First of all, all respect to Peter Thiel. Everyone I know who has worked with him has had nothing but good things to say about him. Having said that, it is wor

First of all, all respect to Peter Thiel. Everyone I know who has worked with him has had nothing but good things to say about him. Having said that, it is worth noting that for all his dedication to the idea of inventing disruptive technologies that has not been his own path to success. Paypal is a pretty boring financial transaction processor, he ran a hedge fund for a while (yawn!), his investment in Facebook paid off big. Where is the disruption there? Facebook is great, but it wasn't even the first social network. A quick glance at the companies in which he personally has invested reveals lots of good investments - in fairly typical incrementalist companies! I know FF has invested in SpaceX which has a legitimate claim to being the kind of company he wants to see more of, but that isn't how he made his money in the first place. My problem with the substance of the article is that it takes for granted that we can always invent wholly new things in every possible category or industry. Let's take transport as an example. Did people stop innovating in transportation because it wasn't profitable, because they were afraid? Nonsense. First of all, they didn't stop innovating. There weren't 350 kph trains in 1940 and any car made more than 30 years ago is a comically underpowered death-trap compared to an entry level car today. Second, there are physical laws that simply constrain the phase space of possible solutions. Every new discovery can change those boundaries somewhat and every now and then someone will bring new ideas together to simply invent a brand new transport modality. However, fundamentally the densities and coefficients of friction of solid surfaces, air, and water drive the kinds of transport we can can come up with.