Peter Thiel helped build big tech. Now he wants to tear it all down

The skills required to be a good capitalist are almost in direct opposition to the skills needed for good governance. Capitalism requires a certain degree of ruthlessness, a lot of risk taking, and maximizing efficiency. Politics (ideally) requires empathy, risk mitigation, and consensus building.

It also doesn't help that Thiel is a bit of a troll when it comes to politics. When talking about business/startups he comes across as fairly reasonable and composed. But when it comes to politics his words and actions take on a more Trumpian tone. And this tone pre-dates Trump's influence on politics. For example his Stanford Review work was fairly troll-ish in nature.

Taleb is basically a con artist imo. He writes about ideas which are obvious but obfuscated to seem insightful, then claims that mainstream experts don't agree with them, and implies that he was the first to understand it and that you must be a smart person because you see it all yourself. It's a vicious persuasive technique and it seems to be his entire MO. Constantly he will attack people by asserting they hold specific views and challenge them to defend them.

I'm curious, do you believe far right is the sad part or nationalism?

I ask this because naturally I find both the far left and far right equally insane in their convictions (which never stand up to scrutiny). But being against nationalism is a separate issue and seems equally looney to me.

Maybe stop having a duopoly politic, and give people more chances then to choose between pest an cholera would help more then being against "far right" and with that automatically have to vote for democrats, but hey i think both democrats and republicans love that, the old ping pong.

I've got the gist of Thiel's ideology from this debate (between Graeber and Thiel: "Where did the future go?"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0cz9OmCGw

...which really did bring out many weaknesses and contradictions in his ideas. Which was disappointing, since many here on HN praised him as a pretty bright thinker.

First of all, I'll repeat that I'm not an American and neither an expert on (presumably) your country's politics, so this is just my armchair observation.

Thiel is funding a new breed of politicians with "hard-right" ideals. The first is Donald Trump [1], which I don't think I need to expatiate following those riots (that was widely used to mock the USA) globally.

His, protégé, Blake Masters, is running for the Arizona Senate position (backed by $10 million+ of Thiel's donations [2]). Masters has some unique ideas, such as opposing Roe vs Wade (abortion rights) and expanding gun rights (in his words, "Eliminating or restructuring the ATF, Repealing the National Firearms Act, and Opposing every kind of federal firearms database or gun registry"). You can see them right on his website - https://www.blakemasters.com/.

Also, JD Vance (backed by $10 million+ of Thiel's money [2]). Vance also has some unique ideas, such as promoting claims that Trump lost the election because of voter fraud [3] or suggesting that Biden was intentionally allowing fentanyl to flood the US because it mainly affected the Republican base [4]. You can check his website and see policy ideals similar to Masters' - https://jdvance.com/issues/.

Now, I'm not saying that everything about them is bad (everyone has flaws). I tried my best to use non-biased political resources (Reuters and Politico have a great rep on my end).

I don't understand much about American politics, but from the little I know, if I was there, I'd be nothing close to a "leftist", but more like a pro-capitalist "conservative", so I'm not really looking at this stuff from a biased lens.

So, from my foreign armchair, I just look at some stuff US politicians say and do (mostly Republicans for unclear reasons) and I'm like, nah dude, that's too extreme...

1- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-thiel-...

2- https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/17/peter-thiel-senate-...

3- https://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-news/2021/10/vance-spou...

4- https://sports.yahoo.com/j-d-vance-wildly-suggests-021349250...

> Are you able to do a steelman of Thiel's politics, where Thiel himself would agree with your characterization?

Would someone acting in bad faith ever agree to such a thing? Maybe you could goad him into saying yes once but the right tends to use terms like "strawman" or "silencing" as a thought terminating cliche without any attempt to make clarifications.

I don't know anything of Thiel's politics besides his support for Trump, but it's difficult to imagine such a person could be a serious thinker or would have any serious political positions.

> I can't say I've seen many articles that really try to understand Thiel's politics or intentions

I mean...it's not like there is much to understand. Him, Mercer and Bannon became extremely passionate about getting Trump in the WH and as soon as 2017 came around they lost all the leverage and didn't even try to strongarm Trump into doing whatever they thought was to be done.

The 3 men have been extremely relevant in getting Trump elected but were essentially gone by 2017.

I have no references for this but my guess would be related to the idea that there are two genders and those genders cannot/should not be changed. Most of the time when I see people ask your question they are trying to draw out something to do with racism, but that's really quite the strawman; very few conservatives are seeking the ability to use racial slurs under the guise of free speech.

> Thiel actively manipulates these same channels for his benefit.

That's what GP is saying...

How was Thiel pumping bitcoin and manipulating social media channels? He has no social media presence at all. I saw one speech at a Bitcoin conference that no one else really watched and I figured he liked the tech due to his politics. But he wasn't pumping it.

> Much in the same way Musk pumped his own stock and sold (along with his brother) at the top.

If he had a crystal ball about the future of the market and Tesla stock, why didn't he sell more? Seems like he left a lot of money on the table.

> Thiel has no principles. He is an empire builder. His goal is to protect his wealth and build it through whatever means possible

There are a lot of things you can say about Thiel but he's not all about protecting his wealth. He personally spent $10 million to fight Gawker for refusing a court order to take down an illegal sex tape of someone. He also suffered a huge reputational hit by supporting and funding Trump early on.

He has principles, just ones that you may not agree with.

I also agree that the two are incompatible, but in a different way: why don't we ditch the liberal concept of freedom and save democracy instead?

From the Online Etymology Dictionary, "freedom":

> Old English freodom "power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance;" see free (adj.) + -dom.

> Meaning "exemption from arbitrary or despotic control, civil liberty" is from late 14c.

> Meaning "possession of particular privileges" is from 1570s.

Isn't it interesting that the definition of freedom has changed from escape from control, to control itself? This happened roughly around the time when the Enlightenment started and liberal thoughts were beginning to spread in Europe, which is also the time when ideas of private property and capitalism were starting to take shape. Take note that one of the most fundamental "freedoms" of liberalism which is private property, can only be enforced by the state with violence or threats of violence, usually done by the police or the army. So at this point freedom has become an oxymoron, since to be free one has to submit to total authority of the law. I think neoliberalism is just an extension of this contradiction - you are encouraged to participate "freely" in the free market, which is held by the global financial system which is backed by the dollar and consequently the military powers of the United States. No matter where you escape to, any economic activity has to be done through the hegemonic powers of the world, and losing access to it means doom for your country and your people (ex. Cuba).

So I view Thiel's search for his ultimate ideal of freedom by ditching democracy is futile, since the liberal conception of freedom itself was already contradictory and impossible to achieve. He can only think of more totalitarian ways to enforce a "free" system upon the people (so probably they can do whatever they want, like you have already said). The problem is that believing in contradictions don't automatically make societies fall, as Deleuze has said: "No one has ever died from contradictions. And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way.” So as you have described nicely in your last sentence, most people will continue to get fucked regardless, until we fucking do something about it.

By the way, Graeber has written a lot about the subject of freedom in many of his books and papers (the most evident one being his last book "The Dawn of Everything" co-written by Wengrow.) I think you'll enjoy his works if you have some shared sympathies with Thiel's views of libertarianism, regardless of if you're labelled left/right in the current political climate. Graeber has once written about a topic Thiel was also interested in ("Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit": https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...), and they've also met together and had a debate about this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0cz9OmCGw).

You’re conflating truth and opinion. “Slavery is morally right” is an opinion (a shitty one), not a “truth”. Lying about objective truth is a much more egregious offense than pushing your shitty opinion, imo

>In the antebellum South slavery was morally right

I don't think this is correct, abolitionism was a thing particularly within the most religious (read:moral) groups of people. Only a tiny fraction of southerners owned slaves, most estimates put that number at under 2% of the population, and there isn't much evidence that the owners of slaves even claimed to have the moral high ground, let alone the 98% of the population that didn't own slaves.

That's not to say abolitionists saw all races as equal, and it also doesn't ignore those who tried to roll out the story of Ham to justify slavery, but there was no consensus on the morality of the institution even at its height. If there were and if it were considered the morally "right" thing to do then we would have seen far more people becoming slave owners, especially among the most religious.

Slavery was essentially a business decision, not a moral one. And not a very good business decision either, even if you can look past the evil of it all.