

It could also be his commute happens during UP before meetings on the calendar
start. He has FREE on many mornings before UP so UP can't directly mean wake
up, that 30 minutes could be the commute.

~~~
Ericson2314
It says thanksgiving holiday at the top, so that rules out the
quarantine......unless this is future calendar haha.

------
dpweb
"Where are the schools? Where are the hospitals? Where are the houses?" The
problem with healthcare, education, and housing is they become too expensive
for the average person.

This is not because we don't create enough of these things. We create enormous
amounts of each. One of the main problems is precisely that we feel the need
to create more of them and (in the name of benevolence), large amounts of
money floods the system and causes inflation. Unlimited college loan limits,
government paid for healthcare, 2% mortgage rates. Even allowing 8 year car
loans!

Notice that every overpriced essential item is backed by a massive government
and/or credit stimulus.

Clearly, the seemingly intractable "problems" of society are a) not
intractable b) being perceived wrongly. Aside are the political games that
manipulate public opinion and wrongly influence people on the issues.

~~~
take_a_breath
Other countries are able to provide these same things with even more
government support. Somehow, they end up costing even less. How does your
theory explain that fact?

~~~
roenxi
Which other countries are we talking here? I'll guess Europe. The United
States covers ~1/3 of a continent and has ~1/3 of a million people who make up
probably the most diverse ever polity on the planet. They can't adopt
approaches that don't scale really well.

Compare that to, say, Sweden. Small physically, small population wise,
although they are a lot more diverse than they used to be. Nevertheless, they
can reasonably adopt policies that do not scale and target a group of people
with very similar experiences.

For the US to provide Schools/Hospitals/Houses services comparable to the
European countries it would be done at the State level. At the Federal level
it is to some degree unprecedented to provide services at the level of quality
and at the scale.

~~~
gspr
Another one! I keep hearing this _over and over again_. Can you PLEASE explain
how these things won't scale from a few million people to a few hundred
million people?

Of course there are some things that only work in very tiny places, like the
prince of Liechtenstein inviting all citizens to a garden party at his place –
and some things that only work in very big places, like a manned lunar
program. But why wouldn't things like hospitals and schools scale well for the
range "a few million" (Sweden in your example) to "a few hundred million" (the
US in your example)? Sorry that I'm getting all worked up here, but I feel
like a crazy person for being presented with this argument over and over and
not grasping even a fraction of it!

Nobody says "oh, those things from Sweden won't scale to Germany (10x)", but
for some reason this conversation keeps getting shut down with "oh, those
things from Germany can't possibly scale to the US (4x)".

Above I'm only talking about population, because _surely_ you don't actually
mean that "small physically" has a positive effect on hospitals, schools and
housing? If we were discussing transportation infrastructure, sure, but…

~~~
roenxi
> But why wouldn't things like hospitals and schools scale well for the range
> "a few million" (Sweden in your example) to "a few hundred million" (the US
> in your example).

Different climates, industries, demographics and educational achievement
change what diseases/health issues are present and how they are dealt with in
the community. That sort of thing varies wildly in a population of 10s-100s of
millions spread over a large geographic area.

A sparse rural population has different healthcare needs than an urban one,
for example. Coordinating that sort of thing across a continent isn't that
helpful. State level administration makes more sense than trying to coordinate
a policy across a continent.

What is cross-continent coordination supposed to win anyone anyway? It just
makes the politics harder to manage.

> Nobody says "oh, those things from Sweden won't scale to Germany (10x)", but
> for some reason this conversation keeps getting shut down with "oh, those
> things from Germany can't possibly scale to the US (4x)".

I'm happy to say that; there will be things Sweden is doing that are
completely different to what Germany does because of scaling. Plus the fact
that they have different laws and legal systems. Although I suspect neither of
us speaks Swedish or German, so it would be hard to settle that one
decisively.

> because surely you don't actually mean that "small physically" has a
> positive effect on hospitals, schools and housing?

I mean exactly that. Australia faces similar issues where West Australia has a
decidedly different culture to the east coast states and it doesn't make sense
to try and coordinate housing policy between them. We don't coordinate
hospitals either for that matter, although there may have been some push
towards a nationalised education standard.

~~~
gspr
> Different climates, industries, demographics and educational achievement
> change what diseases/health issues are present and how they are dealt with
> in the community.

I'm sorry, I'm not buying this without some source that shows that Americans
need more healthcare than Swedes due to those factors.

> A sparse rural population has different healthcare needs than an urban one,
> for example.

Sure, but the US is 82% urban, Sweden is 88%, Germany 77%, France 81%, Norway
83%, Denmark 88%, Finland 85%, Switzerland 74% – I can go on [1]. All very
much in a comparable range.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/fields/349.html)

> State level administration makes more sense than trying to coordinate a
> policy across a continent.

Fine. Many public hospitals in Germany and Switzerland – two countries with
federal systems – are run at the equivalent of the state level.

> What is cross-continent coordination supposed to win anyone anyway? It just
> makes the politics harder to manage.

I'm not claiming that the US would have some _gain_ in these areas for being
huge! I'm merely questioning _your_ claim that "it won't scale".

> I'm happy to say that; there will be things Sweden is doing that are
> completely different to what Germany does because of scaling.

This is incredibly vague. Of course there are "things done differently".
That's not an argument for why the US can't do a version of the same.

> Plus the fact that they have different laws and legal systems.

Why is this relevant? That's like saying "the flags are very different".

> Although I suspect neither of us speaks Swedish or German, so it would be
> hard to settle that one decisively.

I can understand Swedish just fine, and rudimentary German. Even if I
couldn't, the legal, healthcare and educational systems in both countries are
well-described in English language sources.

> Australia faces similar issues where West Australia has a decidedly
> different culture to the east coast states and it doesn't make sense to try
> and coordinate housing policy between them.

I'll perhaps grant that the housing situation may be extremely different from
place to place, and coordination can be hard, but I still don't understand an
iota of what you mean when it comes to healthcare and education.

~~~
roenxi
> Sure, but the US is 82% urban

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States)

Alaska is substantially larger than any of the European countries you listed,
and is not very urban.

> I'm merely questioning your claim that "it won't scale".

Given how badly the US has mucked it up? With that level of technology
sophistication, social dynamism and money? Pretty solid evidence that it can't
be done. It got stuck in the morass that is politics at the US Federal level.

> Why is this relevant? That's like saying "the flags are very different".

European countries are coordinating healthcare at the equivalent level of a US
state and it is working. The US has made moves to coordinate at the Federal
level and it is not. The separate legal systems indicates that these are
highly independent policy-wise.

> I still don't understand an iota of what you mean when it comes to
> healthcare and education.

Healthcare is similar to housing. Sickness is location-specific and
population-specific. For education the arguments take a slightly different
flavour; but boil down to different industries have different educational
needs and a one-size-fits-all educational system will either systematically
under- or over- educate students in different cities with different industry
needs/opportunities.

~~~
gspr
> Alaska is substantially larger than any of the European countries you
> listed, and is not very urban.

Sure, but hospital requirements don't scale with area. If the US had a
horrible healthcare system in Alaska, and a great one in urban areas, maybe we
wouldn't have this debate.

> Given how badly the US has mucked it up?

Is the mucking up _due to size_ though? That is the crux of the matter, and I
can see no evidence that that is the case.

> Pretty solid evidence that it can't be done.

This sounds like insanity to me. It's literally _one_ datapoint! Isn't that a
bit like saying "China hasn't gone to the moon, so that's pretty solid
evidence that the preference of rice over potatoes as main starchy staple
makes moon landings impossible".

> Healthcare is similar to housing. Sickness is location-specific and
> population-specific. For education the arguments take a slightly different
> flavour; but boil down to different industries have different educational
> needs and a one-size-fits-all educational system will either systematically
> under- or over- educate students in different cities with different industry
> needs/opportunities.

There's nothing of substance in what you're saying here. You made a very bold
claim, and all your evidence for it seems to be "oh it could be that, it could
be this, maybe that".

~~~
kongolongo
> Sure, but hospital requirements don't scale with area.

They absolutely do. How can you say the requirements of getting emergency
response to a sparsely populated area is the same as a much smaller and more
densely populated area? Getting a appropriate response times to cover the
larger and more sparsely populated area is definitely going to be more costly
and difficult.

>If the US had a horrible healthcare system in Alaska, and a great one in
urban areas, maybe we wouldn't have this debate.

Actually yes healthcare in rural areas is significantly worse. Urban is not
great, but that is not relevant to the point, also they are not disjoint
systems they share significant funding. Saying urban US doesn't have great
healthcare doesn't disprove the point that rural areas have higher healthcare
costs and worse outcomes.

[https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rural/#:~:text=The%20rural%20popu...](https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rural/#:~:text=The%20rural%20population%20is%20consistently,population%20with%20respect%20to%20health.&text=Rural%20residents%20are%20also%20more,tests%20for%20various%20chronic%20conditions).

~~~
gspr
> They absolutely do. How can you say the requirements of getting emergency
> response to a sparsely populated area over a much larger area is the same as
> a much smaller and more densely populated area? Getting a appropriate
> response times to cover the larger and more sparsely populated area is
> definitely going to be more costly and difficult.

You are describing density.

> Saying urban US doesn't have great healthcare doesn't disprove the point
> that rural areas have higher healthcare costs and worse outcomes.

Nor does rural areas having higher costs prove that European-style public
healthcare won't scale to the US.

~~~
kongolongo
>Nor does rural areas having higher costs prove that European-style public
healthcare won't scale to the US.

No but now the burden of proof is to show how it does scale when the
requirements and characteristics of the users are clearly very different.
European population density is in general higher than US, and in general
European countries are more homogeneous.

~~~
kongolongo
Having similar rates of urbanization does not address the fact that the
population density is still significantly different. Even if the urban rates
are exactly the same there may still be many more pockets of rural areas in
the U.S. that also require access to healthcare, which incurs significant
costs. You're completely not addressing this point at all.

------
justin66
> This interview was recorded in mid May 2020 before we hit major crises in
> this country.

That's a weird place to draw the "we hit major crises" line.

------
tosh
interesting diff to "don't keep a schedule" from 2007 which is also an
interesting read

[https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html](https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html)

------
memexy
Looks like he uses an interleaving strategy for reading books

> It’s a pile of physical books and then the Kindle books. And you're reading
> them all at the same time. When you sit down to read, you just read the one
> that's the most interesting of that pile. It turns out those are the ones
> that you finish. A month later, there's a bunch that you're theoretically
> reading and you’re on Chapter Three and you're never gone back to it. That’s
> like having the shirt in your closet you haven’t worn in a year. It’s a
> signal to get rid of it.

------
KKKKkkkk1
When IT'S TIME TO BUILD was published, I was very curious about the specifics
of what initiatives Marc was about to launch. Any info on that in the
interview?

------
koolhead17
Software is eating the world minus secretary?

------
Omnipresent
Is there a podcast/audio of this?

------
historyremade
The guy who stole Netscape Source Code and claimed to be his own invention. Do
nothing Marc!

~~~
historyremade
[https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19971005&slug...](https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19971005&slug=2564359)

------
lifeisstillgood
Andreessen popped up a a18z podcast and said something that really made me
stop - to paraphrase, we know what worked for "western democracy" \-
capitalism, law, individual rights etc. now is not the time to throw those out
now is the time to double down on what worked - double down on democracy.

It takes some time to parse out but he strikes me as simple to a number of
politicians in UK recently - I agree with his deep values, if not his surface
choices.

------
nl
That was a pretty disappointing interview. If you have one of the most
influential VCs on the planet and spend half the interview talking about
personal productivity and how he runs his calendar then you've missed a great
opportunity.

~~~
kick
The cult of MBAs pretending to be hackers believes that success is entirely
self-determined and self-controlled; if they just rearranged their Rolodex and
pulled their $300 hoodie strings slightly differently they'd surely become
billionaires. And they will, never mind that they haven't done it yet despite
ten to twenty years of adulthood spent failing to with no change in approach.

~~~
nl
Does Marc Andreessen have a MBA? He first became famous as a programmer.

~~~
kick
I was talking about the people who read interviews like this looking for
wisdom on "productivity" rather than Andreessen.

