Love doesn't scale

I first heard this phrase — definitely from Marc Andreessen, likely on a podcast — and it made perfect sense to me. Love does not scale, at least not directly. When you think about it, people only truly care deeply about those closest to them — typically their family and friends. This doesn’t mean they don’t care at all about others beyond that circle, but the intensity of love clearly diminishes as you move further away from that core.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s not realistic to love everyone deeply. You can “have love” for humanity as a whole, but for most people beyond — at most, a few dozen connections — the practical impact of that love is near zero.

I think this matters to me because it highlights that the solutions to humanity’s problems can’t be as simple as “we just need to love everyone” or similar rhetoric. While well — intentioned and valuable as motivation or aspiration, it simply doesn’t scale effectively.