8 ms·

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 thi

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.
- adventured 10y ago
  Except there's very little data supporting that claim. Quite the opposite in fact. - The middle class has continued to get richer for about 40 years, moving up rather than down. That move up has caused the middle class to contract. - US household assets are up by $27 trillion since the peak in 2006/2007. For comparison sake, that gain alone is equivalent to 2/3 of all the wealth in the EU. - US household balance sheets have improved dramatically in the last six years. The household debt to income ratio has declined by a lot, home equity has continued to climb. This contrasts with most of the rest of the developed world, in which households have been rapidly accumulating vast amounts of debt (mostly on mortgage debt accumulation). - Full-time job openings are near record highs. - Full-time job employment is at a record high. - Unemployment has plunged dramatically since the peak of the great recession, including on the U6. The U6 is back to a normal level for the last 30 years, and is back to where it was before the great recession. - The labor force participation rate is finally climbing again. The majority of the losses suffered there were from retirement anyway. - Wages have been growing modestly well for the last two years, after enough slack was removed from the labor pool. - Manufacturing is near an all-time record high on output. - US median net wealth is higher than Germany or Sweden. - US median disposable incomes are the highest in the world outside of Switzerland. - US GDP per capita is back to being #5 in the world (soon to be twice that of Japan by comparison, and ~40% higher than Germany), which is rather extraordinary given the issues the nation just went through. Where's the evidence to support this inbound great collapse? The sole issue that stands out meaningfully is the national debt. That's only going to get easier to manage as rates on debt fall over the next several years. The US has vast spare taxing capacity that very few developed nations have, the US middle and upper-middle class is among the lowest taxed out of that group; the US rich could easily be taxed several points higher without it significantly impacting the economy.
  - tsunamifury 10y ago
    I pay nearly 48% tax to state federal and city, and it does significant damage for my ability to grow in the Bay Area. There is no room to be taxed more, in fact the tax rate here hinders the middle and upper middle class from saving effectively for a down payment, doing actual damage to the region.
tcoppi 10y ago
Making bets on and predicting an economic collapse does not mean one necessarily wants it to happen, simply that they think it is going to. I wouldn't presume to know why he supports Trump, but it will probably be clear after the speech next week.
methehack 10y ago
w/r/t support for Trump (he's a Trump delegate, I think) the best I can come up with -- obviously utter speculation -- is that he's hoping for enough of a collapse of the republican party to create an opening for a new party more in line with is thinking, or alternately, enough of a weakening of the current republican party so as to re-forge it in the same manner. I have thought about this very topic a little because I'm utterly flabbergasted that a book I like as well as Zero to One was written by a Trump delegate. So -- I may be cobbling together more of an excuse here than an explanation, if that's not obvious. Also, in other Theil news, he gave a truly fantastic commencement speech this year at Hamilton college (the delivery is a little halting or stilted for sure, but honestly I think it's part of the charm): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc
- piva00 10y ago
  This would require an Ozymandias-level of forethought... But I think Thiel is odd enough to pull something like that, so weird to not have a clue about the underlying reasons now.
- chubot 10y ago
  I'm also a fan of Zero to One and Thiel's other writings, and not a fan of Trump... To me, it's a reminder that people are complex. Peter Thiel is a remarkably lucid thinker, but he was openly homophobic when he was young, while in the closet! Ron Paul is probably the only political candidate I've ever learned anything from, but he also has a history of racism. Even Trump is complex -- he's not just the arrogant, ignorant character he plays on TV. I found this piece in the NYTimes to be illuminating (sorry if it's a subscription link): http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/campaign-stops/how-trump-can-save-the-gop.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/campaign-stops/... Like Peter Thiel and Ron Paul, Trump has contradictions. He is both ignorant and accomplished. He says a lot of bigoted and sexist stuff, but he has also known to be been shrewd in cultivating gay and female executive leadership. It's been said that his best advocates are his children, and that's saying a lot when you compare them to their peers (other children with 3rd generation wealth). Trump is tapping into a real need that the electorate has, which honestly NEITHER party has an answer for. Trump probably doesn't have an answer for it either, but acknowledging it is the first step. Honestly, it's probably NOT irrational for lower middle class white men to vote for Trump (over Clinton, at least). I would argue that it was probably irrational for them to vote for Bush, since Bush didn't act in their interests. As for why Thiel would support Trump, I'm mystified too. But what I would guess it's because he doesn't support either Democrats or the "establishment GOP", which Trump isn't a part of. Thiel is a contrarian, and in tech social circles, Trump is the ultimate contrarian choice :)
pc86 10y ago
If you don't monospace footnotes they'll actually be clickable.
Rotten194 10y ago
Yet another ridiculously ahistorical "This is the one / primary reason Rome fell" paper. Ugh.
- HarryHirsch 10y ago
  Indeed. And how far did Rome fall during the Crisis of the 3rd Century? In those provinces that were unaffected by tribal incursions (Hispania, Africa, Egypt), life was golden! OK, Auson wrote his Mosella a century later, but it's required reading in this context. That poem tells of peace, peace since time immemorial.
gmarx 10y ago
I think he was also a "peak oil" guy and made some bad bets
- quadrangle 10y ago
  regardless of Thiel, there's nothing invalid about the concept of peak oil. The main questions are "when?" and "will we have enough oil so that full destruction of the stability of the climate hits us first before major peak oil issues?" and things like that
  - gmarx 10y ago
    Crap like this bugs me. Because you waste more time on Hacker News you can downvote and I can't? I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then and if he made a bet on it he got burned for exactly that predictable reason. Someday we will hit peak oil? Duh? Someday the sun will burn out. The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die. I had two friends having panic attacks over this BS. Sorry reality failed to confirm your preferred political narrative in the past. Keep retconning and you can always think you were right
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then It may be the case that Thiel misinterpreted the economic consequences of peak oil and made bad bets based on it (particularly, there are no particular clear short-term market effects associated with peak oil beyond greater price volatility). > The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die. The idea that the point that will be the peak in the smoothed long-term production curve is already past is not yet rejected, though there remains some doubt as to whether that point is in the recent past or not. The idea that the peak would have any particularly clear set of clear short-term market consequences (and particularly anything like "we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food" or "we were all going to die") has never been part of peak oil theory. Now, its clearly possible Thiel bought into some crazy idea like this secondary to peak oil theory, but that's a different issue than peak oil itself.
kafkaesq 10y ago
He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016". Thiel isn't just "weird"; it should be pretty clear that he's out-and-out nuts, by this point. At least he's being honest in conveying to us that not only does he not expect his sockpuppet candidate to win in 2016 - but that his ideology as a whole is essentially fatalistic; and that he needs some major catastrophe (in the form of either the economic collapse he's predicting; or of an actual Trump administration, which he's smart enough to realize would also be a major disaster) to bring about the sweeping, transformative change in global consciousness that he seeks -- the social chaos, ruined lives, and piles of corpses be damned. Just like any megalomaniacal ideologue anywhere, since the beginning of time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sremani 10y ago
  Lets tone down the rhetoric, I have immense respect for Thiel, he is a smart man, man of ideas and vision. But he is not infallible. As Gandhi said, right to err is a basic right. He is a known libertarian and for his own reasons supports Trump, so what?! Also remember, you are not infallible either.
  - mjburgess 10y ago
    "The right to err" is commensurate right on behalf of those your err'ing against to call you a lunatic. Thiel is responsible for his own pronouncements, ideological fantasies and desire for catastrophe.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    > so what?! There are some people, including a lot of us here on Hacker News, for whom a Trump administration wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'd hate it, but my day-to-day life probably wouldn't change all that much (unless he really goes off the deep end and starts a war, either the real kind or the trade kind, which can't be ruled out). But there are a lot of people for whom a Trump administration would be a living hell. Those people have a right to be angry at Thiel's support of Trump without being treated to a "so what?! he's a smart mean of ideas and vision" lecture. That's especially true when, as mentioned above, Thiel's support doesn't appear to be coming from a genuine belief that Trump is the right man for the job, but rather a hope that he will be such a disaster the country will fall apart, and that will ultimately result in the more widespread public support for Ayn Rand-style libertarianism that Thiel has been craving for so long. "Let's burn everything down and hope my preferred ideology springs from the ashes" is easy to support when you're rich and powerful enough to be unharmed by the "burning down" part, which Thiel is and most people are not.
praptak 10y ago
How about class awareness as the explanation? A one percenter supports the party that represents the interest of the one percenters.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  Completely unlike the other party </sarcasm>
biot 10y ago
Clickable: [1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG http://bit.ly/2acARwG [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_performance_2008-2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_perform... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY 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.
adventured 10y ago
Except there's very little data supporting that claim. Quite the opposite in fact. - The middle class has continued to get richer for about 40 years, moving up rather than down. That move up has caused the middle class to contract. - US household assets are up by $27 trillion since the peak in 2006/2007. For comparison sake, that gain alone is equivalent to 2/3 of all the wealth in the EU. - US household balance sheets have improved dramatically in the last six years. The household debt to income ratio has declined by a lot, home equity has continued to climb. This contrasts with most of the rest of the developed world, in which households have been rapidly accumulating vast amounts of debt (mostly on mortgage debt accumulation). - Full-time job openings are near record highs. - Full-time job employment is at a record high. - Unemployment has plunged dramatically since the peak of the great recession, including on the U6. The U6 is back to a normal level for the last 30 years, and is back to where it was before the great recession. - The labor force participation rate is finally climbing again. The majority of the losses suffered there were from retirement anyway. - Wages have been growing modestly well for the last two years, after enough slack was removed from the labor pool. - Manufacturing is near an all-time record high on output. - US median net wealth is higher than Germany or Sweden. - US median disposable incomes are the highest in the world outside of Switzerland. - US GDP per capita is back to being #5 in the world (soon to be twice that of Japan by comparison, and ~40% higher than Germany), which is rather extraordinary given the issues the nation just went through. Where's the evidence to support this inbound great collapse? The sole issue that stands out meaningfully is the national debt. That's only going to get easier to manage as rates on debt fall over the next several years. The US has vast spare taxing capacity that very few developed nations have, the US middle and upper-middle class is among the lowest taxed out of that group; the US rich could easily be taxed several points higher without it significantly impacting the economy.
- tsunamifury 10y ago
  I pay nearly 48% tax to state federal and city, and it does significant damage for my ability to grow in the Bay Area. There is no room to be taxed more, in fact the tax rate here hinders the middle and upper middle class from saving effectively for a down payment, doing actual damage to the region.

tcoppi 10y ago

Making bets on and predicting an economic collapse does not mean one necessarily wants it to happen, simply that they think it is going to. I wouldn't presume to know why he supports Trump, but it will probably be clear after the speech next week.

methehack 10y ago

w/r/t support for Trump (he's a Trump delegate, I think) the best I can come up with -- obviously utter speculation -- is that he's hoping for enough of a collapse of the republican party to create an opening for a new party more in line with is thinking, or alternately, enough of a weakening of the current republican party so as to re-forge it in the same manner. I have thought about this very topic a little because I'm utterly flabbergasted that a book I like as well as Zero to One was written by a Trump delegate. So -- I may be cobbling together more of an excuse here than an explanation, if that's not obvious. Also, in other Theil news, he gave a truly fantastic commencement speech this year at Hamilton college (the delivery is a little halting or stilted for sure, but honestly I think it's part of the charm): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc

piva00 10y ago
This would require an Ozymandias-level of forethought... But I think Thiel is odd enough to pull something like that, so weird to not have a clue about the underlying reasons now.
chubot 10y ago
I'm also a fan of Zero to One and Thiel's other writings, and not a fan of Trump... To me, it's a reminder that people are complex. Peter Thiel is a remarkably lucid thinker, but he was openly homophobic when he was young, while in the closet! Ron Paul is probably the only political candidate I've ever learned anything from, but he also has a history of racism. Even Trump is complex -- he's not just the arrogant, ignorant character he plays on TV. I found this piece in the NYTimes to be illuminating (sorry if it's a subscription link): http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/campaign-stops/how-trump-can-save-the-gop.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/campaign-stops/... Like Peter Thiel and Ron Paul, Trump has contradictions. He is both ignorant and accomplished. He says a lot of bigoted and sexist stuff, but he has also known to be been shrewd in cultivating gay and female executive leadership. It's been said that his best advocates are his children, and that's saying a lot when you compare them to their peers (other children with 3rd generation wealth). Trump is tapping into a real need that the electorate has, which honestly NEITHER party has an answer for. Trump probably doesn't have an answer for it either, but acknowledging it is the first step. Honestly, it's probably NOT irrational for lower middle class white men to vote for Trump (over Clinton, at least). I would argue that it was probably irrational for them to vote for Bush, since Bush didn't act in their interests. As for why Thiel would support Trump, I'm mystified too. But what I would guess it's because he doesn't support either Democrats or the "establishment GOP", which Trump isn't a part of. Thiel is a contrarian, and in tech social circles, Trump is the ultimate contrarian choice :)

pc86 10y ago

If you don't monospace footnotes they'll actually be clickable.

Rotten194 10y ago

Yet another ridiculously ahistorical "This is the one / primary reason Rome fell" paper. Ugh.

HarryHirsch 10y ago
Indeed. And how far did Rome fall during the Crisis of the 3rd Century? In those provinces that were unaffected by tribal incursions (Hispania, Africa, Egypt), life was golden! OK, Auson wrote his Mosella a century later, but it's required reading in this context. That poem tells of peace, peace since time immemorial.

gmarx 10y ago

I think he was also a "peak oil" guy and made some bad bets

quadrangle 10y ago
regardless of Thiel, there's nothing invalid about the concept of peak oil. The main questions are "when?" and "will we have enough oil so that full destruction of the stability of the climate hits us first before major peak oil issues?" and things like that
- gmarx 10y ago
  Crap like this bugs me. Because you waste more time on Hacker News you can downvote and I can't? I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then and if he made a bet on it he got burned for exactly that predictable reason. Someday we will hit peak oil? Duh? Someday the sun will burn out. The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die. I had two friends having panic attacks over this BS. Sorry reality failed to confirm your preferred political narrative in the past. Keep retconning and you can always think you were right
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then It may be the case that Thiel misinterpreted the economic consequences of peak oil and made bad bets based on it (particularly, there are no particular clear short-term market effects associated with peak oil beyond greater price volatility). > The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die. The idea that the point that will be the peak in the smoothed long-term production curve is already past is not yet rejected, though there remains some doubt as to whether that point is in the recent past or not. The idea that the peak would have any particularly clear set of clear short-term market consequences (and particularly anything like "we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food" or "we were all going to die") has never been part of peak oil theory. Now, its clearly possible Thiel bought into some crazy idea like this secondary to peak oil theory, but that's a different issue than peak oil itself.

kafkaesq 10y ago

He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016". Thiel isn't just "weird"; it should be pretty clear that he's out-and-out nuts, by this point. At least he's being honest in conveying to us that not only does he not expect his sockpuppet candidate to win in 2016 - but that his ideology as a whole is essentially fatalistic; and that he needs some major catastrophe (in the form of either the economic collapse he's predicting; or of an actual Trump administration, which he's smart enough to realize would also be a major disaster) to bring about the sweeping, transformative change in global consciousness that he seeks -- the social chaos, ruined lives, and piles of corpses be damned. Just like any megalomaniacal ideologue anywhere, since the beginning of time.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sremani 10y ago
Lets tone down the rhetoric, I have immense respect for Thiel, he is a smart man, man of ideas and vision. But he is not infallible. As Gandhi said, right to err is a basic right. He is a known libertarian and for his own reasons supports Trump, so what?! Also remember, you are not infallible either.
- mjburgess 10y ago
  "The right to err" is commensurate right on behalf of those your err'ing against to call you a lunatic. Thiel is responsible for his own pronouncements, ideological fantasies and desire for catastrophe.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > so what?! There are some people, including a lot of us here on Hacker News, for whom a Trump administration wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'd hate it, but my day-to-day life probably wouldn't change all that much (unless he really goes off the deep end and starts a war, either the real kind or the trade kind, which can't be ruled out). But there are a lot of people for whom a Trump administration would be a living hell. Those people have a right to be angry at Thiel's support of Trump without being treated to a "so what?! he's a smart mean of ideas and vision" lecture. That's especially true when, as mentioned above, Thiel's support doesn't appear to be coming from a genuine belief that Trump is the right man for the job, but rather a hope that he will be such a disaster the country will fall apart, and that will ultimately result in the more widespread public support for Ayn Rand-style libertarianism that Thiel has been craving for so long. "Let's burn everything down and hope my preferred ideology springs from the ashes" is easy to support when you're rich and powerful enough to be unharmed by the "burning down" part, which Thiel is and most people are not.

praptak 10y ago

How about class awareness as the explanation? A one percenter supports the party that represents the interest of the one percenters.

jazzyk 10y ago
Completely unlike the other party </sarcasm>

biot 10y ago

Clickable: [1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG http://bit.ly/2acARwG [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_performance_2008-2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_perform... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY