Marc Andreessen Roasts BlackRock’s Larry Fink For Backpedaling On 'Retarded’ ESG Policies

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen mocked BlackRock CEO Larry Fink for spearheading Wall Street’s push into adopting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment principles, only for the $11.6 trillion asset manager to backtrack over the past year.

.@pmarca Mocks BlackRock CEO Larry Fink for Backtracking on ESG After Leading the Charge

„The other funny one is BlackRock. I don’t know him, but I’ve watched for a long time. Larry Fink, who’s the CEO of BlackRock, was the first in as a major investment CEO on like every dumb… pic.twitter.com/UUh9axjVcY

— CAPITAL (@capitalnewshq) January 27, 2025

LEX FRIDMAN: So the beautiful picture you painted of the Roaring ’20s, how can the Trump Administration play a part in making that future happen?

MARC ANDREESSEN: A big part of this is getting the government boot off the neck of the American economy, the American technology industry, and the American people. This is a replay of what happened in the ’60s and ’70s, which, for what started out looking like good and virtuous purposes, we ended up both then and now with a form of soft authoritarianism. The good news is it’s not a military dictatorship, it’s not like you get thrown into a cell, and it’s not hard authoritarianism. But it is soft authoritarianism — this incredible suppressive blanket of regulation and rules. What’s required to get anything done? You need 40 people to sign off on anything, and any one of them can veto it. A lot of how the political system works now.

And then there’s this general idea that progress is bad, technology is bad, capitalism is bad, building businesses is bad, success is bad, this tall poppy syndrome. Anybody who sticks their head up deserves to have it chopped off. Anybody who’s wrong about anything deserves to get condemned forever. This very grinding repression, coupled with specific government actions such as censorship regimes and de-banking, and deliberately kneecapping critical American industries.

We’ve just been through this period. I call it a demoralization campaign. It ended up being a comprehensive message that says you’re terrible, and if you try to do anything, you’re terrible. The Biden Administration reached the full pinnacle of that in our time. They got really bad on many fronts at the same time. Just relieving that and getting back to a reasonably optimistic, pro-growth frame of mind, there’s so much pent-up energy and potential in the American system that alone is going to cause growth and spirit to take off.

There are a lot of proactive things that can be done. I don’t want to predict anything on this because I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t predict politics or Washington. But the plans and intentions are clear, and the staffing supports it. All the conversations are consistent with the new Administration, and they plan to take rapid action on many fronts. They’ll do as much as they can through executive orders and then use legislation and regulatory changes for the rest. They’ll move quickly on a whole bunch of things. You can already feel a shift in national spirit — at least, I feel it in Silicon Valley.

We just saw a great example of this with what Mark Zuckerberg is doing. We just saw in public the scope and speed of the changes, and these shifts are happening throughout the industry. The tech industry itself, whether people were pro-Trump or anti-Trump, there’s a giant vibe shift, a mood shift that’s already kicked in. I was with a group of Hollywood people about two weeks ago. They were still very anti-Trump, but I said, has anything changed since November 6? They immediately said, “Oh, it’s completely different. It feels like the ice has thawed. All kinds of projects are going to be able to get made now that they couldn’t before. Hollywood’s going to start making comedies again.” It was just like an incredible environmental change. I hear the same thing from people throughout the economy, people who run businesses. This last 10 years of misery is just over.

One of the funny ones I’m watching is Facebook, the other funny one is BlackRock. I don’t know him, but I’ve watched for a long time. Larry Fink, who’s the CEO of BlackRock, was the first in as a major investment CEO on like every dumb social trend and rule set. Like every, all right, I’m going for it, every retarded, every retarded thing you can imagine – every ESG and every possible… saddling companies with every aspect of just these crazed ideological positions. He literally aggregated trillions of dollars of shareholdings that weren’t even his and used them to force companies into these positions. In the last year, he’s been backpedaling as fast as he possibly can. He pulled out of the Corporate Net Zero Alliance and backed away from crazy energy stuff. He’s doing the Richard Pryor backwards walk, backing out of a room while looking like he’s walking forward. Even they’re doing that.