YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew McAfee

lines on the record: 24
first: 2022-06-15
most recent: 2022-06-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And so, if we took current technology and did that, there are some really amazing ideas of things that we can do. I don't think this has anything to do with the environment.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we literally have two magic technologies. Like we have the box that generates power by splitting the atom, and we have the sheet that converts sunlight for free. And both of those are like incredibly modern production techniques for nuclear and solar. I would just be spectacular what you could do. If you engineered new nuclear plants today from scratch properly with the technologies, most of the functional nuclear plants in the West today are like on average there. Are there any younger than like 30 or 40 years old? The average has got to be.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I think look like it goes back to the tariff thing. Like, let the Chinese build solar panels, let them ride the manufacturing cost curve down, and like buy their solar panels.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think environmentalism for the most part is actually about the environment. I think it's about something else. And the reason I say that is because exactly to Andrew's point, I think we actually have the answers. I think we have the answers and I think they're nuclear, which is just like in practice an incredibly safe technology, contrary to what everybody believes.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it went beyond, though, just the specific mechanism. It was more an expression of values on the part of the United States government, which is in theory we care about the environment in practice, like we're more worried about other things. And so we'll trade off the environment.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right, exactly, right, exactly. And so the Chinese have been able to undercut a lot of their American competitors. The kicker to that is the pro-environment administration then reacted to that by putting tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. Therefore, making it cost ineffective for Americans to deploy solar panels that otherwise would have been much cheaper.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to contract the sun. The only problem with it was it ended up being a 4x worse value proposition, price performance value proposition, the conventional solar panels all in. That was one of the train wrecks out here that actually took down the whole US government DOE program to fund clean tech. But the kicker on the whole solar thing is, okay, you said it became a mass manufacturing game. And so it kind of became like memory chips in the 80s. It lent itself to the Chinese ecosystem, which sort of is able to do mass manufacturing at scale.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think those are definitely big components. You may know this, the sort of appendix to that whole saga was, yeah, so there was a huge push for solar panels, including some very advanced. We actually have here in the conference room, we actually have an old cylinder solar panel that I keep around just because it's such a great story. The cylindrical solar panel, right, that would have a huge advantage that it could basically follow the sun.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even beyond that, companies had a much harder time developing and/or commercializing those technologies or just ended up in dire straits that people didn't expect. So I'm very curious if your assessment of what went wrong in the Silicon Valley Cleantech Green Tech Adventure and what should we learn from that, you know, both as an industry and as a world, like how might we, if we're going to try that kind of thing again, like if we're going to try to double down on R&D here, like what lessons should we learn from that in terms of how to do it better?”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that was the good news surprise. The bad news surprise was Silicon Valley embarked on a very big push to do so-called clean tech green tech, particularly between 2010 and 2012. There's a huge push and there were a lot of extremely smart and accomplished people here in the valley who thought that this was the new frontier for American technology, for venture capital. And, you know, with obvious both huge potential positive benefits for the world, but also a huge opportunity to build new businesses. And I think there were hundreds and hundreds, possibly even thousands of companies and a very large amount of money and effort and a lot of people put a lot of work into this. The results were extremely disappointing on a number of fronts. I mean, there were maybe a few isolated cases of success. One might say we got Tesla and SpaceX out of that, right? In which case, you know, fair enough.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a question about RD, the role of research and development in kind of delivering on the dream that you're talking about. Because obviously, everything you're talking about is sort of dependent on future development of advanced technology and creation of new knowledge. The last 20 years, I would say there's been basically like two dramatic events in energy-related R&D in the US. One is this incredibly positive outcome with respect to fracking and liquid natural gas. There's been all kinds of positives to come out of that. And even in the energy industry, like a lot of experts were shocked on how well that stuff.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you take false thought and your thought to their logical extremes, how close can you get ultimately someday to making everything with nothing? If we're sitting here 500, 200 years from now, what are the prospects for being able to take physical inputs out either 99.99% reduced or taken out entirely from many of the things we'll be consuming?”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I recall correctly, and maybe I've made this up in my own head, but I think that one of the lines he used was ephemeralization is the process of making more and more with less and less, but then he added a line, he said, until eventually we are making everything with nothing.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pre software. Yeah, the economy in those days, it was what Joel McCear calls the wheat and steel economy. That was during the era where GDP versus became an economic metric and it was literally like tonnage. It was like how much”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe just explain his idea because that was a remarkable insight at a time when there was probably no actual logical foundation to expect what he was saying.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You discuss in the book a very famous at the time, I guess, in the 70s and 80s, a very famous debate between two at the time, very accomplished people, Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich. And it's largely been forgotten, but it's a highly relevant debate and maybe even more relevant today than it was at the time. And maybe you could describe their debate in the famous bet.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will tease your torture Andy a little bit in that, as you're probably well aware, support for market-based systems like Cap and Trade have collapsed.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm glad you brought up nuclear. I was going to ask you that. So, in many groups, just like flatly rule out nuclear as an option. So what's going on there and what's the way through that?”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's lots of advances being made in energy efficient technologies of all kinds. So one would imagine this will continue. Let's take the strong advocates for dramatic action at their word that we're going to run into real trouble globally. How do you not progress from there to believing we have to take a very different approach from a foreign policy standpoint, in particular towards China and India, potentially up to and including coercive actions? Just because if you look at the graph of global emissions growth, it's very clearly too like gigantic examples.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the things that's so striking carbon emissions right in the US are falling, and you tell me they're starting to fall in certain parts of Europe as well.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is very relevant to current events, right? One of the things that is very common up in the United States right now is the theory of the capitalism is responsible for environmental degradation. And unless we convert to a socialist system, immediately the environment is doomed. And therefore, the very clear assumption is statement is the shifting to a socialist command and control system will lead to better environmental outcomes. That's a very common theme right now. Like, how do you address that in present times?”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Well, this is always the absurdity of would you really rather stand out in the rain with your arm up? Seriously. And by the way, would you really rather have a system in which the driver is able to eyeball you in the street and decide to not give you a ride?”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, exactly. What you want is you want to be pro market. That's what we run into in our business, you know, because we launched these new companies that don't have any political power whatsoever. And they go into these industries that in some cases are heavily dominated by incumbents. And invariably what you find is an intertwining of the incumbents with the regulatory system, often under the color of consumer protection that actually turns out what's happened is the incumbents have rigged the system. They've rigged the politics for their own preservation. And the hypocrisy gets exposed in the form of like, you just have a product that's just obviously better. And then the captured regulatory state comes to try to shut it down and protect incumbents.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He basically argued it's like what modern libertarians actually argue, which is basically to the extent that business people start to get involved in political policy, they try to rig the political system in their favor. And then that trips the line between so-called capitalism and corporatism. And then politically, that's sort of the distinction between being pro-business and being pro-market.”
2022-06-15 · a16z Podcast · More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source