I wonder why Andreesen doesn’t suggest public funding of higher education, instead of fighting DEI. If education was free for all Americans, it would achieve what he’s arguing for and it would undermine and make DEI efforts completely moot. As far as I can tell, we can afford to fund university for all entirely on the extra income taxes that people with degrees make above people without degrees, at least according to income data studies I’ve read from the Fed. (I’m honestly curious why our country hasn’t come to this conclusion already - it certainly looks today like funding higher education for all would increase GDP and reduce the tax burden.)
UncleMeat · 4m ago
He also writes that the NSF should experience "the bureaucratic death penalty."
Andreesen doesn't actually give a shit about the university system whatsoever. He wants people like him to be at the top of society and everybody else to grovel at his feet.
hollerith · 15m ago
Even better: college degrees for everyone
chomp · 8m ago
That’s what the parent commenter is saying, if everyone has the same opportunity to go to college and get a degree, then colleges don’t need to pick and choose students. Right now, only people with means can do to college, and so universities wind up balancing the scales.
dahart · 8m ago
Yes, that’s definitely what I’m suggesting. Did I accidentally imply something else? I feel like taking the whether someone can afford college off the table would just immediately end this DEI argument and give Americans a boost. Why isn’t Adreesen fighting for that?
malcolmgreaves · 11m ago
Most likely it’s because he doesn’t actually want what he claims. Billionaires become corrupted by their wealth. Like a junkie, they need their fix. And their fix is to see their wealth increase.
davidw · 1h ago
Guy who owes his fortune to public funding of research wants to tear it all down.
Bs.. DEI is simply toxic discrimination against non-DEI.
It has nothing to do with equality and it promotes helplessness
DoctorOW · 8m ago
A friend of mine involved with the Coast Guard lemented someone who was fired in Trump's DEI purge. She was hard working, and well respected by those who worked for her, but she was a woman so she was deemed "without merit".
The problem I have with the anti-DEI stuff is that they have no means of proving merit. They're just seeing someone who is a minority and imagining a more qualified white guy.
UncleMeat · 22m ago
Andreesen says that its been 60 years of "discrimination" against white people. My alma mater didn't even admit women in 1965. He says that immigration is "discrimination." The world he pines for is a world of explicit and massive discrimination against women and non-whites.
Andreesen is calling for the NSF to be destroyed. What does that have to do with DEI? The Trump administration is demanding that universities expressly hire conservatives as faculty and admit conservatives as students. Where's Andreesen's concern about this?
skywhopper · 39m ago
You have been misinformed about what DEI is and does. Folks like Andreessen are outright liars. It’s not reverse discrimination. It’s an attempt to level the playing field.
jbverschoor · 37m ago
No I don’t think I am. We had it in the Netherlands for over 20-30 years. It was called “positieve discriminatie”.
It was supposed to level the playing field for people who are just as/more capable, but did not even get considered.
Instead of that, they don’t consider others anymore, nor do they care about actual capabilities.
It’s very simple… politics set policies by rewarding and punishing with taxes. Companies will “game” anything to reach certain numbers.
malcolmgreaves · 20m ago
Ah! Thanks for identifying yourself as Dutch.
Your allegiance makes more sense now. The Dutch people absolutely love the racist Christmas tradition of Zwarte Piet. (What was it back in 2017 — something like 70% of Dutch folk polled wanted to end the tradition not because they wanted to accept it’s blatantly obvious racism, but because they were tired of having the discussion of should it be ended?)
For anyone reading that doesn’t know, it’s a tradition where they get a white person to put on black face (x), parade them around, then blame all of their problems on this (fake) Black person.
(x) Black face is racist: learn the history of blackface — white folks wanted Black characters, but not actual Black people.
Oh another favorite of mine — every culture has their national shames, but some are better than others at being honest about it — do your people learn about the incredible criminal history of the Dutch during colonialism? Do they teach you about the horrors of the Dutch West India Company over there?
gjsman-1000 · 37m ago
… by reverse discrimination in many companies.
Changing words doesn’t change practice. Inventing words like “unhoused” doesn’t fix “homeless.”
Andreesen doesn't actually give a shit about the university system whatsoever. He wants people like him to be at the top of society and everybody else to grovel at his feet.
https://bsky.app/profile/sifill.bsky.social/post/3ltrkbtyam2...
It has nothing to do with equality and it promotes helplessness
The problem I have with the anti-DEI stuff is that they have no means of proving merit. They're just seeing someone who is a minority and imagining a more qualified white guy.
Andreesen is calling for the NSF to be destroyed. What does that have to do with DEI? The Trump administration is demanding that universities expressly hire conservatives as faculty and admit conservatives as students. Where's Andreesen's concern about this?
It was supposed to level the playing field for people who are just as/more capable, but did not even get considered.
Instead of that, they don’t consider others anymore, nor do they care about actual capabilities.
It’s very simple… politics set policies by rewarding and punishing with taxes. Companies will “game” anything to reach certain numbers.
Your allegiance makes more sense now. The Dutch people absolutely love the racist Christmas tradition of Zwarte Piet. (What was it back in 2017 — something like 70% of Dutch folk polled wanted to end the tradition not because they wanted to accept it’s blatantly obvious racism, but because they were tired of having the discussion of should it be ended?)
For anyone reading that doesn’t know, it’s a tradition where they get a white person to put on black face (x), parade them around, then blame all of their problems on this (fake) Black person.
(x) Black face is racist: learn the history of blackface — white folks wanted Black characters, but not actual Black people.
Oh another favorite of mine — every culture has their national shames, but some are better than others at being honest about it — do your people learn about the incredible criminal history of the Dutch during colonialism? Do they teach you about the horrors of the Dutch West India Company over there?
Changing words doesn’t change practice. Inventing words like “unhoused” doesn’t fix “homeless.”