4 ms·

tl;dr: People with power and money do their own thing.

api 10y ago
People do their own thing. If the author had gotten a big lavish dinner he'd use it to talk about the .1% and how out of touch they are. Instead he got an eccentric geek circle with probably a lot of boring SV inside baseball chatter and no food and uses it to drag out the spectre of the rich weirdo. We've survived two centuries of mega rich people with strange agendas and we can survive this. Honestly this crowd is far, far less scary than the Ahmanson family and other supporters of things like "theonomy." Google the "Chalcedon foundation." Or Henry Ford and his admiration for Hitler and Mussolini, or countless other examples. The SV crowd and their rather tame gentrified version of transhumanism and Ayn Rand is fluffy bunny of light stuff compared to those things. Is Thiel actually a Trump supporter or is he just contractually bound to cast a vote for him due to being a delegate? I'm getting bored with the SV bashing genre. You can criticize SV for many things, but SV did not cause the decline of the middle class. That trend was firmly in place by the mid-late 70s and began a full 30 years before SV rose as a power. It's largely due to outsourcing, the decline of unions, and the siphoning of trillions out of the American economy to support our pointless waffling quasi-empire. Blame Nixon.
- falsestprophet 10y ago
  He is a Trump supporter
  - api 10y ago
    Yeah that's very strange. I've heard other libertarians support Trump too and I can't imagine why. He's definitely not a libertarian. What Trump has done well is to tap into a wellspring of hate for the status quo that stretches across the political and wealth spectrum.
    - nolepointer 10y ago
      Electing Trump is about disrupting the system.
      - mwfunk 10y ago
        If true, that's an even worse reason to vote for Trump.
        nolepointer 10y ago
        Well, I disagree. I already voted for him in the primary and I'll be voting for him in the general.
        api 10y ago
        Why would a power lusting narcissist disrupt the source of his power? If he lands in that chair he will grow the power and size of government more than anyone since maybe Johnson or LBJ. It will be his vehicle. Finally the world will have to recognize Trump for the genius he is. He will have the whole Fed and all its money and power to write his name on history. He's not a conservative. He's not a liberal. He's a Trumpist.
    - mwfunk 10y ago
      You could say that about the GOP in general these days- lots of publicly expressed libertarian sentiment coupled with decidedly non-libertarian values like social conservatism, rah rah militarism, religion, and white nationalism. I don't understand how anyone can live with that level of cognitive dissonance and not go insane.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - rayiner 10y ago
      People are hoping that Trump will be the political equivalent of the forest fire. If he burns everything down, something different might spring up in place.

api 10y ago

People do their own thing. If the author had gotten a big lavish dinner he'd use it to talk about the .1% and how out of touch they are. Instead he got an eccentric geek circle with probably a lot of boring SV inside baseball chatter and no food and uses it to drag out the spectre of the rich weirdo. We've survived two centuries of mega rich people with strange agendas and we can survive this. Honestly this crowd is far, far less scary than the Ahmanson family and other supporters of things like "theonomy." Google the "Chalcedon foundation." Or Henry Ford and his admiration for Hitler and Mussolini, or countless other examples. The SV crowd and their rather tame gentrified version of transhumanism and Ayn Rand is fluffy bunny of light stuff compared to those things. Is Thiel actually a Trump supporter or is he just contractually bound to cast a vote for him due to being a delegate? I'm getting bored with the SV bashing genre. You can criticize SV for many things, but SV did not cause the decline of the middle class. That trend was firmly in place by the mid-late 70s and began a full 30 years before SV rose as a power. It's largely due to outsourcing, the decline of unions, and the siphoning of trillions out of the American economy to support our pointless waffling quasi-empire. Blame Nixon.

falsestprophet 10y ago
He is a Trump supporter
- api 10y ago
  Yeah that's very strange. I've heard other libertarians support Trump too and I can't imagine why. He's definitely not a libertarian. What Trump has done well is to tap into a wellspring of hate for the status quo that stretches across the political and wealth spectrum.
  - nolepointer 10y ago
    Electing Trump is about disrupting the system.
    - mwfunk 10y ago
      If true, that's an even worse reason to vote for Trump.
      - nolepointer 10y ago
        Well, I disagree. I already voted for him in the primary and I'll be voting for him in the general.
        api 10y ago
        Why would a power lusting narcissist disrupt the source of his power? If he lands in that chair he will grow the power and size of government more than anyone since maybe Johnson or LBJ. It will be his vehicle. Finally the world will have to recognize Trump for the genius he is. He will have the whole Fed and all its money and power to write his name on history. He's not a conservative. He's not a liberal. He's a Trumpist.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    You could say that about the GOP in general these days- lots of publicly expressed libertarian sentiment coupled with decidedly non-libertarian values like social conservatism, rah rah militarism, religion, and white nationalism. I don't understand how anyone can live with that level of cognitive dissonance and not go insane.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - rayiner 10y ago
    People are hoping that Trump will be the political equivalent of the forest fire. If he burns everything down, something different might spring up in place.