It’s Time To Build

Author: Marc Andreessen URL: https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ One-line: The coronavirus exposed not a failure of foresight alone but a deeper inability to build — and the cure is to want, and to build, the things we need.

Key Highlights

• Every Western institution was unprepared for the pandemic despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade — and it traces to two failures: a failure of imagination (foresight) and, more importantly, a failure of action — “our widespread inability to build.”
• The complacency is everywhere, not just in the pandemic: in healthcare, in housing and the physical footprint of cities, in Education, in manufacturing. “You see it throughout Western life, and specifically throughout American life.” City Building
• Housing: we can’t build enough housing in high-potential cities, so prices skyrocket (San Francisco) and regular people can’t move in to take the jobs of the future. We can’t build the cities themselves — when Westworld wanted to portray the American city of the future, they filmed in Singapore, not Seattle or LA or Austin.
• Education: top-end universities teach only a microscopic share of the world’s 18-year-olds. The last major K-12 innovation was Montessori (1960s); we’ve done 50 years of education research that never reached deployment. We know one-to-one Tutoring yields a two-standard-deviation gain (the Bloom two-sigma effect), and we have the internet — so why haven’t we built systems to match every learner with a tutor? Synthesis School #Apprenticeship
• Manufacturing: US output is at an all-time high, yet key production is offshored to cheaper labor. We know how to build highly automated factories and the higher-paying jobs they create — so why aren’t we building Elon Musk’s “alien dreadnoughts,” giant state-of-the-art factories across the country? #offshoring
• The problem is not money (we fund endless wars, bank/airline/carmaker bailouts, a $2T rescue package in two weeks), not capitalism (Nicholas Stern: capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know; these fields are already lucrative), and not technical competence (we already built the homes, schools, cars, and smartphones we have).
• The real problem is desire, inertia, regulatory capture, and will. “We need to want these things.” We need to want new companies to build them even if incumbents object — if only to force the incumbents to build. And both sides must contribute: separate the imperative to build from ideology and politics. #Compromise
• Build as the answer to every domain: solve climate by building a few thousand zero-emission nuclear reactors (start with 10, then 100, then the rest); reboot the American dream by breaking the price curves of housing, education, and healthcare — because the things we build in quantity (computers, TVs) drop in price, while the things we don’t (housing, schools, hospitals) skyrocket. Climate Change The New American Dream
• The closing reframe: to everyone around us we should be asking what are you building? — directly, or helping/teaching others to build, or taking care of the people who build. If your work doesn’t lead to something being built or to caring for people, “we’ve failed you,” and we need to get all available talent onto the biggest problems. Kyle’s distillation: instead of “what do you do for work?” ask “what are you building?” Build a Better On Ramp For Life

Notable Quotes

Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it’s not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it.

Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t do in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to build.

When the producers of HBO’s “Westworld” wanted to portray the American city of the future, they didn’t film in Seattle or Los Angeles or Austin — they went to Singapore.

The problem is desire. We need to want these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things, even if incumbents don’t like it, even if only to force the incumbents to build these things. And the problem is will. We need to build these things.

Milton Friedman once said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Instead of taking that as an insult, take it as a challenge — build new things and show the results!

The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don’t, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price.

Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building?

Kyle: Instead of asking “what do you do for work?” — ask “what are you building?”

How It Connects

• Marc Andreessen — author; a16z co-founder. This is his most-cited public essay.
• The Build-Nothing Country — Noah Smith’s later, more mechanistic diagnosis of the same failure (permitting, land use, NIMBYism). Direct intellectual descendant.
• To Save America, Restore Our Frontier — Joe Lonsdale’s parallel argument that bureaucratic capture, not ideology, is the real decline.
• City Building — the cities-we-can’t-build thread.
• The New American Dream / American dream — build to break the housing/education/healthcare price curves.
• Nuclear Energy / Climate Change — build reactors as the climate answer.
• Elon Musk / alien dreadnoughts — automated factories as the manufacturing answer.
• Bloom two-sigma effect / Tutoring / Synthesis School — the education-building thread.
• Nicholas Stern — “capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know.”
• Milton Friedman — judge by results, not intentions.
• Progress Studies — the broader build/progress movement this essay helped catalyze; the “want and build the things we need” framing is a foundational text for it.

Verbatim source notes — restored from Roam, 2026-09-21

• You see it in manufacturing. Contrary to conventional wisdom, American manufacturing output is higher than ever, but why has so much manufacturing been offshored to places with cheaper manual labor? We know how to build highly automated factories. We know the enormous number of higher paying jobs we would create to design and build and operate those factories. We know — and we’re experiencing right now! — the strategic problem of relying on offshore manufacturing of key goods. Why aren’t we building Elon Musk’s “alien dreadnoughts” — giant, gleaming, state of the art factories producing every conceivable kind of product, at the highest possible quality and lowest possible cost — all throughout our country? #offshoring
• Milton Friedman once said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Instead of taking that as an insult, take it as a challenge — build new things and show the results! #Accountability #KPI
• We know one-to-one Tutoring can reliably increase education outcomes by two standard deviations (the Bloom two-sigma effect); we have the internet; why haven’t we built systems to match every young learner with an older tutor to dramatically improve student success? Apprenticeship Bloom’s Taxonomy
• And we need to separate the imperative to build these things from ideology and politics. Both sides need to contribute to building. #Compromise
• A government that collects money from all its citizens and businesses each year has never built a system to distribute money to us when it’s needed most.
• In fact, I think building is how we reboot the American dream. The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don’t, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price. What’s the American dream? The opportunity to have a home of your own, and a family you can provide for. We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare, to make sure that every American can realize the dream, and the only way to do that is to build. The New American Dream
• You see it in Education. We have top-end universities, yes, but with the capacity to teach only a microscopic percentage of the 4 million new 18 year olds in the U.S. each year, or the 120 million new 18 year olds in the world each year. Why not educate every 18 year old? Isn’t that the most important thing we can possibly do? Why not build a far larger number of universities, or scale the ones we have way up? The last major innovation in K-12 education was Montessori, which traces back to the 1960s; we’ve been doing education research that’s never reached practical deployment for 50 years since; why not build a lot more great K-12 schools using everything we now know? Synthesis School
• You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities. We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future. We also can’t build the cities themselves anymore. When the producers of HBO’s “Westworld” wanted to portray the American city of the future, they didn’t film in Seattle or Los Angeles or Austin — they went to Singapore. We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they? City Building
• Is the problem money? That seems hard to believe when we have the money to wage endless wars in the Middle East and repeatedly bail out incumbent banks, airlines, and carmakers. The federal government just passed a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package in two weeks! Is the problem capitalism? I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know — all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment, good both for the investor and the customers who are served. Is the problem technical competence? Clearly not, or we wouldn’t have the homes and skyscrapers, schools and hospitals, cars and trains, computers and smartphones, that we already have.
• Solve the climate crisis by building — energy experts say that all carbon-based electrical power generation on the planet could be replaced by a few thousand new zero-emission Nuclear Energy, so let’s build those. Maybe we can start with 10 new reactors? Then 100? Then the rest? Climate Change Alternative Energy Distributed Energy Model Nuclear Energy
• Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems. Build a Better On Ramp For Life
• You don’t just see this smug ==complacency==, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build, in the pandemic, or in healthcare generally. You see it throughout Western life, and specifically throughout American life.

Reading log

• April 18th, 2020 — Kyle’s Roam daily note, verbatim: “https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ - #articles-to-read”