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There are many many reasons not to respect Peter Thiel ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-women-democracy_us_5747079be4b03ede4413f6f5 http://www.

There are many many reasons not to respect Peter Thiel ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-women-democracy_us_5747079be4b03ede4413f6f5 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-women-democr... )

civilian 10y ago
He helped take down Gawker, rightfully so, and he's simply against the welfare state. Respect is an odd animal. It's an interesting trend that conservatives & libertarians will respect people who hold different opinions, but if a liberal meets someone who holds a differing opinion, they vilify them for it.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Peter Thiel: "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." (second paragraph of link from article, direct link here: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...) Since when do we have to tolerate this kind of thing? Extremism in the defense of liberty never used to be a vice.
  - civilian 10y ago
    I know you think it's a scandalous quote, but there is a weird interplay between democracy and freedom. In some sense, government can maximize our freedom. By having police, a military, and a strong justice system we allow people to make decisions without worrying about crime. (And importantly I would include corporate fraud in the umbrella of "crime", and I think that the imbalanced resources & information between employer/employee and retailer/consumer justifies the government stepping in to standardize how those groups should interact.) It's a Pax Romana! When we don't have to worry about bandits, barbarians and charlatans then we flourish. But government can also diminish our freedom. We get spied on. We can't do harmless recreational drugs. For a long time we couldn't have sex in certain ways or with certain people. We can't choose how our child's school money gets spent (it by default goes to public schools-- I'd prefer a voucher system.) There are thousands of stupid laws! We incarcerate people at the 2nd-highest rate! And since we're the 3rd most populous country, it means that our government is one of the biggest instruments of tyranny in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  > It's an interesting trend that conservatives & libertarians will respect people who hold different opinions, but if a liberal meets someone who holds a differing opinion, they vilify them for it. Oh, come on! Seriously? Is this the level of discourse we're reduced to? (EDIT: Just as a counter-example, Senator McCain.)
  - civilian 10y ago
    Ahhhhh okay, I was too bait-y there. Sorry, and the right does it too. So here's the problem in it's essence. 1. Person A strongly believes that a policy will help the nation/world 2. Person B disagrees with the policy. 3. Person A calls Person B repugnant for not wanting to help the world! But we're lost something here. Person B doesn't hate the world, they don't want to burn it down. They have a different model of the world. So either they think that we have different priorities, they think that the policy uninformed and will have unintended side-effects. Like, in the 1970s, when we had gas shortages? The US initiated price controls. Because they said: "hey, you shouldn't have to pay a lot of gas!". But I would've been against that. Do I want people to pay high prices for gas? No! But I think that the side-effects of price control (namely, that you're going to cause long lines, and possibly start a dangerous black market) is worse than having high gas prices. Futhermore, having high gas prices will incentivize prospecting, or it will incentivize oil companies to increase supply in other ways.
    - lomnakkus 10y ago
      Not sure what you're doing with the 1970s analogy there, but I think you might be describing the Principal Agent problem, except maybe in an "externalized" form. (See below.) Unfortunately, we people have an unfortunate tendency to attribute disagreements to "we're just not like them" and agreements to "we're exactly like them". (Tribalism rules IOW, but just on the basis of having the same opinion rather than Geography.). Even if most of the people on the Internets don't literally hate the people who have opposing opinions, they'll usually say that they do (again, on the Internets), leading to further fueling of the emotions/hatred of the "other".

civilian 10y ago

He helped take down Gawker, rightfully so, and he's simply against the welfare state. Respect is an odd animal. It's an interesting trend that conservatives & libertarians will respect people who hold different opinions, but if a liberal meets someone who holds a differing opinion, they vilify them for it.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Peter Thiel: "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." (second paragraph of link from article, direct link here: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...) Since when do we have to tolerate this kind of thing? Extremism in the defense of liberty never used to be a vice.
- civilian 10y ago
  I know you think it's a scandalous quote, but there is a weird interplay between democracy and freedom. In some sense, government can maximize our freedom. By having police, a military, and a strong justice system we allow people to make decisions without worrying about crime. (And importantly I would include corporate fraud in the umbrella of "crime", and I think that the imbalanced resources & information between employer/employee and retailer/consumer justifies the government stepping in to standardize how those groups should interact.) It's a Pax Romana! When we don't have to worry about bandits, barbarians and charlatans then we flourish. But government can also diminish our freedom. We get spied on. We can't do harmless recreational drugs. For a long time we couldn't have sex in certain ways or with certain people. We can't choose how our child's school money gets spent (it by default goes to public schools-- I'd prefer a voucher system.) There are thousands of stupid laws! We incarcerate people at the 2nd-highest rate! And since we're the 3rd most populous country, it means that our government is one of the biggest instruments of tyranny in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
lomnakkus 10y ago
> It's an interesting trend that conservatives & libertarians will respect people who hold different opinions, but if a liberal meets someone who holds a differing opinion, they vilify them for it. Oh, come on! Seriously? Is this the level of discourse we're reduced to? (EDIT: Just as a counter-example, Senator McCain.)
- civilian 10y ago
  Ahhhhh okay, I was too bait-y there. Sorry, and the right does it too. So here's the problem in it's essence. 1. Person A strongly believes that a policy will help the nation/world 2. Person B disagrees with the policy. 3. Person A calls Person B repugnant for not wanting to help the world! But we're lost something here. Person B doesn't hate the world, they don't want to burn it down. They have a different model of the world. So either they think that we have different priorities, they think that the policy uninformed and will have unintended side-effects. Like, in the 1970s, when we had gas shortages? The US initiated price controls. Because they said: "hey, you shouldn't have to pay a lot of gas!". But I would've been against that. Do I want people to pay high prices for gas? No! But I think that the side-effects of price control (namely, that you're going to cause long lines, and possibly start a dangerous black market) is worse than having high gas prices. Futhermore, having high gas prices will incentivize prospecting, or it will incentivize oil companies to increase supply in other ways.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Not sure what you're doing with the 1970s analogy there, but I think you might be describing the Principal Agent problem, except maybe in an "externalized" form. (See below.) Unfortunately, we people have an unfortunate tendency to attribute disagreements to "we're just not like them" and agreements to "we're exactly like them". (Tribalism rules IOW, but just on the basis of having the same opinion rather than Geography.). Even if most of the people on the Internets don't literally hate the people who have opposing opinions, they'll usually say that they do (again, on the Internets), leading to further fueling of the emotions/hatred of the "other".