People are focusing shame on Peter Thiel today but that's the wrong place. There will always be rich people.
Yeah, he could. But that was not in fact what he did. Gawker didn't lose by attrition, they lost a particular case they damn well deserved to lose.
On the other hand, Thiel says Gawker's former victims have been forced to settle for a pittance because of attrition on their end. That sounds entirely plausible.
Money matters in court, by default that favours corporations (including media corporations like Gawker, and their $200-million owner Nick Denton) over all but the richest of individuals. That's the status quo, now the media are upset that it didn't work in their favor for once.
However, the Thiel involvement produced a vindictive and revenge-based strategy to try the case in such a way that Gawker couldn't use their insurance to pay the damages.
So I don't think anybody's arguing that Gawker shouldn't have lost that case. But it's clear the motive here wasn't just punishment, it was to put Gawker out of business.
And I used to hate Gawker because of all this Valleywag nonsense they did, but they have a lot of good sites today.
It's not the insurance company that has wronged him. It's perfectly reasonable for Bollea to seek deterrence rather than settlement money/damages. Anyone would prefer that, unless they were forced to settle for something else for money reasons. Usually the plaintiff would settle/go for damages because they have to prefer money, because going to court is damn expensive.
So saying this was unfair and vindictive is presuming that the status quo, where money decides court cases, is just and reasonable. That Bollea should have been forced to go for the money because he's not really rich, he just has a rich backer. But I disagree with that. As long as money matters in court, the more people get access to multimillionaire justice the better.
The short article just tries to show that the new billionaires are not different than old billionaires. They won't hesitate to use their power for personal gain in any area.
Well, you may say, of course, they will use their power for their personal gain. Well, yes, that is the point. Silicon Valley billionaires are not different.
Thiel's history with Gawker is irrelevant to whether the cause is noble. If the cause is noble, it's noble regardless of who is funding it and why. If funding cancer research is noble, it is still noble even if you became interested because you had cancer.
Which reveals the lie behind the term "justice system". It's a judicial system. Its goal is to render judgments. Its relationship to justice exists only in the abstract.
Peter Thiel is not an automaton. he is a human being. he bears responsibility for his actions. he might not be doing anything illegal, but it is perfectly justified to expect more of people than merely following the letter of the law, and as for the rest, anything goes! it is particularly justified to expect more from such influential people like him. he bears, if not legal, then moral responsibility. and after all, laws did not spring out of Zeus' head or something, we defined them, and situations like this, and discussions that they instigate, can change those laws.
I don't like moral expectations because it works like a black box, which I would be okay with if only the results weren't so lacking and unreliable. When discourse is constrained by limited resources, I prefer to speak of mechanisms because I feel it has a more plausible relationship with moral results.
When I'm one on one with you, then of course, we might discuss our moral framework and expectations, standards which may go far higher than brute mechanisms.
no system can be perfect. even in pure math you have Gödel. in the ugly gray world of real life, of human societies, it can only be worse. unpredictable outcomes, grey areas,.. they are unavoidable. so i think we must do both - create systems which try to guarantee good order, and always complement them with a human touch. and that means personal moral responsibility, and a duty to think of more than just satisfying the dead letter of the law. furthermore, a system which would exactly codify morality is probably impossible, or even deadly for society. (just imagine what it means to have laws covering everything that is immoral... it would be the most extremely totalitarian state imaginable.) a lot will always be left to people themselves, to decide and to enforce in this way, through open public discussions, and their ugly brother, public blaming and shaming. it not even clear: should we even make a law against what Mr Thiel is doing? the answer does not seem so easy to me.
also, how could this discussion even take place if no one should judge the actions of Mr Thiel? what kind of abstract articles would we then be reading? "somebody somewhere did something, we can't say too much about what, so you don't figure out who it is"? :)
BTW, is it not kinda funny to defend a well known libertarian by proposing a stricter system? :)
Really, this is a solved problem elsewhere.
Suppose that rich media-owner slandered you. Even if the lawsuit would not be frivolous, the small possibility that you would lose and have to pay for the rich guy's very expensive lawyers would dissuade you from suing him in the first place.
(Clearly you care or you wouldn't have wound up in this thread.)
Since Thiel revealed his involvement, that has been the story which makes me think maybe he was right to conceal it. his name and money had nothing to do with this crime.
The fact is some people want other people to fail, they want their companies to fail, it may be rational or it may be irrational or it may be revenge based but society allows that. You can short a stock if you want, if you have enough money you can even affect the price of the stock. Gawker placed itself in a situation where it had substantial financial risk, Thiel simply exploited it. Don't make powerful enemies, don't break laws, this is avoidable stuff. It wasn't a frivolous lawsuit that some billionaire manipulated in to a company killer. Nobody's taken out tmz or drudge or many of the others....
It's also ironic, I'd argue that any deal to pay for lawyers is a private matter. The very existence of that privacy is a concept gawker doesn't seem to comprehend and that's what caused their problem in the first place.
Same here. I'd have also continued to make it secret. I expect the media to carry out a series of character assassinations on Peter Thiel on baseless grounds, and then self referentially refer to their campaigns of the past as evidence for campaigns of the present. "Oh Thiel? That guy who was constantly being sued by [media ally] before, he's being sued again [different media ally] to nobody's [the media] surprise. Ha ha, what a bunch these crazy Silicon Valley tycoons are, I bet Joe Public is tired [opinion forming] of their petty games".
The main threat to Thiel is probably the opportunity cost of fending off the media all the time. The only solution I can think of is a diversion.
I am pretty sure that if Thiel funds private investigators into Denton's crew and the Devil himself, he'll find plenty of distraction material for the media to devour their own. After all, Nick Denton has likely already unleashed the hounds and this would merely be returning the favour.
It is dirty but that is how this is played I'm afraid. It gets worse from here!
Nothing to stop the Koch brothers from doing this.
The goal here seems to be to make sure that Gawker won't be able to secure funding for further litigation which it'll lose anyway.
We need a single-payer legal system.