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LeoJiWoo

Rumors are swirling that Thiel is gearing up for economic/regulatory war on silicon valley.

So I can't say this is surprising but I find it all extremely confusing.

EDIT: Mostly rumors I hear from happy hours with some politicos in DC. Sorry, its just meat space rumors.

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What kind of rumors? Any links or anything that would give some context?

Apparently an AG that Thiel gave money to is investigating google for antitrust stuff in Missouri:

“But it’s not the first time Thiel has handed cash to an AG who went after Google over monopoly concerns.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Nov. 13 that his office was investigating Google to see if the Mountain View tech giant had violated the state’s antitrust and consumer-protection laws. The Missouri attorney general said he had issued an investigative subpoena to Google. He’s looking at the firm’s handling of users’ personal data, along with claims that it misappropriated content from rivals and pushed down competitors’ websites in search results.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/15/is-billionaire-vc-pete...

What would he have to gain from such a war?

The ones who profit the most from more regulations are usually the big existing players (in the case of general regulations). He has a lot of investments in big players, so the motive would be good old monetary gain. In the case of more specialized regulations targeting single players can be used to take out the competition (e.g. hurting Google might be good for his stake in Facebook).

Regulatory lock for both Palantir and Facebook. Regulations can be very good for large businesses as they erect enormous barriers to entry into certain spaces that only established companies can hope to surmount.

I am not willing to believe that on such scarce evidence. I not exactly a fan of Peter Thiel, but I am not convinced he is that ruthless.

However, if it were true, it matches so perfectly the article he wrote for WSJ a few years ago. It was literally titled "Competition is for losers". [1]

I still do not think that he basically wants to bully all the competition away so he can make more money and become more powerful. And I will not even go into how likely it is that could actually succeed with such a move, if he did.

But still - if the rumors should turn out to be true, we cannot say that nobody could have seen that coming, in fact he told us himself what he was going to do. If.

And at that point truth has become indeed stranger than fiction.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...

I mean, it's straight out of his book Zero to One, something about being "last to market"

The high falutin fancy pants term is regulatory capture[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Thiel is clearly a libertarian nutter of the Bannon varietal, from his statements and interviews.

To them "all regulations == bad," lacking nuance and honest reality in preference to utopian illusions that align with the interests of unlimited greed.

It’s clear you don’t know Thiel. Comparing him to Bannon is just ridiculous.

A few large silicon valley companies have a large concentration of power. Libertarians like distribution of power among smaller entities.

That doesn't sound like the Peter Thiel I have heard about. If his writing is any reflection of his beliefs, he is a big fan of monopolies (unless he doesn't own them).

My impression of Thiel is more the "superman" type approach to libertarianism. Power should be concentrated among the worthy (aka me).

That's not a great summary of libertarian beliefs, and the exact opposite of Thiel's stated beliefs.

But that's not Thiel at all. He does want power concentrated; he just wants to be one of those it's concentrated with.

He wants power to be as concentrated as it should be when people are free to gain and lose power as consequences of their decisions. That's contrasted with bureaucratic insulation whereby power isn't gained or lost with bad or good decisions.

Nothing I've seen indicates that's even remotely close to the truth. He wants power to be concentrated with him.

Then why did he support another person's presidential run?

And why is it a problem for him to concentrate power so long as the power transfer is consensual? or democratic?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/natural_born_citizen

If this is true and not just rumors, my guess would be that it's political. SV tends to lean left or left-libertarian.

Righteous vengeance? He seems like the kind of guy who enjoys that kind of thing. He took a ton of flak for supporting Trump, and I'll bet a lot of people burned bridges, certain of a Clinton victory. But then against all odds Trump won and all of a sudden Thiel has a lot of friends in high places, and it's payback time.

What does this mean?

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