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Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teena

Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.” > But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today. The full essay https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

tiahura 1y ago
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  Haha I like that quote, but to her unintentional credit Ayn Rand did force me to think about why she was wrong, whereas if my main exposure to capitalist propaganda were the plausibly apolitical econ classes offered in school I might never have even realized that they were propaganda.
bpt3 1y ago
These sound like the exact reasons we don't have a direct democracy. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” - not Peter Thiel
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  That's exactly how it works already, albeit through the middlemen representatives figuring out what block of voters is cheapest to buy. The only meaningful difference in a representative democracy is that the representatives can choose not to deliver on their promises (in other words: lie), thereby consolidating real power in a smaller group of people.
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    Except somehow it's the opposite? The Big Beautiful Bill is one of the most regressive bills in decades - the vast majority of the benefits went to the richest while the biggest cuts went to the poorest. The MAGA base is definitely not on the richer end of that spectrum. I.e. they didn't really even get anything for their undying loyalty besides "owning the libs" I guess.
  - schmidtleonard 1y ago
    The market already exponentially concentrates wealth, just piggy back on that. There will always be a market for promoting the self-serving politics of the rich.
  - bpt3 1y ago
    The idea is that smaller group of people actually have some integrity and sense of duty to the people they represent and the country at large, rather than just pulling the lever for the thing that benefits them the most in the immediate term. That idea has always been tested, with the current times being the largest test in several decades at least.
    - _Algernon_ 1y ago
      The argument that somebody else has better integrity and sense of duty representing my needs or wants is dead on arrival. Direct democracy is a representative democracy where each person has a representative.
rayiner 1y ago
He's expressing more or less the same sentiment as the American founders themselves expressed.
- miltonlost 1y ago
  More or less, "I don't believe in democracy" is the same as the people who founded the country? Ok, you have no idea of nuance.
  - bpt3 1y ago
    That's not what Thiel said, and not what the parent poster said. How familiar are you with the writings of the founding fathers? The ones who very intentionally avoided creating a system based on direct democracy?
    - FireBeyond 1y ago
      A few things: The founding fathers were often in their (often early) 20s. They were not infallible, nor was the system they created. That's why they created mechanisms for evolving that system. Except we rarely do. "But Constitutional Amendments", people say. Actually, one of the doctrines of the founding fathers was that the whole system should be reviewed, head to toe, every 10-20 years. Everything is very selective. Infallible when we want it to be. "Oh they didn't mean that/like that" when we want. And completely ignore other parts as inconvenient.
      - bpt3 1y ago
        They certainly were not infallible, but the question is whether they were unwavering advocates for democracy. All of the restrictions they put in place, such as the electoral college and who was able to vote at all, along with the writings we have, suggests as a group they were not.
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > The founding fathers were often in their (often early) 20s. The youngest delegate to the Constitutional convention was Johnathan Dayton of New Jersey, who was 26, and there were three more under 30. There were more over 60 than than under 30. The people that are frequently cited as being "Founding Fathers" in their "early 20s" (or "between 19 or 21, because we're not sure exactly when he was born", in Hamilton's case) are people who were that age in 1776 and ended up playing an important role. But the Constitution was drafted more than a decade later -- there was a war, plus time under the first system of government under the Articles of Confederation in between. > Actually, one of the doctrines of the founding fathers was that the whole system should be reviewed, head to toe, every 10-20 years., No, that was not a "doctrine of the founding fathers", it was a belief of Thomas Jefferson expressed later in a letter to, as I recall, John Adams, specifically (the upper limit of the period at which he held any law or constitution needed to expire was actually 19 years, based on actuarial data and a set of assumptions he had about what was necessary and acceptable in terms of avoiding the living being ruled over by the dead.) You can tell it was not a widely held "doctrine of the founding fathers" (or, more to the point, of the Framers, who are the ones actually relevant to the Constitution, though the two groups have considerable overlap) because instead of expiring by its own terms in 19 years or less, the Constitution was permanent, with a very difficult method of amendment, and that method of amendment was specifically barred from changing certain parts. There weren't really very many widely shared "doctrines" of the Founders or the Framers. They weren't a hive mind or a cult or even a group as ideologically aligned as the coalition that makes up either of the US's current major political parties. The idea of shared doctrines or a single unifying vision behind the Constitution are mythologies created after, and requiring deliberate disregard of, the facts.
grafmax 1y ago
I mean, he’s not wrong. Libertarianism is freedom - for the rich. And concentrated wealth is antithetical to democracy because it’s concentrated power. He’s just taking libertarianism to its logical extreme by repudiating democracy. Is it any wonder that he has helped fund our decline into authoritarianism? We now have concentration camps, abrogation of the constitution, judicial capture, and the military turned increasingly against American citizens.
- betaby 1y ago
  > We now have concentration camps, abrogation of the constitution, judicial capture, and the military turned increasingly against American citizens. Other countries got those without paying Palantir billions.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    This is part of the fundamental contradiction of libertarianism. Why would those with the power and the purse strings curtail the government (including spending) when it doesn’t suit them? Instead it’s things like environmental regulations and social programs that get cut, tipping society’s imbalances further.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- anonfordays 1y ago
  > We now have concentration camps Immigration detention facilities are not concentration camps.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    They’re not death camps. But mass detention without due process - that’s a concentration camp.
    - 1y ago
bdisl 1y ago
He’s right. You can see it every time people vote to restrict their individual freedoms, which in the west doesn’t stop happening.
- Y-bar 1y ago
  I have knowingly voted for less freedoms for myself multiple times and I know it, for example I have voted: - to have less freedom to pollute the environment. - to have less freedom where I am able to defraud my customers. - to have less freedom to have less ability to lie about medical "benefits" of fake cures. I am also a big proponent of freedom-limiting legislation like GDPR which prevents myself and my employer from secretly collecting and processing your personal information. And I am currently part of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative which will hopefully restrict the freedom of games companies to sunset and withdraw purchases without a clear roadmap or similar remedy.
  - bdisl 1y ago
    That is a lot of typing for a massive strawman that is more likely to belong in Reddit than here.
    - Y-bar 1y ago
      I understood your comment as restricting my own freedoms was a fully bad thing, and I therefore tried to provide examples of positive freedoms being afforded to you by restricting my own negative freedoms. Explain why that is a straw-man.
      - shazbotter 1y ago
        It's not, you refuted their obviously poorly constructed argument directly. They just have an ideological axe to grind.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  Thanks in part, no doubt, to massive funding from Peter Thiel (and of course others) on issues/candidates that lead to restricting freedom.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
Ah yes, because of the vast freedoms enjoyed by the people of all those non democratic nations throughout history. The freedom to own a slave. The freedom to treat women as property. The freedom to kill somebody who may have wronged you. Just an array of freedoms.
keernan 1y ago
What so many seem to be overlooking is the very, very strong belief by the top 0.01% is that science is about to - or already has - found a way to eliminate natural causes of death. Hence the quote from Peter Thiel: >I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual Assume for one moment that it is true that science will be able to eliminate natural causes of death in the very near future. If you are a multi-billionaire, what does that mean for you? What is the biggest danger to you moving forward? Can the earth support the current population expanding at an ever increasing pace if everyone lives forever? Is it feasible that the wealthiest 3,000 people on earth can 'control' who has access to the ability to never die a natural death?

tiahura 1y ago

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

schmidtleonard 1y ago
Haha I like that quote, but to her unintentional credit Ayn Rand did force me to think about why she was wrong, whereas if my main exposure to capitalist propaganda were the plausibly apolitical econ classes offered in school I might never have even realized that they were propaganda.

bpt3 1y ago

These sound like the exact reasons we don't have a direct democracy. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” - not Peter Thiel

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
_Algernon_ 1y ago
That's exactly how it works already, albeit through the middlemen representatives figuring out what block of voters is cheapest to buy. The only meaningful difference in a representative democracy is that the representatives can choose not to deliver on their promises (in other words: lie), thereby consolidating real power in a smaller group of people.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  Except somehow it's the opposite? The Big Beautiful Bill is one of the most regressive bills in decades - the vast majority of the benefits went to the richest while the biggest cuts went to the poorest. The MAGA base is definitely not on the richer end of that spectrum. I.e. they didn't really even get anything for their undying loyalty besides "owning the libs" I guess.
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  The market already exponentially concentrates wealth, just piggy back on that. There will always be a market for promoting the self-serving politics of the rich.
- bpt3 1y ago
  The idea is that smaller group of people actually have some integrity and sense of duty to the people they represent and the country at large, rather than just pulling the lever for the thing that benefits them the most in the immediate term. That idea has always been tested, with the current times being the largest test in several decades at least.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    The argument that somebody else has better integrity and sense of duty representing my needs or wants is dead on arrival. Direct democracy is a representative democracy where each person has a representative.

rayiner 1y ago

He's expressing more or less the same sentiment as the American founders themselves expressed.

miltonlost 1y ago
More or less, "I don't believe in democracy" is the same as the people who founded the country? Ok, you have no idea of nuance.
- bpt3 1y ago
  That's not what Thiel said, and not what the parent poster said. How familiar are you with the writings of the founding fathers? The ones who very intentionally avoided creating a system based on direct democracy?
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    A few things: The founding fathers were often in their (often early) 20s. They were not infallible, nor was the system they created. That's why they created mechanisms for evolving that system. Except we rarely do. "But Constitutional Amendments", people say. Actually, one of the doctrines of the founding fathers was that the whole system should be reviewed, head to toe, every 10-20 years. Everything is very selective. Infallible when we want it to be. "Oh they didn't mean that/like that" when we want. And completely ignore other parts as inconvenient.
    - bpt3 1y ago
      They certainly were not infallible, but the question is whether they were unwavering advocates for democracy. All of the restrictions they put in place, such as the electoral college and who was able to vote at all, along with the writings we have, suggests as a group they were not.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > The founding fathers were often in their (often early) 20s. The youngest delegate to the Constitutional convention was Johnathan Dayton of New Jersey, who was 26, and there were three more under 30. There were more over 60 than than under 30. The people that are frequently cited as being "Founding Fathers" in their "early 20s" (or "between 19 or 21, because we're not sure exactly when he was born", in Hamilton's case) are people who were that age in 1776 and ended up playing an important role. But the Constitution was drafted more than a decade later -- there was a war, plus time under the first system of government under the Articles of Confederation in between. > Actually, one of the doctrines of the founding fathers was that the whole system should be reviewed, head to toe, every 10-20 years., No, that was not a "doctrine of the founding fathers", it was a belief of Thomas Jefferson expressed later in a letter to, as I recall, John Adams, specifically (the upper limit of the period at which he held any law or constitution needed to expire was actually 19 years, based on actuarial data and a set of assumptions he had about what was necessary and acceptable in terms of avoiding the living being ruled over by the dead.) You can tell it was not a widely held "doctrine of the founding fathers" (or, more to the point, of the Framers, who are the ones actually relevant to the Constitution, though the two groups have considerable overlap) because instead of expiring by its own terms in 19 years or less, the Constitution was permanent, with a very difficult method of amendment, and that method of amendment was specifically barred from changing certain parts. There weren't really very many widely shared "doctrines" of the Founders or the Framers. They weren't a hive mind or a cult or even a group as ideologically aligned as the coalition that makes up either of the US's current major political parties. The idea of shared doctrines or a single unifying vision behind the Constitution are mythologies created after, and requiring deliberate disregard of, the facts.

grafmax 1y ago

I mean, he’s not wrong. Libertarianism is freedom - for the rich. And concentrated wealth is antithetical to democracy because it’s concentrated power. He’s just taking libertarianism to its logical extreme by repudiating democracy. Is it any wonder that he has helped fund our decline into authoritarianism? We now have concentration camps, abrogation of the constitution, judicial capture, and the military turned increasingly against American citizens.

betaby 1y ago
> We now have concentration camps, abrogation of the constitution, judicial capture, and the military turned increasingly against American citizens. Other countries got those without paying Palantir billions.
- grafmax 1y ago
  This is part of the fundamental contradiction of libertarianism. Why would those with the power and the purse strings curtail the government (including spending) when it doesn’t suit them? Instead it’s things like environmental regulations and social programs that get cut, tipping society’s imbalances further.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
anonfordays 1y ago
> We now have concentration camps Immigration detention facilities are not concentration camps.
- grafmax 1y ago
  They’re not death camps. But mass detention without due process - that’s a concentration camp.
  - 1y ago

bdisl 1y ago

He’s right. You can see it every time people vote to restrict their individual freedoms, which in the west doesn’t stop happening.

Y-bar 1y ago
I have knowingly voted for less freedoms for myself multiple times and I know it, for example I have voted: - to have less freedom to pollute the environment. - to have less freedom where I am able to defraud my customers. - to have less freedom to have less ability to lie about medical "benefits" of fake cures. I am also a big proponent of freedom-limiting legislation like GDPR which prevents myself and my employer from secretly collecting and processing your personal information. And I am currently part of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative which will hopefully restrict the freedom of games companies to sunset and withdraw purchases without a clear roadmap or similar remedy.
- bdisl 1y ago
  That is a lot of typing for a massive strawman that is more likely to belong in Reddit than here.
  - Y-bar 1y ago
    I understood your comment as restricting my own freedoms was a fully bad thing, and I therefore tried to provide examples of positive freedoms being afforded to you by restricting my own negative freedoms. Explain why that is a straw-man.
    - shazbotter 1y ago
      It's not, you refuted their obviously poorly constructed argument directly. They just have an ideological axe to grind.
dfxm12 1y ago
Thanks in part, no doubt, to massive funding from Peter Thiel (and of course others) on issues/candidates that lead to restricting freedom.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago

Ah yes, because of the vast freedoms enjoyed by the people of all those non democratic nations throughout history. The freedom to own a slave. The freedom to treat women as property. The freedom to kill somebody who may have wronged you. Just an array of freedoms.

keernan 1y ago

What so many seem to be overlooking is the very, very strong belief by the top 0.01% is that science is about to - or already has - found a way to eliminate natural causes of death. Hence the quote from Peter Thiel: >I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual Assume for one moment that it is true that science will be able to eliminate natural causes of death in the very near future. If you are a multi-billionaire, what does that mean for you? What is the biggest danger to you moving forward? Can the earth support the current population expanding at an ever increasing pace if everyone lives forever? Is it feasible that the wealthiest 3,000 people on earth can 'control' who has access to the ability to never die a natural death?