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Who's Afraid of Peter Thiel? A New Biography Suggests We All Should Be (2021)

143 points by zfg 2y ago

dangus 2y ago
> I think there’s actual reason for people to be afraid of Peter Thiel. > That said, it’s not productive to be afraid. Chalk this one up to clickbait to sell a book I guess? Personally I feel like the false aura around wealthy people like Peter Thiel works to their favor and advantage. We all think they are these powerful scary incredibly smart people when they are actually slightly above average people who got lucky, and sometimes only got lucky once. Peter Thiel would be a nobody if PayPal or Facebook failed, and there was always a high chance for those things to happen. He could just be the nobody guy who seeded $500,000 into Friendster instead of Facebook. He earned $55 million from the PayPal sale and $1 billion from his Facebook sale. If you stick your money in an index fund it will double in value every 7 years (before adjusting for inflation). Do that for $55 million at the PayPal sale and you get $880 million, do that for his Facebook stock in 2012 and you end up with $4 billion. So around $5 billion of his net worth can be attributed to hypothetical passive investment of his original windfalls, attributed to being at the right place at the right time with just two companies, and he would not have been able to invest in the second on without winning the lottery at the first. In other words, with 100% disposable income that could be gambled on moonshots (unlike our 401ks), he only beat the market by 15% per year. Any idiot with a wealth manager and tolerance for risk can do that. And we, the people, have lots of power over people like this if we exert it.
- kreetx 2y ago
  Maybe he hadn't been as known, but I'd assume, he had started another venture had PayPal failed.
- hnhg 2y ago
  You might be missing the point. They can be all of those things you say (and I very much agree with you) but they can still be very dangerous. In fact, perhaps their banality is a key part of what makes them so dangerous.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Curious keyword, "banality".. Hannah Arendt wrote a whole book about a banal man, which probably has lessons for the current times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
    - hnhg 2y ago
      Indeed she did.
- hlpn 2y ago
  They are not necessarily smart, but they are powerful and most likely sociopathic. They are dangerous.
  - akudha 2y ago
    The most annoying thing is society's (especially American society) admiration for Billionaires and the belief that their IQ is in the four digits or some crap like that. More than intelligence, it takes ruthlessness, narcissism and questionable ethics (or no ethics at all) to amass hundreds of billions of dollars in a couple of decades. I feel sorry for anyone who worships people like Musk or Theil. Sure Theil was supposedly a talented chess player in his youth, did well in school etc. But so do millions of other kids. These dudes don't have so much money because they are intelligent, they have so much money because they are willing to do damn near anything to get it - including trampling over people that helped them in the first place
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  I agree with your premise but not conclusion. I think there are people who take big unlikely risks. Statistically some of them succeed. Now they are big risk takers with survivorship bias and illusions of self importance, AND lots power/money. And that can be scary.
  - isaacfrond 2y ago
    Survivorship bias would be a good explanation for Musk's success, if he succeeded at one thing. But it doesn't explain having a string of successes.
    - bdauvergne 2y ago
      The jury is still out if Tesla is is still a success, losing 50% of sales each year for the few next years could clearly go toward bankruptcy.
    - jgeada 2y ago
      SpaceX and, for a time, Tesla. PayPal was already a success when he conned his way in. What other successes has he had? Twitter imploded when he took over, Boring company was never real, FSD at Tesla will never be real. And SpaceX is succeeding because they have a team dedicated to keeping him away from decision making. What he's had is an army of internet bots pumping up his supposed credentials (visible even in the voting patterns here on YN)
    - consteval 2y ago
      It does if those successes aren’t based on you at all, which they’re not. In every instance, a lot of other people did all the work. Musk provided funds, which a machine could do. And, he did fail. A lot. But the more money you have, the more you can fail.
  - dangus 2y ago
    It’s easy to take unlikely risks when you already have a “never need to work again” windfall. I can’t risk my retirement nest egg. If Peter Thiel ended PayPal with $55 million that means he could set aside ~$5-10 to live the rest of his life and risk the rest. So really I would argue that having a risk-adjacent personality isn’t related to skill. Thiel was willing to throw half a million dollars at random tech startups done by college dropouts and he also had a social network of his own thanks to doing the same with PayPal. So it’s about networking, capital, and timing more than skill. Thiel would be a nobody if he was born 10 years later. Where is the PayPal-like opportunity in today’s tech landscape? The modern startup is wildly capital heavy and loses money for possibly decades (e.g., Lyft just made its first profit EVER in 2024).
- tejohnso 2y ago
  > Peter Thiel would be a nobody if PayPal failed. Maybe for Peter (I don't know) but not for Musk. He did X/PayPal, but then blew everyone away with Tesla, crushed it with SpaceX, succeeds with Starlink... Some people really do have something that is more than just getting lucky once.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    There is something to it. As someone, who shorted Tesla based on fundamentals ( it was back when I foolishly thought fundamentals matter more than emotion ), I can't help but wonder if he was less of who is and how he operates, under any other CEO, this would have been a clear case of Tesla going into bankruptcy. There is luck and there is this weird mix of skills that keep you going all the time.
    - queuebert 2y ago
      He's smart enough to fool the masses that he's a genius scientist, but, as a scientist myself, he looks to me like a gifted manager and maybe a genius at hiring.
  - dangus 2y ago
    He didn't start Tesla, he joined as an investor. He would not have the money to do so if PayPal failed. Musk has gotten wildly lucky many times, like when he was "gifted" a factory by the federal government in the wake of the 2008 automotive crisis. If the 2008 financial crisis never happened Tesla would not be a mass market manufacturer today. In an alternate timeline GM/Toyota would still be building the Pontiac Vibe and Corolla Matrix in Fremont. Musk has been hitching his businesses to government money ever since (SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Starlink) and I say that's a direct result of his astonishing success in getting cheap/free money for Tesla. And you don't convince the government to buy your products so easily unless you have a success story like Tesla's government investment under your belt. When you think about it this way his infiltration into the executive branch is a logical conclusion of his "genius" strategy. Now he can just tell the government to buy his products. It's the exact kind of thing that a middling manager with mediocre products would do rather than compete on quality and value.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  If.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > false aura around wealthy people like Peter Thiel I assumed he was a fairly clever libertarian/contrarian, who'd made it big. I then read this https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105 https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583... (his op ed in the FT) Where I realised he's just a dipshit. He's obviously reads about history, but the reek of 4chan level "media conspiracy" overpowers it. The constant littering of references to vaguely related historical words is pointless, and I'm not sure who its meant to impress. This drowns out some of the big points he's trying to get across in the piece. The biggest red herring is the assumption that "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex" is a thing separate from society, run by shadowy cabals. Its really not, its just society. That's how humans organise. You have a shared narrative and so long as you're within a certain percentage of it, you'll not get ostracised. Its cute that he still appears to think, with all his business experience that a shadowy cabal can be that well organised, effective and powerful without leaking. Just look at white house now, the exec is leaking like a fucking sieve.
vintagedave 2y ago
The very end has some understated sentences: > When you combine the hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage. 'Potentially'.
- kspacewalk2 2y ago
  'Some damage'. End our sheltered and prosperous way of life on this continent.
bmitc 2y ago
These extremist billionaire libertarians are such cowards because they're not really libertarians. They're all for fascist, authoritarian regimes in which they are in control, have power, and make all the money. They are for freedom and liberty only in the sense that they just want the U.S. government and its regulations and laws to get out of the way so that they can do their bidding. It's about power and control to them. They are actively against freedom and liberty. These billionaires and corporations have long been a threat to the U.S. China actually recognizes this and does not allow billionaires and corporations to dictate.
- sQL_inject 2y ago
  Right it just allows unelected officials answerable to no one pull all the strings indefinitely then puts you into a labor camp if you practice religion.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  > They are for freedom and liberty only in the sense that they just want the U.S. government and its regulations and laws to get out of the way so that they can do their bidding. Pretty sure that is where Libertarianism always ends up. I think you want Utopianism.
- afh1 2y ago
  Such a freer country is China than the US... Funny word to use in this context also, to dictate...
  - asddubs 2y ago
    of course it's not, but the ccp certainly realized the threat to its own power
- gooseus 2y ago
  They're libertarians in the sense that believe everyone is entitled to as much liberty as they can secure with their own resources. They want a kind of feudalism where everyone is "free" to choose whichever Lord to serve, exchanging their life for whatever liberty and resources the Lord deems them worthy of. Don't like Lord Musk's policy of prima nocta? You are free to pack up all your shit and travel (with proper papers, of course) to the court of Lord Bezos... assuming they are not currently in conflict, otherwise you could be turned away as a traitor or otherwise made an example of.
BJones12 2y ago
Somewhere, some poor schmuck is phoneless, sitting by a waterfall, completely unaware of how scared he is supposed to be
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  You can ignore politics, but politics won't ignore you.
  - esafak 2y ago
    As fired federal workers found out.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      That's not the most severe things that can happen for ignoring politics. Some people are unfortunate enough to ignore it to the point they sit in a frozen trench while IR-enabled drone is looking for them
      - FreebasingLLMs 2y ago
        [flagged]
        kspacewalk2 2y ago
        I know, what is it about shrill people insisting on looking up lately? Dial down on the fear factor, baby! It's like they say on Russian TV: what do you decide, anyway? The higher-ups aren't fools, they know what they're doing.
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > The higher-ups aren't fools, they know what they're doing. Recent evidence contradicts this viewpoint.
aaron_m04 2y ago
We should be concerned about all billionaires and the outsize influence on media and government. That said, I do think fear is unproductive.
- nancyminusone 2y ago
  Unproductive? Fear writes laws and wins elections.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    I think parents is referring to us - regular people. It is unproductive for people like us. For people, who want to induce fear for one reason or another, clearly it nearly a goal unto itself.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      A different take on this - authorities are most powerful when they can keep the people in fear. When the people lose the fear a revolution of some kind usually follows (peaceful or otherwise).
    - aaron_m04 2y ago
      That is what I meant, yes.
jgalt212 2y ago
Joe Lonsdale was on CNBC talking his book (long Palantir) the other day in the context of DoD cuts. He was confident that DoD would buy more from Palantir and other new contractors (e.g. Anduril), and DOGE would continue to cut the fat. All of that may or may not be true, but the wrinkle not addressed is the vibes between Musk and Thiel.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  I saw someone point out that DOGE has so far been masterful at making its detractors point for them — DOGE has shown that there's surprisingly less waste an inefficiency than anyone might have thought before.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Well, not “anyone”. It was pretty well-studied and there weren’t good reasons to believe there were extreme levels of waste in government. Anyone whose only reason for believing there was waste was because a talking head told them there was, sure.
    - ttyprintk 2y ago
      Consider the type of person who can acquire clearance so high that he’s trusted to program the war games. Personality-wise, this is not a lavish, profligate spender.
    - yathaid 2y ago
      Federal agencies pay over $65 billion to consultants each year. 98% of Booz Allen's revenues (~$11 billion) is from government consulting. I don't know what the threshold for "extreme waste" for you is, but that is a hell of a lot of money that consulting firms have been able to siphon from American taxpayers. [1] - https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/doge-cost-cuts-zero-in-on-top-u-s-consulting-firm-contracts/91155069 https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/doge-cost-cuts-zero-in-on-...
      - 2y ago
JKCalhoun 2y ago
My takeaway is that billionaires are dangerous. Un-checked power is dangerous. I remember the first time I heard someone say they thought there shouldn't be Billionaires, we shouldn't even allow there to be Billionaires my Capitalist mind reeled, "Say wut?" And then I started watching the world careen further out of control and could see that in fact the problem might just be wielding of financial power that really is the root of the problem.
- afh1 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - contagiousflow 2y ago
    How is that even a comparison? Governments are elected Edit: To Americans, fix your own democracy before you think the idea of democracy is broken.
    - desumeku 2y ago
      Is that supposed to make a difference?
      - contagiousflow 2y ago
        In countries other than America it sure does...
      - pjmorris 2y ago
        That's what James Madison thought (see Federalist #51)
    - afh1 2y ago
      https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf
      - 2y ago
jmyeet 2y ago
[flagged]
bey0nder 2y ago
why is this discussion full of one liners and not normal HN paragraphs?!
somelamer567 2y ago
This techno-fascist trend can best be understood through the lens of a cognitive bias called 'elite projection': where the rich and powerful believe that everyone shares their preferences and plans accordingly. 'Freedom' from the likes of Peter Thiel is best understood as "I should be allowed to do what I want". On the surface, it's silly and lame: Adam Something, a vlogger, did a great video demonstrating how Elon's driverless pod concept could never work in the real world. So it's easy to dismiss as rich people being stupid, but what we're seeing emerge here, is something much darker and far more sinister. Money amplifies speech, reach and political power, and so one's freedom is commensurate with their wealth. Combine that with how big business and private equity have switched to basically strip-mining the middle class through rent-seeking, and we are looking at a future of fascist billionaire feral elites ruling over everyone else as serfs. Peter Thiel is a key supporter of the 'Dark Enlightenment' intellectual movement: a metastasis of the alt-Right into an overly White-supremacist, elitist neo-reactionary movement, and they are getting serious traction everywhere. Be afraid. I am.
- thrance 2y ago
  Yes, but is it really a cognitive bias though? A lot of voters went against their own interests in the last election, in favor of techno-fascism. I can't remember who wrote that "in a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie's ideology is necessarily the dominant one".
briandear 2y ago
> Thiel’s pretty unique in that he was involved in this elaborate and secretive litigation campaign that resulted in the destruction of a pretty substantial media outlet when he secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. Nick Denton is a terrible person in my opinion; a gossip columnist and the things he often published were pure trash. Anti-semantic drivel, outing people against their will, and other salacious click-farming nonsense. Let’s not forget that Gawker lost a jury trial and the verdict bankrupted him. That Peter helped fund the case doesn’t change that the jury found Gawker liable. Gawker’s actions caused their demise. If you want to play with gossip and attempt to destroy people, you have to be prepared to suffer the legal consequences when the targets seek legal recourse. Blaming Peter for the destruction of Gawker is ridiculous — Gawker did the thing and the thing had consequences. As far as the article claiming that Peter Theil’s philosophy borders on fascism — that’s complete nonsense. Libertarianism is the opposite of fascism. Suppressing free speech, forcing businesses to close — all of the Biden era Covid policies — that’s fascism. Remember the days when we couldn’t talk about vaccine injuries? Or the times when scientific journals scrubbed articles that contradicted the prevailing directives on masks? Specifically articles published with flu studies that showed surgical masks as ineffective. One day, the articles were there, the next day, those articles seemingly disappeared aside from within the print versions which are harder to scrub for obvious reasons. Remember the social media bans for even expressing skepticism about mRNA covid shots? How about sharing opinions on the lab leak theory? What about the Santa Monica surfer who was arrested for surfing in the ocean with nobody within a half mile of him? That’s faciscm. Fauci was unelected yet wielded incredible power, Sara Cody in Santa Clara county — also unelected yet had the sweeping power to shut down everything in her county during Covid. I never voted for her. Yet she had the singular, unaccountable power to destroy businesses and destroy children’s education. Covid-America was almost pure fascism, yet nobody on the left wants to have that conversation. People complain about Elon being “unelected,” while forgetting that Sara Cody shut down an entire region — including private businesses and schools. Reducing the size and scope of government is not fascism. Using lawfare to go after political enemies is fascism. People are attempting to redefine words such as fascism in order to make their political opponents look scary, but ironically the real fascists are the ones calling everyone else fascist.
- wqaatwt 2y ago
originalvichy 2y ago
Most Americans I’ve interacted with think money is a reflection of your intelligence, so unfortunately as long as this guy has a net worth of billions he will be powerful.
- desumeku 2y ago
  How many EU politicians are poor, broke and humble?
  - orwin 2y ago
    At least one of them worked as a hostel cleaner until she was elected, and at least one of them was a temp worker who did odd jobs and gig work in parallel to his political action with 'La Jeune Garde'
- flyinglizard 2y ago
  I don't think the problem with Thiel is a lack of intelligence. Stupid people don't usually become a menace on a national (or indeed now, global) scale. May terrorize their household or maybe close neighbours, but don't have lots of reach beyond that.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- garden_hermit 2y ago
  The thing is that people like Thiel are actually quite smart. The problem is that people really overrate “smartness”. Smart people are often dumb as hell.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    careful bro, you're posting this on HN of all places
  - swat535 2y ago
    The thing is, people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos are undoubtedly intelligent, they were all lucky of course but I would argue that no one with below average IQ can use their initial luck to create additional opportunities and generate millions of dollars worth of wealth. That being said, I feel like we need to be more nuanced when we discuss "intelligence", because I think that it can have a multifaceted definition and people have a wide array of skillets. So I perhaps a better question would be something along the lines of "Intelligent in what way?"
jongjong 2y ago
Thiel is remarkably spot-on about a lot of things. He seems to be early in on every major economic, political and cultural trend.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  It's almost like, in some way, he's part of a shadowy cabal of people who are making these things happen by spending money through Super-PACs and influencers to spread ideas.
  - jongjong 2y ago
    With this interpretation, he'd have to be funding the problems and then presenting his ideas as the solutions. I think a lot the political problems which make Thiel's ideas appealing arose during the Biden era and given that Thiel supported Trump since his first run, it's hard to see how he would have had much influence under Biden. There are other billionaires who seem to be much more aligned with Biden and have been funding NGOs for decades and who don't seem to be aligned with Thiel. Maybe he served as controlled opposition, but IDK, controlled opposition is a kind of social over-engineering. Controlled opposition can easily turn into real opposition if the conditions arise. I think 'controlled opposition' is one of the ideas that conspiracy theorists tend to go overboard with. I sometimes wonder if maybe it is itself a narrative which exists to try to discredit any potential real opposition to make them seem fake and keep people down. We get deep into the tangled weeds of uncertainty here.
- danny_codes 2y ago
  Nepotism is a route to success.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
briandear 2y ago
Why aren’t people afraid of Bill Gates? Why is it only the libertarians that scare people? Bill Gates does some extremely scary things — not to mention some morally repugnant things that apparently even Melinda Gates couldn’t take anymore. And speaking of billionaires, why no complaints about Soros? The intellectual dishonestly is astounding. Soros has literally bought scores of radio stations, bought off district attorneys around the U.S., and Gates is doing vaccine experiments in ultra poor countries where oversight is minimal to non-existent. Pfizer did the same thing with drug trials in places where people can’t sue. Gates even wants to release genetically modified mosquitos — without the consent of the people who live in the proposed areas. How about Laurene Jobs’s ownership of The Atlantic and the influence she has attempted to buy with her billions? What about the Clinton Foundation’s malfeasance in Haiti (among other places?) But sure, let’s have another article complaining about Theil and by extension, Musk. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002940_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-00294... https://socialism.com/fs-article/the-robber-baron-as-lord-bountiful-bill-gates-and-the-capitalist-philanthropy-scam/ https://socialism.com/fs-article/the-robber-baron-as-lord-bo...
- mortarion 2y ago
  Because "libertarian" is just another word for "anarchist" and anarchy is not a good system of government, as it obeys no rules.
- desumeku 2y ago
  >not to mention some morally repugnant things that apparently even Melinda Gates couldn’t take anymore. Can you explain this?
  - yadaeno 2y ago
    > (talking about gates and Epstein) …This is extremely significant because it substantially increases the amount of specific, known meetings between the two, and shows that they were meeting on specific dates late into 2014—after, in fact, the relationship had caused conflict between Gates and his then wife, Melinda French Gates, which would ultimately end in their divorce. https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabout-bill-gates-and-jeffrey-epstein/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabo...
mortarion 2y ago
Him and his company is pure evil. Sadly some EU government do business with them (Germany, Denmark) whilst what should happen, if the world was sane, is EU wide sanctions on Palantir and life-time entry bans on all employees, and if any details of EU citizens are in their system, arrest and criminal prosecution if he ever sets foot in Schengen.
- Doches 2y ago
  > his company is pure evil Would you mind elaborating on why you'd call Palantir 'evil' in particular? I wouldn't exactly hold the company up a a role model of good corporate citizenship, but I also wouldn't put them down as particularly more 'evil' than your average multinational. Say, on a level with -- to pull an example not-quite-entirely out of thin air -- Airbus.
bluenomatterwho 2y ago
If you want to take issue with Technocracy, fine. Call out the entire liberal order and Karp's marxism in the same breath. Pretending it is just Thiel is so willfully ignorant. It is so nauseating how much people need to project and play favorites as if Thiel isn't chatting right now with people you adore as your champions. I'm not saying this in appreciation of Peter (as we call him in my circle of people you love) only to call out the pointless and meaningless divisiveness of this line of thinking. We can't both have nearly unlimited knowledge working tools and this kind of nonsense favoritism and boogeymen unless you actively choose to be ignorant. Be the change you want to see.
ck2 2y ago
Peter Thiel essentially owns JD Vance If you think things are bad now and headed towards disaster over next few years, imagine an even worse puppet sitting only a heartbeat away.
- kjsingh 2y ago
  So Thiel is next in line after Musk?
amai 2y ago
„But the idea that companies should basically be able to do whatever they want, that democracy isn’t the most important value, these things are reflected in the decisions and actions that many Silicon Valley companies are making, even Silicon Valley companies that are run by ostensibly liberal progressives.“ That explains how the US lost its democracy.

143 points by zfg 2y ago

> I think there’s actual reason for people to be afraid of Peter Thiel. > That said, it’s not productive to be afraid. Chalk this one up to clickbait to sell a book I guess? Personally I feel like the false aura around wealthy people like Peter Thiel works to their favor and advantage. We all think they are these powerful scary incredibly smart people when they are actually slightly above average people who got lucky, and sometimes only got lucky once. Peter Thiel would be a nobody if PayPal or Facebook failed, and there was always a high chance for those things to happen. He could just be the nobody guy who seeded $500,000 into Friendster instead of Facebook. He earned $55 million from the PayPal sale and $1 billion from his Facebook sale. If you stick your money in an index fund it will double in value every 7 years (before adjusting for inflation). Do that for $55 million at the PayPal sale and you get $880 million, do that for his Facebook stock in 2012 and you end up with $4 billion. So around $5 billion of his net worth can be attributed to hypothetical passive investment of his original windfalls, attributed to being at the right place at the right time with just two companies, and he would not have been able to invest in the second on without winning the lottery at the first. In other words, with 100% disposable income that could be gambled on moonshots (unlike our 401ks), he only beat the market by 15% per year. Any idiot with a wealth manager and tolerance for risk can do that. And we, the people, have lots of power over people like this if we exert it.

kreetx 2y ago
Maybe he hadn't been as known, but I'd assume, he had started another venture had PayPal failed.
hnhg 2y ago
You might be missing the point. They can be all of those things you say (and I very much agree with you) but they can still be very dangerous. In fact, perhaps their banality is a key part of what makes them so dangerous.
- netsharc 2y ago
  Curious keyword, "banality".. Hannah Arendt wrote a whole book about a banal man, which probably has lessons for the current times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
  - hnhg 2y ago
    Indeed she did.
hlpn 2y ago
They are not necessarily smart, but they are powerful and most likely sociopathic. They are dangerous.
- akudha 2y ago
  The most annoying thing is society's (especially American society) admiration for Billionaires and the belief that their IQ is in the four digits or some crap like that. More than intelligence, it takes ruthlessness, narcissism and questionable ethics (or no ethics at all) to amass hundreds of billions of dollars in a couple of decades. I feel sorry for anyone who worships people like Musk or Theil. Sure Theil was supposedly a talented chess player in his youth, did well in school etc. But so do millions of other kids. These dudes don't have so much money because they are intelligent, they have so much money because they are willing to do damn near anything to get it - including trampling over people that helped them in the first place
NikolaNovak 2y ago
I agree with your premise but not conclusion. I think there are people who take big unlikely risks. Statistically some of them succeed. Now they are big risk takers with survivorship bias and illusions of self importance, AND lots power/money. And that can be scary.
- isaacfrond 2y ago
  Survivorship bias would be a good explanation for Musk's success, if he succeeded at one thing. But it doesn't explain having a string of successes.
  - bdauvergne 2y ago
    The jury is still out if Tesla is is still a success, losing 50% of sales each year for the few next years could clearly go toward bankruptcy.
  - jgeada 2y ago
    SpaceX and, for a time, Tesla. PayPal was already a success when he conned his way in. What other successes has he had? Twitter imploded when he took over, Boring company was never real, FSD at Tesla will never be real. And SpaceX is succeeding because they have a team dedicated to keeping him away from decision making. What he's had is an army of internet bots pumping up his supposed credentials (visible even in the voting patterns here on YN)
  - consteval 2y ago
    It does if those successes aren’t based on you at all, which they’re not. In every instance, a lot of other people did all the work. Musk provided funds, which a machine could do. And, he did fail. A lot. But the more money you have, the more you can fail.
- dangus 2y ago
  It’s easy to take unlikely risks when you already have a “never need to work again” windfall. I can’t risk my retirement nest egg. If Peter Thiel ended PayPal with $55 million that means he could set aside ~$5-10 to live the rest of his life and risk the rest. So really I would argue that having a risk-adjacent personality isn’t related to skill. Thiel was willing to throw half a million dollars at random tech startups done by college dropouts and he also had a social network of his own thanks to doing the same with PayPal. So it’s about networking, capital, and timing more than skill. Thiel would be a nobody if he was born 10 years later. Where is the PayPal-like opportunity in today’s tech landscape? The modern startup is wildly capital heavy and loses money for possibly decades (e.g., Lyft just made its first profit EVER in 2024).
tejohnso 2y ago
> Peter Thiel would be a nobody if PayPal failed. Maybe for Peter (I don't know) but not for Musk. He did X/PayPal, but then blew everyone away with Tesla, crushed it with SpaceX, succeeds with Starlink... Some people really do have something that is more than just getting lucky once.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  There is something to it. As someone, who shorted Tesla based on fundamentals ( it was back when I foolishly thought fundamentals matter more than emotion ), I can't help but wonder if he was less of who is and how he operates, under any other CEO, this would have been a clear case of Tesla going into bankruptcy. There is luck and there is this weird mix of skills that keep you going all the time.
  - queuebert 2y ago
    He's smart enough to fool the masses that he's a genius scientist, but, as a scientist myself, he looks to me like a gifted manager and maybe a genius at hiring.
- dangus 2y ago
  He didn't start Tesla, he joined as an investor. He would not have the money to do so if PayPal failed. Musk has gotten wildly lucky many times, like when he was "gifted" a factory by the federal government in the wake of the 2008 automotive crisis. If the 2008 financial crisis never happened Tesla would not be a mass market manufacturer today. In an alternate timeline GM/Toyota would still be building the Pontiac Vibe and Corolla Matrix in Fremont. Musk has been hitching his businesses to government money ever since (SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Starlink) and I say that's a direct result of his astonishing success in getting cheap/free money for Tesla. And you don't convince the government to buy your products so easily unless you have a success story like Tesla's government investment under your belt. When you think about it this way his infiltration into the executive branch is a logical conclusion of his "genius" strategy. Now he can just tell the government to buy his products. It's the exact kind of thing that a middling manager with mediocre products would do rather than compete on quality and value.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
If.
KaiserPro 2y ago
> false aura around wealthy people like Peter Thiel I assumed he was a fairly clever libertarian/contrarian, who'd made it big. I then read this https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105 https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583... (his op ed in the FT) Where I realised he's just a dipshit. He's obviously reads about history, but the reek of 4chan level "media conspiracy" overpowers it. The constant littering of references to vaguely related historical words is pointless, and I'm not sure who its meant to impress. This drowns out some of the big points he's trying to get across in the piece. The biggest red herring is the assumption that "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex" is a thing separate from society, run by shadowy cabals. Its really not, its just society. That's how humans organise. You have a shared narrative and so long as you're within a certain percentage of it, you'll not get ostracised. Its cute that he still appears to think, with all his business experience that a shadowy cabal can be that well organised, effective and powerful without leaking. Just look at white house now, the exec is leaking like a fucking sieve.

vintagedave 2y ago

The very end has some understated sentences: > When you combine the hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage. 'Potentially'.

kspacewalk2 2y ago
'Some damage'. End our sheltered and prosperous way of life on this continent.

bmitc 2y ago

These extremist billionaire libertarians are such cowards because they're not really libertarians. They're all for fascist, authoritarian regimes in which they are in control, have power, and make all the money. They are for freedom and liberty only in the sense that they just want the U.S. government and its regulations and laws to get out of the way so that they can do their bidding. It's about power and control to them. They are actively against freedom and liberty. These billionaires and corporations have long been a threat to the U.S. China actually recognizes this and does not allow billionaires and corporations to dictate.

sQL_inject 2y ago
Right it just allows unelected officials answerable to no one pull all the strings indefinitely then puts you into a labor camp if you practice religion.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> They are for freedom and liberty only in the sense that they just want the U.S. government and its regulations and laws to get out of the way so that they can do their bidding. Pretty sure that is where Libertarianism always ends up. I think you want Utopianism.
afh1 2y ago
Such a freer country is China than the US... Funny word to use in this context also, to dictate...
- asddubs 2y ago
  of course it's not, but the ccp certainly realized the threat to its own power
gooseus 2y ago
They're libertarians in the sense that believe everyone is entitled to as much liberty as they can secure with their own resources. They want a kind of feudalism where everyone is "free" to choose whichever Lord to serve, exchanging their life for whatever liberty and resources the Lord deems them worthy of. Don't like Lord Musk's policy of prima nocta? You are free to pack up all your shit and travel (with proper papers, of course) to the court of Lord Bezos... assuming they are not currently in conflict, otherwise you could be turned away as a traitor or otherwise made an example of.

BJones12 2y ago

Somewhere, some poor schmuck is phoneless, sitting by a waterfall, completely unaware of how scared he is supposed to be

hackyhacky 2y ago
You can ignore politics, but politics won't ignore you.
- esafak 2y ago
  As fired federal workers found out.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    That's not the most severe things that can happen for ignoring politics. Some people are unfortunate enough to ignore it to the point they sit in a frozen trench while IR-enabled drone is looking for them
    - FreebasingLLMs 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - kspacewalk2 2y ago
        I know, what is it about shrill people insisting on looking up lately? Dial down on the fear factor, baby! It's like they say on Russian TV: what do you decide, anyway? The higher-ups aren't fools, they know what they're doing.
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > The higher-ups aren't fools, they know what they're doing. Recent evidence contradicts this viewpoint.

aaron_m04 2y ago

We should be concerned about all billionaires and the outsize influence on media and government. That said, I do think fear is unproductive.

nancyminusone 2y ago
Unproductive? Fear writes laws and wins elections.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  I think parents is referring to us - regular people. It is unproductive for people like us. For people, who want to induce fear for one reason or another, clearly it nearly a goal unto itself.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    A different take on this - authorities are most powerful when they can keep the people in fear. When the people lose the fear a revolution of some kind usually follows (peaceful or otherwise).
  - aaron_m04 2y ago
    That is what I meant, yes.

jgalt212 2y ago

Joe Lonsdale was on CNBC talking his book (long Palantir) the other day in the context of DoD cuts. He was confident that DoD would buy more from Palantir and other new contractors (e.g. Anduril), and DOGE would continue to cut the fat. All of that may or may not be true, but the wrinkle not addressed is the vibes between Musk and Thiel.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
I saw someone point out that DOGE has so far been masterful at making its detractors point for them — DOGE has shown that there's surprisingly less waste an inefficiency than anyone might have thought before.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Well, not “anyone”. It was pretty well-studied and there weren’t good reasons to believe there were extreme levels of waste in government. Anyone whose only reason for believing there was waste was because a talking head told them there was, sure.
  - ttyprintk 2y ago
    Consider the type of person who can acquire clearance so high that he’s trusted to program the war games. Personality-wise, this is not a lavish, profligate spender.
  - yathaid 2y ago
    Federal agencies pay over $65 billion to consultants each year. 98% of Booz Allen's revenues (~$11 billion) is from government consulting. I don't know what the threshold for "extreme waste" for you is, but that is a hell of a lot of money that consulting firms have been able to siphon from American taxpayers. [1] - https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/doge-cost-cuts-zero-in-on-top-u-s-consulting-firm-contracts/91155069 https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/doge-cost-cuts-zero-in-on-...
    - 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago

My takeaway is that billionaires are dangerous. Un-checked power is dangerous. I remember the first time I heard someone say they thought there shouldn't be Billionaires, we shouldn't even allow there to be Billionaires my Capitalist mind reeled, "Say wut?" And then I started watching the world careen further out of control and could see that in fact the problem might just be wielding of financial power that really is the root of the problem.

afh1 2y ago
[flagged]
- contagiousflow 2y ago
  How is that even a comparison? Governments are elected Edit: To Americans, fix your own democracy before you think the idea of democracy is broken.
  - desumeku 2y ago
    Is that supposed to make a difference?
    - contagiousflow 2y ago
      In countries other than America it sure does...
    - pjmorris 2y ago
      That's what James Madison thought (see Federalist #51)
  - afh1 2y ago
    https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf
    - 2y ago

jmyeet 2y ago

[flagged]

bey0nder 2y ago

why is this discussion full of one liners and not normal HN paragraphs?!

somelamer567 2y ago

This techno-fascist trend can best be understood through the lens of a cognitive bias called 'elite projection': where the rich and powerful believe that everyone shares their preferences and plans accordingly. 'Freedom' from the likes of Peter Thiel is best understood as "I should be allowed to do what I want". On the surface, it's silly and lame: Adam Something, a vlogger, did a great video demonstrating how Elon's driverless pod concept could never work in the real world. So it's easy to dismiss as rich people being stupid, but what we're seeing emerge here, is something much darker and far more sinister. Money amplifies speech, reach and political power, and so one's freedom is commensurate with their wealth. Combine that with how big business and private equity have switched to basically strip-mining the middle class through rent-seeking, and we are looking at a future of fascist billionaire feral elites ruling over everyone else as serfs. Peter Thiel is a key supporter of the 'Dark Enlightenment' intellectual movement: a metastasis of the alt-Right into an overly White-supremacist, elitist neo-reactionary movement, and they are getting serious traction everywhere. Be afraid. I am.

thrance 2y ago
Yes, but is it really a cognitive bias though? A lot of voters went against their own interests in the last election, in favor of techno-fascism. I can't remember who wrote that "in a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie's ideology is necessarily the dominant one".

briandear 2y ago

> Thiel’s pretty unique in that he was involved in this elaborate and secretive litigation campaign that resulted in the destruction of a pretty substantial media outlet when he secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. Nick Denton is a terrible person in my opinion; a gossip columnist and the things he often published were pure trash. Anti-semantic drivel, outing people against their will, and other salacious click-farming nonsense. Let’s not forget that Gawker lost a jury trial and the verdict bankrupted him. That Peter helped fund the case doesn’t change that the jury found Gawker liable. Gawker’s actions caused their demise. If you want to play with gossip and attempt to destroy people, you have to be prepared to suffer the legal consequences when the targets seek legal recourse. Blaming Peter for the destruction of Gawker is ridiculous — Gawker did the thing and the thing had consequences. As far as the article claiming that Peter Theil’s philosophy borders on fascism — that’s complete nonsense. Libertarianism is the opposite of fascism. Suppressing free speech, forcing businesses to close — all of the Biden era Covid policies — that’s fascism. Remember the days when we couldn’t talk about vaccine injuries? Or the times when scientific journals scrubbed articles that contradicted the prevailing directives on masks? Specifically articles published with flu studies that showed surgical masks as ineffective. One day, the articles were there, the next day, those articles seemingly disappeared aside from within the print versions which are harder to scrub for obvious reasons. Remember the social media bans for even expressing skepticism about mRNA covid shots? How about sharing opinions on the lab leak theory? What about the Santa Monica surfer who was arrested for surfing in the ocean with nobody within a half mile of him? That’s faciscm. Fauci was unelected yet wielded incredible power, Sara Cody in Santa Clara county — also unelected yet had the sweeping power to shut down everything in her county during Covid. I never voted for her. Yet she had the singular, unaccountable power to destroy businesses and destroy children’s education. Covid-America was almost pure fascism, yet nobody on the left wants to have that conversation. People complain about Elon being “unelected,” while forgetting that Sara Cody shut down an entire region — including private businesses and schools. Reducing the size and scope of government is not fascism. Using lawfare to go after political enemies is fascism. People are attempting to redefine words such as fascism in order to make their political opponents look scary, but ironically the real fascists are the ones calling everyone else fascist.

wqaatwt 2y ago

originalvichy 2y ago

Most Americans I’ve interacted with think money is a reflection of your intelligence, so unfortunately as long as this guy has a net worth of billions he will be powerful.

desumeku 2y ago
How many EU politicians are poor, broke and humble?
- orwin 2y ago
  At least one of them worked as a hostel cleaner until she was elected, and at least one of them was a temp worker who did odd jobs and gig work in parallel to his political action with 'La Jeune Garde'
flyinglizard 2y ago
I don't think the problem with Thiel is a lack of intelligence. Stupid people don't usually become a menace on a national (or indeed now, global) scale. May terrorize their household or maybe close neighbours, but don't have lots of reach beyond that.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
garden_hermit 2y ago
The thing is that people like Thiel are actually quite smart. The problem is that people really overrate “smartness”. Smart people are often dumb as hell.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  careful bro, you're posting this on HN of all places
- swat535 2y ago
  The thing is, people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos are undoubtedly intelligent, they were all lucky of course but I would argue that no one with below average IQ can use their initial luck to create additional opportunities and generate millions of dollars worth of wealth. That being said, I feel like we need to be more nuanced when we discuss "intelligence", because I think that it can have a multifaceted definition and people have a wide array of skillets. So I perhaps a better question would be something along the lines of "Intelligent in what way?"

jongjong 2y ago

Thiel is remarkably spot-on about a lot of things. He seems to be early in on every major economic, political and cultural trend.

throwway120385 2y ago
It's almost like, in some way, he's part of a shadowy cabal of people who are making these things happen by spending money through Super-PACs and influencers to spread ideas.
- jongjong 2y ago
  With this interpretation, he'd have to be funding the problems and then presenting his ideas as the solutions. I think a lot the political problems which make Thiel's ideas appealing arose during the Biden era and given that Thiel supported Trump since his first run, it's hard to see how he would have had much influence under Biden. There are other billionaires who seem to be much more aligned with Biden and have been funding NGOs for decades and who don't seem to be aligned with Thiel. Maybe he served as controlled opposition, but IDK, controlled opposition is a kind of social over-engineering. Controlled opposition can easily turn into real opposition if the conditions arise. I think 'controlled opposition' is one of the ideas that conspiracy theorists tend to go overboard with. I sometimes wonder if maybe it is itself a narrative which exists to try to discredit any potential real opposition to make them seem fake and keep people down. We get deep into the tangled weeds of uncertainty here.
danny_codes 2y ago
Nepotism is a route to success.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

briandear 2y ago

Why aren’t people afraid of Bill Gates? Why is it only the libertarians that scare people? Bill Gates does some extremely scary things — not to mention some morally repugnant things that apparently even Melinda Gates couldn’t take anymore. And speaking of billionaires, why no complaints about Soros? The intellectual dishonestly is astounding. Soros has literally bought scores of radio stations, bought off district attorneys around the U.S., and Gates is doing vaccine experiments in ultra poor countries where oversight is minimal to non-existent. Pfizer did the same thing with drug trials in places where people can’t sue. Gates even wants to release genetically modified mosquitos — without the consent of the people who live in the proposed areas. How about Laurene Jobs’s ownership of The Atlantic and the influence she has attempted to buy with her billions? What about the Clinton Foundation’s malfeasance in Haiti (among other places?) But sure, let’s have another article complaining about Theil and by extension, Musk. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002940_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-00294... https://socialism.com/fs-article/the-robber-baron-as-lord-bountiful-bill-gates-and-the-capitalist-philanthropy-scam/ https://socialism.com/fs-article/the-robber-baron-as-lord-bo...

mortarion 2y ago
Because "libertarian" is just another word for "anarchist" and anarchy is not a good system of government, as it obeys no rules.
desumeku 2y ago
>not to mention some morally repugnant things that apparently even Melinda Gates couldn’t take anymore. Can you explain this?
- yadaeno 2y ago
  > (talking about gates and Epstein) …This is extremely significant because it substantially increases the amount of specific, known meetings between the two, and shows that they were meeting on specific dates late into 2014—after, in fact, the relationship had caused conflict between Gates and his then wife, Melinda French Gates, which would ultimately end in their divorce. https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabout-bill-gates-and-jeffrey-epstein/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabo...

mortarion 2y ago

Him and his company is pure evil. Sadly some EU government do business with them (Germany, Denmark) whilst what should happen, if the world was sane, is EU wide sanctions on Palantir and life-time entry bans on all employees, and if any details of EU citizens are in their system, arrest and criminal prosecution if he ever sets foot in Schengen.

Doches 2y ago
> his company is pure evil Would you mind elaborating on why you'd call Palantir 'evil' in particular? I wouldn't exactly hold the company up a a role model of good corporate citizenship, but I also wouldn't put them down as particularly more 'evil' than your average multinational. Say, on a level with -- to pull an example not-quite-entirely out of thin air -- Airbus.

bluenomatterwho 2y ago

If you want to take issue with Technocracy, fine. Call out the entire liberal order and Karp's marxism in the same breath. Pretending it is just Thiel is so willfully ignorant. It is so nauseating how much people need to project and play favorites as if Thiel isn't chatting right now with people you adore as your champions. I'm not saying this in appreciation of Peter (as we call him in my circle of people you love) only to call out the pointless and meaningless divisiveness of this line of thinking. We can't both have nearly unlimited knowledge working tools and this kind of nonsense favoritism and boogeymen unless you actively choose to be ignorant. Be the change you want to see.

ck2 2y ago

Peter Thiel essentially owns JD Vance If you think things are bad now and headed towards disaster over next few years, imagine an even worse puppet sitting only a heartbeat away.

kjsingh 2y ago
So Thiel is next in line after Musk?

amai 2y ago

„But the idea that companies should basically be able to do whatever they want, that democracy isn’t the most important value, these things are reflected in the decisions and actions that many Silicon Valley companies are making, even Silicon Valley companies that are run by ostensibly liberal progressives.“ That explains how the US lost its democracy.