7 ms·

Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel on Facebook, Millenials, and Predictions for 2030

107 points by jbredeche 2y ago

toddmorey 2y ago
I honestly can’t think of two people I’d less like to hear predictions from. Sorry to be negative.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  Then you should definitely read as it is contains stuff mostly very unconnected with their public speeches. In particular you can say Thiel kinda defending socialism which is funny.
- mrmetanoia 2y ago
  Yeah two monsters that got as rich as they are nasty, let's all pull up a chair and listen.
- geodel 2y ago
  [flagged]
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  There is something to be said for knowing your enemy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  I for one think, it’s almost refreshing to see Billionaires acknowledge the problems truthfully, even if it is to protect their own interests. > But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why > Beyond how we talk, there's also a question of which issues we focus on and try to provide solutions for. For example, we work a lot on housing, but perhaps there are specific things we could do to make housing more affordable with an emphasis on younger people who don't have large families yet. Or given that so many people graduate college today burdened with crazy amounts of debt, perhaps we should have a larger program for hiring people who didn't go to college to help show that that's a reasonable path as well. That is far more than any politician, media organization or even a significant portion of boomers, even the ones in your family, are willing to do.
- consf 2y ago
  Why?
  - ausbah 2y ago
    what do a pair of out of touch billionaires have to say that’s worth listening to. especially one that’s actively funding the erosion of American democracy
pixelmonkey 2y ago
The Economist just launched a new podcast, "Boom!", on why boomers, as a generation, have been holding an "iron grip" on major US institutions. The first episode is free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QEy9RO7bEJ8 https://youtu.be/QEy9RO7bEJ8 -- I listened to it today, I thought it was pretty good. It digs into the history of a very important political year of boomers' lives: 1968. And it started to answer why the demographics of US political institutions skew so much toward people in their 70s and 80s (and, occasionally, 90s). Recent data visualization on that: https://github.com/amontalenti/home/assets/40263/c21a34e4-2c9a-42eb-ba54-51e0d87c9cd0 https://github.com/amontalenti/home/assets/40263/c21a34e4-2c... This is the Thiel quote I'm reacting to here: "What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions. When the handover finally happens in the 2020s, it will therefore happen more suddenly and perhaps more dramatically than people expect or than such generational transitions have happened in the past."
- pests 2y ago
  You're first YouTube link is marked private, anywhere else to watch?
  - pixelmonkey 2y ago
    Perhaps here? https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/boom https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/boom
- fire_lake 2y ago
  It was handed to Obama (gen X) and then we went back to the boomers again!
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    And then to the silent generation. And all we know now is that it won’t go back to gen x or later for at least another four years.
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
> As a result of this history and success, there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation I’ve had a few interactions with Thiel. Like other megalomaniacs I know, they all have this tendency of speaking in these very strong macro generalities about humanity or society with absolutely no justification with any type of hypothesis testing, statistics, or any type of actual measurable research Like this is quite a claim frankly, to say that an entire generation worldwide is looking towards the richest capitalist as a moral guide for society Then going on to make all these ridiculous “..and therefore” arguments that just accept the premise It’s frankly absurd and indicative of how this class of owners views the rest of the world. And to be clear for the most part, they are not hiding these perspectives and it’s not new historically with political dominionists (of which Thiel is one and a strong supporter of fascists like Trump) They’re very aggressively, pushing this idea that there are genuinely different classes of people have power differentials respectively because of their positioning and access. To the extent where they view their role as managing global perceptions of their own power distribution and how they’re managing to pull power from cross society and consolidated into the hands of their elite friends via classic propaganda and nudge based manipulation for power: “Nick -- I certainly would not suggest that our policy should be to embrace Millennial attitudes unreflectively. I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.” It’s ironic to see these clowns talking about the impending overthrow of the elites, not recognizing that they are precisely the people that are about to have their metaphorical “King Charles I” moment coming soon - brought to you by the rapidly organizing labor force.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  The problem with King Charles was he kept on doing stupid things and not recognizing what could happen to him. Thiel seems smarter to understand that and might wanna go the route of James II when the time comes (off course these are all just broad analogies)
- kibwen 2y ago
  [flagged]
voiceblue 2y ago
Beyond showing just how much influence Mr. Thiel has on Mr. Zuckerberg (referring to efforts behind the commencement speech as 'we'), I didn't glean anything from these e-mails. They seemed rather devoid of meaningful content. Perhaps this is a poor assessment due to my recent reading of Ben Franklin's private correspondence, and comparing one to the other might not make sense. It did, however, remind me of so much corporate and PR correspondence which is all but designed to be as inspid as possible. The saving grace, I suppose, is that these individuals probably did not intend to publicize these e-mails. Then again, neither did Mr. Franklin.
- campbel 2y ago
  I find them shallow because the conversations are purely based on how they want to be perceived and lack any ideas into how things ought to be. Which I imagine the founding fathers correspondence was rich with.
- bag_boy 2y ago
  Where can I read Benjamin Franklin’s private correspondence?
  - voiceblue 2y ago
    This book [0] contains several such letters. Beware it makes for fairly dry reading sometimes, since they're usually addressed to one person about a topic that may or may not be of general interest, and often missing greater context. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Franklin-Autobiography-Richard-Writings/dp/1883011531/ https://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Franklin-Autobiography-Richa...
asveikau 2y ago
I can't really read this. Peter Thiel seems so stupid and out of touch here, it's drivel. I know the HN audience has lots of people who would like to be sycophantic to Thiel and call my above commentary rude, but man.. it is such an overwhelming stench.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  I agree. The guy has always thought he's some architect of society and it really rubs me the wrong way.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    The paradox of capitalism is that its biggest cheerleaders talk about the virtues of investment and bottom-up organization, while also acting like the top-down bureaucrats they (rightfully) accuse authoritarian communists of being.
    - zozbot234 2y ago
      Company CEO's may be top-down bureaucrats, but they don't have power to coerce you. No one is legally required to have a Facebook account, on pain of civil or criminal penalties. And if Facebook becomes less popular with its users, Zuckerberg feels the hit immediately as the value of his stake in the venture drops. Government bureaucrats can have vast powers of coercion at their disposal, and there's no obvious way to replace them if this power is abused. Elections are better than nothing, but they're also slow and imperfect.
      - nunez 2y ago
        There's a difference between hard power, which Facebook doesn't have, and soft power, which Facebook has tons of. No one is legally required to have a Facebook account, but if you want to find out what times businesses are (actually) open and closed, get the latest information about what's happening in your neighborhood or even remain somewhat connected with people, you absolutely need to have an Instagram account and better be fine with using X (hence Musk willing to break the bank to acquire it). In many countries, you must have a WhatsApp account to receive official communications from their governments. In other words, not having a WhatsApp account could be a safety issue.
DueDilligence 2y ago
[dead]
ryandrake 2y ago
> As a result of this history and success, there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation LOL I'm just a bit older than "Millenials" but I don't know anyone in that age range who thinks Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, has the lived experience, and the same shared hopes, dreams, struggles, and fears of that generation at large, to the point where he can speak for that generation. I haven't even gotten through 1/4 of the article and Thiel seems so lost and out of touch. EDIT: This is why you should read the whole article before posting. Right after that part, Thiel admits that Zucc is actually not that representative of his generation. Pulled the trigger too soon on this one!
- hcfman 2y ago
  He meant spokes person for other millennial billionaires. He probably didn’t make that clear.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Billennials
  - malfist 2y ago
    Nobody else exists to him
- sakopov 2y ago
  I also found it humorous. Zuck is known as "is he that Facebook guy?" and a human robot among millennials, not a glorified spokesperson for his generation.
- sva_ 2y ago
  They just love sniffing each other's gases.
- ineptech 2y ago
  It's still pretty deranged. "When Mark shares on Facebook, a part of the narrative is a generational narrative..." Like millennials are sitting around reading whatever Mark Zuckerberg posts on facebook and discussing it with each other.
Oarch 2y ago
Makes me wonder if longform emails are "Millenial". Seems rather formal these days to me (a millenial). This could have easily been a video chat or a series of group messages.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  The beauty of email is the asynchronous nature where participants have ample time to compose and structure their thoughts instead of needing to be real-time during a video chat or gc.
  - campbel 2y ago
    Agreed. Any complex ideas (not that these ideas are that) are done a service by fleshing out completely in long form writing. Video also works well, but has significant overhead. Conversations are good for exploration of ideas and aligning perspectives between two people quickly.
krustyburger 2y ago
Zuckerberg: “Finally, I think there's also some distinction between me and the company here. While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.” Does he really think he’s better known than, say, Lebron James or Lionel Messi?
- Kiro 2y ago
  Infuriating that you actually think Lebron James is that famous outside the US.
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    He's very well known in China and has massive sponsorships deals there.
- transcriptase 2y ago
  I couldn’t pick Lionel Messi out of a lineup if you put a gun to my head, and I’m only 80% sure he’s a soccer player. So… yes?
  - jerojero 2y ago
    The hubris of thinking you're representative of the world. I think there's a better chance of Messi being known because there's more people in Europe and Latin America that are fans of football than corporations. Even Africa, soccer is quite a popular sport. Now, for Asia, I'm not sure. That's where the game would be played. In a lot of ways when these people say "the world" they mean the subset of people they actually care about. Mostly, US Americans and perhaps Canadians.
    - transcriptase 2y ago
      I think it’s odd to assume that people in Europe, Latin America, and Africa wouldn’t know who the creator of Facebook is, like he’s some obscure figure only known to G7 countries and tech enthusiasts.
willsmith72 2y ago
It's interesting reading, but in turns of credibility, I will take predictions from the company named Meta with an unhealthy dosage of salt
- consf 2y ago
  [dead]
yedava 2y ago
It's interesting to see Thiel and Zuckerberg be so oblivious to the problems of millennials. Boomers are a problem because they control capital and have lobbying power. The same kind of capital and political power now rests with the tech billionaires. People like Thiel are the new boomers who are destroying the younger generation.
karaterobot 2y ago
The funny part of this exchange was how Thiel and Zuckerberg are at such a remove from the daily functioning of Facebook that they can write long, polished, bloviating emails with vague ideas in them. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, who works for them, writes business-style emails with short sentences and bullet points, and seems to just want to know what specific actions they are telling him to take so he can keep his job.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I found the same thing pretty hilarious, too! Thiel: Political navel-gazing Zucc: Long form amateur philosophizing Thiel: More vague generational politics Clegg: "Ok, we wrote a doc and here's what I think the action items are. Am I following y'all here?"
robwwilliams 2y ago
Interesting and intelligent but limited scope by the bubble in which all of the participants live. The major dichotomy is NOT boomer’s vs millennials or other generations. At best this is a heuristic associated with crude generalizations. And of course the entire not-so-tacit motivation for this conversation in 2019 was on how to keep millennials glued to FB. Completely left undisturbed is the ugly and true dichotomy caused by ever more extreme wealth imbalance across most of the world. Zuckerberg at one point seems to bemoan that even his very well paid employees cannot afford housing in San Francisco, as if this were the crux of a major problem. Smart, ridiculously rich people living in a cloud.
- themkidsonphone 2y ago
  [dead]
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > Completely left undisturbed is the ugly and true dichotomy caused by ever more extreme wealth imbalance across most of the world. Zuckerberg at one point seems to bemoan that even his very well paid employees cannot afford housing in San Francisco, as if this were the crux of a major problem. Except a hugely important point is that Zuck and Thiel are arguing that Boomers are responsible for policies that exacerbate the huge wealth inequality by transferring wealth from younger generations to Boomers. The SF/CA housing crisis is a perfect example. Boomers were able to buy property when it was affordable and new developments were still being constructed. Then they made it nearly impossible to add new housing stock, so you have people who could afford a small, nice house on a blue collar salary in the Bay Area that now goes for 2-3 million, transferring all this wealth from younger (poorer) people just starting out to landowners.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    The solution to the SF/CA crisis - and indeed, to 'gentrification' more generally - is for people to vote with their feet and move out of SF/CA. There's plenty of "second-rate", cheap cities which are seen as "second-rate" only because people have yet to move there.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I'm curious to what others think about some of the underlying themes of these emails. To be blunt, I think a lot of the comments along the lines of "lol! Mark think he speaks for Millennials!" or "Does Mark really think he's that famous" are lazy don't really add anything insightful or interesting. Yeah yeah, I love dunking on Mark (or Peter Thiel for that matter) as much as anyone, and we all know it's popular and gets lots of upvotes. All that said, I think there were some really interesting underlying themes and tidbits in these emails: 1. The general theme of "Boomers have been hanging on to the economy with an iron grip and instituting policies that deliberately transfer wealth from younger generations to the Boomers" is not exactly news but was interesting to me to see how these people discussed it. 2. I know it's easy to hate Zuckerberg or Thiel, but I certainly thought Thiel in particular put a lot of issues in clear, insightful terms, e.g. "I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it." 3. I felt the overall theme of these emails was one that I hadn't quite thought much about before and was very interesting: namely, in generations past, the transfer of economic and political power has happened gradually. But in this case, he Boomers have held onto power so effectively that when the transition happens in the later 20s that it will be much more abrupt. Made me think about what effects this abrupt transition will have on me personally. 4. This is somewhat more random, but as someone (a Gen-X) who is generally a big fan of Pete Buttigieg, this tidbit was pretty thought-provoking for me, "You can think of Pete Buttigieg as a (political) example of what Mark absolutely should not be: Buttigieg is very popular with older Baby Boomer voters and shockingly unpopular with Millennial voters of his age and younger. Buttigieg's basic message is that the system is working reasonably well and this is precisely why younger voters do not like him — he is the sort of super annoying Millennial who tells the Boomers what they want to hear and thereby glosses over the many ways in which the generational compact in our society has been badly broken." Anyway, all-in-all thought there was interesting stuff here once you get beyond the "Zuckerberg/Meta/Thiel sucks" knee-jerk response.
mike_hearn 2y ago
> "In a recent YouGov survey, 70% of US Millennials said they'd vote for socialism." This isn't related to generational prognostication but it's really dumb that Nick Clegg, a former British politician, doesn't stop and give this claim a basic reality check. Is Zuckerberg getting his money's worth from Clegg? It's sort of an open secret in the polling community that panel polls have serious balance problems when it comes to political questions like this. Even the best polling firms are affected by extreme levels of what is called "volunteering bias" which they have no way to remove. The underlying panels are made up of people who aren't representative of the actual population in some key respects and so pollsters compete on the skill of their models in weighting the responses. For their bread and butter surveys (brand recognition etc) it's assumed that the bias doesn't matter, but if it does the problem is fixed with models that are calibrated for a relatively small set of tasks, like predicting elections. When polling firms ask socio-political questions for which they don't have sufficient remodelling ability they frequently yield extreme results, and this is one of them. People are just way too willing to repeat claims by polling firms even when they are mad as a box of frogs. I wrote an essay about this problem a few years ago, using data from Pew Research and some social science studies to show how this problem can lead to extremely implausible claims about what people think (it was about a YouGov poll) [1]. Pew is one of the better/more self-reflective pollsters and have done some great research into the volunteering bias problem. A few years later the problem was demonstrated again when the BBC blithely reported that a quarter of the British population thought COVID was a hoax, that millions of people had participated in marches against 15 Minute Cities and obscure conspiracy theory magazine "The Light" was by far Britain's top selling news magazine with over 3.4 million people helping to distribute it (i.e. a distribution network six times larger than the Labour Party) [2]. The source was a poll by Savanta laundered through King's College London [3]. Despite three different orgs being involved nobody sanity checked these numbers, and only KCL apologised (and even then only in a half-hearted way). The BBC doubled down even (Marianna Spring needless to say). tl;dr take polling results on social questions with a big dose of salt. [1] https://dailysceptic.org/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimate-public-support-for-covid-restrictions/ https://dailysceptic.org/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimat... [2] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/bbc-verify-falls-its-own-conspiracy https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/bbc-verify-falls-i... [3] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/conspiracy-belief-among-the-uk-public.pdf https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/conspiracy-bel...
neilv 2y ago
> Perhaps we should consider Millennials as a diversity criterion for our Board of Directors. [...] Should we aim to have two or three Millennials on our board? If we did, how would it change the nature of the discussion at the Board level? What could a person who is in a position to be on the board of directors of one of these companies... and who happens to be a Millennial... be able to tell the board anything substantial they don't already know? If a major company board wants to be informed by the thinking that they don't already have, of Millennials or Zoomers, maybe start with with a question more like: Who has a representative experience of Millennials or Zoomers (and who we normally wouldn't even consider for a board position, if we ever became aware of them at all)? (A bit cynically, I'm imagining a scenario of, somehow, a board makes a bold decision to bring in a true outsider, who they think will be disruptive in an overall good way, despite the board being a bit scared of the move... but the anointed person actually plays it like their entree to higher circles of power, and acclimates almost immediately to the same-ol' thinking and behavior. :)
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  Yeah "Millennial qualified to be on a board" is almost certainly not bringing a "Millennial perspective" to said board.
  - tennisflyi 2y ago
    Same for any user story, persona, tester, ad nauseam
neilv 2y ago
Is some clique moving forward on a new public influence or image campaign, in just the last few months? Or gotten a new PR team? Some have been active before, but anecdotally I've noticed more clever outreaches in the last few months.
- lupire 2y ago
  Zuck does this every now and then, doing photo ops and making statements to burnish his image or test the waters for politics.
  - RiverCrochet 2y ago
    He literally has the whole world at his doorstep and can just ask them. It would be awesome if Zuckerberg pulled an "Apple U2" moment and posted on Facebook, in some special way that it appears on all 800 million active accounts: "What are your thoughts if I were to run for U.S. President someday?"
650 2y ago
Thiel talking about Mark in the first email as if it’s a PR puff piece. What Thiel and Zuckerberg are going for is Mark as eventual future president.
reducesuffering 2y ago
I'm perplexed by Thiel's inability to grasp how his disdain for "Boomers" and disdain for Pete Buttigieg are contradictory. Thiel advocates against left wing government-funded social benefits (free college education), the very same that Buttigieg isn't as supportive of, causing his lack of popularity with younger voters amongst Democrats like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren! The whole reason we have these major political divisions is instead of working inward (where the majority of peoples' opinions lie) on compromise, we have power brokers, like Thiel, hating one side so much that they try to push the middle toward the other extreme side. Then, instead of a normal distribution of voting patterns matching political opinion, we have the middle pulled out to each side voting for the edges.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
Thiel - "I would be tempted to draw a very sharp contrast between CZI and the Gates Foundation by asking questions about what kinds of philanthropy resonate with the younger generation (vs. what kinds of philanthropy Boomers think younger people should be doing!)" HOUSING. Millennials and younger age cohorts need affordable and preferably private, housing. Zuckerberg - "we work a lot on housing, but perhaps there are specific things we could do to make housing more affordable with an emphasis on younger people who don't have large families yet." This is smart, though the conspiracist in me wonders if he's talking about "pods"? Thiel - "What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions." Refreshing. Talking to you NIMBYS. I assume a lot of the negative comments in this thread are from those who the system has worked for, those with housing and wealth. Talk about an impending revolution from organized labor sounds like wealthy liberals larping as radicals. We need real solutions from those capable of providing it, fast. It can't get much worse, if Zuck, Thiel or whoever want to have a go at reforming this mess I say cheers.
- user_of_the_wek 2y ago
  > if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it. is also a good observation. Nothing new, but spelled out clearly.
spacecadet 2y ago
Nothing clever to add here, scary AF. Please vote with your hearts and not your wallets.
ConnorCallahan 2y ago
3 presidents born within 70 days of each other is a great stat to show how boomers refused to give up power.
Yusefmosiah 2y ago
Intergenerational conflict is particularly salient for wealthy Americans. The death of the boomers enables the millennials’ inheritance. Millennials blame boomers for not gracefully ceding power in their own lifetimes. But boomers see millennials as waiting for their parents to die, as complacent and heartless. This conflict does not exist to nearly the same degree in families without wealth to inherit, and in cultures that respect the wisdom of one’s elders; rejection of one’s elders/youth worship is one value that millennial Americans inherited from Baby Boomers. As to the emails, Clegg was right when he said this: > For Millennials, authenticity, agency, autonomy, idealism, altruism etc all seem to be top of their list of desirable virtues – for better or worse, they are difficult to reconcile with Silicon Valley these days. Well, it’s worse, not better. Anyway, this kind of self-conscious persona-construction is opposite to what millennials vibe with. No matter how much Zuck styles himself like a rapper or athlete, he only appeals to boomer or at best Gen X sensibilities. This is great for META stock price, but doesn’t make Zuck appealing to millennials.

107 points by jbredeche 2y ago

toddmorey 2y ago

I honestly can’t think of two people I’d less like to hear predictions from. Sorry to be negative.

crop_rotation 2y ago
Then you should definitely read as it is contains stuff mostly very unconnected with their public speeches. In particular you can say Thiel kinda defending socialism which is funny.
mrmetanoia 2y ago
Yeah two monsters that got as rich as they are nasty, let's all pull up a chair and listen.
geodel 2y ago
[flagged]
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
There is something to be said for knowing your enemy.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 2y ago
I for one think, it’s almost refreshing to see Billionaires acknowledge the problems truthfully, even if it is to protect their own interests. > But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why > Beyond how we talk, there's also a question of which issues we focus on and try to provide solutions for. For example, we work a lot on housing, but perhaps there are specific things we could do to make housing more affordable with an emphasis on younger people who don't have large families yet. Or given that so many people graduate college today burdened with crazy amounts of debt, perhaps we should have a larger program for hiring people who didn't go to college to help show that that's a reasonable path as well. That is far more than any politician, media organization or even a significant portion of boomers, even the ones in your family, are willing to do.
consf 2y ago
Why?
- ausbah 2y ago
  what do a pair of out of touch billionaires have to say that’s worth listening to. especially one that’s actively funding the erosion of American democracy

pixelmonkey 2y ago

The Economist just launched a new podcast, "Boom!", on why boomers, as a generation, have been holding an "iron grip" on major US institutions. The first episode is free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QEy9RO7bEJ8 https://youtu.be/QEy9RO7bEJ8 -- I listened to it today, I thought it was pretty good. It digs into the history of a very important political year of boomers' lives: 1968. And it started to answer why the demographics of US political institutions skew so much toward people in their 70s and 80s (and, occasionally, 90s). Recent data visualization on that: https://github.com/amontalenti/home/assets/40263/c21a34e4-2c9a-42eb-ba54-51e0d87c9cd0 https://github.com/amontalenti/home/assets/40263/c21a34e4-2c... This is the Thiel quote I'm reacting to here: "What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions. When the handover finally happens in the 2020s, it will therefore happen more suddenly and perhaps more dramatically than people expect or than such generational transitions have happened in the past."

pests 2y ago
You're first YouTube link is marked private, anywhere else to watch?
- pixelmonkey 2y ago
  Perhaps here? https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/boom https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/boom
fire_lake 2y ago
It was handed to Obama (gen X) and then we went back to the boomers again!
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  And then to the silent generation. And all we know now is that it won’t go back to gen x or later for at least another four years.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

> As a result of this history and success, there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation I’ve had a few interactions with Thiel. Like other megalomaniacs I know, they all have this tendency of speaking in these very strong macro generalities about humanity or society with absolutely no justification with any type of hypothesis testing, statistics, or any type of actual measurable research Like this is quite a claim frankly, to say that an entire generation worldwide is looking towards the richest capitalist as a moral guide for society Then going on to make all these ridiculous “..and therefore” arguments that just accept the premise It’s frankly absurd and indicative of how this class of owners views the rest of the world. And to be clear for the most part, they are not hiding these perspectives and it’s not new historically with political dominionists (of which Thiel is one and a strong supporter of fascists like Trump) They’re very aggressively, pushing this idea that there are genuinely different classes of people have power differentials respectively because of their positioning and access. To the extent where they view their role as managing global perceptions of their own power distribution and how they’re managing to pull power from cross society and consolidated into the hands of their elite friends via classic propaganda and nudge based manipulation for power: “Nick -- I certainly would not suggest that our policy should be to embrace Millennial attitudes unreflectively. I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.” It’s ironic to see these clowns talking about the impending overthrow of the elites, not recognizing that they are precisely the people that are about to have their metaphorical “King Charles I” moment coming soon - brought to you by the rapidly organizing labor force.

crop_rotation 2y ago
The problem with King Charles was he kept on doing stupid things and not recognizing what could happen to him. Thiel seems smarter to understand that and might wanna go the route of James II when the time comes (off course these are all just broad analogies)
kibwen 2y ago
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voiceblue 2y ago

Beyond showing just how much influence Mr. Thiel has on Mr. Zuckerberg (referring to efforts behind the commencement speech as 'we'), I didn't glean anything from these e-mails. They seemed rather devoid of meaningful content. Perhaps this is a poor assessment due to my recent reading of Ben Franklin's private correspondence, and comparing one to the other might not make sense. It did, however, remind me of so much corporate and PR correspondence which is all but designed to be as inspid as possible. The saving grace, I suppose, is that these individuals probably did not intend to publicize these e-mails. Then again, neither did Mr. Franklin.

campbel 2y ago
I find them shallow because the conversations are purely based on how they want to be perceived and lack any ideas into how things ought to be. Which I imagine the founding fathers correspondence was rich with.
bag_boy 2y ago
Where can I read Benjamin Franklin’s private correspondence?
- voiceblue 2y ago
  This book [0] contains several such letters. Beware it makes for fairly dry reading sometimes, since they're usually addressed to one person about a topic that may or may not be of general interest, and often missing greater context. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Franklin-Autobiography-Richard-Writings/dp/1883011531/ https://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Franklin-Autobiography-Richa...

asveikau 2y ago

I can't really read this. Peter Thiel seems so stupid and out of touch here, it's drivel. I know the HN audience has lots of people who would like to be sycophantic to Thiel and call my above commentary rude, but man.. it is such an overwhelming stench.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
I agree. The guy has always thought he's some architect of society and it really rubs me the wrong way.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  The paradox of capitalism is that its biggest cheerleaders talk about the virtues of investment and bottom-up organization, while also acting like the top-down bureaucrats they (rightfully) accuse authoritarian communists of being.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    Company CEO's may be top-down bureaucrats, but they don't have power to coerce you. No one is legally required to have a Facebook account, on pain of civil or criminal penalties. And if Facebook becomes less popular with its users, Zuckerberg feels the hit immediately as the value of his stake in the venture drops. Government bureaucrats can have vast powers of coercion at their disposal, and there's no obvious way to replace them if this power is abused. Elections are better than nothing, but they're also slow and imperfect.
    - nunez 2y ago
      There's a difference between hard power, which Facebook doesn't have, and soft power, which Facebook has tons of. No one is legally required to have a Facebook account, but if you want to find out what times businesses are (actually) open and closed, get the latest information about what's happening in your neighborhood or even remain somewhat connected with people, you absolutely need to have an Instagram account and better be fine with using X (hence Musk willing to break the bank to acquire it). In many countries, you must have a WhatsApp account to receive official communications from their governments. In other words, not having a WhatsApp account could be a safety issue.

DueDilligence 2y ago

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ryandrake 2y ago

> As a result of this history and success, there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation LOL I'm just a bit older than "Millenials" but I don't know anyone in that age range who thinks Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, has the lived experience, and the same shared hopes, dreams, struggles, and fears of that generation at large, to the point where he can speak for that generation. I haven't even gotten through 1/4 of the article and Thiel seems so lost and out of touch. EDIT: This is why you should read the whole article before posting. Right after that part, Thiel admits that Zucc is actually not that representative of his generation. Pulled the trigger too soon on this one!

hcfman 2y ago
He meant spokes person for other millennial billionaires. He probably didn’t make that clear.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Billennials
- malfist 2y ago
  Nobody else exists to him
sakopov 2y ago
I also found it humorous. Zuck is known as "is he that Facebook guy?" and a human robot among millennials, not a glorified spokesperson for his generation.
sva_ 2y ago
They just love sniffing each other's gases.
ineptech 2y ago
It's still pretty deranged. "When Mark shares on Facebook, a part of the narrative is a generational narrative..." Like millennials are sitting around reading whatever Mark Zuckerberg posts on facebook and discussing it with each other.

Oarch 2y ago

Makes me wonder if longform emails are "Millenial". Seems rather formal these days to me (a millenial). This could have easily been a video chat or a series of group messages.

hipadev23 2y ago
The beauty of email is the asynchronous nature where participants have ample time to compose and structure their thoughts instead of needing to be real-time during a video chat or gc.
- campbel 2y ago
  Agreed. Any complex ideas (not that these ideas are that) are done a service by fleshing out completely in long form writing. Video also works well, but has significant overhead. Conversations are good for exploration of ideas and aligning perspectives between two people quickly.

krustyburger 2y ago

Zuckerberg: “Finally, I think there's also some distinction between me and the company here. While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.” Does he really think he’s better known than, say, Lebron James or Lionel Messi?

Kiro 2y ago
Infuriating that you actually think Lebron James is that famous outside the US.
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  He's very well known in China and has massive sponsorships deals there.
transcriptase 2y ago
I couldn’t pick Lionel Messi out of a lineup if you put a gun to my head, and I’m only 80% sure he’s a soccer player. So… yes?
- jerojero 2y ago
  The hubris of thinking you're representative of the world. I think there's a better chance of Messi being known because there's more people in Europe and Latin America that are fans of football than corporations. Even Africa, soccer is quite a popular sport. Now, for Asia, I'm not sure. That's where the game would be played. In a lot of ways when these people say "the world" they mean the subset of people they actually care about. Mostly, US Americans and perhaps Canadians.
  - transcriptase 2y ago
    I think it’s odd to assume that people in Europe, Latin America, and Africa wouldn’t know who the creator of Facebook is, like he’s some obscure figure only known to G7 countries and tech enthusiasts.

willsmith72 2y ago

It's interesting reading, but in turns of credibility, I will take predictions from the company named Meta with an unhealthy dosage of salt

consf 2y ago
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yedava 2y ago

It's interesting to see Thiel and Zuckerberg be so oblivious to the problems of millennials. Boomers are a problem because they control capital and have lobbying power. The same kind of capital and political power now rests with the tech billionaires. People like Thiel are the new boomers who are destroying the younger generation.

karaterobot 2y ago

The funny part of this exchange was how Thiel and Zuckerberg are at such a remove from the daily functioning of Facebook that they can write long, polished, bloviating emails with vague ideas in them. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, who works for them, writes business-style emails with short sentences and bullet points, and seems to just want to know what specific actions they are telling him to take so he can keep his job.

ryandrake 2y ago
I found the same thing pretty hilarious, too! Thiel: Political navel-gazing Zucc: Long form amateur philosophizing Thiel: More vague generational politics Clegg: "Ok, we wrote a doc and here's what I think the action items are. Am I following y'all here?"

robwwilliams 2y ago

Interesting and intelligent but limited scope by the bubble in which all of the participants live. The major dichotomy is NOT boomer’s vs millennials or other generations. At best this is a heuristic associated with crude generalizations. And of course the entire not-so-tacit motivation for this conversation in 2019 was on how to keep millennials glued to FB. Completely left undisturbed is the ugly and true dichotomy caused by ever more extreme wealth imbalance across most of the world. Zuckerberg at one point seems to bemoan that even his very well paid employees cannot afford housing in San Francisco, as if this were the crux of a major problem. Smart, ridiculously rich people living in a cloud.

themkidsonphone 2y ago
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hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> Completely left undisturbed is the ugly and true dichotomy caused by ever more extreme wealth imbalance across most of the world. Zuckerberg at one point seems to bemoan that even his very well paid employees cannot afford housing in San Francisco, as if this were the crux of a major problem. Except a hugely important point is that Zuck and Thiel are arguing that Boomers are responsible for policies that exacerbate the huge wealth inequality by transferring wealth from younger generations to Boomers. The SF/CA housing crisis is a perfect example. Boomers were able to buy property when it was affordable and new developments were still being constructed. Then they made it nearly impossible to add new housing stock, so you have people who could afford a small, nice house on a blue collar salary in the Bay Area that now goes for 2-3 million, transferring all this wealth from younger (poorer) people just starting out to landowners.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  The solution to the SF/CA crisis - and indeed, to 'gentrification' more generally - is for people to vote with their feet and move out of SF/CA. There's plenty of "second-rate", cheap cities which are seen as "second-rate" only because people have yet to move there.

deleted 2y ago

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hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I'm curious to what others think about some of the underlying themes of these emails. To be blunt, I think a lot of the comments along the lines of "lol! Mark think he speaks for Millennials!" or "Does Mark really think he's that famous" are lazy don't really add anything insightful or interesting. Yeah yeah, I love dunking on Mark (or Peter Thiel for that matter) as much as anyone, and we all know it's popular and gets lots of upvotes. All that said, I think there were some really interesting underlying themes and tidbits in these emails: 1. The general theme of "Boomers have been hanging on to the economy with an iron grip and instituting policies that deliberately transfer wealth from younger generations to the Boomers" is not exactly news but was interesting to me to see how these people discussed it. 2. I know it's easy to hate Zuckerberg or Thiel, but I certainly thought Thiel in particular put a lot of issues in clear, insightful terms, e.g. "I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it." 3. I felt the overall theme of these emails was one that I hadn't quite thought much about before and was very interesting: namely, in generations past, the transfer of economic and political power has happened gradually. But in this case, he Boomers have held onto power so effectively that when the transition happens in the later 20s that it will be much more abrupt. Made me think about what effects this abrupt transition will have on me personally. 4. This is somewhat more random, but as someone (a Gen-X) who is generally a big fan of Pete Buttigieg, this tidbit was pretty thought-provoking for me, "You can think of Pete Buttigieg as a (political) example of what Mark absolutely should not be: Buttigieg is very popular with older Baby Boomer voters and shockingly unpopular with Millennial voters of his age and younger. Buttigieg's basic message is that the system is working reasonably well and this is precisely why younger voters do not like him — he is the sort of super annoying Millennial who tells the Boomers what they want to hear and thereby glosses over the many ways in which the generational compact in our society has been badly broken." Anyway, all-in-all thought there was interesting stuff here once you get beyond the "Zuckerberg/Meta/Thiel sucks" knee-jerk response.

mike_hearn 2y ago

> "In a recent YouGov survey, 70% of US Millennials said they'd vote for socialism." This isn't related to generational prognostication but it's really dumb that Nick Clegg, a former British politician, doesn't stop and give this claim a basic reality check. Is Zuckerberg getting his money's worth from Clegg? It's sort of an open secret in the polling community that panel polls have serious balance problems when it comes to political questions like this. Even the best polling firms are affected by extreme levels of what is called "volunteering bias" which they have no way to remove. The underlying panels are made up of people who aren't representative of the actual population in some key respects and so pollsters compete on the skill of their models in weighting the responses. For their bread and butter surveys (brand recognition etc) it's assumed that the bias doesn't matter, but if it does the problem is fixed with models that are calibrated for a relatively small set of tasks, like predicting elections. When polling firms ask socio-political questions for which they don't have sufficient remodelling ability they frequently yield extreme results, and this is one of them. People are just way too willing to repeat claims by polling firms even when they are mad as a box of frogs. I wrote an essay about this problem a few years ago, using data from Pew Research and some social science studies to show how this problem can lead to extremely implausible claims about what people think (it was about a YouGov poll) [1]. Pew is one of the better/more self-reflective pollsters and have done some great research into the volunteering bias problem. A few years later the problem was demonstrated again when the BBC blithely reported that a quarter of the British population thought COVID was a hoax, that millions of people had participated in marches against 15 Minute Cities and obscure conspiracy theory magazine "The Light" was by far Britain's top selling news magazine with over 3.4 million people helping to distribute it (i.e. a distribution network six times larger than the Labour Party) [2]. The source was a poll by Savanta laundered through King's College London [3]. Despite three different orgs being involved nobody sanity checked these numbers, and only KCL apologised (and even then only in a half-hearted way). The BBC doubled down even (Marianna Spring needless to say). tl;dr take polling results on social questions with a big dose of salt. [1] https://dailysceptic.org/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimate-public-support-for-covid-restrictions/ https://dailysceptic.org/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimat... [2] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/bbc-verify-falls-its-own-conspiracy https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/bbc-verify-falls-i... [3] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/conspiracy-belief-among-the-uk-public.pdf https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/conspiracy-bel...

neilv 2y ago

> Perhaps we should consider Millennials as a diversity criterion for our Board of Directors. [...] Should we aim to have two or three Millennials on our board? If we did, how would it change the nature of the discussion at the Board level? What could a person who is in a position to be on the board of directors of one of these companies... and who happens to be a Millennial... be able to tell the board anything substantial they don't already know? If a major company board wants to be informed by the thinking that they don't already have, of Millennials or Zoomers, maybe start with with a question more like: Who has a representative experience of Millennials or Zoomers (and who we normally wouldn't even consider for a board position, if we ever became aware of them at all)? (A bit cynically, I'm imagining a scenario of, somehow, a board makes a bold decision to bring in a true outsider, who they think will be disruptive in an overall good way, despite the board being a bit scared of the move... but the anointed person actually plays it like their entree to higher circles of power, and acclimates almost immediately to the same-ol' thinking and behavior. :)

BobbyJo 2y ago
Yeah "Millennial qualified to be on a board" is almost certainly not bringing a "Millennial perspective" to said board.
- tennisflyi 2y ago
  Same for any user story, persona, tester, ad nauseam

neilv 2y ago

Is some clique moving forward on a new public influence or image campaign, in just the last few months? Or gotten a new PR team? Some have been active before, but anecdotally I've noticed more clever outreaches in the last few months.

lupire 2y ago
Zuck does this every now and then, doing photo ops and making statements to burnish his image or test the waters for politics.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  He literally has the whole world at his doorstep and can just ask them. It would be awesome if Zuckerberg pulled an "Apple U2" moment and posted on Facebook, in some special way that it appears on all 800 million active accounts: "What are your thoughts if I were to run for U.S. President someday?"

650 2y ago

Thiel talking about Mark in the first email as if it’s a PR puff piece. What Thiel and Zuckerberg are going for is Mark as eventual future president.

reducesuffering 2y ago

I'm perplexed by Thiel's inability to grasp how his disdain for "Boomers" and disdain for Pete Buttigieg are contradictory. Thiel advocates against left wing government-funded social benefits (free college education), the very same that Buttigieg isn't as supportive of, causing his lack of popularity with younger voters amongst Democrats like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren! The whole reason we have these major political divisions is instead of working inward (where the majority of peoples' opinions lie) on compromise, we have power brokers, like Thiel, hating one side so much that they try to push the middle toward the other extreme side. Then, instead of a normal distribution of voting patterns matching political opinion, we have the middle pulled out to each side voting for the edges.

hnpolicestate 2y ago

Thiel - "I would be tempted to draw a very sharp contrast between CZI and the Gates Foundation by asking questions about what kinds of philanthropy resonate with the younger generation (vs. what kinds of philanthropy Boomers think younger people should be doing!)" HOUSING. Millennials and younger age cohorts need affordable and preferably private, housing. Zuckerberg - "we work a lot on housing, but perhaps there are specific things we could do to make housing more affordable with an emphasis on younger people who don't have large families yet." This is smart, though the conspiracist in me wonders if he's talking about "pods"? Thiel - "What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions." Refreshing. Talking to you NIMBYS. I assume a lot of the negative comments in this thread are from those who the system has worked for, those with housing and wealth. Talk about an impending revolution from organized labor sounds like wealthy liberals larping as radicals. We need real solutions from those capable of providing it, fast. It can't get much worse, if Zuck, Thiel or whoever want to have a go at reforming this mess I say cheers.

user_of_the_wek 2y ago
> if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it. is also a good observation. Nothing new, but spelled out clearly.

spacecadet 2y ago

Nothing clever to add here, scary AF. Please vote with your hearts and not your wallets.

ConnorCallahan 2y ago

3 presidents born within 70 days of each other is a great stat to show how boomers refused to give up power.

Yusefmosiah 2y ago

Intergenerational conflict is particularly salient for wealthy Americans. The death of the boomers enables the millennials’ inheritance. Millennials blame boomers for not gracefully ceding power in their own lifetimes. But boomers see millennials as waiting for their parents to die, as complacent and heartless. This conflict does not exist to nearly the same degree in families without wealth to inherit, and in cultures that respect the wisdom of one’s elders; rejection of one’s elders/youth worship is one value that millennial Americans inherited from Baby Boomers. As to the emails, Clegg was right when he said this: > For Millennials, authenticity, agency, autonomy, idealism, altruism etc all seem to be top of their list of desirable virtues – for better or worse, they are difficult to reconcile with Silicon Valley these days. Well, it’s worse, not better. Anyway, this kind of self-conscious persona-construction is opposite to what millennials vibe with. No matter how much Zuck styles himself like a rapper or athlete, he only appeals to boomer or at best Gen X sensibilities. This is great for META stock price, but doesn’t make Zuck appealing to millennials.