New York Magazine recently published a really great conversation between Marc Andreessen and Kevin Rose. Marc cofounded Netscape way back when, and now runs a venture capital firm.
In addition to technology, the conversation touches on a bunch of different topics such as why it’s beneficial to be an optimist and why change can be difficult for people to accept.
But they also hit on a number of broader economic shifts, such as the replacement of labor by machines, and the rise and decline of industrial production in the US. Here’s a snippet on that latter point:
You’ve described the middle class of the 20th century as a myth.
There are two middle classes. There’s the historical middle class—which is the bourgeoisie—starting in the, like, 1600s. This was the businesspeople and the traders, the merchants, the butcher, the baker, the general-store manager, the guy who was going off to China to go get silk and bring it back. Businesspeople.