Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen believes the world can "easily" support 50 billion people consuming energy and goods at a higher rate than Americans do today.
Andreessen, a founder and partner at Meno Park-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, this week published a 5,000-word "manifesto" calling for "techno-optimism." In his post that's featured on the homepage of his firm's website, a16z.com, the billionaire startup investor praised technology and the potential it can have on society's future. Andreessen touched on themes like the colonization of outer space, asked for increased efforts to develop artificial intelligence, and proposed that society ups its energy usage.
Among his points: Andreessen claimed Earth is "dramatically underpopulated" as he said our world could have 50 billion people and that we could be sending people to other planets. His opinion about population size runs in conflict with a report by the United Nations Population Fund, which found that in surveys it did, people said their national population sizes were too large.
According to Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Earth does not have the capacity to hold the amount of people Andreessen projects and only has only enough resources to hold a maximum of 10 billion people. In his book, "The Future of Life", Wilson said there are constraints on the amount of food that can be produced on the planet and there is a limited access to freshwater.
Yet, Andreessen is not the first tech influencer to express a pronatalist-like view.
Some venture capitalist and wealthy tech tycoons, like Elon Musk, have expressed that by having more kids they are preventing a population decline. Some said they hope their kids will be instrumental in counteracting societal threats.
Andreessen manifesto said that it's possible to have large populations by having "more energy." He called for people to raise their energy consumption to the “level we have” and then raise it again by "1,000x".
Andreessen did not expand on what the best approach would be to offset the cost of that form of energy production.
"We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it," he said. "If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US."
