With Eye On Future, Billionaire Investor Bets On Paul | Hacker News Reader

With Eye On Future, Billionaire Investor Bets On Paul

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Dear Mr. Thiel:

How about throw some money Gary Johnson's way? It's pretty clear that Ron Paul won't be winning the GOP nomination; but Governor Johnson will likely be on the ballot in all 50 states, as the Libertarian alternative to the major party hegemony.

Thx,

Mindcrime

The problem with Gary Johnson is that when it comes to the financial crisis he's too close to the status quo. His position is that nobody did anything illegal, so no prosecutions, etc.

That's demonstrably false, and the lack of S&L-like prosecutions is a symptom of governmental capture/crony capitalism, and its consequent moral hazard is something we'll paying for sooner or later.

From that perspective, Ron Paul and/or Bill Still > Gary Johnson.

From that perspective, Ron Paul and/or Bill Still > Gary Johnson.

Yeah, but Gary Johnson > Mitt Romney & Barak Obama. And Johnson will (likely) be on the ballot in all 50 states, probably the only candidate other than Romney or Obama who can make that claim.

I supported Paul last time around and was disappointed to discover he wasn't really serious about (or maybe simply not prepared for) winning the primary or having a significant impact on US politics at the expense of his political party. I got the feeling he was perfectly content to let his r3volution get hijacked by the Tea Party and used to suit the purposes of various politicians. The money I donated was not used to mount a serious campaign, but was instead appropriated for other use once the campaign was conceded. I ended up having to vote for Bob Barr. Bob Barr! Fool me twice, you're not gonna fool me again. Paul seems like a good guy, but he's doing more harm than good squandering all these resources that might be better spent on someone who's actually serious about running a viable campaign.

I think the issues with the Paul campaign were more due to incompetence than malice.

His management style is very hands off, and that means some of the people around him which are some times rather clueless or nutty end making a bit of a mess of things.

To me, it seems like he's along for the ride rather than leading anything. He's simply coasting on the momentum of his immutable ethos, and then riding the break from successive waves of the world crashing into it until each is expired. Money given to someone like that is probably wasted; Ron Paul is just going to keep being Ron Paul no matter how much money you throw at him.

His movement has quite a big impact in GOP right now. They are replacing people in local GOP parties with their own. Even if Ron Paul doesn't win now, whoever will be their candidate in 2016 or even for the next Congress elections, will have a very high chance of winning.

You may or may not like the libertarian views, but I'd say they'd be a huge improvement to the current religious conservatives, the neo-conservatives who want more wars and bigger military budgets, and the general corruption within GOP.

I think all that stuff is great, and that's why I supported him last time, but then he also has some less good platforms, like wanting to bring back a gold-backed currency [1], and a perhaps controversial stance on the legality of abortion. He's a mixed bag to me, and on top of that, he just comes off as not being sure why he's even in the race.

[1] Hard currency is deflationary rather than inflationary, which takes away much of the incentive for holders of wealth to place their holdings in relatively risky placements such as seed funding and venture capital funds (a consequence HN readers would surely realize the distateful meaning of). This decreases social mobility, which is anathema to the American Way. Inflation, to a point, is the lubricant for social mobility.

Contrary to your point, the 19th century was a deflationary period and there was massive wealth creation and innovation. Inflation is not and was never a lubricant for social mobility.

There was tremendous wealth concentration, ultimately leading to the New Deal and Federal Reserve.

The New Deal had absolutely nothing to do with the late Victorian period (or the 19th century.) The New Deal was a reaction to the Great Depression.

There was indeed great wealth concentration in the 19th century, but there was also a massive amount of wealth creation that benefited more than just the very wealthy.

The Federal Reserve had little to do with the concentration of wealth. The Federal Reserve was the culmination of decades of lobbying to bring back a central bank the U.S.

Ron Paul will never be president. And he was never going to be president.

It's not just that he's too intellectual and not suave and good-looking enough. It's that he actually wants to run the government. The bureaucracy, the intellectuals, the press, and monied business interests don't want to see a more innovative, more free, and more forward-looking country. They like preserving the power they have just fine, thank you.

And the press, the academy, and big business have enough influence over public opinion to prohibit anyone they really don't like from winning power.

The purpose of sending money to Ron Paul and voting for Ron Paul is to move the Overton Window. [1]

The day that someone like Ron Paul can win the presidency, there will be dozens like him running and he won't seem like a special shining light. The thing that does make Paul special is that he is running when it's impossible to win but still possible for things to change.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Meh. If he's not in it to win, I don't see the point. Sure, nothing gets handed to you on a silver platter, positive national media coverage in particular, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, it just means you need a very creative strategy. Paul doesn't have that.

I'd like to see libertarians admit that most people simply don't like Ron Paul and his policy platform, rather than try and claim it as a conspiracy of the political elite to keep him out.

The political elite, like most of America, don't give two shits about Ron Paul. They're not afraid of him; they ignore him. He's easy to ignore, because he will never be a threat. He will never be president, not just because he doesn't have the charisma to win an election, but because his policies are actively off-putting.

Paul fans like to claim that there are things to ling about him from all sides of the political spectrum. This is true. As a liberal, I like his stance on civil liberties, drug policy, and the like. However, I hate his economic policies, which appear to be crafted under the illusion that the world stopped turning in the 1920s. So while I like some things about him, I would never vote for him. Likewise for social conservatives: while they might like his tax policies, they hate his social ones.

Ron Paul is a perennial also-ran because his policies actively repulse the vast majority of Americans. Deal with it, and stop blaming it on some conspiracy of the political elite.

You have understand something if you are to understand Ron Pauls actions from the last election.

He is OLD and has been running for this forever. He has always been an outsider. Always.

And he never ever expected to win. He ran to get some discussion, to shake the political system up a bit.

What Ron Paul didn't expect was the massive boost he would get from the internet. The first generation to grow up with the internet had come of voting age and quite frankly we were sick and tired of George Bush and many of us didn't believe in Obama either (and, by the god I don't believe in, were we ever right) and then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes this politician who have something that we would never expect to see -- honestly and fucking integrity. In a politician?

So basically you have a man how is used to being ignored and people who are used to ignore politicians. So he meets the supporters never expecting anything to happen and suddenly the money bombs starts to go of, soldiers overseas donate massively to his campaign and he is making more progress than he had done all the years before.

Basically he was nowhere near ready for the onslaught that came his ways -- much like the shops in west Berlin had no idea what was about to happen when the wall came down -- and really, I can't fault the guy. How could he possibly know that this time it was different? Heck I couldn't have predicted it and I almost live on the internet.

And by the way he has one additional trick up his sleeve that is about to go of in a month or two. It may be worth sticking around to watch.

I still don't think he's ready, and that ship has likely sailed in any case. I'll save my cash for the next guy.

I was more interested in when Thiel talked about whether technology growth is decelerating. It was back in March, here's the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrLyckg8Nc

How far will $2.5 million go anyway? How will it compare to say $5 or $15 million? Sounds like chicken feed to me (coming from him) ..especially now with the FB IPO a done deed.

What amount (if any) to Paul would it take for him to get kicked off the Bilderberg steering committee?

"I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years — part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion," he says. "And all the engineering disciplines that had to do with stuff have basically been outlawed one by one."

As an engineer myself, this quote illustrates Thiel's ignorance of engineering progress over the past 40 years, and his disregard for the risks posed by industrial-scale experiments on the general public. People like him are precisely why we need environmental regulations in the first place, instead of simply relying on people's common sense and prudence.

Neal Stephenson recently wrote an article on how being risk averse is limiting our progress: http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starv...

I think there are two sides to this, I want to see more innovation and am willing to live in a riskier world to see that happen faster. A lot of regulation merely locks in present bad forms, in the nuclear world we see that yucca mountain isn't perfect so instead we leave nuclear waste all around the country in "temporary pools" -- where the risk is much much higher that something bad can happen. Unfortunately, when people become risk averse the status quo dominates, I mean who can argue with "that's how it's always been done" vs "I took a chance and it didn't work out, but the status quo was unsustainable."

We've unleashed a monster of bureaucracy that vastly limits the potential avenues of investigation. Feynman, has a great perspective - I got good at math and could do it fast, this means that when I wanted to try something the cost was low - a few minutes or an hour, whereas others it would take a day or two. This allowed me to investigate areas with low likelihood of success, and try out novel ideas. Some of his big discoveries were from that type of work. (paraphrased from memory - couldn't find the story, it's in one of his books.

The problem is that we can directly measure the cost of an accident/disaster, but we don't correctly factor, imho, the cost of stuff that was never created.

[W]hen people become risk averse the status quo dominates...

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Looking at history objectively, I don't think it can be plausibly argued that technological progress now is slower than it was 60 years ago. And we are taking big new risks on a variety of fronts, including massive experiments in the genetic engineering of worldwide agriculture, smaller but even more dangerous experiments with genetically modified viruses, and experiments in large-scale decentralized automation of large segments of our financial systems, not to mention the ongoing global experiment in CO2 saturation that we are conducting unabated. You can argue for the benefits of all these experiments, but you can hardly say we've become risk averse. In the context of the highly leveraged and interconnected world we are creating, I would argue that we are nowhere near risk averse enough.

You are assuming that those regulations lead to a better outcome.

This is not very likely given that the amount of issues the world is facing is not going to be solved by alternative energy as we know it, nor by ignoring the very essence of progress.

Reality don't care what way we do thing. It will judge us by our ability to survive whatever it throws at us.

Whether that is astroids hitting earth, lack of resources or simply insufficient use of them.

The engineering progress over the past 40 years have primarily been piggybacking on the 60 years that came before. This is not to take anything away from what have been accomplished, just to say that the fairly safe progress is based on much more risky progress that went before.

You are assuming that those regulations lead to a better outcome.

I'm satisfied by the evidence that they do. We don't have nearly the lead in our bodies that we did in the heyday of lead fuel additives, we don't have asbestos dust permeating our schools, and the ozone hole is shrinking. All of these positive outcomes were the result of regulation.

[Reality] will judge us by our ability to survive whatever it throws at us.

Or whatever we throw at us. The US has an obesity epidemic costing us billions in health care and lost productivity, and it is a problem entirely of our own making.

The engineering progress over the past 40 years have primarily been piggybacking on the 60 years that came before.

This is always true, whatever time period you look at. And looking at the history of technological progress objectively, it is simply absurd to maintain that it is slower now than it was 40 years ago.

Exactly right. This is why all the innovation is in the virtual world rather than the physical world. Engine explosions [1], airplane crashes [2], and radiation poisoning [3] were the price of progress in the early 20th century, but we've become too fat and happy to take those kinds of risks today. The only crash we'll tolerate is the Fail Whale, and we'll complain bitterly about that too.

China has no such hangups [4]. Even Europe has less onerous regulations than the US in key areas like medical devices [5].

We are soon going to see what the relative innovation rates are in a society that accepts a few deaths of brave pioneers as the nonnegotiable price of progress, versus one that has forgotten how many people died perfecting the technologies that got us to the present day.

[1] http://www.historicpelham.com/blogarchive/Blog20090720.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_307#Operational_history

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin

[4] http://boingboing.net/2011/09/21/china-gentleman-builds-home...

[5] http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medical-devices-and-pre...

This is why all the innovation is in the virtual world rather than the physical world. Engine explosions [1], airplane crashes [2], and radiation poisoning [3] were the price of progress in the early 20th century

So who's up to lead now? China? India?

I smell bullshit. There are a few unjustly felonious fields-- nuclear power, stem cells, and recreational psychotropics are the ones that spring to mind. But in general, government regulation seems an easy scapegoat for the massive extraction of money and talent into the inanely lucrative military and financial sectors, along with a consumerist economy which inappropriately values making something cheaper over making it better.

To whatever extent innovation has been outlawed, it is not the result of environmentalism or risk aversion but of the power of those industries which would be hurt by innovation.

Here is the problem.

Most environmentalist believe they can solve the worlds problem by exchanging the current sources of energy with newer more environmentally friendly ones.

But this is a linear solution to an exponential problem. The need for energy is going to increase manifold the next couple of decades.

Can you name me one type of renewable energy that offers anything but a different source for same output?

Thorium Reactors are one thing but it smells too much of nuclear and thus have most of the world running scared. This of course despite more people dying or coal burning in a year than have died of nuclear disasters.

So yes the government is risk averse and eviromentialism is creating a false premise about how to solve the worlds problems.

The world does not have an energy generation problem. The world has an energy transmission problem. Fossil fuels are an easy but suboptimal solution to the latter. The premise that this has anything to do with environmentalism is absurd.

The world _will_have_ an energy generation problem.

If it was so absurd then there would be environmentalists who would argue for nuclear and thorium reactors.

That is not the case.

>The world _will_have_ an energy generation problem.

It will not. We orbit a self-sustaining fusion reaction which by definition will last our habitable life. The Earth, at least, is pretty much set.

> If it was so absurd then there would be environmentalists who would argue for nuclear and thorium reactors.

>That is not the case.

Many environmentalists argue for nuclear and thorium reactors. What decade do you think it is?

"It will not. We orbit a self-sustaining fusion reaction which by definition will last our habitable life. The Earth, at least, is pretty much set."

We are set if we are allowed to find new ways to generate the energy. I don't see that happening right now or in the near future, in fact what I see is primarily an attempt to replace current usage.

Perhaps you have different sources that shows we have no problem and I would be happy to have a look at them. Otherwise we have to agree to disagree.

"Many environmentalists argue for nuclear and thorium reactors. What decade do you think it is?"

Perhaps our definition of environmentalists differ and perhaps it's because I am from Europe. But again if you have sources showing that the waste majority of envorimentalists are pro nuclear and pro thorium I would be happy to be proven wrong.

In fact this was the only thing that showed up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalists_for_Nuclear_E...

In which even they argue that environmentalists anti-nuclear views are a misunderstanding.

So as it stands right now I have a hard time believing your claim to be true.

We could easily generate enough power for the world using solar, nuclear, or coal, with solar being the longest lasting. What we cannot do presently is store or transmit that power to the point of use in a way which meets current expectations. This is why oil, though rarely burned for electricity, remains one of our primary energy sources-- #1 in the US, at least.

I'm curious what part of this stretches credibility.

> But again if you have sources showing that the waste majority of envorimentalists are pro nuclear and pro thorium I would be happy to be proven wrong.

I have claimed no such thing. Decide what you're arguing about.

Were you trying to highlight the ridiculous level of hyperbole in his diatribe? So the regulation of things deemed potentially harmful to the individual or society is equivalent to universal criminalization of innovation? Sounds like he's been exposed to a few too many regulated substances, perhaps through no fault of his own.

For one, there are many more harmful things yet to be discovered which are still legal to work with; people like him could invest their focus there if they have such an affinity. Coincidentally, I hear there's funding for private rocket research.

Question: anyone know the largest risk, financially, that Thiel has recently taken?

Clarium Capital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital

(directly related to his Ron Paul support)

Clarium's assets under management grew to $8 billion in 2008 after which a series of unprofitable investments and client redemptions resulted in its assets declining below $1 billion as of 2011

Ouch.

Do we know how much of his own money was there?

After reading the headline, and then first seeing Peter's picture in the article, I was expecting to read that he was going to be directly investing in Paul Graham and YC.

Ha.

Sorry, but political articles are "off topic".

Stupid "bet" by Thiel. If he was truly thinking of the future, he'd be better off supporting Rand Paul not Ron. But a fool and his money...

If he loses 99% of his worth that "fool" will still be a millionaire with a ridiculous number of accomplishments. Disagreeing with you on politics doesn't seem like the best way to judge intelligence.

Money isn't the best way to judge intelligence either.

Obviously he doesn't believe that Ron Paul will win the Republican nomination. Only an imbecile would believe that and Thiel is not that. The point is that as long as Ron Paul is out there on the political flank of plausible candidates with a small committed support base, the more centrist candidates will tack towards his position to try and capture some of his support.

Witness how Santorum pulled Romney towards more socially conservative positions just by existing. Santorum didn't win, but as a result of his run he pulled the Republican centre towards him.

The point is that as long as Ron Paul is out there on the political flank of plausible candidates with a small committed support base, the more centrist candidates will tack towards his position to try and capture some of his support.

do you have any example to support this claim? Ron Paul isn't running for the first time. Which of his positions got anywhere close to mainstream candidate's agenda previously?

Witness how Santorum pulled Romney towards more socially conservative positions just by existing.

Santorum was Romney's runner-up if not outrunning him during several moments.

Here's a random example from one of the debates... http://vote4reason.com/2011/12/11/ron-paul-wins-iowa-abc-gop...

"In closing, Rick Perry said he has most learned from Ron Paul’s effort to end the Federal Reserve, and why it matters."

In later debates, Gingrich seemed to make similar moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCC0vokYHnY

Not saying Paul was completely transformative, but his take on the Federal Reserve which I think was largely considered "extreme" started to become more of a mainstream GOP topic.

Rick Perry? oh boy...

anyway, criticism of Fed from GOP is nothing new http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve_...

I'm skeptical Ron Paul had any particular role in reigniting it.

"Obviously he doesn't believe that Ron Paul will win the Republican nomination."

Let's be honest, Ron Paul won't be around for much longer. If you are really trying to make any real difference, you need someone younger and who's got a better chance of doing something. That would be Rand Paul and not Ron.

Ron Paul had his run and it's over. To put money into him now is a losers bet. There's no real political future for Ron Paul while there is a hell of an upside for Rand Paul.

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