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Peter Thiel, Scourge of Silicon Valley
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- e40 5y ago"For a man who wants to live for ever" Typo in the first sentence. s/for ever/forever/ I guess no one has editors any longer...
- raldi 5y agoThe Economist is a British publication, and in British English, "for ever" means without end, whereas "forever" means without pause.
- ghuin 5y agoI guess e40 doesn't have an editor any longer
- vipa123 5y agoI guess then he wants both...
- inglor_cz 5y agoThere is a place in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where someone is momentarily legally dead for tax purposes, but I think Thiel would rather pay some taxes and stay alive without a pause :)
- unfunco 5y agoFor ever is two words when used after a verb, according to The Economist style guide, page 81 in the tenth edition.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shric 5y agohttps://archive.is/VY3Qm https://archive.is/VY3Qm
- hacknat 5y agoOr just disable JS.
- annadane 5y agoI like archive.org being linked, though. It's an inoculation against pages eventually going down
- throw0101a 5y agoarchive.is ≠ archive.org
- rgun 5y agoWhat is the difference?
- throw0101a 5y agoThey're run by completely different organizations.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aasasd 5y agoAnnoyingly and kinda undermining this use of Archive.is, it doesn't allow me to put its pages into Wallabag, the self-hosted read-later app.
- aml702 5y agoComing from the same (trash) publication that endorsed the Iraq War: "The case for war—revisited" https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-war-revisited https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-wa...
- ihsw 5y agoThe Economist was always a globalist rag, they might as well be renamed "The Globalist."
- exogeny 5y agoHe sucks, a thin-skinned, petty hypocrite. The best thing you could say about him is that his proteges (Vance, Grenell, etc.) are even worse. It's a stain YC ever worked with him. I know it's going to get flagged, but whatever.
- fighterpilot 5y ago"If that is the case, it would probably involve continued pillorying of big-tech firms, especially Google, which Mr Thiel has long accused of being a monopoly." He accuses it of being a monopoly but AFAIK he's not for anti-trust and he views these monopolies somewhat positively.
- cblconfederate 5y agoHis view of capitalism is as a machine that, through competition, picks its monopolies. Ironically he s against regulation , but it is through regulations that those monopolies entrench their dominance forever. in any case he hasn't invented any new form of capitalism, he makes some blunt conclusions that make people uncomfortable. Even more ironically, his book was a major success in communist China. It seems the chinese took it seriously, learned to instrumentalize capitalism to build their own monopolies, but then disenfranchised the capitalists.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- davesque 5y agoSure, but like Trump, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Thiel deploys rhetoric mostly just to get attention and not to make a consistent argument. He and the people like him live for the moment, always trying to exert influence but ultimately having no other goal than simply to win.
- Applejinx 5y agoWithin their context, that's all that exists. As such, what other goal could there possibly be? If they can kill you, to them that counts as an existence proof of their ethic… and a failure-to-exist-proof of both you and whatever competing ethic you had. I'm reminded of Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments, and times when TitForTat tended to win out over much more hostile and ruthless strategies. In situations like this I like to look to modeling and experimentation for axioms: like the easily demonstrated proof that discontinuities in simple exchange produce inequities that are not in any way representative of merit: the natural state is not for things to average out, given some simple and natural conditions the natural state is for some unfit competitors to become vastly over-rewarded relative to their merit. Thus disproving certain assumptions that wealth in any way signals merit in any sense.
- hacknat 5y agoGreat example of an article which, I hope, invokes the Gell-Mann amnesia effect for most of its tech-educated readers. Its fascinating to read such articles being written with so little irony. Journalism really is dead now.
- 1cvmask 5y agoThe Economist is a great exemplar of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Their subpar coverage of wars, Iraq WMDs, Syria, Afghanistan, Middle East, Asia, Latin America (they couldn't even call a coup in Bolivia a coup), Tech, Business all prove the Gell-Man amnesia effect. I don't have enough knowledge about their coverage of Finance though. They seem to fail upwards like most of mainstream media acting as mouthpieces of the DC/London establishement, stenagrophers of the national security establishment and PR agency of many VC funded tech bros.
- jmeister 5y agoChafkin has no clue. He got all the info for his book from unreliable third-hand sources. See this review: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/peter-thiel-max-chafkin-contrarian/619823/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/peter-t...
- nebula8804 5y agoPeople said the same thing about the recent Elon Musk book by Tim Higgins. They trot out the Musk Tim Cook example. I don't know why both denied ever meeting but I do know that a lot of the stories correlate to what I saw on the anti-Tesla subreddits. In fact it helped complete some unanswered questions about how things were running at Tesla during their Model 3 struggles. So while this guy may or ay not be getting his sources from unreliable third party places, he has enough of a personal credibility to at least consider the stores in the book. At least thats what I learned after seeing how quickly the Tesla community turned against the Higgins book.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoI don’t think it is that complicated. Thiel is at heart a libertarian and always has been. But if you listen to him speak, he is constantly lamenting the lack of hard tech development. “We wanted flying cars but all we got is 40 characters.” It seems obvious to me that he has calculated the best way to get this hard tech and science development: from government investment. Much of the actual scientific and technological advancement circa 1940-1980 came out of military investment. Thus he has continually tried to involve himself in government spaces where he has an opportunity to make an impact. Sometimes that works (Palantir) sometimes it doesn’t (his involvement with Trump.)
- intro-b 5y agothrough Zero to One, his other writings, and by developing his own personal history, Thiel has created an alternate will-to-power mythos for those who feel alienated by whatever they believe the prevailing Silicon Valley technology & startup culture is "do no evil" might have been the contrarian counterpoint in the nascent early to mid 2000's, but now Thiel, and those with similar cultural, social, and political ideals, has chosen "we have chosen sides" — Thiel wants to position himself as someone who is for and against something, anything, where most technology companies have a bland, homogenous corporate neutrality I don't think his end goal is trying to get his favored political candidates back to office or something — Thiel is cultivating a larger story and seeding his ideas about the act of choosing sides, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that
- throwawaymanbot 5y agobacking people who tried to stage a coup in the US is... not wrong??? Cultivating a larger story eh!!!
- hacknat 5y agoI don't disagree, but I think there is a lot of nuance to it. Thiel is an ardent disciple of Rene Girard. If people want insight into how Thiel sees the world, I would strongly recommend reading The Straussian Moment. There is a Peter Robinson interview about the essay that can serve as a good primer[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRleB034EC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRleB034EC8
- intro-b 5y agoabsolutely — my few sentences is just a rough summary of a small part of Thiel's thinking and ideology summing his life as a Silicon Valley bad guy is a gross oversimplification — his actions and work is the product of decades of his study and thought, and has evolved in a number of ways over time if you follow his writings and interviews it's clear that he holds the ideas he's arrived at with conviction, and has been in the process of enacting them through financial or political or intellectual means
- angelzen 5y ago
- teawrecks 5y agoI don't know anything about Thiel, but I remember seeing a talk of his where he basically described that: 1) all companies are on a spectrum between being a complete monopoly and having intense competition 2) their goal is always to be as far to the monopoly side as possible 3) and regardless of where they are on the spectrum, they have to do everything in their power to convince everyone that they are on the other end (Slightly complicated by the fact that you can hold a monopoly in one market, but have lots of competition in a closely related market. On the one hand you have competition, on the other hand it may just be a facade to help sell your case for #3) So I don't know the extent of why "leftists hate him", but IMO this is the best logical argument for why late stage capitalism is as unsustainable as leftists say it is.
- xondono 5y agoBeing honest doesn’t make him wrong. If Thiel is known for something is for being insightful early. A lot of people in the startup world still value “first mover advantage” as something that gives them an edge, when evidence says it’s hardly the case. “It’s not about being the first X, is about being the last one” is a brilliant way to put it.
- vernie 5y agoThis is the wrong place to criticize Thiel.
- motohagiography 5y agoThe irony of calling Theil a "nihilist," for taking stances on issues based on his principles and beliefs whether one agrees with them or not is a bit rich. The most nihilistic thing anyone believes in tech and other establishments is that truth is personal and subjective, or whatever lacks conseqeunces, as in, there is no truth - the sufficient and necessary condition for the definition of nihilism. I can see why they're projecting it though, people are catching on. A head full of jargon and thought terminating cliches, and an utter lack of durable convictions is what nihilism is. Theil and other billionaires need no defense from me or anyone, but journalistic integrity needs every ally it can find.
- clairity 5y ago> "A head full of jargon and thought terminating cliches, and an utter lack of durable convictions is what nihilism is." doesn't seem to be a incorrect description of thiel. he's single-mindedly self-serving, trying to lay claim to often mundane ideas, in search of personal esteem, wealth and power. had he not been so lucky with paypal, he'd probably be as obscure as the rest of us.
- hwers 5y agoVery well said
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- arcticbull 5y agoIs "taking a stand on issues based on principles" not nihilistic if the principle on which he is taking a stand is that nothing particularly matters and therefore he should pursue personal wealth at the expense of the rest of humanity? I'm asking this as a question by the way, I found your take really interesting.
- zepto 5y agoThat isn’t Thiel’s position.
- hownottowrite 5y agoThe fact that this hasn’t been flagged off the home page over the last three hours is impressive. Typically Count Dracula posts get the hammer rather quickly.
- hownottowrite 5y agoHaha! Already downvoted by his army of Renfields. Love it.
- tengbretson 5y agoSome thought that he might call it quits on VC investing, but how could he? Its in his blood.
- rkk3 5y agoTLDR: Another piece on the hit piece book coming out by Chafkin. This one it least acknowledges it "fails to find an explanation that ties the threads together"
- fumar 5y agoHN will criticize FB’s algorithm but defend Thiel and his creation of Palantir. I don’t follow. I would like to understand the nuances in tracking people for private vs government interests.
- okareaman 5y agoMy concern is that Thiel and the Thielists think that democracy in America does not work anymore and feel they need to take over and run the country.
- hacknat 5y agoDevil's advocate, is democracy in America working anymore?
- okareaman 5y agoI was going to add that as my second sentence, but decided to keep it short and sweet. It seems to me that Democrats are desperately trying to show that it still works while the other party is coming up with creative ways to show that it doesn't.
- CRConrad 5y ago(On democracy:) > the other party is coming up with creative ways to show that it doesn't. Chief among them, making it so that it doesn't. In a way, just a variation of their age-old way of justifying their "Governement is the problem, it never works!" stance by fucking up government whenever they're in power.
- CRConrad 5y ago> sharing-economy giants such as Airbnb and Lyft, plus a host of other blitzscaling platforms TIL: "blitzscaling".
- CRConrad 5y ago> The new ideology would be anti-China, a country Mr Thiel portrays as using artificial intelligence (ai) to centralise control over the economy. So what? So does he. To anyone who is neither Peter Thiel nor the Chinese state, it doesn't much matter if too much power is concentrated in the hands of the Chinese state or the hands of Peter Thiel. The problem is the same. > As he once told a friend: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” Not to worry, Mr Thiel, you're at least halfway there.