4 ms·

The primary beef this seemed to have with Thiel was that he was "withdrawing consent" from democracy, believing it to be incompatible with liberty. Not good fo

The primary beef this seemed to have with Thiel was that he was "withdrawing consent" from democracy, believing it to be incompatible with liberty. Not good for the writer of the article that Thiel is technically correct. Divine right of the mob is no better than the divine right of kings, oligarchs or whatever else. Anyone can look around and see that democratic government is just as capable of genocide and police-statery as the next. They go on to criticize him for committing heresy against public education and our university system. I'd think the users of HN would realize by now that a degree doesn't necessarily imply someone is smart or has skills needed to do some job. They finish off with the usual "libertarians are all selfish" argument. They then hold up other members of the elite as an example of not being selfish >snicker<. Nobody's perfect, and you can always make anybody rich look like Satan. This is clearly just a hit piece to make people holding a particular worldview feel good and find a new enemy to attack. There's no concrete criticisms here, nor is the interview here in depth enough for you to understand his context or worldview.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> Divine right of the mob is no better than the divine right of kings, oligarchs or whatever else. Absolutely. If the mob says a witch must be burned; is that still the democracy that the author had in mind? It seems that there are two definitions of democracy: one that implies a liberal system of the sort that developed in the West that has public institutions, several branches of power, and regular referendums, and another that implies that the majority is always right (aka "tyranny of the majority", "dictatorship of the masses" etc). I have a feeling that Thiel had the second definition in mind when he criticized democracy, and the author of the article decided to take advantage of the ambiguity of the word "democracy" and paint Thiel as an authoritarian of some sort. Either that or the author is really confused and shouldn't be writing about politics.

bluekeybox 15y ago

> Divine right of the mob is no better than the divine right of kings, oligarchs or whatever else. Absolutely. If the mob says a witch must be burned; is that still the democracy that the author had in mind? It seems that there are two definitions of democracy: one that implies a liberal system of the sort that developed in the West that has public institutions, several branches of power, and regular referendums, and another that implies that the majority is always right (aka "tyranny of the majority", "dictatorship of the masses" etc). I have a feeling that Thiel had the second definition in mind when he criticized democracy, and the author of the article decided to take advantage of the ambiguity of the word "democracy" and paint Thiel as an authoritarian of some sort. Either that or the author is really confused and shouldn't be writing about politics.