Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?
Who should take into their hands the job to stop him, and to what lengths should they push themselves?
Who should take into their hands the job to stop him, and to what lengths should they push themselves?
Thiel is only "relevant" because he's wealthy.
In a system that allows wealth to equal political power, systematically weakening the impact of wealth on civic and political systems is an effective method. Whether that can be done in America, with the current understanding of the constitution and the current philosophy that many take towards taxation/wealth is questionable; but the idea that we can do nothing is just not true. We don't need to slide back into an era of 19th century robber barons and pseudo-aristocracy. If we do, it's because we largely gave up or allowed it to happen.
Unfortunately the political rhetoric have smeared "the globalists" and equated people that want global coordination to limit those multinationals with power, with the ones abusing it. Even the platform that was promising to drain the swamp turns out was just another swamp, so one would need to start from the scratch for that political movement.
The dixiecrats mascarading as Christian Republicans who HN treats as all American Christians don't even believe in the larger USA/Constitution/Human rights so yeah they ignore/are anti a lot of basic American beliefs. They are from a long line of loser traitors to our beliefs.
In his case - I assume most of it is from Palantir these days. Therefore stop your governments from contracting with them.
What are you prepared to do to contain/restrain a person who is non compos mentis?
I also like a two-pronged approach which includes taxing the billionaires out of existence. I haven't heard any significant downside to doing that. All the more so when weighed against the possible upsides.
I think what frustrates me above all else is that we, as a society, as a people, could have it so much better.
We could all be living in such a better world but for the allowances we make for the most sociopathic and greedy among us.
When you reach an arbitrary score, like $100 million, you get presented with a cup that says ‘congratulations, you won capitalism’ and are given the choice of either playing again from the start but this time on hard mode (no emerald mine or parents that are friends with the IBM chairman this time), or keeping your winnings on the condition that you and your family fuck off somewhere and are never seen or heard of again.
Seriously though, that billionaires can exist, that so much power and wealth can be concentrated in the hands of so few while so many have nothing is utterly repugnant.
So yes: as a system, "wealth" is demonstrably extremely wasteful of capital, in wouldn't take much on both edges to improve it significantly.
Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.
If voting didn't work, they wouldn't poor money into it. If voting didn't work, they wouldn't be trying to force their horrible new ID poll tax laws.
Spreading fear in this way since 9/11 has dramatically changed America into something worse. I'm sad you've lost faith in Liberal thought and are preaching replacing it with reactionary nothingness.
We literally defeated the people who owned the system AND owned the workers, because we elected the right people and we fought. If we had instead burnt the system down how the heck would we win the war? This system was build for people like us. The first of it's kind. We aren't going to get a better playing field. The oligarchy WANT it burnt down. Stop doing their work and put your effort/energy into useful change, don't be a tool for them.
It's sucks we have to fight, but it's idiotic to seed the best battlefield we are going to get to fight them on to some nebulous, reactionary unknown one like you seem to want. Don't give up! And fuck the anti-American traitors!