Peter Thiel's advice about monopoly is hugely similar to the point Porter makes in his first book, Competitive Strategy. On the first chapter of his book, Porter clearly states that a business located in an industry with strong competitive forces will have lower margins. He even uses the airline industry example on his HBR article, in the 80's (actually, I'm not sure if it is in his first article, or the one from 2008 in which he revisits the topic 20 years later. Either way, is an old idea in the business world) It is, in a way, a very old idea in the business world. The value of Thiel's way of stating it (very, very boldly and controversially) is that it makes people in the startup world actually listen to it. And that's a very good thing The only problem I see, on the other hand, is the unnecessary bashing of economists. Economists, normally, analyse a market from the point of view of the "public interest". With this perspective in mind, self-perpetuating monopolies are almost always a bad thing (unless you believe in such things as centralized planning and dictatorships).