Let's be real, if Gates and Zuck can't even scratch fixing US education, then a16z sure won't touch it with a 10' pole. Edu and healthcare are graveyards of bold dreams and hubris against entrenched interests.

You think after writing the article he called his assistant and designed the plan for Crypto Fund II?

These things take time, and this was probably in the works from before.

a16z is "all about" spending other people's money.

The "time to build" nonsense was about spending taxpayer's money. That is, telling the American government how to spend it.

Consider that a16z and its clients probably do not pay much taxes. Certainly they pay less than people who cannot afford the same level of profesional services required to reduce their tax burden to the same extent.

If America builds infrastructure and better educational systems, a16z and their clients will benefit, along with the folks who actually paid for it. Whether those benefits would be disproportional in favor of a16z and its clients is left as a question for the reader.

Even google balked at the cost of infrastructure and abandoned Fiber.

I think google made a mistake. AT&T (and Verizon too) still has a monopoly on places because of cables that were laid almost a century ago.

If someone figures out the next step of search, google could disappear quickly. AT&T, not nearly.

Google is still expanding fiber. They wired a neighborhood near me and theres a vote on my HOA to wire our neighborhood.

Google Fiber and Fi were focused on getting market incumbents to install fiber and decrease mobile data costs (respectively). They were not targeted at capturing marketshare, but purely tactical, and in that regard successful.

The emergency is over. Its time to go back to normal behavior.

It’s what you write when you see the writing on the wall for the end of a superpower and you get to be right either way while you don’t do anything to fix it.