Thiel thinks that America needs more demagogues to unite Americans in a manufactured hatred of the Chinese et al. So he's funding some of those demagogues right now.
In reality, many of America's problems are due to the unfettering of ruthless & selfish oligarchs -- like himself -- who don't have the foggiest sense of "collective social good". A paradox indeed. It's hard to not view his political activity as mere scapegoating while he continues to make billions in the most depraved of manners (e.g. Palantir).
Which is much better than Musk who's a "libertarian"; constantly posting how America should do away with regulations to Twitter.
Meanwhile he's not saying a single thing about China (except once where he simply said "China's great!") since he has a car factory there.
Really it's not hard to see most rich libertarians as completely full of shit. They want to pay less taxes and regulations for their business but they don't really show any signs of libertarianism when it comes to the most authoritarian threat to us all: China. In fact they'll happily have factories there.
Billionaires like Koch and economists fabricated libertarianism to do away with costs and pass on externalities to everyone else. It's a utopian ideology far polar opposite of Communism. What's sad is how many "smart" people fall for it because it assumes everyone plays nice and common infrastructure is cheap. It's a filter bubble warped reality that plays from an unconscious bias Upton Sinclair effect of favoring what's good for you is good for everyone or everything. I would wager every billionaire is implicitly and explicitly out-of-touch with the concerns, worries, and stresses of the homeless and working poor.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." - James Madison
Since jerks and clueless idiots exist in droves, government regulation is absolutely essential to police what (greedy) people can and cannot do.
Demonzing China isn't constructive and has the optics of racism. China isn't an imminent military threat to anyone outside the South China Sea and the border with India. The US is a far greater threat with hundreds of bases worldwide. China is a larger threat ecologically because of wanton water and air (including emissions) pollution through the manufacturing of domestic and export goods. China would be wise to tax carbon, regulate air/soil/water pollution, and/or cap/trade, even if it means driving nearly slave-wages carpetbagging corporations to Africa and other parts of Asia. Even if political interests prevent particular remediation solutions, China has the advantage that it can choose to deploy evidence-based solutions at scale ahead of economic interests in a self-serving, sustainment manner.
I think it's disingenuous to call libertarianism fabricated, especially by people like the Kochs. This implies that those supporting its views are either manipulators or being ignorant of manipulation. It's a range of ideas rooted in enlightenment thinking that goes back hundreds of years, some of which are more extreme than others.
I find this kind of sentiment across many political groups where each seems to think they are the enlightened ones trying to save humanity and others are just in it to manipulate others for personal gain. This is conspiracy theory thinking. We should treat arguments in good faith in that those arguing for them really do think they have merit and are the best for most people, as we work towards discovering where we might have incorrect assumptions or just plain different ideas on what is "best" and what is fair.
You think, based on what specifically? I don't think you know the history or how it was legitimized. Thom Hartmann has spent a few hours on this very subject across various shows. Checking facts, he gets them right every time. Cato (climate change deniers with phony IPCC reports), Koch (dirty industries tax write off), and Reason Foundation (libertarian grooming factory by rich reporters and rich celebrities pushing a viewpoint, not academics or independent professional journalists) often promulgate ideas that aren't helpful to anyone except the rich and those who vote against their own interests with an "alternative flavor" of "freedom" that isn't free for anyone but the well-off.
Generalizing all political systems together is intellectually lazy and lacks nuance. Extreme utopian ideals like communism, libertarianism, and anarchism don't scale in the real world. I think you need to learn more about each of them in detail before you write it off as tribal "muh green team is better becuz it's mine." You're coming across as lacking in knowledge, experience, and a leg to stand on and going for a cheap shot.
Practical is somewhere in the middle that gets things done and considers enough peoples' needs. There are dumb ideas, like for-profit healthcare, for-profit policing, "everyone picking themselves up by their bootstraps (as misinterpretation of a children's parable)", hyper-individualism, and doing away with government (anarchy, anarcho-capitalism).
I stated that it was rooted in enlightenment thinking, to be more specific it is an amalgamation of classical liberal ideas supporting individual liberty and limited government. Ideas espoused by philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and even Lao-Tzu. These are ideas worth understanding.
I gave no defense of it other than to imply that should not be dismissed as total manipulation by rich people. I agree with your assessment that we best avoid utopian ideals and the laisse-faire and anarchist libertarians take things way too far. You clearly have an issue with some contemporary brand of libertarians, and I think a lot of that is valid.
> You're coming across as lacking in knowledge, experience, and a leg to stand on and going for a cheap shot.
I think this was unwarranted and I don't appreciate it.
On the face of it I'm inclined to agree, but how do you know that's what is causing America's ills? Maybe America does need a common enemy; maybe it should be one that is committing genocide right now.
You want a common enemy? How about ignorance? Or poverty? Or if they're too hard, how about tackling obesity, or the prescription drug epidemic, or tackling under-employment and job security, or routing out political corruption, or mitigating the corrupting behaviour of the profit motive on the criminal justice system? Still too hard? How about uniting against crumbling infrastructure? Or tackling pollution?
I don't think America lacks for common enemies. What it lacks is the will to develop agreed strategies for those common enemies. The political structures in the US all but guarantee that that lack of unification on strategy will continue indefinitely.
Or maybe another great war could destroy civilization, and it's best not to play around it irresponsibly.
Most of our ills are coordination failures. I believe solutions are complex, because society is growing more complex.
But we also need to find ways to reinvent ourselves so that we won't fall prey to the various instabilities we are subject to -- political instabilities, environmental instabilities, even AI safety instabilities. What is needed is a clear vision of our shared goal: to maximize the well being of all conscious creatures. As long as most of our system design is not aligned with that, we will be in significant danger.
(To be honest, just existing in the long term is just so darn difficult -- something few people realize -- that even with such systems in place there are no guarantees)
Did you notice how the US never had a war with USSR (beside proxy wars, like Afghanistan in 1980s), but still defeated it economically?
Of course a war is not a great idea, and is a device of last resort. But who are you friends with, and who do you depend on economically, plays a very large role on which regimes last, and which get changed, one way or another.
Just to clarify, I said common enemy, not conflict (which to me implies kinetic or hybrid warfare). My greatest preference would be for our common enemy not to be a country but rather a shared goal that benefits humanity; I had high hopes that climate change or the pandemic would be that... now my last hope is aliens uniting the human race together (although I hope it ends up more like Star Trek)
Sorry, it's not meant to be a gotcha, I think it's more than accidentally using the wrong word, I think we are indeed taught that of course we "need" an enemy, such that we just repeat it/internalize it without even considering what we're saying. And it's terrifying.
The point was very much not clear. Go back and look at your first comment. It clearly read to me as saying we needed a common enemy so the question was what country was most suitable. I was not intentionally misreading it. And I don't think it's at all unusual for Americans to think what it clearly said. And it's terrifying.
> how do you know that's what is causing America's ills?
Look around. Hundreds of millions of Americans are suffering under the predatory practices of massive corporations: unnecessary debt, opioids, malnutrition, misinformation, other addictions.
> Maybe America does need a common enemy; maybe it should be one that is committing genocide right now.
You see this a lot with hedge fund guys too. They make a boatload of money doing a very specific thing (thiel : software :: griffin : securities trading) and think their ability in that thing gives them abilities in most other things.
Stepping back it’s fairly obvious the opposite is true. They got so good at that thing by focusing on it. Focusing on something, by definition, means not paying attention to other things. You see where this goes…
You're actually very wrong on this point at a very basic level.
You can't be really good at something by focusing only on it.
To be good at software design, you need to be good at understanding computers and people. You need to understanding programming, design, marketing, hiring, management, etc.
Scott Adams developed this into a concept he named "The Talent Stack".
You can easily verify it: find billionairs who got rich from X, study their profile, you will find they have a wide range of skills outside of X.
For any such X you can also find many individuals with exceptional ability/knowledge about X but not much else, and they are often far less successful from people with a wide range of skills.
I’ve edited this to remove the snark from my initial post where I mentioned something about being much closer to the people in question than you might guess, trying to keep conversation high quality. What do you recommend I research?
He's a lawyer and economist, a National Master chess player, and a (multiple) startup founder (PayPal, Palintir, etc), investor (first outside investor in Facebook). And he is actually also a "hedge fund guy", but he does not seem to be a software guy of any sort.
As far as I can tell from a very great distance, he is highly intelligent and has been demonstrably successful across multiple domains of expertise, and certainly smarter than your previous remark would seem to imply.
EDIT: just saw your kind response. Perhaps just read through the above wikipedia page. He's obviously a very polarizing individual, but whether you personally like or hate his politics, it seems pretty clear that he's a pretty brilliant person -- as smart as Reid Hoffman on the other side of the aisle (whom he is good friends with.) It seems wise to be friends with (and have friendly debates with) people who disagree with you, especially if they are very smart. Iron sharpens iron. Thanks for elevating the level of discourse!
Alright, I grouped in PayPal with software, but point taken. That being said, it makes the simile in my original post line up even more. I also think Ken Griffin is highly intelligent, I just don’t think either of them are the political experts they seem to present themselves as. Thank you as well, appreciate the dialog.
I think I understand now; just not sure what the definition of a political expert is, but I'm not sure if anyone fits the bill (or even would want to.)
To comment on the podcast itself, I found it decently interesting but unsatisfying because the guest didn't go deeper into Thiel's thinking and ecosystem.
As someone who is interested enough in Thiel to buy a Rene Girard book, too much of this episode is 'intro' stuff.
He can say and do and present himself as this and that all he likes and everyone will run around hanging off his every word defending this and impugning that. He has money.
He has also not been hesitant to use his money to shut down Gawker by bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit. When it became public which claims would make Gawker’s insurance pay for the defense and damages, they specifically dropped those claims so that Gawker would be responsible for the damages themselves.
Money is just one form of power, not the most powerful.
Putin for example has way more power than any wealthy Russian oligarch. They have money but they will do anything to avoid getting on Putin's bad side.
>> Money is power.
> Money is just one form of power, not the most powerful.
I've over thought this one a lot and happened on an anthropology book that confirmed my position:
Power is the ability to influence or induce action. Money is a medium of exchange which acts as a mechanism to induce economic activity. Entertainment companies, media companies, and even social media influencers have the ability to manipulate perception which may induce action. Money is an odd beast in the landscape of power because it grants access to "API's" of power. Lobbying, media buys, hiring employees, and even purchasing portions of the economy(i.e. businesses). My point, and where I agree with you, is that money, in and of itself, is not power... it is a medium through which one can express power.
Peter Thiel is a man who got lucky in the dotcom boom, expanded that fortune by merely having no shame and starting companies to spy on us for governments, laments that women get to vote, funded Trump, is now funding people to encourage war with China, bought land in New Zealand to escape to after America is ruined by himself. That HN is so fascinated by him is so disappointing. The man represents the worst of humanity in every way, we should be allied against people like him.
> That HN is so fascinated by him is so disappointing. The man represents the worst of humanity in every way, we should be allied against people like him.
Agree with the second sentence, but I'm pretty interested in Thiel because he's one of the few, and maybe only, prominent tech billionaires who does not talk in PR-speak and pretend that capitalism is benevolent.
His well known "competition is for losers" point exhibits how he candidly rejects capitalist articles of faith that are held and espoused by the dishonest and the stupid.
> we should be allied against people like him.
Oracle's Larry E is also a multi-billionaire Trump supporting right-winger, but he hides his malevolence and ideology, so there's little talk about him.
Thiel is one of the most vicious, petty hypocrites around.
Believes fiercely in free speech, but bankrolls an entire lawsuit to get revenge on a press publication that outs him.
Goes on and on about being a libertarian but his company, Palantir, is just about the worst abuser of privacy one can imagine, and then uses his connections with Trump to pardon Levandowski.
Espouses a distinctly anti-government, pro-corporate fantasy where the best in business are ostensibly the smartest and most viable leaders, yet whole-heartedly backs Trump, perhaps the least successful businessman one can name, even today and bankrolls the next wave of populist right-wing candidates who take the approach to the lowest possible denominators.
Screw him. I wouldn't take funding from any firm he's associated with.
The least successful businessman (we use business person these days) is a weak point because Hilary isn't a business person. The fact that we can name Trump means he is more successful compared to most. Libertarian doesn't mean privacy. Lawsuits are part of his speech.
The Libertarian platform literally has a section saying, “Libertarians advocate individual privacy and government transparency.” I am not sure where you got the confidence that it does not mean this, can you elaborate?
I keep seeing Thiel called a libertarian. He may have been at one time but I get the sense he has converted to national conservatism or perhaps even more extreme views such as neoreaction. Those are not libertarian views at all.
If that were the case he would not be alone. There has been a mass conversion of libertarians to those sorts of views in the 20-teens. Many others converted to the far left. It feels as if libertarianism is dead.
I don’t really know. I’m just wondering if he still calls himself that.
> perhaps even more extreme views such as neoreaction
Evidence? I have and listened to Thiel extensively and see no signs of neoreaction. In fact, he has been pretty consistent in his claims of pursuing a less violent future.
I think to the posters point, his words and actions don’t line up. If he wants a less violent future, he shouldn’t bankroll those advocating for, condoning, or downplaying violence such as zip ties and gallows at the Capitol.
How do you know he doesn't have some theory of change that leads him to believe supporting Blake Masters, J.D. Vance, etc. won't lead to a less violent future? Maybe he believes they'll take an extremely hard line on China which will end up as a deterrent and prevent an action on Taiwan which would start a massive war or trade dispute tearing the world apart. I don't have any special insights here, but just because he backs politicians that you may find odious, doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't going for a less violent future.
You’re taking a utilitarian and relativistic view on this, which feels disingenuous in this context. He is already backing people who {support, condone, downplay} violence that has already happened.
I don’t find it debating on good faith to ignore real violence by countering with hypothetical violence. Furthermore, he could easily advocate for a more hawkish view on China - a wildly popular view across the entire American political spectrum - while using his platform to disavow the real violence already done against Americans (that is also dividing us at a time when we need to have a united front against China.)
So, sure, we could do mental gymnastics to find some weird, hypothetical justification, or we could just look at the evidence in front of us.
These aren't the views of the poster you're responding to -- they're just speculating about what Thiel's unstated motivations could be. So accusations of bad faith don't really apply here as far as I can see.
Thiel seems pragmatic, if nothing else, so it's not a leap to speculate that he's thinking in terms of tradeoffs here (minor violence now vs major violence later).
He could do as you propose, but that might not be an effective strategy (seems likely not to be), however pure it might make him in our bubble's calculations.
Why is that disingenuous? Plenty of people/governments/whatever have backed awful people for "the greater good." His theory of change might be that it's worth destroying American democracy in order to preserve American hegemony because he believes it's a fundamentally better world with America as the sole superpower; my point was I don't have any special insight and that people are really complicated and sometimes just because they do things we don't like, doesn't mean they're bad people.
I think “destroying American democracy” can pretty firmly put you in the “bad” camp unless you start doing some odd mental gymnastics.
I also think “destroying American democracy” is by definition unconstitutional, simply by what the “un-“ preface means in English.
I agree people are really complicated but thankfully, there are lines people can cross that allow us to straightforwardly recognize them as “bad” without making the only bar for that something extreme like Satan.
> His theory of change might be that it's worth destroying American democracy in order to preserve American hegemony because he believes it's a fundamentally better world with America as the sole superpower
This is the logic of autocrats. In this supposed less violent future, I'm guessing Peter Theil sees himself and rich people like him as the elites in charge of post-democratic American hegemony, don't you think?
I'm sorry if I'm not convinced that this billionaire, who owns a mass surveillance company literally named after a fictional surveillance technology that was used to deceive people, is advocating for the destruction of American democracy and the subsequent elevation of his own power for altruistic reasons.
Whether you realize it or not, your oblique approach is undermining your claims. What is your claim, specifically? Who did Thiel bankroll? For how much? Why? What did they do with respect to Jan 6?
Thiel is heavily behind his protege, Blake Masters.
Representative sample:
"Saving Arizona PAC, the Thiel-funded effort that has already spent nearly $1.7 million in Arizona, has launched ads attacking state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Masters' principal GOP opponent, for rejecting Trump's lie that voter fraud cost him the election.
"Mark Brnovich says President Trump is wrong on voter fraud. Really? Brnovich failed to convene a grand jury, certified Biden as president. Now he's nowhere to be found, making excuses … instead of standing with our president," the ad says." [0]
If you can't find evidence of Thiel's direct or by association diminishing of January 6th, then you're either not looking in good faith or you don't know how to use a computer.
I mean, first of all, Trump himself??? Blake Masters? Kris Kobach? My claim is exactly what I stated. These people, including Thiel, support politicians who support, condone, or downplay violence that has already happened. Whether you realize it or not, trying to get intellectual about simple things is undermining the doubt you’re trying to cast.
That’s a fantastic piece on a nexus that has puzzled me as much as it puzzles this writer. The thing I find most puzzling is how confused and irrational yet oddly unified it is.
I think that unity comes from all the misogyny and racism. It’s more identity politics than the identity politics they despise. They doth protest too much.
I've seen the term mis-characterized, for lack of a better word. I've seen European libertarian, eastern (US) libertarian, southern (US) libertarian people describe their beliefs all in vastly different ways. Some I'd characterize as heavily socialist, some heavily.... right, some heavily left, some just as a "alternative" to two main US parties.
I think the decline of libertarian attitudes is part of why things are so polarized, for exactly that reason. If we can live and let live it’s okay if we think differently. If we are arguing over what everyone must be forced to do, disagreement becomes an actual threat.
I don't know what the textbook definition is, but I think libertarianism (in the US, in my experience) is more about being against government regulation. Even if regulation would increase freedom (for, say, a minority group) libertarians will tend to be against it.
It depends. Libertarians of the more Randian school tend toward the view that there are only individual rights, not “states rights” and such. If the Fed intervenes to support individual rights that is justified. Local tyranny is not superior to Federal tyranny.
A lot of people I know who call themselves libertarians - not all, but the loudest - are what I would describe as opportunistic freedom-warriors when it suits their purposes. Pointing out to them the degree to which their safety and prosperity is being safeguarded by the government they think unnecessary just results in cognitive dissonance for them: They can't accept it emotionally. So they live in a fantasy where they believe they ultimately control every aspect of their own destiny, and where everyone else must be a fool, but their political views are not much more than a series of post-justifications for being fairly lousy human beings.
As I understand the taxonomy, Libertarians are more closely aligned with anarcho-capitalists, to the point where I tend to consider them equivalent.
Anarcho-capitalists believe in the primacy of property rights above all else. It is a system which explicitly requires an enforcement mechanism - such as, ideally, a private police system, with the right to use force against citizens to protect the rights of property holders.
Anarchism is in general a utopian (but IMO idealistic, and intrinsically unstable) system where no person has authority over any other. There can be no police force because everyone has effectively the same rights. (There are lots of variations on this general theme). Anarchism has a bad reputation (the reasons for this are in themselves interesting) but by definition it is anti-authoritarian.
I personally think that most libertarians I’ve met are actually anarcho-capitalists, and not anarchists. Despite sounding alike, the two systems could hardly be more different.
I have a problem with calling him a libertarian, I would call him an opportunist in the same mould as shikreli who doesn’t seem to have any moral/ethical lines when trying to make money. That is what defines him more libertarianism.
In reality, many of America's problems are due to the unfettering of ruthless & selfish oligarchs -- like himself -- who don't have the foggiest sense of "collective social good". A paradox indeed. It's hard to not view his political activity as mere scapegoating while he continues to make billions in the most depraved of manners (e.g. Palantir).