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This sentiment coming from Barack Obama plays directly into Peter Thiel's claims that the liberal elite are ignoring the plight of so many Americans. The fact t

This sentiment coming from Barack Obama plays directly into Peter Thiel's claims that the liberal elite are ignoring the plight of so many Americans. The fact that nearly 50% of the population support Donald Trump and his message "Make American Great Again" should make that clear. See Thiel's pro Trump speech from this afternoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE

tunesmith 10y ago
Nearly 50% of the population also would have supported Vogon Jeltz and his message "I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon!" if he were a Republican. I don't think that proves much about Thiel.
- ebfe 10y ago
  Sure, but there's a reason Trump was picked over the other Republicans in the primaries.
  - tzs 10y ago
    The Republicans spent the entirety of the Obama presidency trying to make sure Obama did not get any credit for anything good that happened, and would get blame for anything that wasn't good. For instance, when we started recovering from the recession and would get good news on something like jobs or growth, the Republican message would be that the numbers were too low. The standard they held Obama to was that of boom times, ignoring that we were still recovering from the recession, and that much of the rest of the first world was still in that recession. When health care costs would rise, the Republican message would be that it was due to Obamacare, completely ignoring that the increases were about the same or even slightly less than they had been before Obamacare. Nope...if your health care costs had been rising 5% a year for the last 10 years before Obama, and then rose 5% a year under Obamacare, the Republican message was that Obamacare made your health care costs go up 5%. Republicans seemed to think that if they spent nearly 8 years telling people that things sucked, people would turn against Obama and the Democrats, and sweep Republicans into complete control. Of course, that's not what happened. They successfully convinced people that things sucked, but the blame fell on all politicians, not just Obama and Democrats, making the GOP primary voters receptive to the idea of an outsider. Several of the major GOP contenders ran as outsiders (even Jeb Bush claimed to be an outsider...), but they all had extensive political careers and so Trump trumped them on the outsider thing.
return0 10y ago
Could Thiel be the first gay US president in a few years? BTW don't miss the ridiculous article [1] which basically says Thiel is not gay because he s not a liberal. 1. http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/10/14/peter-thiel-shows-us-theres-difference-between-gay-sex-and-gay http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/10/14/peter-thiel-sh...
- danhak 10y ago
  Not without a constitutional amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Early_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Early_life
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan
codyb 10y ago
Sure but he's not wrong on a global scale. Despite the high wealth inequality in the USA and many places abroad (many much less friendly to democracy in any form even our semi-hijacked, obstructed, weaker than it needs be in many areas, and stronger than it need be in many others seemingly oligarchich in many ways form) poverty is down, hunger is down, death in violent manners is down, and wars have been less prevalent and less region and globe encompassing than most periods of human history. There's plenty of people and regions hurting, but he's not wrong.
- return0 10y ago
  I would wager those are "normal" things, not good. When did hunger, poverty, death etc go up outside wars?
  - pavlov 10y ago
    When did hunger, poverty, death etc go up outside wars? About 50% of the time throughout human history? We've been making constant progress for a very short time. Widespread famine happened in Europe as recently as the late 19th century, and all it took was one or two cold summers.
scrollaway 10y ago
Trump is a salesman. He's pretty successfully selling the idea that America used to be great and that he's just what you need to make it great again. Regardless of whether it's wrong or not, it certainly doesn't have to be true for it to sell. Americans especially seem to love buying hot air. Now, to address your point, ask yourself if the same class of people you claim Obama is ignoring would have been better off 50 or 100 years ago.
- totalZero 10y ago
  Spoken like someone who lives in a different country and is unfamiliar with the nuances of current American political sentiment, which is the reason why Trump's pitch is resonating with just about half of the USA. Trump connects with Americans on many issues that either affect regular people or make them feel disempowered...loss of jobs, national debt, corruption in Washington, illegal immigration, excessive warfare in foreign lands...it's a little silly to say he's totally full of hot air. If you don't have a sense for the zeitgeist, you can never understand why a populist is, well...popular.
  - criley2 10y ago
    It's resonating with white identity politics. No magic here. It's white nationalism. Sugar coating follows:
    - ericzawo 10y ago
      Which mirrors what has been happening in Europe for a while now.
      - threeseed 10y ago
        Mirrors what is happening in all Western countries e.g. Australia. Right wing politicians are exploiting the population around the world by blaming migrants/refugees for all their problems.
        10y ago
threeseed 10y ago
> liberal elite are ignoring the plight of so many Americans Which is a ridiculous and bizarre premise. Because up until Trump it was the conservative elite who were most in favour of free markets/trade/regulations etc that have been allegedly responsible for a collapse in blue collar jobs. Anyway the problem isn't the ignoring of the masses. It's that there has been a failure to communicate in a way they can understand. Free trade isn't responsible for the loss of their jobs and globalisation was always going to happen. The issue is that rather than help them transition to 'jobs of the future' politicians took the easy road and blamed foreigners.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >Anyway the problem isn't the ignoring of the masses. It's that there has been a failure to communicate in a way they can understand. Free trade isn't responsible for the loss of their jobs and globalisation was always going to happen. By and large the people who benefit the most from free trade and immigration aren't the people who pay the price. We could have fashioned policies such that both the benefits and the pain from globalization were spread more evenly, although there would have been a cost in terms of overall growth. This isn't a communication problem. The problem is trade policies, environmental regulations, the legal environment, and immigration policies reflect the concerns of well-educated upper-middle-class and wealthier people to the exclusion of everyone else.
  - generic_user 10y ago
    The gap between the upper 5% and the bottom 95% is larger now then at any time since he 1930's. Thats not an accident its a predictable consequence of the Free trade agreements that were enthusiastically promoted and enacted by the that same 5% at to top that has benefited so spectacularly from them.
    - pnathan 10y ago
      >The gap between the upper 5% and the bottom 95% is larger now then at any time since he 1930's. Thats not an accident its a predictable consequence of the Free trade agreements that were enthusiastically promoted and enacted by the that same 5% at to top that has benefited so spectacularly from them. That's an oversimplification. You have to work backwards into the Reagan era and the deregulation from the 70s before you can start really taking NAFTA into account. If you want to throw turds at the top earners, look at the total system and don't just blame single causes. It's a very complex economic system. Further, consider the advantages of free trade: millions (billions?) of people in China have gotten better lives. Protectionism and mercantilism is not a great system for increasing total wealth...
panarky 10y ago
> ignoring the plight of so many Americans Trump's supporters are richer than most Americans, so it's hard to make the case that they're suffering more than others. Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-... This is about ideology and race more than economics.
- refurb 10y ago
  Wait a second. I keep hearing that Donald's biggest voter group is unemployed, poor white guys. Which one is it?
justinhensley 10y ago
Regarding the Thiel speech you linked and Trump in general, those are absolutely real and troubling issues for our country. Donald Trump does not offer realistic solutions to any of them. The only thing on the Trump platform remotely resembling a plan is making all health care insurance providers compete with each other nationally. Or as Trump says, "I'm going to remove all the lines, it'll be fantastic." Thiel's reason of "Trump is an outsider" is not enough for me.
- refurb 10y ago
  Oh please, every politician does that. I'm going to solve problem X by doing Y. They say it because it gets votes. Not because it's true. A great example is closing the gun show "loop hole". Is it a smart thing to do? Sure, you can think that. Will it reduce gun crime? Probably not since most guns used in crime are acquired through illegal means. But it get votes!
  - justinhensley 10y ago
    Except Donald Trump skips the Y part of your equation. He just states it will be the "best" or "great" or we'll do it "bigly".
    - refurb 10y ago
      Sure he does! We have a security problem, or an illegal alien problem, build a wall. Do I actually expect him to do that? Probably not. Just like every other politician.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
justinhensley 10y ago
Your claim of "nearly 50% of the population" support him needs a source. I put his support at closer to 40% than 50%.
- blhack 10y ago
  >I put his support at closer to 40% than 50%. Based on what? Most of these polls (as of today), put Trump at within a few percentage points of Clinton: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
  - threeseed 10y ago
    Those daily tracking polls are garbage and should be ignored. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n... Trump is on average closer to 40%.
    - douche 10y ago
      538 isn't really any less biased a source than Rasmussen or RealClearPolitics or the LA Times poll. They have a pretty clear agenda, and appear to be drafting on the tailwinds of past successes. They've been dismally wrong throughout the primary season.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Keep in mind that tracking polls track likely voters. It's erroneous to extrapolate from likely voters to the population at large. Granted that the sentiment of likely voters will line up quite well with the population at large, it's just that a likely voter poll necessarily rejects people who don't give a shit. The people who don't give a shit shouldn't be counted as supporting anything.
random_upvoter 10y ago
I'm surprised that nobody looks at the insipid presidency of Obama as one of the explanations for the rise of Trump. Obama has been little more than a figurehead of a system that runs itself and therefore can be considered as "out of control". Throwing a monkey wrench in the system may at this point be the only way for the voter to take back control.
pnathan 10y ago
Having family on the "other side" of that divide: their lives are measurably better now than 25 years ago. Pay generally better, education is better, knowledge more common, health care better. Most things cost less. Not everything is better, and incremental fixes to policies need to take place. Probably the biggest extant bug is the cost of health insurance and its rising. Things get much worse if you're in a rural area and not willing to relocate to better your life when the local money engine dies. That Americans aren't moving as much is a known fact; that American's aren't is likely a key contributor to certain economic 'dead sea' effects IMO. Generally, you have to look past the panic and doom of the 24/7 cable news cycle to see the bettering of the US though. It takes a bit of a long view. The key thing - and this is what Obama is trying to go for though - is that we can't pull up the ladder behind us. Regarding the current election. * The cable news networks are mostly a dumpster fire: Fox and CNN more than others. Written journalism has been adequate to excellent in general. * Mr. Thiel has been known for some time to be more of a neo-reactionary type. That he supports Trump is not surprising. * That the Republicans turn out to support the Party candidate is not surprising. It's a known characteristic of the Republicans. * That the song and dance of a mythical 50s appeals to so many white people should also not be surprising. We've spent 40 years mythologizing it. Also, 'Make America Great' Again largely is a dogwhistle to "Make America run by White Men Again", with a helping of good old traditional isolationism to boot. It's almost a no-op slogan, everyone can read into it what they want, based upon their current grievance - so long as they are aggrieved. One more note. I've worked good jobs, and I've worked minimum wage jobs, and I've been broke, and I've been not-broke. My overall estimate is that in order to assure prosperity and a better life to the blue collar workers, unions have to be re-energized across the board, taxes on corporations have to go up, and marginal taxes rates on the very wealthy have to go up. Better government services from the taxes, and better pay from the unions. This will lead to a better quality of life. That's a straight liberal playbook. We can look back on the 50s, 60s and the 90s liberal playbooks and iterate on them. There are things to improve, but they got some stuff right.
tashi 10y ago
Interesting. I haven't heard him speak about politics before, and I only knew that he was thought of as a Libertarian. I am very confused now about what he believes. He talks about our expensive college and health care systems, contrasting them with the rest of the world's, but my impression is that the most effective models currently in place are built on the opposite of free markets, so I can't tell what his solution would be. He praises Trump for being against open markets and military interventionism. But Trump has historically been in favor of open markets (and I thought Libertarians were as well), so it doesn't seem to be a deeply-held belief. And Trump may not believe in our current wars right now, but he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them, and to encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals, so I'm not getting a sense that a more peaceful world is his priority. Can someone please explain what I'm missing? I usually think of Libertarians as aiming for a logically consistent system, so that even when I disagree with them I can follow their reasoning. But I'm not getting Thiel at all.
- aswanson 10y ago
  There was a WSJ article awhile back that theil authored about Trump. His basic argument is that it's a vote against a political establishment that can't accomplish anything. I was as confused as you are about the seeming inconsistencies.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
  >And Trump may not believe in our current wars right now, but he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them, and to encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals, so I'm not getting a sense that a more peaceful world is his priority. If your enemies know you are willing to use Nuclear, they will not attack. If they won't attack, then there will be no war. No war = peace. >...he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them... He said "as a last resort." In other word, if America is about to go down, he will use Nuclear to save America as a last resort. If your enemies have nukes, and they are willing to nuke you, and you are not willing to nuke them back, then they'll just nuke you to bits, because they know you won't nuke them back. Remember, just because America is a good country doesn't mean that North Korea is also a good country. North Korea will not think twice about nuking America if America is not willing to nuke them back. >...encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals... Go read the Theory of Nuclear Deterrence. Nuclear Deterrence prevents war. It encourages countries to solve their problems through other means, instead of through war. Trump just wants peace. And he understands how to get it.

tunesmith 10y ago

Nearly 50% of the population also would have supported Vogon Jeltz and his message "I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon!" if he were a Republican. I don't think that proves much about Thiel.

ebfe 10y ago
Sure, but there's a reason Trump was picked over the other Republicans in the primaries.
- tzs 10y ago
  The Republicans spent the entirety of the Obama presidency trying to make sure Obama did not get any credit for anything good that happened, and would get blame for anything that wasn't good. For instance, when we started recovering from the recession and would get good news on something like jobs or growth, the Republican message would be that the numbers were too low. The standard they held Obama to was that of boom times, ignoring that we were still recovering from the recession, and that much of the rest of the first world was still in that recession. When health care costs would rise, the Republican message would be that it was due to Obamacare, completely ignoring that the increases were about the same or even slightly less than they had been before Obamacare. Nope...if your health care costs had been rising 5% a year for the last 10 years before Obama, and then rose 5% a year under Obamacare, the Republican message was that Obamacare made your health care costs go up 5%. Republicans seemed to think that if they spent nearly 8 years telling people that things sucked, people would turn against Obama and the Democrats, and sweep Republicans into complete control. Of course, that's not what happened. They successfully convinced people that things sucked, but the blame fell on all politicians, not just Obama and Democrats, making the GOP primary voters receptive to the idea of an outsider. Several of the major GOP contenders ran as outsiders (even Jeb Bush claimed to be an outsider...), but they all had extensive political careers and so Trump trumped them on the outsider thing.

return0 10y ago

Could Thiel be the first gay US president in a few years? BTW don't miss the ridiculous article [1] which basically says Thiel is not gay because he s not a liberal. 1. http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/10/14/peter-thiel-shows-us-theres-difference-between-gay-sex-and-gay http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/10/14/peter-thiel-sh...

danhak 10y ago
Not without a constitutional amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Early_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Early_life
honkhonkpants 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan

codyb 10y ago

Sure but he's not wrong on a global scale. Despite the high wealth inequality in the USA and many places abroad (many much less friendly to democracy in any form even our semi-hijacked, obstructed, weaker than it needs be in many areas, and stronger than it need be in many others seemingly oligarchich in many ways form) poverty is down, hunger is down, death in violent manners is down, and wars have been less prevalent and less region and globe encompassing than most periods of human history. There's plenty of people and regions hurting, but he's not wrong.

return0 10y ago
I would wager those are "normal" things, not good. When did hunger, poverty, death etc go up outside wars?
- pavlov 10y ago
  When did hunger, poverty, death etc go up outside wars? About 50% of the time throughout human history? We've been making constant progress for a very short time. Widespread famine happened in Europe as recently as the late 19th century, and all it took was one or two cold summers.

scrollaway 10y ago

Trump is a salesman. He's pretty successfully selling the idea that America used to be great and that he's just what you need to make it great again. Regardless of whether it's wrong or not, it certainly doesn't have to be true for it to sell. Americans especially seem to love buying hot air. Now, to address your point, ask yourself if the same class of people you claim Obama is ignoring would have been better off 50 or 100 years ago.

totalZero 10y ago
Spoken like someone who lives in a different country and is unfamiliar with the nuances of current American political sentiment, which is the reason why Trump's pitch is resonating with just about half of the USA. Trump connects with Americans on many issues that either affect regular people or make them feel disempowered...loss of jobs, national debt, corruption in Washington, illegal immigration, excessive warfare in foreign lands...it's a little silly to say he's totally full of hot air. If you don't have a sense for the zeitgeist, you can never understand why a populist is, well...popular.
- criley2 10y ago
  It's resonating with white identity politics. No magic here. It's white nationalism. Sugar coating follows:
  - ericzawo 10y ago
    Which mirrors what has been happening in Europe for a while now.
    - threeseed 10y ago
      Mirrors what is happening in all Western countries e.g. Australia. Right wing politicians are exploiting the population around the world by blaming migrants/refugees for all their problems.
      - 10y ago

threeseed 10y ago

> liberal elite are ignoring the plight of so many Americans Which is a ridiculous and bizarre premise. Because up until Trump it was the conservative elite who were most in favour of free markets/trade/regulations etc that have been allegedly responsible for a collapse in blue collar jobs. Anyway the problem isn't the ignoring of the masses. It's that there has been a failure to communicate in a way they can understand. Free trade isn't responsible for the loss of their jobs and globalisation was always going to happen. The issue is that rather than help them transition to 'jobs of the future' politicians took the easy road and blamed foreigners.

gozur88 10y ago
>Anyway the problem isn't the ignoring of the masses. It's that there has been a failure to communicate in a way they can understand. Free trade isn't responsible for the loss of their jobs and globalisation was always going to happen. By and large the people who benefit the most from free trade and immigration aren't the people who pay the price. We could have fashioned policies such that both the benefits and the pain from globalization were spread more evenly, although there would have been a cost in terms of overall growth. This isn't a communication problem. The problem is trade policies, environmental regulations, the legal environment, and immigration policies reflect the concerns of well-educated upper-middle-class and wealthier people to the exclusion of everyone else.
- generic_user 10y ago
  The gap between the upper 5% and the bottom 95% is larger now then at any time since he 1930's. Thats not an accident its a predictable consequence of the Free trade agreements that were enthusiastically promoted and enacted by the that same 5% at to top that has benefited so spectacularly from them.
  - pnathan 10y ago
    >The gap between the upper 5% and the bottom 95% is larger now then at any time since he 1930's. Thats not an accident its a predictable consequence of the Free trade agreements that were enthusiastically promoted and enacted by the that same 5% at to top that has benefited so spectacularly from them. That's an oversimplification. You have to work backwards into the Reagan era and the deregulation from the 70s before you can start really taking NAFTA into account. If you want to throw turds at the top earners, look at the total system and don't just blame single causes. It's a very complex economic system. Further, consider the advantages of free trade: millions (billions?) of people in China have gotten better lives. Protectionism and mercantilism is not a great system for increasing total wealth...

panarky 10y ago

> ignoring the plight of so many Americans Trump's supporters are richer than most Americans, so it's hard to make the case that they're suffering more than others. Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-... This is about ideology and race more than economics.

refurb 10y ago
Wait a second. I keep hearing that Donald's biggest voter group is unemployed, poor white guys. Which one is it?

justinhensley 10y ago

Regarding the Thiel speech you linked and Trump in general, those are absolutely real and troubling issues for our country. Donald Trump does not offer realistic solutions to any of them. The only thing on the Trump platform remotely resembling a plan is making all health care insurance providers compete with each other nationally. Or as Trump says, "I'm going to remove all the lines, it'll be fantastic." Thiel's reason of "Trump is an outsider" is not enough for me.

refurb 10y ago
Oh please, every politician does that. I'm going to solve problem X by doing Y. They say it because it gets votes. Not because it's true. A great example is closing the gun show "loop hole". Is it a smart thing to do? Sure, you can think that. Will it reduce gun crime? Probably not since most guns used in crime are acquired through illegal means. But it get votes!
- justinhensley 10y ago
  Except Donald Trump skips the Y part of your equation. He just states it will be the "best" or "great" or we'll do it "bigly".
  - refurb 10y ago
    Sure he does! We have a security problem, or an illegal alien problem, build a wall. Do I actually expect him to do that? Probably not. Just like every other politician.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

justinhensley 10y ago

Your claim of "nearly 50% of the population" support him needs a source. I put his support at closer to 40% than 50%.

blhack 10y ago
>I put his support at closer to 40% than 50%. Based on what? Most of these polls (as of today), put Trump at within a few percentage points of Clinton: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
- threeseed 10y ago
  Those daily tracking polls are garbage and should be ignored. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n... Trump is on average closer to 40%.
  - douche 10y ago
    538 isn't really any less biased a source than Rasmussen or RealClearPolitics or the LA Times poll. They have a pretty clear agenda, and appear to be drafting on the tailwinds of past successes. They've been dismally wrong throughout the primary season.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Keep in mind that tracking polls track likely voters. It's erroneous to extrapolate from likely voters to the population at large. Granted that the sentiment of likely voters will line up quite well with the population at large, it's just that a likely voter poll necessarily rejects people who don't give a shit. The people who don't give a shit shouldn't be counted as supporting anything.

random_upvoter 10y ago

I'm surprised that nobody looks at the insipid presidency of Obama as one of the explanations for the rise of Trump. Obama has been little more than a figurehead of a system that runs itself and therefore can be considered as "out of control". Throwing a monkey wrench in the system may at this point be the only way for the voter to take back control.

pnathan 10y ago

Having family on the "other side" of that divide: their lives are measurably better now than 25 years ago. Pay generally better, education is better, knowledge more common, health care better. Most things cost less. Not everything is better, and incremental fixes to policies need to take place. Probably the biggest extant bug is the cost of health insurance and its rising. Things get much worse if you're in a rural area and not willing to relocate to better your life when the local money engine dies. That Americans aren't moving as much is a known fact; that American's aren't is likely a key contributor to certain economic 'dead sea' effects IMO. Generally, you have to look past the panic and doom of the 24/7 cable news cycle to see the bettering of the US though. It takes a bit of a long view. The key thing - and this is what Obama is trying to go for though - is that we can't pull up the ladder behind us. Regarding the current election. * The cable news networks are mostly a dumpster fire: Fox and CNN more than others. Written journalism has been adequate to excellent in general. * Mr. Thiel has been known for some time to be more of a neo-reactionary type. That he supports Trump is not surprising. * That the Republicans turn out to support the Party candidate is not surprising. It's a known characteristic of the Republicans. * That the song and dance of a mythical 50s appeals to so many white people should also not be surprising. We've spent 40 years mythologizing it. Also, 'Make America Great' Again largely is a dogwhistle to "Make America run by White Men Again", with a helping of good old traditional isolationism to boot. It's almost a no-op slogan, everyone can read into it what they want, based upon their current grievance - so long as they are aggrieved. One more note. I've worked good jobs, and I've worked minimum wage jobs, and I've been broke, and I've been not-broke. My overall estimate is that in order to assure prosperity and a better life to the blue collar workers, unions have to be re-energized across the board, taxes on corporations have to go up, and marginal taxes rates on the very wealthy have to go up. Better government services from the taxes, and better pay from the unions. This will lead to a better quality of life. That's a straight liberal playbook. We can look back on the 50s, 60s and the 90s liberal playbooks and iterate on them. There are things to improve, but they got some stuff right.

tashi 10y ago

Interesting. I haven't heard him speak about politics before, and I only knew that he was thought of as a Libertarian. I am very confused now about what he believes. He talks about our expensive college and health care systems, contrasting them with the rest of the world's, but my impression is that the most effective models currently in place are built on the opposite of free markets, so I can't tell what his solution would be. He praises Trump for being against open markets and military interventionism. But Trump has historically been in favor of open markets (and I thought Libertarians were as well), so it doesn't seem to be a deeply-held belief. And Trump may not believe in our current wars right now, but he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them, and to encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals, so I'm not getting a sense that a more peaceful world is his priority. Can someone please explain what I'm missing? I usually think of Libertarians as aiming for a logically consistent system, so that even when I disagree with them I can follow their reasoning. But I'm not getting Thiel at all.

aswanson 10y ago
There was a WSJ article awhile back that theil authored about Trump. His basic argument is that it's a vote against a political establishment that can't accomplish anything. I was as confused as you are about the seeming inconsistencies.
DefaultUserHN 10y ago
>And Trump may not believe in our current wars right now, but he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them, and to encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals, so I'm not getting a sense that a more peaceful world is his priority. If your enemies know you are willing to use Nuclear, they will not attack. If they won't attack, then there will be no war. No war = peace. >...he has given many indications that he'd be willing to use nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have them... He said "as a last resort." In other word, if America is about to go down, he will use Nuclear to save America as a last resort. If your enemies have nukes, and they are willing to nuke you, and you are not willing to nuke them back, then they'll just nuke you to bits, because they know you won't nuke them back. Remember, just because America is a good country doesn't mean that North Korea is also a good country. North Korea will not think twice about nuking America if America is not willing to nuke them back. >...encourage our allies to develop their own arsenals... Go read the Theory of Nuclear Deterrence. Nuclear Deterrence prevents war. It encourages countries to solve their problems through other means, instead of through war. Trump just wants peace. And he understands how to get it.