6 ms·

I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't rea

by otalp 10y ago

I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't realize is that improving technology is more important than globalization for the human race, which is fine, but that leads him to the conclusion that things like welfare and tax increases are an abomination holding back progress, which makes him against both. I don't think he has a problem with government spending as long as it's towards corporations instead of people.

api 10y ago
That's a little bit of an oversimplification. Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe since current technology (fossil fuel energy systems, slow transit, inefficient power grids, etc.) cannot possibly support the entire human race at a modern developed world standard of living. I don't agree with everything Peter thinks, but this seems like a flat fact to me. Present-day technology as deployed in the Western world cannot support the entire human race at a Western standard of living and may not even be able to support the Western world at its current standard of living for another hundred years. Ask yourself what a slow motion Malthusian catastrophe might look like. Maybe you'd have insane levels of pollution (Google "asian brown cloud") as countries with 3X the US population try to achieve US standards of living, massive inflation in the cost of necessities, economic and political turmoil as systems buckle, stagnation and the destruction of the middle class in developed economies, ...? Edit: Thiel originally jumped out at me because he was one of the few people who sees something I've considered self-evident for years but that many other people seem unable to see-- that we entered a kind of minor dark age around 1970. Most of what we are doing now is just an incremental refinement of tech that was invented in the 50s and 60s. We stopped inventing. I don't know if I would agree with Thiel about the causes of this, but I give him credit for actually seeing it. When I saw SpaceX land a rocket I was filled with an incredible sense of optimism that the 1970s might finally be over.
- choxi 10y ago
  What's your opinion about the causes of this "mini Dark Age"? Do you still feel that we're in it?
  - api 10y ago
    Around the early 1970s, the great watch-word of the culture became "back." This came primarily in two forms: back to nature (left), and back to the Bible (right). Under the hood both embrace the naturalistic fallacy (natural equals good) and the idea that there is a proper order from which we have deviated (sin, redemption, reconciliation). This manifested as the Religious Right, the anti-development wing of the Green movement, dogmatic Skepticism (a.k.a. scholasticism), and finally the alt-right. The alt-right is the ultimate Hegelian synthesis. I'll get to more on what I think is happening today later. IMHO this was driven by a number of things. These are some that jump out at me: "Duck and cover"-- this was the generation that grew up with the looming terror of instant thermonuclear annihilation. A bit of ludditeism and retro fantasy is understandable. Social and urban decay-- by the 1970s pollution was very bad in the West and cities were becoming vast ugly slums. Families were falling apart. Crime rates were rising. Reality did not look so good. See also: duck and cover. Disillusionment with the collapse of the optimistic and futurist 1960s psychedelic counterculture. By the 1970s the Human Be-In type stuff had given way to Altamont and Manson and "acid casualties." This was the generation that grew up on television. Broadcast TV is the most passive form of media in history and encourages escape into fictional idealized worlds. Finally I think we got overwhelmed on an emotional level by rapid change and rapid discovery. Years ago I was thinking about this topic and came across a photo of the Earth from the Moon. I saw it through different eyes, saw it not as an amazing picture of accomplishment but as a terrifying image of our "frightful place in the universe" as H.P. Lovecraft so eloquently put it. Look at that picture. Do you see a God who cares about us? Do you see anything that will save us? I just see a speck of dust covered with a thin film of air floating in infinite black mystery. If an asteroid came along and whacked that speck of dust, nothing would care. There were many other things too, like the de-funding of basic research in favor of "practical" research, but I see those as secondary effects rather than primary drivers. The primary drivers are deep philosophical and emotional currents. Capitalism kept driving innovation, but not invention. We kept taking the stuff we'd invented in the first 2/3 of the 20th century and refining it. We took microprocessors from toys to today's behemoths and we took feature sizes down to <10nm. We made cars safer, faster, and more efficient. We cleaned up the air and the water (at least in the West). We incrementally improved health care. But we stopped inventing. I think invention requires a fundamentally progressive worldview. To invent is to posit that there is a better way that has never existed, which negates the possibility that there is or was a better way today or in the past. Invention is fundamentally anti-tradition, anti-nature, anti-status-quo, and imaginative. It goes without saying that if you accept the naturalistic fallacy (or the theistic version) or a dogmatic and scholastic approach to knowledge there is no point in inventing. Invention is either a sin, foolish, or futile. Fast-forward to today: I think it's ending. If I had to put a date on it, I'd say the day SpaceX landed its first rocket. Seems a good enough piece of symbolism to me. One of the symptoms of its end is a final blow-out phase. The alt-right, as I said above, represents a total synthesis of the retro-left and the retro-right. It combines concrete manifestations of the luddite left (anti-tech, anti-GMO, anti-health-care, anti-vax, etc.) with concrete manifestations of both the religious and secular reactionary right. As such it has swept up both 70s-liberals and 70s-conseratives. Under the hood it is driven by explicitly reactionary traditionalist thought, including but not limited to the likes of Julius Evola. The alt-right's embrace of racism and sexism also represents a final total embrace of the naturalistic fallacy. The idea of global human equality is profoundly unnatural. Racism is natural. Gender inequality is natural. It's true that the alt-right is partly a millennial thing, but it's being driven by boomers and late-boomers. My prediction is that the alt-right will flame out spectacularly and then the 70s will finally be over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMhl7YuKEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMhl7YuKEY Edit: Thiel's backing of Trump and the alt-right is why I doubt I agree with him about the causes here. Either that or he's playing insanely "meta" 5D-chess and is actually trying to accelerate the demise of the zeitgeist by driving it to its final culmination. That would be true high magic, but I doubt it. Edit #2: our frightful place in the universe: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/moon_and_earth_lroearthrise_frame_0.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/moon_and_earth_lroe...
- solipsism 10y ago
  Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe And yet he pretends to lack the sense to realize that there's nothing you can do about that! Globalism is the inevitable result of the capitalism and free markets which Theil purports to champion. He wants to have his cake (freedom from coercion) and eat it too (the ability to coerce others). It's a perversion of libertarianism that's purely greedy and unprincipled to its core. I think Theil knows this and thinks he's playing a masterful game of chess against us (the rest of the world).
  - Anderkent 10y ago
    Where does Thiel ever argue for or request the ability to coerce others? Adjusting the system so that other actions are incentivised is not coercion.
    - solipsism 10y ago
      Supporting the governmental bureaucracies like the NSA is by definition participating in coercion.
      - Anderkent 10y ago
        That's redefining coercion towards meaninglessness.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  That theory has a major blind spot: the increase in demand for a Western standard of living at an unprecedented global scale enables innovation to bring down costs. Example: Africa has dealt with underinvestment for a long time in many areas, like telecommunications infrastructure. But because of that, many African nations have leapfrogged hardline telecommunications in favor of mobile, resulting in less spending before and after for maintenance of an antiquated system. Likewise, we in America are dealing with the ramifications of unsustainable sprawl, where entire municipal and county budgets are exhausted just to maintain current infrastructure, particularly roads, and we have nothing left over to invest with. All in all, that theory is limited to one's faith in humanity to adapt and thrive. We made it through the ice ages and the Toba Catastrophe. Besides, who in the 21st century is content with aspiring to the living standards of the 20th century? The global poor, perhaps, but once they reach the 20th century, they, like most people, aspire for the 21st.
  - api 10y ago
    All of that is incremental and evolutionary. Here's a good example of what I mean. Fundamental invention: radio. Before radio communication via invisible waves over long distances was impossible. After radio it wasn't. This is a fundamental qualitative change in capability. Innovation and evolution: morse code keys to 4G/LTE and WiFi. This represents a quantitative change in capability (faster/better/cheaper), but qualitatively WiFi is the same class of capability as morse code key radio. If the EmDrive actually worked, that would represent a new fundamental invention happening today. At this point I doubt it does, but it's an example of what such a thing would look like. In the pre-EmDrive world you couldn't propel something without reaction mass. In a post-EmDrive world you could. Qualitative step change in capability.
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      I disagree with your assessment. It is widely understood that shipping containers are responsible for more global trade than any other factor, which has lowered the prices of goods around the world at a scale never seen before. The unprecedented demand for trade necessitated their adoption, but they are essentially a metal box on top of other metal boxes on top of a flat surface. Shipping containers were a tremendous innovation but they required absolutely no new or novel technology to produce or deploy. Another example: insulation. Energy costs are higher to heat in the winter than cool in the summer, but an extraordinary amount of energy is wasted due to insufficient insulation. Solving this problem would decrease energy costs, increase quality of life, and would require no new technology whatsoever. I fear we in the tech sphere are sometimes too addicted to the lure of the future to imagine what we could do with what we already have. I mean, shit, literally, could be solved by better toilets. Last I checked India had more cell phones than flushing toilets. Proper sanitation saves on health care costs later on. This is another very old technology that can prevent us from even needing high technology to solve the problem caused by insufficient sanitation and toilet access. Shit happens, but it doesn't always have to.
- new299 10y ago
  I'm not going to say it's false. But I've love to see citations supporting the notion that technological progress has slowed since the 1970s. Looking around me I see some evidence: CCD Cameras: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device#History LEDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Initial_commercial_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Initial_c... Laser diodes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diode#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diode#History LCDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#History Microprocessors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#History All invented before 1970. However, they were not really in the hands of consumers by this time. So, I wonder if the point of invention, or the point at which they really had widespread availability is more important?
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Cloud computing is the mainframe model. ALGOL was safe, maintainable language for systems with LISP being ultimate for scripting or flexibility. Current languages mostly do what the could already do. High-performance, NoSQL databases were how mainframes started. Clustering & early distributed systems by Dec's VMS & Tandem NonStop. Xerox PARC came up with desktops. Englebart's people demonstrated all kinds of stuff in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos Most stuff I see today is just rehashes of concepts that were made from the 1960's to 1980's. The core ones you need for personal communication or running a business were all built before 1970. There's still innovation happening but most improvements were just incremental rather than ground-breaking. The most groundbreaking stuff today, like a computer in your pocket, were often result of massive, economic investment into a pile of incremental improvements by many people over time. I'm fine with this but let's not act like we're having many Xerox PARC or Doug Englebart moments.
    - jdminhbg 10y ago
      > Cloud computing is the mainframe model. It really, really isn't. It shares one characteristic (computation done on behalf of one client by another remote client), but pretty much nothing else. The need to pigeonhole all developments in terms of historical patterns is just revisionism.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  Thiel is not the only one to make that observation. Alan Kay has said something along those lines -- that there have been virtually no compelling inventions in computing for a while now [0][1]. [0] http://stackoverflow.com/q/432922/177696 http://stackoverflow.com/q/432922/177696 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941827
  - kenjackson 10y ago
    What's "a while" and what is "compelling"?
Bartweiss 10y ago
Zero to One was a hell of a read, even just as a Thiel biography - I think you're right to conclude that he's not a libertarian in the classic sense. The "Secrets" chapter among others suggested that he just has a vastly different view of where value and progress come from than most people, and is driven by that rather than the usual moral/economic arguments for libertarianism.
mlmlmasd 10y ago
> I don't think he has a problem with government spending as long as it's towards corporations instead of people. That's exactly what every right-libertarian and ancap thinks and acts according to. Most of the right-libertarian and ancap 'movement' is funded and supported by corporate and pro-corporate interests, the people that fall for the bullshit are social lobbyist for corporatism and neo-feudalism.

by otalp 10y ago

api 10y ago

That's a little bit of an oversimplification. Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe since current technology (fossil fuel energy systems, slow transit, inefficient power grids, etc.) cannot possibly support the entire human race at a modern developed world standard of living. I don't agree with everything Peter thinks, but this seems like a flat fact to me. Present-day technology as deployed in the Western world cannot support the entire human race at a Western standard of living and may not even be able to support the Western world at its current standard of living for another hundred years. Ask yourself what a slow motion Malthusian catastrophe might look like. Maybe you'd have insane levels of pollution (Google "asian brown cloud") as countries with 3X the US population try to achieve US standards of living, massive inflation in the cost of necessities, economic and political turmoil as systems buckle, stagnation and the destruction of the middle class in developed economies, ...? Edit: Thiel originally jumped out at me because he was one of the few people who sees something I've considered self-evident for years but that many other people seem unable to see-- that we entered a kind of minor dark age around 1970. Most of what we are doing now is just an incremental refinement of tech that was invented in the 50s and 60s. We stopped inventing. I don't know if I would agree with Thiel about the causes of this, but I give him credit for actually seeing it. When I saw SpaceX land a rocket I was filled with an incredible sense of optimism that the 1970s might finally be over.

choxi 10y ago
What's your opinion about the causes of this "mini Dark Age"? Do you still feel that we're in it?
- api 10y ago
  Around the early 1970s, the great watch-word of the culture became "back." This came primarily in two forms: back to nature (left), and back to the Bible (right). Under the hood both embrace the naturalistic fallacy (natural equals good) and the idea that there is a proper order from which we have deviated (sin, redemption, reconciliation). This manifested as the Religious Right, the anti-development wing of the Green movement, dogmatic Skepticism (a.k.a. scholasticism), and finally the alt-right. The alt-right is the ultimate Hegelian synthesis. I'll get to more on what I think is happening today later. IMHO this was driven by a number of things. These are some that jump out at me: "Duck and cover"-- this was the generation that grew up with the looming terror of instant thermonuclear annihilation. A bit of ludditeism and retro fantasy is understandable. Social and urban decay-- by the 1970s pollution was very bad in the West and cities were becoming vast ugly slums. Families were falling apart. Crime rates were rising. Reality did not look so good. See also: duck and cover. Disillusionment with the collapse of the optimistic and futurist 1960s psychedelic counterculture. By the 1970s the Human Be-In type stuff had given way to Altamont and Manson and "acid casualties." This was the generation that grew up on television. Broadcast TV is the most passive form of media in history and encourages escape into fictional idealized worlds. Finally I think we got overwhelmed on an emotional level by rapid change and rapid discovery. Years ago I was thinking about this topic and came across a photo of the Earth from the Moon. I saw it through different eyes, saw it not as an amazing picture of accomplishment but as a terrifying image of our "frightful place in the universe" as H.P. Lovecraft so eloquently put it. Look at that picture. Do you see a God who cares about us? Do you see anything that will save us? I just see a speck of dust covered with a thin film of air floating in infinite black mystery. If an asteroid came along and whacked that speck of dust, nothing would care. There were many other things too, like the de-funding of basic research in favor of "practical" research, but I see those as secondary effects rather than primary drivers. The primary drivers are deep philosophical and emotional currents. Capitalism kept driving innovation, but not invention. We kept taking the stuff we'd invented in the first 2/3 of the 20th century and refining it. We took microprocessors from toys to today's behemoths and we took feature sizes down to <10nm. We made cars safer, faster, and more efficient. We cleaned up the air and the water (at least in the West). We incrementally improved health care. But we stopped inventing. I think invention requires a fundamentally progressive worldview. To invent is to posit that there is a better way that has never existed, which negates the possibility that there is or was a better way today or in the past. Invention is fundamentally anti-tradition, anti-nature, anti-status-quo, and imaginative. It goes without saying that if you accept the naturalistic fallacy (or the theistic version) or a dogmatic and scholastic approach to knowledge there is no point in inventing. Invention is either a sin, foolish, or futile. Fast-forward to today: I think it's ending. If I had to put a date on it, I'd say the day SpaceX landed its first rocket. Seems a good enough piece of symbolism to me. One of the symptoms of its end is a final blow-out phase. The alt-right, as I said above, represents a total synthesis of the retro-left and the retro-right. It combines concrete manifestations of the luddite left (anti-tech, anti-GMO, anti-health-care, anti-vax, etc.) with concrete manifestations of both the religious and secular reactionary right. As such it has swept up both 70s-liberals and 70s-conseratives. Under the hood it is driven by explicitly reactionary traditionalist thought, including but not limited to the likes of Julius Evola. The alt-right's embrace of racism and sexism also represents a final total embrace of the naturalistic fallacy. The idea of global human equality is profoundly unnatural. Racism is natural. Gender inequality is natural. It's true that the alt-right is partly a millennial thing, but it's being driven by boomers and late-boomers. My prediction is that the alt-right will flame out spectacularly and then the 70s will finally be over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMhl7YuKEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMhl7YuKEY Edit: Thiel's backing of Trump and the alt-right is why I doubt I agree with him about the causes here. Either that or he's playing insanely "meta" 5D-chess and is actually trying to accelerate the demise of the zeitgeist by driving it to its final culmination. That would be true high magic, but I doubt it. Edit #2: our frightful place in the universe: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/moon_and_earth_lroearthrise_frame_0.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/moon_and_earth_lroe...
solipsism 10y ago
Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe And yet he pretends to lack the sense to realize that there's nothing you can do about that! Globalism is the inevitable result of the capitalism and free markets which Theil purports to champion. He wants to have his cake (freedom from coercion) and eat it too (the ability to coerce others). It's a perversion of libertarianism that's purely greedy and unprincipled to its core. I think Theil knows this and thinks he's playing a masterful game of chess against us (the rest of the world).
- Anderkent 10y ago
  Where does Thiel ever argue for or request the ability to coerce others? Adjusting the system so that other actions are incentivised is not coercion.
  - solipsism 10y ago
    Supporting the governmental bureaucracies like the NSA is by definition participating in coercion.
    - Anderkent 10y ago
      That's redefining coercion towards meaninglessness.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
That theory has a major blind spot: the increase in demand for a Western standard of living at an unprecedented global scale enables innovation to bring down costs. Example: Africa has dealt with underinvestment for a long time in many areas, like telecommunications infrastructure. But because of that, many African nations have leapfrogged hardline telecommunications in favor of mobile, resulting in less spending before and after for maintenance of an antiquated system. Likewise, we in America are dealing with the ramifications of unsustainable sprawl, where entire municipal and county budgets are exhausted just to maintain current infrastructure, particularly roads, and we have nothing left over to invest with. All in all, that theory is limited to one's faith in humanity to adapt and thrive. We made it through the ice ages and the Toba Catastrophe. Besides, who in the 21st century is content with aspiring to the living standards of the 20th century? The global poor, perhaps, but once they reach the 20th century, they, like most people, aspire for the 21st.
- api 10y ago
  All of that is incremental and evolutionary. Here's a good example of what I mean. Fundamental invention: radio. Before radio communication via invisible waves over long distances was impossible. After radio it wasn't. This is a fundamental qualitative change in capability. Innovation and evolution: morse code keys to 4G/LTE and WiFi. This represents a quantitative change in capability (faster/better/cheaper), but qualitatively WiFi is the same class of capability as morse code key radio. If the EmDrive actually worked, that would represent a new fundamental invention happening today. At this point I doubt it does, but it's an example of what such a thing would look like. In the pre-EmDrive world you couldn't propel something without reaction mass. In a post-EmDrive world you could. Qualitative step change in capability.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    I disagree with your assessment. It is widely understood that shipping containers are responsible for more global trade than any other factor, which has lowered the prices of goods around the world at a scale never seen before. The unprecedented demand for trade necessitated their adoption, but they are essentially a metal box on top of other metal boxes on top of a flat surface. Shipping containers were a tremendous innovation but they required absolutely no new or novel technology to produce or deploy. Another example: insulation. Energy costs are higher to heat in the winter than cool in the summer, but an extraordinary amount of energy is wasted due to insufficient insulation. Solving this problem would decrease energy costs, increase quality of life, and would require no new technology whatsoever. I fear we in the tech sphere are sometimes too addicted to the lure of the future to imagine what we could do with what we already have. I mean, shit, literally, could be solved by better toilets. Last I checked India had more cell phones than flushing toilets. Proper sanitation saves on health care costs later on. This is another very old technology that can prevent us from even needing high technology to solve the problem caused by insufficient sanitation and toilet access. Shit happens, but it doesn't always have to.
new299 10y ago
I'm not going to say it's false. But I've love to see citations supporting the notion that technological progress has slowed since the 1970s. Looking around me I see some evidence: CCD Cameras: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device#History LEDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Initial_commercial_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Initial_c... Laser diodes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diode#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diode#History LCDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#History Microprocessors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#History All invented before 1970. However, they were not really in the hands of consumers by this time. So, I wonder if the point of invention, or the point at which they really had widespread availability is more important?
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Cloud computing is the mainframe model. ALGOL was safe, maintainable language for systems with LISP being ultimate for scripting or flexibility. Current languages mostly do what the could already do. High-performance, NoSQL databases were how mainframes started. Clustering & early distributed systems by Dec's VMS & Tandem NonStop. Xerox PARC came up with desktops. Englebart's people demonstrated all kinds of stuff in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos Most stuff I see today is just rehashes of concepts that were made from the 1960's to 1980's. The core ones you need for personal communication or running a business were all built before 1970. There's still innovation happening but most improvements were just incremental rather than ground-breaking. The most groundbreaking stuff today, like a computer in your pocket, were often result of massive, economic investment into a pile of incremental improvements by many people over time. I'm fine with this but let's not act like we're having many Xerox PARC or Doug Englebart moments.
  - jdminhbg 10y ago
    > Cloud computing is the mainframe model. It really, really isn't. It shares one characteristic (computation done on behalf of one client by another remote client), but pretty much nothing else. The need to pigeonhole all developments in terms of historical patterns is just revisionism.
sah2ed 10y ago
Thiel is not the only one to make that observation. Alan Kay has said something along those lines -- that there have been virtually no compelling inventions in computing for a while now [0][1]. [0] http://stackoverflow.com/q/432922/177696 http://stackoverflow.com/q/432922/177696 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941827
- kenjackson 10y ago
  What's "a while" and what is "compelling"?

Bartweiss 10y ago

Zero to One was a hell of a read, even just as a Thiel biography - I think you're right to conclude that he's not a libertarian in the classic sense. The "Secrets" chapter among others suggested that he just has a vastly different view of where value and progress come from than most people, and is driven by that rather than the usual moral/economic arguments for libertarianism.

mlmlmasd 10y ago

> I don't think he has a problem with government spending as long as it's towards corporations instead of people. That's exactly what every right-libertarian and ancap thinks and acts according to. Most of the right-libertarian and ancap 'movement' is funded and supported by corporate and pro-corporate interests, the people that fall for the bullshit are social lobbyist for corporatism and neo-feudalism.