 Do you remember, oh, maybe one before last. Do you remember a few days ago, a week ago, I don't know when it was, I did a segment on the show about Mark Andreessen's manifesto, his tech, you know, pro technology, technology will make the future better, technology is great, technology is wonderful, technology is amazing, and this optimistic, just optimistic manifesto, I was excited by, I thought it was wonderful, you know, Mark Andreessen has written a lot of really, really good stuff lately, and he had this techno-optimism manifesto, and I thought it was terrific, and consistent with a lot of the things I think I believe, and I think many of you believe. Anyway, it turns out that the press, in particular the tech press, hated his manifesto, take a magazine like Wyatt. Now, Wyatt used to be like, yes to progress, we love progress, we love tech, we love the future's great, startups are great. I mean, it used to be, it used to reflect this sense of optimism and positivism and excitement that Silicon Valley presented. But Wyatt, I think with some in Silicon Valley, has taken a bizarre turn, a bizarre turn. So when describing Mark Andreessen's essay, and I've commented on this in the past with other essays in Wyatt Magazine, I used to read Wyatt in the 90s and 2000s, it was an exciting magazine to read. So it accuses Mark of being a merchant of progress. Now, what's the deal with merchant of progress? Merchant of progress are people who make money off of progress. How dare they? It writes favorably about technology smashing, you know, Luddites. You know, it ran a story on October 22nd, just a week ago. Everyone is a Luddite now. A new history of the Luddites argues that 19th century fears about technology are still relevant today. It's the latest in a long line of attempts to reclaim the label. Yeah, they give it a very positive review. They even ran a story about Gaza being a hub, a tech hub. This is the headline. Palestinians growing tech industry has been literally blown apart by the war between Israel and Hamas. I mean, I laugh, I shouldn't laugh, but it's pretty ridiculous, you know, really, butting, you know, this thriving tech industry that doesn't really exist. So Stephen Levy in the pages of Wyatt referred to Mark Andreessen's exuberance along with all the industry's top venture firms as examples of late-stage capitalism. This is the death of capitalism, the end. To quote, you know, the purpose of Mark's manifesto, according to this author, was to quote, take your money, you vote or your soul. That's what venture capitalists about. Taking your money, you vote in your soul. And that's what the manifesto is about, this techno-optimism. It's about your soul. It's about getting you. Another magazine, Gizmodo, the tech-optimism manifesto was a quote, unabomber style manifesto. And another author wrote, quote, Mark Andreessen openly embraces this violent right-wing, right-wing machismo that he calls techno-optimism. So now, techno-optimism, to be optimistic about the future and about tech, is right-wing and machismo. And violent, by the way. It's violent to be optimistic about technology. That's inflicting violence on people. Fast company, Financial Times, San Francisco Standard, Business Insider, Washington Post, all were just furious about how dare a capitalist actually express his view that the future is good if only we allow technology to help us grow our economies. Here's a venture capitalist, after all, and that is what venture capitalists do. They express that sense of optimism in the investment that they make every single day. Tech crunch. Again, one of these bastions of pro-technology, pro-future, maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago. No more. Tech crunch, quote, when was the last time Mike Andreessen talked to a poor person? Really? That's relevant. Actually, sorry, the Gaza Strip story was actually written in tech crunch, not in other places. So in other words, today, to be optimistic about technology, to be optimistic about the future, to believe in progress, to want economic growth, is violent, right wing. It is exploitative. It is a way to control people's souls. It's a way to extract money from them. It's a way to exploit them. Having those views, writing them out, investing in the future. These people will kill, will kill this economy to the extent that they get their way. They are anti-humanity. They express views that are anti-human flourishing, exactly the opposite of what Morale demands. They are destructive to human life. And the fact that this exists in Silicon Valley, the fact that these are technology writers, the fact that these are people supported by, supported by the tech industry is really a sign that we are indeed in a kind of late-stage capitalism. We're towards the end of this amazing run that the United States and the West have had. You can see that in Ukraine, in their weak, pathetic response of the West. You can see that in Gaza, with the model equivalency and the turning against Israel that has happened. I have one other story about that. You can see it in the fact in Greta and in all the insanity, the complete insanity of climate change, catastrophism, and the demands that they make, the anti-human demands that they are making. And you can see it here in Silicon Valley, in the heart of what actually drives the U.S. economy forward. Without Silicon Valley, the U.S. economy is shrinking. Without Silicon Valley, the U.S. economy is nothing. Without Silicon Valley, whatever economic progress we've made over the last 30, 40 years would not exist. And in that, what used to be the epicenter of optimism, excitement, the thrill of producing, of creating, of building a beautiful future. If in that, in the heart of that, this is the attitude, I just don't see how we get out of it. I just don't see how we're not in a place of steady, slow, but really almost impossible to reverse a decline. Truly horrific.