my response to @pmarca’s important new essay, “It’s Time to Build.” It’s terrific, but what’s missing in Andreessen’s manifesto is a concrete connection between America’s apparent dwindling desire to build and the political realities on the ground that contribute to that problem. https://twitter.com/aier/status/1252237910394486785

2/ Andreessen suggests that, somewhere along the line, something changed in the DNA of the American people and they essentially stopped having the desire to build as they once did. But is that really true? Or were too many barriers thrown in the way of us being builders?

3/ Joel Mokyr has noted how, “technological progress requires above all tolerance toward the unfamiliar and the eccentric” and that the innovation is “a fragile and vulnerable plant” that “is highly sensitive to the social and economic environment and can easily be arrested...”

4/ attitudes toward growth, risk-taking & entrepreneurialism are vital to building. Mancur Olson speaks of a "structure of incentives” & why “the great differences in the wealth of nations are mainly due to differences in the quality of their institutions and economic policies."

5/ We can choose to set innovation defaults closer to the green light of “permissionless innovation,” generally allowing entrepreneurial acts, or we can use the red light of the precautionary principle, which disallows most risk-taking & building. https://permissionlessinnovation.org/book/ 

6/ The problem today is that a massive volume of precautionary policies exist that discourage “productive entrepreneurship” (i.e., building) and instead actively encourage “unproductive entrepreneurship” (i.e., preservation of the status quo).

7/ @pmarca identifies this when he speaks of “smug complacency, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build.” But he doesn’t fully connect the dots between how the attitudes came about and the public policy incentives that actively encourage such thinking

8/ Why try to build when all the incentives are aligned against you? @pmarca wants to know “Where are the supersonic aircraft? Where are the millions of delivery drones? Where are the high speed trains, the soaring monorails, the hyperloops, and yes, the flying cars?”

9/ Well, I’ll tell you where they are at. They are trapped in the minds of inventive people who cannot bring them to fruition so long as an endless string of barriers makes it costly or impossible for them to realize those dreams.

People won't "build" if they are told not to.

10/ Read @elidourado's important essay on “How Do We Move the Needle on Progress?” to get a more concrete feel for the specific barriers to building in the fields where productive entrepreneurialism is most needed: health, housing, energy & transportation. https://elidourado.com/blog/move-the-needle-on-progress/

11/ Calestous Juma said it best: “The biggest risk that society faces by adopting approaches that suppress innovation is that they amplify the activities of those who want to preserve the status quo by silencing those arguing for a more open future.” https://techliberation.com/2016/07/29/book-review-calestous-jumas-innovation-and-its-enemies/

12/ we should join @pmarca in his call for a renewed builder movement. But it will remain just a distant dream, incapable of ever being realized so long as the wheels of novelty are gummed up by decades of inefficient, archaic, counterproductive public policies.

13/ We need to clear away barriers to building and get back to common sense government. Here's one blueprint from @PhilipKHoward ( https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-federal-recovery-authority-needed) & another from @EconPatrick, @MattMitchell80 & me ( https://www.mercatus.org/publications/covid-19-policy-brief-series/fresh-start-how-address-regulations-suspended-during-coronavirus-crisis). It's time to get our house in order.

14/ Finally, I have a new book coming out next week that offers a range of reform ideas to get America building again. Our problem isn't a lack of entrepreneurial spirit, but rather burdensome bureaucratic barriers to unleashing that spirit more widely.
https://www.amazon.com/Evasive-Entrepreneurs-Innovation-Economies-Governments/dp/1948647761/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Adam+Thierer&qid=1587304239&sr=8-1