April 2020 was perhaps the lowest point of the COVID-19 pandemic. That month, the US became the coronavirus’ global hotspot in terms of cases and deaths. There were widespread shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). And Operation Warp Speed wouldn’t be launched until that month’s final day. 

One bright spot with, it turns out, long-term impact was “It’s Time to Build,” a viral (no pun intended) essay by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. It was a call to action for the West, particularly America, to renew its focus on creating tangible solutions to problems—from a lack of PPE to a lack of supersonic airliners. The problem isn’t too little money or technical expertise, he wrote, but rather not enough desire, will, and action to build and innovate. And one sign of that “inertia” is our willingness to simply accept a reality that contains obvious barriers to building and problem solving, especially regulatory capture. Andreessen concludes:

Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that’s to build.

Shortages and supply-chain snarls—from medical supplies to semiconductor chips—were a key factor in a growing national recognition that America had a problem, especially innovating and building in the physical world. This was followed by a recognition that our regulatory and permitting process would make it needlessly expensive and time-consuming—if not impossible—to build a clean-energy-powered economy. Oh, and maybe America relies too much on products manufactured in China or on that island nation near China that Beijing might choose to invade. 

One result of Washington’s recognition, finally, of this problem was the CHIPS and Science Act. Unfortunately, sweeping regulatory reform has yet to happen. Not good. But at least we now seem to be societally aware that there is a problem—so much so that at the Democratic National Convention last night, Barack Obama made a NIMBY-friendly “time to build” plea:

We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. … [If] we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country

One might even say that it’s time to build.

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