6 ms·

Peter Thiel will speak at GOP convention

88 points by peterkshultz 10y ago

CPLX 10y ago
I wonder what his comments will be on the fact that "gay conversion therapy" is slated to be an official part of the GOP platform adopted at the same convention. I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story.
- sevenless 10y ago
  A lot of Democrats support homeopathy/alternative medicine, think GMOs are bad, dismiss nuclear power, etc. It's not like only one party suffers from a lack of evidence based thinking. It's misleading to go from "Parents should be allowed to seek whatever treatment or therapy they deem fit for their children" to "Republicans are advocating gay conversion therapy", anyway. Not opposing something is not the same as advocating it.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    It's misleading of you to attempt to make such a blatantly false equivalence. The DNC isn't pushing or even recognizing homeopathic therapy as part of their official party platform. You know that. The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized -- it's not official dogma promoted by the leaders of the party and written into the official platform, the way conversion therapy and climate change denial and marriage inequality are part of the official Republican Party platform and ideology. Don't be coy about the plausibly deniable wording. Everybody knows what the dog whistles signify.
    - qrendel 10y ago
      > The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized -- it's not official dogma promoted by the leaders of the party Um... well... actually... https://psmag.com/why-is-hillary-clinton-making-strange-comments-about-aliens-2b9d3e0838fc https://psmag.com/why-is-hillary-clinton-making-strange-comm...
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      >The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized On this point at least you are mistaken; John Podesta is Clinton's campaign chairman and a pretty big UFO nut. He hasn't been marginalized at all.
      - DonHopkins 10y ago
        Can you show me where in the DNC platform it mentions UFOs?
        tanderson92 10y ago
        If you can you show me where I mentioned the DNC platform, then I'll be glad to do that. I was responding with a counterexample to the quoted part of your statement: I thought that was rather clear.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  Maybe he'll be there because he believes gay conversion therapy works the other direction too, since the Grindr scene is always so hot during the Republican National Convention. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_gWaABMBIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_gWaABMBIU
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    If you go by the numbers, the GOP is gay conversion therapy! (Just not with the intended outcome.)
    - sevenless 10y ago
      I'm not sure it's either accurate or helpful to repeat the "Homophobes are closeted gays" line. You can be in the closet without being a homophobe, and there are plenty of people who simply dislike gay people for religious-cultural reasons.
      - CPLX 10y ago
        Clearly not every person who pushes homophobic rants is in the closet and gay. But Peter Thiel certainly was: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/peter-thiel-keith-rabois-stanford-review http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/peter-thiel-keith-rabois...
        sevenless 10y ago
        The anti-gay rant quoted in this article did not come from Thiel, and I can't see anything in the linked articles to show he backed it. Not that I'm claiming Thiel is a lifelong supporter of gay rights or has never said anything terrible, simply that this article doesn't seem to support what you're claiming. Anyway, Thiel isn't a Republican himself. As per Wiki, he's a Libertarian, from an Evangelical background. I liked this link though, from 1995: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-President-Condemns-Opinion-Piece-3022703.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-President-Condem... > Calling the multiculturalism movement "mindless," the piece argues that as "recycled anti-Western banalities substitute for a genuine study of Western and non- Western cultures, multiculturalism is effectively wasting some of the best years of America's brightest students." In some feminist studies courses, students were asked to write, but not necessarily send, letters to their parents about "coming out as a lesbian," said Sacks and Thiel. > The two also criticized a class on the history of rights in the United States, saying it "was so busy extolling 1960s protests movements that the class never got around to studying the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution." Have campus conservatives ever found anything new to complain about?
- oconnore 10y ago
  Stacks of $100 bills are actually pretty effective at wiping away guilt and plebeian sympathies.
- mr_overalls 10y ago
  It's not just the conversion therapy. The current GOP platform has been decried as the most anti-LGBT in the party's history by the Log Cabin Republicans. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/log-cabin-republicans-gop-party-platform-anti-lgbt/story?id=40564850 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/log-cabin-republicans-gop-par...
- ikeboy 10y ago
  >I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story. I assume you agree with every single thing anyone you vote for or support says, since that's the standard you're applying to him, then?
  - CPLX 10y ago
    If a highly powerful billionaire on the board of top media companies participates in politics and supports hateful bigoted anti-gay organizations and candidates despite being gay himself that's news. Seems like a fairly non-confusing standard to apply, your strawman argument notwithstanding.
    - ikeboy 10y ago
      > supports hateful bigoted anti-gay organizations You really need to distinguish between hate groups and groups that contain hateful people. The KKK is a hate group. The Republican party is a group that contains hateful people. Using the same term for both is misleading.
- lintiness 10y ago
  social issues are a nice little diversion from what government is really all about: taking your money, borrowing against it, and spending it.
  - CelestialTeapot 10y ago
    > social issues are a nice little diversion from what government is really all about: taking your money, borrowing against it, and spending it. The Republicans seem to waste a great deal of effort trying to fit the government into people's bedrooms, family life, and women's doctors offices for it to just be "a nice little diversion."
    - lintiness 10y ago
      the democrats want to outlaw sodas and guns. it's all bullshit to fire up morons. do you really think there's a snowball's chance in hell of overturning roe v. wade? do you really believe republicans want to force gay people to convert to heterosexuality? if you do, you're an abject moron, exactly the type of person this kind of divisive diversionary nonsense is aimed at.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        I guess all those Senators saying just that, are probably muddying the issue for us abject morons.
        lintiness 10y ago
        lawyer whores say all kinds of shit they don't believe in order to "win".
      - CelestialTeapot 10y ago
        The Democrats want to impose a "sin" tax on soda to try to nudge people from making themselves even more obese than they already are, in a futile attempt to bring down health care costs, without addressing the main problem, which neither side wants to confront (too much lobbyist money at stake). I would welcome sane legislation on gun control that would work. I doubt that anyone in Congress would have the courage to do what Australia did. It really doesn't seem worth engaging you any further, as you seem to be a fine exemplar of your closing statement in your argument.
- internaut 10y ago
  > I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story. Is it normal to reverse causality to make an argument?
3pt14159 10y ago
If this existence is all some sort of a really complex TV Show for computer AI, I would find it very funny if there was a scene where Trump and Clinton secretly plan about how to get a Democrat in the white house, meanwhile Thiel and Gary Johnson hatch a plan (after Trump's early success at torpedoing the GOP nomination process) to back Trump so that the disaffected GOP members go Libertarian and break the two party race that has been dominating American politics; but Gary is so anti-war and pro-pot that he pulls enough younger democrats off Hilary in just the wrong states to where Trump actually wins the electoral college votes even though by the popular vote Clinton still wins.
- 323454 10y ago
  Mind = blown
- grandalf 10y ago
  I've been hoping this sort of thing happens for about a decade now. The split between the parties is indeed not natural, and the general values of "liberalism" are pretty much absent from both parties, but more and more younger votes care more about liberalism than about labor, defense, and protectionism (the causes that the major parties squabble over the details of).
  - kordless 10y ago
    The split between the parties is a result of stored societal dissonance which was previously not a "natural" arising event before the arrival of the Internet. Search and watch "this video will make you angry" for more context.
tmaly 10y ago
That is probably the only talk at the convention that I would be interest to hear.
schwabacher 10y ago
Is Peter Thiel still involved with ycombinator?
- davesque 10y ago
  I'm actually curious about this too. Anyone care to comment?
  - JayHost 10y ago
    I came here to ask this too. Thiel says weird things like "Tell me something that's true that no one agrees with you on" Which happens to fit the mold of a good startup. It's also what crazy people think their bad ideas fit into.
getgoingnow 10y ago
Peter Thiel is a weird guy. For many years he said there is going to be a major economic crisis. - He wrote a paper on the fall of the Roman Empire [1] and thinks something similar could happen to the US. - His fund 'Clarium Capital' bet on the fall of US dollar and lost a lot of money [2] - He also stated that Hillary Clinton is going to win and be a one-term president, probably because the economic collapse is going to happen in few years [3]. He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016". What do you think is behind his support for Trump? Does he want the economic armageddon to happen or not? Does he think that collapse is going to happen and that Trump is better at dealing with consequences than Hillary? [1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_performance_2008-2010 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY
- Kinnard 10y ago
  Ever been to Detroit? In some ways, in some places, the collapse is already well-underway. Ruins all around.
  - saturdaysaint 10y ago
    Yeah, I ate there last night. It was hard to get a table at several restaurants and I almost got bumped into by a few Poke-hunters.
  - eclipxe 10y ago
    Comment would have been spot on 4-5 years ago. While Detroit hasn't become an amazing place, it has recovered from its lows a bit.
    - Kinnard 10y ago
      Au contraire, the ruins are still there, they surround all the strips and islands of recovery.
      - internaut 10y ago
        It's an eerie image, the desolate ruins inhabited by nothing but lolloping sandshrews ;-) Probably can't find a pokestop either... There was even an article written.
lavamantis 10y ago
Is it weird that there's no Sarah Palin speech scheduled?
- peter303 10y ago
  Major empty slot Wed evening for VP choice. Perhaps she is still in contention.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  They'll be playing a Markov chain of her greatest hits.
cjbenedikt 10y ago
Obviously the Peter Principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle applies to VCs as well
danso 10y ago
I'm watching a Thiel speech right now on YouTube [0]. To be honest, the only perception I have of Thiel as a public speaker is that "Silicon Valley's" (on HBO) Peter Gregory was partly based on him. He's a better speaker than his HBO caricature, but he doesn't seem like someone who has been groomed to be a public speaker. I'm impressed that he's chosen to put himself in the spotlight here. Even if he just recites the Emancipation Proclamation word-for-word, he is going to be relentlessly grilled by the political punditry. He already was, for being a Silicon Valley-based Trump delegate, and then of course for the Gawker lawsuit. I don't agree with all of his politics but at least he's throwing himself into the public fray even though there's virtually nothing for him to gain personally (unless he's prepping for a run for governor or U.S. Senator). [0] His commencement speech at Hamilton College https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc
hsileng 10y ago
Peter Thiel is the 21st century Koch in every single way. And I feel sad about that. You'd think when Kochs pass, the old era will be good riddance over. But maybe not...
- brianbreslin 10y ago
  I suspect we will always see billionaires trying to buy political direction (see Sheldon Adelson for example).
  - louprado 10y ago
    Or perhaps it is a means to give back to society ? Bill Gates often mentions than the affect of the BMG Foundation is dwarfed by the resources of a government. Given BG's comment, wouldn't it make sense to use political influence as a leveraged means to improve society ?
- lintiness 10y ago
  a pbs program i watched last night (human development, evolution, and the populating of n. america) was sponsored by the "David H. Koch Fund for Science". pure evil.
- jn1234 10y ago
  The Kochs are the 21st century Kochs. Peter Thiel hasn't had any major success as a political donor, while the Kochs have been wildly successful as political donors and furthering their political agendas.
jjuel 10y ago
Seems odd to me that he is backing Trump while being a Libertarian, but I guess he probably doesn't feel Gary Johnson has a legitimate shot.
return0 10y ago
I would think this would be impossible under other, gay-unfriendly candidates.
raimundjoss 10y ago
The convention basically will be a sludge fest. If you are a scum, you go there.
lumberjack 10y ago
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...
lumberjack 10y ago
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
This is actually a good thing. If he can get that audience to lusten to his ideas, maybe the two sides of America will get closer to finding common ground. It's better than someone who will go there to pander and incite the mob. From what I've seen of Thiel, it's worth it to hear him out. He has a lot of good ideas. Some sound a bit out there perhaps, but he doesn't seem malicious or destructively polarizing.
marcoperaza 10y ago
Maybe he just actually supports Trump, or disfavors Hillary even more. Have you all considered that? He is close friends with Ann Coulter and his views on the direction of the country are quite well known. It would be totally in line with his thinking to back Trump. The cognitive dissonance in the comments here, the desperate attempts to come up with conspiratorial rationalizations, is kind of ridiculous. The man deserves to be taken at his word.
rayiner 10y ago
I'm a little surprised at all the negativity. Everybody complains that the two parties are the same, but as soon as the prospect of a Trump/Thiel ticket comes up (which would, at the very least, shake things up), people freak out. I'm about as far from a libertarian as you can get, but I find this interesting! The combination of Trump's willingness to attack everything, and Thiel's ideas on disruption could put a lot of sacred cows up for debate. Regardless of what side you're on, that's not a bad thing. It forces the other side to articulate defenses of the status quo, instead of leaning on inertia.
- voodoomagicman 10y ago
  Thiel is supporting Trump, but I don't think anyone is suggesting he would be vice president.

88 points by peterkshultz 10y ago

CPLX 10y ago

I wonder what his comments will be on the fact that "gay conversion therapy" is slated to be an official part of the GOP platform adopted at the same convention. I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story.

sevenless 10y ago
A lot of Democrats support homeopathy/alternative medicine, think GMOs are bad, dismiss nuclear power, etc. It's not like only one party suffers from a lack of evidence based thinking. It's misleading to go from "Parents should be allowed to seek whatever treatment or therapy they deem fit for their children" to "Republicans are advocating gay conversion therapy", anyway. Not opposing something is not the same as advocating it.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  It's misleading of you to attempt to make such a blatantly false equivalence. The DNC isn't pushing or even recognizing homeopathic therapy as part of their official party platform. You know that. The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized -- it's not official dogma promoted by the leaders of the party and written into the official platform, the way conversion therapy and climate change denial and marriage inequality are part of the official Republican Party platform and ideology. Don't be coy about the plausibly deniable wording. Everybody knows what the dog whistles signify.
  - qrendel 10y ago
    > The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized -- it's not official dogma promoted by the leaders of the party Um... well... actually... https://psmag.com/why-is-hillary-clinton-making-strange-comments-about-aliens-2b9d3e0838fc https://psmag.com/why-is-hillary-clinton-making-strange-comm...
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    >The few people in the Democratic party who believe in homeopathy and UFOs are considered nut cases and marginalized On this point at least you are mistaken; John Podesta is Clinton's campaign chairman and a pretty big UFO nut. He hasn't been marginalized at all.
    - DonHopkins 10y ago
      Can you show me where in the DNC platform it mentions UFOs?
      - tanderson92 10y ago
        If you can you show me where I mentioned the DNC platform, then I'll be glad to do that. I was responding with a counterexample to the quoted part of your statement: I thought that was rather clear.
DonHopkins 10y ago
Maybe he'll be there because he believes gay conversion therapy works the other direction too, since the Grindr scene is always so hot during the Republican National Convention. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_gWaABMBIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_gWaABMBIU
- stcredzero 10y ago
  If you go by the numbers, the GOP is gay conversion therapy! (Just not with the intended outcome.)
  - sevenless 10y ago
    I'm not sure it's either accurate or helpful to repeat the "Homophobes are closeted gays" line. You can be in the closet without being a homophobe, and there are plenty of people who simply dislike gay people for religious-cultural reasons.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Clearly not every person who pushes homophobic rants is in the closet and gay. But Peter Thiel certainly was: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/peter-thiel-keith-rabois-stanford-review http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/peter-thiel-keith-rabois...
      - sevenless 10y ago
        The anti-gay rant quoted in this article did not come from Thiel, and I can't see anything in the linked articles to show he backed it. Not that I'm claiming Thiel is a lifelong supporter of gay rights or has never said anything terrible, simply that this article doesn't seem to support what you're claiming. Anyway, Thiel isn't a Republican himself. As per Wiki, he's a Libertarian, from an Evangelical background. I liked this link though, from 1995: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-President-Condemns-Opinion-Piece-3022703.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-President-Condem... > Calling the multiculturalism movement "mindless," the piece argues that as "recycled anti-Western banalities substitute for a genuine study of Western and non- Western cultures, multiculturalism is effectively wasting some of the best years of America's brightest students." In some feminist studies courses, students were asked to write, but not necessarily send, letters to their parents about "coming out as a lesbian," said Sacks and Thiel. > The two also criticized a class on the history of rights in the United States, saying it "was so busy extolling 1960s protests movements that the class never got around to studying the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution." Have campus conservatives ever found anything new to complain about?
oconnore 10y ago
Stacks of $100 bills are actually pretty effective at wiping away guilt and plebeian sympathies.
mr_overalls 10y ago
It's not just the conversion therapy. The current GOP platform has been decried as the most anti-LGBT in the party's history by the Log Cabin Republicans. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/log-cabin-republicans-gop-party-platform-anti-lgbt/story?id=40564850 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/log-cabin-republicans-gop-par...
ikeboy 10y ago
>I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story. I assume you agree with every single thing anyone you vote for or support says, since that's the standard you're applying to him, then?
- CPLX 10y ago
  If a highly powerful billionaire on the board of top media companies participates in politics and supports hateful bigoted anti-gay organizations and candidates despite being gay himself that's news. Seems like a fairly non-confusing standard to apply, your strawman argument notwithstanding.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    > supports hateful bigoted anti-gay organizations You really need to distinguish between hate groups and groups that contain hateful people. The KKK is a hate group. The Republican party is a group that contains hateful people. Using the same term for both is misleading.
lintiness 10y ago
social issues are a nice little diversion from what government is really all about: taking your money, borrowing against it, and spending it.
- CelestialTeapot 10y ago
  > social issues are a nice little diversion from what government is really all about: taking your money, borrowing against it, and spending it. The Republicans seem to waste a great deal of effort trying to fit the government into people's bedrooms, family life, and women's doctors offices for it to just be "a nice little diversion."
  - lintiness 10y ago
    the democrats want to outlaw sodas and guns. it's all bullshit to fire up morons. do you really think there's a snowball's chance in hell of overturning roe v. wade? do you really believe republicans want to force gay people to convert to heterosexuality? if you do, you're an abject moron, exactly the type of person this kind of divisive diversionary nonsense is aimed at.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      I guess all those Senators saying just that, are probably muddying the issue for us abject morons.
      - lintiness 10y ago
        lawyer whores say all kinds of shit they don't believe in order to "win".
    - CelestialTeapot 10y ago
      The Democrats want to impose a "sin" tax on soda to try to nudge people from making themselves even more obese than they already are, in a futile attempt to bring down health care costs, without addressing the main problem, which neither side wants to confront (too much lobbyist money at stake). I would welcome sane legislation on gun control that would work. I doubt that anyone in Congress would have the courage to do what Australia did. It really doesn't seem worth engaging you any further, as you seem to be a fine exemplar of your closing statement in your argument.
internaut 10y ago
> I also wonder why there are still people who want to argue that there was literally no genuine news value in a media outlet outing a powerful billionaire who would personally and financially support a party that would put this on their platform, but I guess that's another story. Is it normal to reverse causality to make an argument?

3pt14159 10y ago

If this existence is all some sort of a really complex TV Show for computer AI, I would find it very funny if there was a scene where Trump and Clinton secretly plan about how to get a Democrat in the white house, meanwhile Thiel and Gary Johnson hatch a plan (after Trump's early success at torpedoing the GOP nomination process) to back Trump so that the disaffected GOP members go Libertarian and break the two party race that has been dominating American politics; but Gary is so anti-war and pro-pot that he pulls enough younger democrats off Hilary in just the wrong states to where Trump actually wins the electoral college votes even though by the popular vote Clinton still wins.

323454 10y ago
Mind = blown
grandalf 10y ago
I've been hoping this sort of thing happens for about a decade now. The split between the parties is indeed not natural, and the general values of "liberalism" are pretty much absent from both parties, but more and more younger votes care more about liberalism than about labor, defense, and protectionism (the causes that the major parties squabble over the details of).
- kordless 10y ago
  The split between the parties is a result of stored societal dissonance which was previously not a "natural" arising event before the arrival of the Internet. Search and watch "this video will make you angry" for more context.

tmaly 10y ago

That is probably the only talk at the convention that I would be interest to hear.

schwabacher 10y ago

Is Peter Thiel still involved with ycombinator?

davesque 10y ago
I'm actually curious about this too. Anyone care to comment?
- JayHost 10y ago
  I came here to ask this too. Thiel says weird things like "Tell me something that's true that no one agrees with you on" Which happens to fit the mold of a good startup. It's also what crazy people think their bad ideas fit into.

getgoingnow 10y ago

Peter Thiel is a weird guy. For many years he said there is going to be a major economic crisis. - He wrote a paper on the fall of the Roman Empire [1] and thinks something similar could happen to the US. - His fund 'Clarium Capital' bet on the fall of US dollar and lost a lot of money [2] - He also stated that Hillary Clinton is going to win and be a one-term president, probably because the economic collapse is going to happen in few years [3]. He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016". What do you think is behind his support for Trump? Does he want the economic armageddon to happen or not? Does he think that collapse is going to happen and that Trump is better at dealing with consequences than Hillary? [1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_performance_2008-2010 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY

Kinnard 10y ago
Ever been to Detroit? In some ways, in some places, the collapse is already well-underway. Ruins all around.
- saturdaysaint 10y ago
  Yeah, I ate there last night. It was hard to get a table at several restaurants and I almost got bumped into by a few Poke-hunters.
- eclipxe 10y ago
  Comment would have been spot on 4-5 years ago. While Detroit hasn't become an amazing place, it has recovered from its lows a bit.
  - Kinnard 10y ago
    Au contraire, the ruins are still there, they surround all the strips and islands of recovery.
    - internaut 10y ago
      It's an eerie image, the desolate ruins inhabited by nothing but lolloping sandshrews ;-) Probably can't find a pokestop either... There was even an article written.

lavamantis 10y ago

Is it weird that there's no Sarah Palin speech scheduled?

peter303 10y ago
Major empty slot Wed evening for VP choice. Perhaps she is still in contention.
DonHopkins 10y ago
They'll be playing a Markov chain of her greatest hits.

cjbenedikt 10y ago

Obviously the Peter Principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle applies to VCs as well

danso 10y ago

I'm watching a Thiel speech right now on YouTube [0]. To be honest, the only perception I have of Thiel as a public speaker is that "Silicon Valley's" (on HBO) Peter Gregory was partly based on him. He's a better speaker than his HBO caricature, but he doesn't seem like someone who has been groomed to be a public speaker. I'm impressed that he's chosen to put himself in the spotlight here. Even if he just recites the Emancipation Proclamation word-for-word, he is going to be relentlessly grilled by the political punditry. He already was, for being a Silicon Valley-based Trump delegate, and then of course for the Gawker lawsuit. I don't agree with all of his politics but at least he's throwing himself into the public fray even though there's virtually nothing for him to gain personally (unless he's prepping for a run for governor or U.S. Senator). [0] His commencement speech at Hamilton College https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc

hsileng 10y ago

Peter Thiel is the 21st century Koch in every single way. And I feel sad about that. You'd think when Kochs pass, the old era will be good riddance over. But maybe not...

brianbreslin 10y ago
I suspect we will always see billionaires trying to buy political direction (see Sheldon Adelson for example).
- louprado 10y ago
  Or perhaps it is a means to give back to society ? Bill Gates often mentions than the affect of the BMG Foundation is dwarfed by the resources of a government. Given BG's comment, wouldn't it make sense to use political influence as a leveraged means to improve society ?
lintiness 10y ago
a pbs program i watched last night (human development, evolution, and the populating of n. america) was sponsored by the "David H. Koch Fund for Science". pure evil.
jn1234 10y ago
The Kochs are the 21st century Kochs. Peter Thiel hasn't had any major success as a political donor, while the Kochs have been wildly successful as political donors and furthering their political agendas.

jjuel 10y ago

Seems odd to me that he is backing Trump while being a Libertarian, but I guess he probably doesn't feel Gary Johnson has a legitimate shot.

return0 10y ago

I would think this would be impossible under other, gay-unfriendly candidates.

raimundjoss 10y ago

The convention basically will be a sludge fest. If you are a scum, you go there.

lumberjack 10y ago

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

lumberjack 10y ago

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

lawnchair_larry 10y ago

This is actually a good thing. If he can get that audience to lusten to his ideas, maybe the two sides of America will get closer to finding common ground. It's better than someone who will go there to pander and incite the mob. From what I've seen of Thiel, it's worth it to hear him out. He has a lot of good ideas. Some sound a bit out there perhaps, but he doesn't seem malicious or destructively polarizing.

marcoperaza 10y ago

Maybe he just actually supports Trump, or disfavors Hillary even more. Have you all considered that? He is close friends with Ann Coulter and his views on the direction of the country are quite well known. It would be totally in line with his thinking to back Trump. The cognitive dissonance in the comments here, the desperate attempts to come up with conspiratorial rationalizations, is kind of ridiculous. The man deserves to be taken at his word.

rayiner 10y ago

I'm a little surprised at all the negativity. Everybody complains that the two parties are the same, but as soon as the prospect of a Trump/Thiel ticket comes up (which would, at the very least, shake things up), people freak out. I'm about as far from a libertarian as you can get, but I find this interesting! The combination of Trump's willingness to attack everything, and Thiel's ideas on disruption could put a lot of sacred cows up for debate. Regardless of what side you're on, that's not a bad thing. It forces the other side to articulate defenses of the status quo, instead of leaning on inertia.

voodoomagicman 10y ago
Thiel is supporting Trump, but I don't think anyone is suggesting he would be vice president.