Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay

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100 pointsr4vik14 comments

Here's my "secret" I believe to be true.

Rule of law makes countries rich. Rule of law foster cooperation and trust in societies. People can trust authorities and each other.

Democracies don't foster trust. Instead, they ferment disrespect and corruption. Politicians make law to gain vote. They don't care about long term consequences. They want pork for their district, not efficient funding. That lead to distrust, fear, and non-cooperation. People wouldn't help each other if they think they're going to get screwed or the courts can't help make it right.

Judges are the one who are immune to democratic pressure, yet they make ruling that even politicians will follow. If they don't, they destroy the consent of the people. They destroy trust in the law.

Therefore, western nations are powerful and rich in spite of democracy and elected officials. They are held together by independent judges and jurors.

Signapore and South Korea like to believe that their interventions help. Maybe that's not true at all. Perhaps, they achieve their wealth through not being so corrupted.

This leads to a prediction:

China and India will never be as prosperous as Japan, South Korea, the United States, or Western Europe if their bureaucracies are inefficient and corrupt.

How will this manifest? Their purchasing power will always be lower. Their military will be defeated in wars. They will never be as innovative. Maybe, they will never win any football championship. Maybe their GDP will never quite dwarf the US.

Or maybe they will surpass ours, in spite of the corruption and evilness of their officials. If they didn't in the next 20 years, I will consider myself right.

> Rule of law makes countries rich. Rule of law foster cooperation and trust in societies. People can trust authorities and each other.

I don't think that part of your thesis is too controversial. The big idea of common law, for example, is that courts try to make their decisions reasonably consistent with previous decisions, not because they think that this will necessarily lead to the best decisions each time, but because this makes the law predictable. Predictable laws are an important part of a good business environment.

(Laws with low overhead are also important, mind you. This is why an AP1000 nuclear power plant made in China costs so much less than one built in the US or Europe, even though it's the same damn plant. The overhead of dealing with the government in a very heavyweight regulatory environment is a huge factor in cost and speed.)

My big problem with the legislative branch is that they love to make law and they do so recklessly. This bypass any attempt at making laws consistent and predictable or any attempt to figure out whether those laws are any good.

But it's not the same plant if it is built cutting corners on the design. Or even if it is the same plant, of waste is disposed unsafely or workers are abused, the plant doesn't cost less, the costs are pushed onto unconsenting parties.

You will be hard pressed to find an Indian who believes that we have progressed because of our government or system. The question is how far can we go with the burden of a corrupt system and what happens once we hit that limit.

Sorry but that is just nonsense.

Disrespect and corruption will exist as long as human ambition exists. It is not unique to democracy as is demonstrated every day in places like China or India. And of course politicians will make laws to gain votes. That is the whole point of democracy.

What people don't get is politicians are a perfect reflection of society. For better or worse.

Disrespect and corruption will exist as long as human ambition exists.

I don't believe humans are necessarily always evil. I believe that they are largely malleable in their goodness and evilness.

It is not unique to democracy as is demonstrated every day in places like China or India.

I didn't say that democracy is the only type of government that foster corruption. I did say that democracy help fosters corruption.

What people don't get is politicians are a perfect reflection of society. For better or worse.

Do you believe in the idea of incentive? If so, incentive can determine what kind of politicians we elect. If the incentive is bad, we'll elect bad one. If the incentive is good, we'll elect good one.

I believe democracy, as we westerners practice it, leads us to politicians who are often corrupt.

If you haven't actually read Kaczynski you should. His ideas about goals are interesting, but probably more important are his ideas about how technology inevitably leads to the loss of freedom.

While reading him, remember the professors, grad students, computer store owners, etc. that he killed and injured. Prof Angelakos at Berkeley did a lot of great RF engineering work.

Could you give a quick summary of how technology inevitably leads to loss of freedom?

I understand that this is often the case, but is it always necessarily the case? Ie. Is it a universal law that "Technology leads to loss of freedom"?

It's been about ten years since I last read it, but as I remember the basic argument is:

- Technology can always be used for both good and evil.

- As technology gets more powerful, the potential for causing harm will be greater.

- Each new technology will require new laws in order to minimize the potential harms of that technology.

- Each of those laws is going to have unintended consequences that will result in the loss of freedom.

- As the rate of technological discovery increases, the amount of freedom approaches zero.

He proposes it as a universal law, and I think it makes sense. But I also suspect that the idea that we're approaching the singularity is actually a cognitive distortion caused by observer bias, so things might not be quite as bad as they seem.

Those first four bullets may be true statements, but the second bullet point is a half-truth. It should read "As technology gets more powerful, the potential for causing harm will be greater AND the amount of freedom will increase by some arbitrary amount." It's then reasonable to say that new laws are made to put new technologies in check. It's a lot harder to reach the same conclusion if that's the case.

Secret I believe to be true:

A good deal of experimental research is a cartel on resources and data. The "open access" movement in biology is not what programmers would think of as open; you can get access to many "open" data sets only by application, and you pretty much need to be an academic biologist to be granted an application. Science would be much stronger if there was a norm of truly sharing data. But restricting access is in the interest of each individual researcher who wants to maintain his/her relative prestige advantage.

@kiba, pjscott is correct. But what makes countries rich is not laws. It's natural resources. Either having them, or having control over them, even if they are in another country. Give it some thought. Apply the idea to some sample countries. You might revise your thesis.

Form of government might be a red herring. Corruption and injustice might be tied to people and culture, not simply to form of government. Think about it.

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