I find myself bothered by this tweet of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. I suppose I could have stopped writing at "I find myself bothered by this tweet," but seriously, this is a leader within a community that is worshipped by many. The land of tech innovators and disruptors and geniuses all the world looks to. And in response to a Wall Street Journal chart on U.S. income inequality showing Asian-Americans at the top, the best this high-powered, Silicon Valley mind can do is launch a game of Choose Your Own Racist Adventure. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/777423600986890240 There are real answers to the seemingly simple question of why different groups earn wages and possess wealth at different levels in the U.S. And it doesn't take a legendary business mind to discover those answers. It does take genuine curiosity and an openness to the idea that the manner of income and wealth creation in this country is only partially related to individually controllable factors like "work ethic" and "intelligence." I think Mr. Andreessen would prefer a world in which the system worked and hard work resulted in greater rewards. Such a view is self-aggrandizing for a man who uses money to make money in a political system distorted by money. But the deeper truth is that the U.S. economic system is working just as it was designed, when you account for all those design elements, that is. It works because of the foundation of theft, discrimination, and violence on which it was built. And no serious person can show a chart of financial inequality by racial groups without acknowledging this very known and very real history. Of all people, an investor should be familiar with the notion of compound interest. That is, the cumulative growth effect of interest added to a base of cash or capital over time. Well, the United States is a thriving example of compound interest on stolen capital, in the form of human labor, housing discrimination, bank loan discrimination, employment discrimination, criminal justice discrimination and official policies of domestic terrorism, media distortion, and family destruction. [For the genuinely curious, read this long, excellent piece http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/] The affects of these policies over time surely has had a disparate impact on the earning powers of different groups of Americans, and while these few examples I cite don't fully explain the WSJ chart, they do a far better job than Mr. Andreessen's irresponsible, faux-curious, ignorance amplifying tweet below. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/777423600986890240
