Summary of article – “It’s Time To Build”

Here is the link of the article : https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

The article starts with putting forward the point that the corona virus pandemic has acted as an eye opener for the Western Nation in terms of their level of preparedness and their institutional ineffectiveness in dealing with it. The cause of it cannot be attributed to any single political party or any single nation. The route of the problem lies in lack of imagination and the inability to build.

The article continues the discussion by stating that there is a scarcity of medical facilities required to test and cure patients. It is believed that the vaccine for this virus will take time to develop and even when it is developed, maybe there would be an absence of the means to scale up its production.

Many people in the United States are suffering due to a storage of capital and mass layoffs. However the government which has always collected from the public doesn’t seem to have a plan to give it back to its people when its required the most.

The absence of all these things reveals that we chose not to build.

Not just these factors, other too show these traits:

• Housing: In many places in America like San Fansico people have failed to create enough housing facilities because of which the prices are rising and people are not able to settle and take up new jobs.
• Education: Though the education sector has improved but it serves only a handful of student population. There is a lack of the number of Universities and there is absence of techniques like one to one learning which can improve education outcome manifold.
• Manufacturing: American Companies find it feasible to outsource manufacturing due to the availability of cheap labour. Highly Automated factories, if built the number of high paying jobs it would create will be enormous. Efforts towards these are absent.

All these is not due to any scarcity of technology or capital, there is the lack of want to build.

Public Sector can play a tremendous role in building new health care, education, housing, etc and that too in an effective manner.

Anyone can contribute to the process of building it can be CEOs, political party, entrepreneur and even the general public. People can either contribute by building for by helping those who are building or by teaching those who are building.  In this way every person can contribute to the process.

Our Co-fathers had built road, factories, computers and what not. This is our time to pass on the legacy inherited by us from our co-fathers to the next generation.