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> the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted It's a little disingenu
by bambax 10y ago
> the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted
It's a little disingenuous to characterize the logic of this piece thusly.
Mr Thiel is not just some guy, he's the main guru of the Silicon Valley crowd, a major "idea machine" who's constantly quoted, etc.
What the author is saying is more akin to this: we were used to seeing tech billionaires as "different" (more pure, better), and this episode shows they in fact aren't.
The argument is defensible, esp. with all the talk about disruption and "changing the world". Some things are new, some certainly do change, but "the world" does not seem very different.
- ben_jones 10y agoIt was ironically Chris Sacca (Of Twitter and Uber fame) who said in a Bill Simmons podcast in regards to Trump something akin to: "The American people trust Billionaires implicitly because they are successful and therefore worthy of admiration". Again not a direct quote and it wasn't said of the context of "I believe this is true" but just an observation he had made. I'll take it a step further and say Americans think wealthy and successful people are implicitly better then everybody else even if they received their wealth and success from their parents.