The Peter Thiel Paradox
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lrb.co.uk
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).
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)
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.
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.
So the real enemy is tribalism.
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.
AIPAC is far too powerful for that to happen.
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.
"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 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.
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 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.
That's not my impression, nor is there any mention of the word in the Wikipedia on his political views:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk#Political_p...
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…
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
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!
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.
As someone who is interested enough in Thiel to buy a Rene Girard book, too much of this episode is 'intro' stuff.
Money is power. Power is money.
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.
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.
This is an article from the NYT before they knew it was financed by Thiel: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/business/dealbook/gawker-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
0: https://www.salon.com/2021/10/15/peter-thiel-bets-on-the-far...
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://reason.com/2020/08/02/wait-wasnt-peter-thiel-a-liber...
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.
Libertarians also have the specific problem that we attract a disproportionate number of people who hate everything...
In which case it seems entirely possible to be a libertarian and have strong personal beliefs of wildly different flavors.