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Peter Thiel: "Everything is short-term focused no one is looking into the future, 15 to 20 years like they used to in our parents' generation. A lot of what our

Peter Thiel: "Everything is short-term focused no one is looking into the future, 15 to 20 years like they used to in our parents' generation. A lot of what our parents generation did: building interstate highways, Manhattan Project, etc, could not be done today." This from a huge libertarian?

mindcrime 16y ago
This from a huge libertarian? Being a libertarian doesn't conflict with wanting to be forward looking, or with wanting to do ambitious projects. And a "small 'l' libertarian" might even be OK with the State managing the construction of something like the Interstate highway system. A "Big 'L' Libertarian" would oppose funding such a project through coercive, involuntary taxation, but wouldn't necessarily oppose the idea in itself. They would just argue that a means of funding should be found that doesn't involve coercion. That said, I don't know Peter Thiel and I don't know how deeply his libertarian roots run, or how much of an ideologue he is. There are a lot of people who call themselves libertarians that I wouldn't necessarily call libertarians myself. <shrug />
- jbooth 16y ago
  Libertarian has been diluted to meaningless. These days, if you go by majority vote, it generally means "doctrinaire conservative who decided deficits were really important on January 20th, 2009".
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Here are some articles by libertarians criticizing deficits as early as 2004. http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/13/revive-gramm-rudmann http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/13/revive-gramm-rudmann http://reason.com/archives/2007/02/12/the-beltway-cut http://reason.com/archives/2007/02/12/the-beltway-cut
    - jbooth 16y ago
      I'm sure you can find a token libertarian criticism in between enabling these guys every other spare second. Ron Paul even opposed the war in Iraq. (I'll give that guy credit for being principled even though half of his opinions are loony-bin crazy). But I'm talking about the totality -- check out Fox News and the Tea Party if you want the beating heart of the conservative movement. These are the exact same people, not figuratively, literally, who defended the Bush admin for 8 straight years. And CATO? How many pieces did they put out as cover for the Bush admin during that same time period? They're basically part of the republican messaging system.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        I just did a quick google search, and picked the first few items from prior years. Here is the Cato archive, form your own opinion: http://www.cato.org/pubarchives/index.php?type=opeds#year=2004&month=12 http://www.cato.org/pubarchives/index.php?type=opeds#year=20... For the one month I bothered to look at, most of it seemed pretty anti-bush (with the exception of one article advocating for looser immigration rules).
        jbooth 16y ago
        Well, ok, maybe I was unfair to Cato there by lumping them in with the rest of the republican messaging organizations. From a quick glance it does seem like they were calling out Bush on libertarian grounds when it was appropriate to do so. Anyways my original point was that if you add up all of the people calling themselves libertarian these days, you generally get the guy saying "keep the government out of medicare" who had no idea he was a libertarian until about 5 minutes after Obama was inaugurated. It's not about government, it's about Obama and all that he represents (liberals, anti-americanism, illegal immigrants, manchurian candidates, radical islam, etc etc etc crazy talk). Sorry that your movement's been hijacked. (notes that someone went down this thread blindly modding you up and me down -- this is what I'm talking about when I say sorry about your movement -- it's not about reasoned opinions on how government should work, it's about "us vs them" cultural warfare).
      - 16y ago
- inthewoods 16y ago
  Has nothing to do with looking forward or doing ambitious projects - it has to do with your view of the private sector vs. the government. Most of the libertarians I know would argue that the government has no business being involved in creating innovation - regardless of how it is funded. They would argue that government can't innovate and the private sector is where the market can decide what innovations will succeed. And yes, Peter Thiel is a huge libertarian. I find it comical that he would then list off an entire list of government projects as examples of driving innovation.
  - mindcrime 16y ago
    True, although categorizing libertarians is about as easy as herding cats. But this whole sub-thread is already, IMO, way off-topic, so I'm not going to say anything more to perpetuate this whole discussion. I probably shouldn't have chimed in to begin with. <sigh />

mindcrime 16y ago

This from a huge libertarian? Being a libertarian doesn't conflict with wanting to be forward looking, or with wanting to do ambitious projects. And a "small 'l' libertarian" might even be OK with the State managing the construction of something like the Interstate highway system. A "Big 'L' Libertarian" would oppose funding such a project through coercive, involuntary taxation, but wouldn't necessarily oppose the idea in itself. They would just argue that a means of funding should be found that doesn't involve coercion. That said, I don't know Peter Thiel and I don't know how deeply his libertarian roots run, or how much of an ideologue he is. There are a lot of people who call themselves libertarians that I wouldn't necessarily call libertarians myself. <shrug />

jbooth 16y ago
Libertarian has been diluted to meaningless. These days, if you go by majority vote, it generally means "doctrinaire conservative who decided deficits were really important on January 20th, 2009".
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Here are some articles by libertarians criticizing deficits as early as 2004. http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/13/revive-gramm-rudmann http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/13/revive-gramm-rudmann http://reason.com/archives/2007/02/12/the-beltway-cut http://reason.com/archives/2007/02/12/the-beltway-cut
  - jbooth 16y ago
    I'm sure you can find a token libertarian criticism in between enabling these guys every other spare second. Ron Paul even opposed the war in Iraq. (I'll give that guy credit for being principled even though half of his opinions are loony-bin crazy). But I'm talking about the totality -- check out Fox News and the Tea Party if you want the beating heart of the conservative movement. These are the exact same people, not figuratively, literally, who defended the Bush admin for 8 straight years. And CATO? How many pieces did they put out as cover for the Bush admin during that same time period? They're basically part of the republican messaging system.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      I just did a quick google search, and picked the first few items from prior years. Here is the Cato archive, form your own opinion: http://www.cato.org/pubarchives/index.php?type=opeds#year=2004&month=12 http://www.cato.org/pubarchives/index.php?type=opeds#year=20... For the one month I bothered to look at, most of it seemed pretty anti-bush (with the exception of one article advocating for looser immigration rules).
      - jbooth 16y ago
        Well, ok, maybe I was unfair to Cato there by lumping them in with the rest of the republican messaging organizations. From a quick glance it does seem like they were calling out Bush on libertarian grounds when it was appropriate to do so. Anyways my original point was that if you add up all of the people calling themselves libertarian these days, you generally get the guy saying "keep the government out of medicare" who had no idea he was a libertarian until about 5 minutes after Obama was inaugurated. It's not about government, it's about Obama and all that he represents (liberals, anti-americanism, illegal immigrants, manchurian candidates, radical islam, etc etc etc crazy talk). Sorry that your movement's been hijacked. (notes that someone went down this thread blindly modding you up and me down -- this is what I'm talking about when I say sorry about your movement -- it's not about reasoned opinions on how government should work, it's about "us vs them" cultural warfare).
    - 16y ago
inthewoods 16y ago
Has nothing to do with looking forward or doing ambitious projects - it has to do with your view of the private sector vs. the government. Most of the libertarians I know would argue that the government has no business being involved in creating innovation - regardless of how it is funded. They would argue that government can't innovate and the private sector is where the market can decide what innovations will succeed. And yes, Peter Thiel is a huge libertarian. I find it comical that he would then list off an entire list of government projects as examples of driving innovation.
- mindcrime 16y ago
  True, although categorizing libertarians is about as easy as herding cats. But this whole sub-thread is already, IMO, way off-topic, so I'm not going to say anything more to perpetuate this whole discussion. I probably shouldn't have chimed in to begin with. <sigh />