

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel on liberty and scientific progress - alexwg
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125469.html

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DaniFong
Is Peter being dishonest, or just glossing over things?

 _Basically creating this new payment system from scratch, which was one of
these Holy Grail type of things that a lot of people had been focused on. The
basic thought was if you could lessen the control of government over money and
somehow shift the ability of people to control the money that was in their
wallets, this would be a truly revolutionary shift._

He makes it sound like that's what he intended from the get go, but it took
them a bunch of major changes in concept to land in the business they're in.

Regarding technological singularities, even super-human intelligences remain
bound by the laws of physics, and therefore laws limiting computational
complexity.

Why are the concepts 'the singularity', standing for an endless, unpredictable
period of technological growth, and the more reasonable advent of super-human-
AI, munged together?

~~~
Eliezer
When Paypal was first starting up, I saw Luke Nosek give a demo that involved
creating an email account for russiandrugdealer@hotmail.com and sending $10 to
it. I think they've got a pretty credible claim to libertarianism.

Re: munging of Singularity concepts, see
[http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-
singular...](http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-
schools/)

------
Prrometheus
One of Thiel's most recent investments is the anarchist seasteading project
run by Patri Friedman, Googler and grandson of Milton Friedman:

<http://www.reason.com/news/show/126198.html>

The Seasteading Institute's homepage is here:

<http://seasteading.org/>

~~~
JMiao
ah, that's right. the real-world equivalent of rapture city.

------
zandorg
My Paypal experience as a UK citizen: They shut down my account for some
obscure reason, and only re-opened it when I threatened to contact the
Financial Services Authority.

So much for libertarianism, and yay for the FSA.

~~~
mseebach
Thanks for sorting out any ideological issues anyone might have in three
sentences. Or, of course, you could try to, you know, read a book about free
markets, and then one on international financial regulations (I guarantee you
the latter will be much longer and harder to read), and then try to put Paypal
and libertarianism into the same box again.

~~~
zandorg
The article in question compared them, not me, and the rest of the comment is
based on my factual experience, not so subjective that I needed a book to
verify it.

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shafqat
This is a great interview. Good questions, intelligent answers. I'm impressed
by Thiel the more I read about him/from him.

~~~
lyime
Must agree, his responses are very intelligent and technical. There isnt as
much as I would like to read about him online. I guess hes not very public.

------
msie
You've got to be skeptical of a magazine and website that calls itself
"reason". Of course! Free-market thinkers are the only reasonable people out
there.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I'm more skeptical of something that would call itself _The Nation_ or _The
New Republic_. Wait, the _whole_ nation is expected to think this way?

~~~
davidw
And I'm skeptical of articles that lead to exchanges like these on hacker
news.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Well, _I'm_ skeptical of people who would make a claim like that without
noting that last time the article was submitted
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177504>) such comments didn't show up.

------
walterk
I'm rather disappointed that he never gave a decent justification for
libertarianism in that interview. About all he said was "Totalitarianism is
bad, that's why I'm a libertarian. Also, I read Tolkien."

~~~
byrneseyeview
People who read _Reason_ don't need to be told why one should be libertarian.

~~~
walterk
Well, I was reading it about 4 hours ago, and I'd like to be told why one
should be libertarian. :)

But I'm genuinely curious to see what sort of reasoning led to Thiel's
becoming a libertarian, and there's just not much to go on in the interview.
People of many political persuasions, after all, maintain a healthy dislike
for totalitarianism. And anyone who's taken Lord Acton's proverb to heart
should recognize that corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market
power just as easily as in those who hold political power.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily
as in those who hold political power._

Not really. People in business pursue the profit-maximizing choice, which at
its worst means providing something unique enough that you can charge a
monopolistic price. People in government pursue the power-maximizing choice,
which at its best means maintaining the status quo until the next election.

I guess it's too bad we don't have his whole conversion story, but I notice
that NPR will not ask guests how they all became indistinguishable center-
leftists.

~~~
walterk
"People in business pursue the profit-maximizing choice, which at its worst
means providing something unique enough that you can charge a monopolistic
price."

You're assuming they're bound by laws and aren't willing to subvert them to
make a profit. At their worst, people in business have done a whole lot worse.

~~~
Prrometheus
>At their worst, people in business have done a whole lot worse.

I challenge you to show me a single non-governmental entity that has done
anything as bad as the Great Leap Forward, the Holocaust, the slayings of the
Khmer Rouge, the starving of the Ukraine, etc. You aren't really competing
with government in the killing-people field until you do it by the millions.

