Marc Andreessen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Yeah but there's the question of — Do they value art versus are they speculating on art? And then how much of the effort is being spent on speculating on the art versus creating the art? Well, this gets into this old kind of cultural taboo. This depends on what you mean by speculation. If what you mean by speculation is obsessing on daily price signals and buying and selling and turning a portfolio, like being a day trader kind of speculation. That's what I think of speculation. Let's say that's the bad form of speculation, that's the non productive form. If by speculation, on the other hand, you mean — look, there are different kinds of things in the world that have different possible future values. And people are trying to estimate those future values, and people are trying to figure out utility, and they're trying to figure out aesthetic value. Look at how the traditional art market works, is somebody supporting a new contemporary artist speculating or not? Yes, maybe from one lens they are. Maybe they're buying and selling paintings, and maybe they buy in and if it doesn't start going up in price, they flip it and buy something else. But also, maybe they're supporting a new young artist. And maybe they build a speculative portfolio of new young artists and as a consequence those artists can get paid, and they can afford to be full time artists. And then it turns out they're the next Picasso. And so I think that kind of speculation is good and healthy. And it's core to everything. I'd also say this — I don't know that there's actually a dividing line between that form of speculation, and speculation on what people call investments. Because even when people make investments, even just the institutional bond market. Look at US government debt, people are today in the bond market trying to figure out what that's worth. Because is the debt ceiling gonna get raised? Even that's up for grabs. To me, that’s not speculation in the bad sense, that's a market working properly. People are trying to estimate. Ben Graham said “financial markets are both a voting machine and a weighing machine. And in the short term, they tend to be a voting machine in the long run, they tend to be a weighing machine.” What's the difference between a voting machine and a weighing machine? I don't know, some people would say they're very different. Maybe it's actually the same thing. Why did prices go up? Because there are more buyers and sellers. Why do the prices go down? There were more sellers than buyers. The way markets work is you get individuals trying to make these estimations and then you get the collective effect. There's this dirty interpretation of any kind of trading or any kind of people trying to do the voting and weighing process. I just think it's this historical, ancient taboo against money. It's like in the Bible, Jesus kicking the money changers out of the temple. It's this old taboo against charging interest on debt. Different religions and cultures tend to have some underlying unease with the concept of money, the concept of trade, the concept of interest. e. It's this old taboo against charging interest on debt. Different religions and cultures tend to have some underlying unease with the concept of money, the concept of trade, the concept of interest. And I just think it's like superstition, it's like resentment, it's fear of the unknown. But those things are the things that make economies work. And so I'm all in favor.…

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