[tomder55]

They are not quite a political force. They are however the leaders of a budding quasi-political influencer movement.

They have gathered unofficially on X where Elon Musk has allowed the former Twitter to be mostly a free speech platform . Some of the alternate journalists I routinely reference post their information on X . Musk gave a couple of them (Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald ) access to the Twitter files . They in turn gave us the first real hard glimpse of the depth of government censorship.

One of them ,Marc Andressen ,is a successful capital investor who founded among other companies Netscape. He became a billionaire when he sold that to AOL.

He has written a 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto

To sum up their philosophy ;they believe in unfettered free speech .They believe in free markets .They oppose the compliant press . They reject group think elite's consensus . They reject DEI and woke political correctness. They all have an optimistic view of technology and the potential future it will bring.
"Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential."

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto | Andreessen Horowitz (a16z.com)


We believe markets lift people out of poverty – in fact, markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty, and always have been. Even in totalitarian regimes, an incremental lifting of the repressive boot off the throat of the people and their ability to produce and trade leads to rapidly rising incomes and standards of living. Lift the boot a little more, even better. Take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get.

My one critique is that it is mostly a humanistic philosophy The optimists out of hand thinks technology is inherently good . But unless there is a deep rooted moral foundation behind it then as history confirms ,technology can be a 2 sided sword .

All you really need to do is examine how China has melded technological advancements with a totalitarian system of governance....or how the US has used it to advance the nanny state. Technology is a tool .How it is used is the issue.

[jlisenbe]

To sum up their philosophy ;they believe in unfettered free speech .They believe in free markets .They oppose the compliant press . They reject group think elite's consensus . They reject DEI and woke political correctness. They all have an optimistic view of technology and the potential future it will bring.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.