Peter Thiel on the Dangers of Progress
unherd.com
unherd.com
Jon makes a narrow argument, but it’s persuasive to me. I’ve said before that Thiel is the most interesting billionaire, but his high-minded thinking is right now cashing out in the campaigns of two low-brow, bog-standard Trumpist senate candidates: Masters and Vance.
PS: If you earn wages by working for someone, you are a worker no matter how much you earn
Technological progress is generally what I'm referring to
The masses arguing over which form of control they are under is the best of the lot is more than acceptable to those in power.
Progress and power do not seem to typically go hand in hand. Lots of “progress,” very little progress.
At least this time the unionizers aren't getting slaughtered by cops I guess?
There is no evening out the power balance. Going at it like that is committing to a never-ending battle for slightly better. It would still be the commoners banding together to feel less pain from the powerful. But that’s all. Less pain.
Why tolerate any pain handed from one class to a “lower” one?
Unions are treating a symptom.
From my perspective the root cause is capitalism itself
It is older than currency. Just more informally at that point, but maybe more explicitly.
So long as you’ve picked an ism to fight, the powerful get to sleep at night.
We currently incentivize greed, changing this would mitigate many of the issues.
The slope is slippery and the cost is great.
No, I’m not offering a solution. To the problem of capitalism, or to any other. But it is hard to get excited about more symptom solving.
Greed comes close, but it is broader. A tyrant doesn’t have to be wealthy. Which is why another “ism” just doesn’t do it for me. Power doesn’t have to be draped in gold. (It just tends to be.)
If you think the problem is innate to humans, we can't change it without changing humans themselves. At this point that is unrealistic, and we currently have a system that literally rewards greed. It rewards greed not only with money but with power. Political and corporate power systems reward greed, to make any progress that must be changed.
Human progress is incremental, the next best step we can take is to implement mitigations to the innate issues present.
You talk bad about "isms" but present no tangible solution. Quite frankly, that is not helpful. Greed for power has already been identified quite some time ago and systems have been thought up as mitigations to this problem. We need a tangible solution that we can put into place now because we have people suffering at the hands of others currently.
I suggest you read about socialism and how the system is set up to mitigate these problems, as considering your statement about greed being able to taint the system, I don't think you understand how it works.
“You have no solution so that’s not helpful.” I’m not offering you a target so I should be quiet. I’m not providing an alternative so the problem needs no more thought. No value from discussion not about socialism. Check.
“Duh to anything where I agree with you, you simply misunderstood my words and Lenin’s words, and nothing you said is original.” Not looking for common ground. General negation. Check.
“Progress is incremental,” and “we need solutions.” Rolls with shutting down discussion, socialism is the only viable and we have no time to look for alternatives, let’s just do. Check.
“I suggest you read my book. You don’t understand it.” Check and check.
From the above, I have to assume you are only interested in socialism, not the broader problems with the formation and decay of conscious society at a global scale. Let me know if that changes.
Do you really not understand why socialism isn’t working? Why people might fear it could just as easily be corrupted as anything else? Your reply is practically performance art on the subject.
As I said the problem has been identified long ago, restating the issue doesn't help anything. We need a solution.
How do you even define consciousness of society?what does that even mean? How do you know it even changed?
As I said I disagree with the dogma. The problem is not identified. That’s my disagreement. Just a symptom. And treatment of symptoms can be as problematic as the symptoms. Until the cause is addressed it isn’t going away.
It also horrifies me that you suggest we move on from discussion because dead men have already discussed. That sounds awful conservative, tbph. Perhaps I should reread some things.
“How do you even define consciousness of society?” Excellent question! But why do you phrase it in such a way as to suggest looking into the unknown and asking questions is a waste of time? Again, that sounds oddly the opposite of… progress.
So you claimed that innate desire for power is the root of the problem, I agreed and clarified, and now you're saying it isn't identified? I can't tell if you're serious or disingenuous. Your statements seem completely disingenuous.
I suggest we move on because we finished with the identification, why would we linger on that after its finished. That's a bullshit move to muddy the waters and prevent progress. That is what reactionary conservatives do
I phrased it in that way because I suspected you had no idea what that actually meant and are just stringing words together for dramatic effect. To have a discussion on a topic we need to have agreed upon definitions, but with the way you waffle back and forth in ambiguity I find it hard to believe you actually want to try.
No, the issue isn’t as simple as lust for power. You finished the identification and the solution selection. And now we are to move on. At least to the solution. I’m sure we can breeze by that too, if only you can get this simpleton blow-hard to think, right?
It isn’t simple lust. But again you don’t really want to go down this road, as you keep accusing me of. The world is cleaner when power is bad and people can’t handle it themselves. (Let’s solve that. With… very careful objective power. Yes yes.)
So I’ll make this as clear as I can. If you think identification is complete, I disagree. The comment I linked made that pretty clear, or so I thought.
Your very strong desire to move on has now been stated. As has mine to not simply assume that the elders have solved the problem. Now what?
Feel free to keep tossing bait though. You came just shy of admitting it. So I’ll take it the rest of the way for you.
It really impresses upon me why socialism is the best choice for a harmonious future. Thanks for that.
It must take quite a lot of skill to use so many words while saying nothing at all
But you did manage to provide a fantastic example for me. I appreciate that. From your entering the scene like a MLM stereotype, all the way to that last response. Fantastic, really. More than I hoped for.
That being said, you aren’t legitimately interested in discussion, at least outside of your area of interest, to put it gently, and I really don’t want to upset you any more than I already have. That last comment looked like a struggle for you. Don’t feel like you have to respond.
Having a change of heart? Or preparing another barb?
I’ll be here. Take your time.
Progress is just another club for the prehistorical hi-tech person.
Think tanks spread that bs
Capitalism was good for its time, it came after feudalism and allowed more freedoms and progress. After the industrial revolution we can now produce such an insane excess of goods yet all of that productivity is captured by a few capital owners instead of being spread out to benefit the workers that produce the goods