15 ms·

> 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

by 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.

by dangus 2y ago

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.