
New Zealand Is ‘the Future,’ Peter Thiel Said in His Push for Citizenship - wiredfool
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/business/peter-thiel-new-zealand-citizenship.html
======
spatulon
Is having a place to live in NZ part of some 'prepper' survival plan?

From The New Yorker's profile of sama:

    
    
        “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the
        world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five
        years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic
        virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero.”
    
        ...
    
        If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend
        Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New
        Zealand.
    

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-
man...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-
destiny)

~~~
saycheese
(Mobile friendly)

From The New Yorker's profile of sama:

“My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the
world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years
ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being
released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero.

[...]

If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend
Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New
Zealand."

SOURCE: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-
man...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-
destiny)

------
humanrebar
Why can't Thiel like New Zealand and support Trump? Isn't this a big ad
hominem response to Thiel's politics?

Obligatory (because I don't care to defend things that people like to assume):
I don't like Trump and didn't vote for him partly because of the stuff that's
in the news now.

~~~
azernik
In certain circles, New Zealand citizenship is seen as a rich survivalist's
hedge against the collapse of American society [1]. Especially given that he's
gotten this citizenship and is not intending to live there (and doesn't even
travel there often enough to go through his naturalization ceremony in-
country), that is the most likely motivation. And given that this is just
after Thiel so enthusiastically helped Trump get elected, it's easy to see
this as voter's remorse, even though Thiel started this process long before
Trump was running (in fact, even before _Obama_ was running in 2008).

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-
prep-f...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-
super-rich)

~~~
humanrebar
So Thiel supported Trump and isn't a jingoist, at least not a traditional one.
I guess that's interesting but not front page material for a thoughtful
community.

It's clearly a response to his thoughts on the recent immigration order. But
it's a long-form logical fallacy.

~~~
rev_null
Thiel made the mistake of taking Trump seriously when he should have been
taking him literally.

~~~
fighttf
Mmmm... I think thiel knew exactly what he was getting with trump. Let's not
make excuses for the guy

~~~
rev_null
I meant it as a half-joking inverse of Thiel's claim pre-election that the
media takes Trump literally but not seriously [1]. It's very clear now that
much of what Trump said was literal.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2016/10/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2016/10/31/peter-thiels-media-critique-reporters-take-trumps-
statements-literally-but-not-seriously/)

------
corry
Even after reading the attached letter from Peter, it's not clear to me as to
'why New Zealand'.

Sure... friendly people, environment, business friendly gov, familiar culture,
opportunity to contribute to startup community etc. Makes sense. But other
Commonwealth countries could check those boxes too -- especially Canada --
that one would expect to be far more convenient and accessible.

Even the obvious not-spoken reason -- the isolation of New Zealand and its
ability to act as a haven in case of global calamity -- could find analogues
in Canada's vast wilderness for a man of his means. Actually, he might already
have a landing strip and bunker somewhere next to a freshwater spring in the
Canadian shield (Canada has 1/5th of the world's freshwater).

That said, Canada is locked in orbit with the US; so perhaps part of his
rationale is ability to escape the US sphere of influence if needed too.
Canada is also less ethnically homogenous than NZ, which some people may think
will matter in a doomsday scenario. New Zealand also has much higher
population density... one could imagine that mix of density and isolation
being important when trying to rebuild civilization.

~~~
razorunreal
NZ is ethnically homogeneous? Maybe in the South Island. Wikipedia claims 69℅
European overall which doesn't sound that high to me.

~~~
corry
Good point. Canada is <60% European descent - but still not as big of a gap as
I thought. Canada's big cities tend to be very multicultural -- Toronto,
Vancouver, Montreal -- which maybe skews my perception a bit.

------
nilved
This guy is like the villain of a Silicon Valley TV show in real life.

~~~
bbctol
IIRC they've basically admitted Peter Gregory's hatred of college and general
zen weirdness is based on Thiel.

~~~
greggarious
Likewise, Gavin's comments on persecution of billionaires were based on real
billionaire comments:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10598265/Silicon-
Valley-billionaire-compares-treatment-of-Americas-rich-to-Nazi-persecution-of-
Jews.html)

------
arcticbull
Multiple citizenships are a hedge against local instability. Having one is
putting all your eggs in one basket. If all you have is US citizenship and an
lets say hypothetically an orange totalitarian takes over, you're kinda stuck.
You've got no legal right to live anywhere else. Another citizenship(s)
affords that to you.

New Zealand is a good bet because they're (1) remote, (2) English speaking,
(3) very well developed and (4) has an extremely well functioning government
with among the lowest perception of corruption (5) and widely-accepted travel
documents.

Particularly as a notable or wealthy individual, another citizenship can make
a lot of sense.

~~~
orcdork
And people say techies are disconnected from reality. I mean, where did that
come from amiright.

~~~
arcticbull
I mean, feel free to explain why. It's more interesting to have a
conversation.

------
hd4
Not sure what the point is in getting angry about what billionaires do. It's
hardly like they will change their decision-making based on what HN/Reddit et
al. think about them. Focus on improving yourself.

~~~
Veen
They might not change their decision-making, but since they're quite
influential — including having influence on governments — it's useful to know
what they're up to and whether their public pronouncements match their private
behavior.

------
philipov
New Zealand is the future, and Peter Thiel will make sure of that by giving us
Trump. It all makes sense, now.

------
verelo
New Zealand is a beautiful place, but it's also rather boring and small,
remote and inaccessible unless you own a car for local transit and can afford
plenty of plane tickets for your larger travels.

I would disagree and say that the future of the worlds environment probably
looks like the opposite of New Zealand, but I'll hand it to him, the New
Zealand economy does look a lot like the future of the USA in my opinion if
Trump continues down his path hurting innovating industries by favouring
traditional factory work: irrelevant.

As a VC Thiel is used to people saying what it takes to get what they want. I
am pretty sure he's just going through the motions, much like most people who
come to him asking for money in exchange for an idea that will "change the
world" are doing.

~~~
michael_h
Mountains, glaciers, hot springs, huge forests, beaches, wineries, rugby, meat
pies.

Yeah, it's a real snooze-fest.

~~~
verelo
Like i said, beautiful, but if you like city life (large variety of places to
eat, touring shows/bands to see, things other than bars being open past 6pm
etc) it's certainly going to get real boring real quick.

------
eternalban
Can't you just picture this guy getting pulled off his chopper by zombies as
he tries to flee to New Zealand? :)

------
padseeker
With the way things are going with Trump he might be right. Ironic that he's
helping Trump.

------
kriro
Seems very consistent. Thinks US isn't great, gets backup citizenship, finds
another/more direct way to make USA great again. Also consistent with his
involvement in sea steading. Would make sense for him to renounce NZ now.

I don't quite get why the snarky "make NZ great again" remark was needed in
the article (isn't the NYT supposed to be a reliable news source?) however I
like that it was reported because I didn't know about this. I think multi-
citizenship is a strange concept but I'm all for competition among countries
for citizens.

------
rusk
So he's not actually going to be living in New Zealand ... I'd have to wonder,
aside from the generous donations noted in the article what's in it for them?
Will he be paying tax? Presumably he'll still have to pay tax wherever he's
domiciled (California) but is there some rub here he (and NZ) could be taking
advantage of?

------
kweinber
Tldr: New Zealand is corrupt and Peter Thiel bought citizenship without ever
living there.

There is no mention of his helping revive the Trump campaign and how you
should think "Peter Thiel" and his investments every time an executive action
oppresses someone during this administration...so let's not go there.

~~~
tim333
They gave him citizenship after he invested $7m and gave $1m to charity there.
That's not really corrupt - in most countries you can move there through
investing. Corrupt is when you give an envelope of cash to an official. NZ
actually ranks joint #1 least corrupt country in the world with Denmark. USA
is #18.
[http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percepti...](http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016)

~~~
arcticbull
Generally you stop at permanent residency (US EB-5, for instance) and can't
really buy citizenship. Notable exception of course being Malta as a path to
EU citizenship (pretty cheap, actually, some 650,000EUR [1]

[1] [http://csbgroup.com/relocation/citizenship/malta-
individual-...](http://csbgroup.com/relocation/citizenship/malta-individual-
investor-programme-iip/)

------
throwaway54320
To understand Thiel, I think you have to look at how he is a dark inversion of
his philosophical mentor, Rene Girard.

Girard's primary thesis is that human desires are imitative, but we refuse to
acknowledge this through a repeated, romantic lie about how our desires for an
"object" are authentic vs. being rooted in imitation of another. This
dissonance leads to periodic eruptions of violence that are themselves too
imitative and escalatory, and which are only resolved through redirecting the
violence onto a scapegoat:

"If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a
fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning desire is
aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and
the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of
the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an
object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but
now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend
to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically,
grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the
appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the
group suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing
simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this
miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the
prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back."

Girard's solution to this problem is a kind of atheistic Christianity. It's
essentially incumbent on each person acknowledge the truth of these structures
in human society, The innocence and subsequent false deification of scapegoats
(relative to the origin of mimetic violence), and walk away from them by
modeling themselves after the example of Jesus' disciples.

What I think Thiel instead calculated using this philosophy is that scapegoats
are the true origin of political and economic power in all forms. Since humans
want to believe the romantic lie about the sincerity of their desires, they'll
willingly accept false idols and their promise of transcendence through human
sacrifice. Allying yourself with a political movement based on these
principles is a path to wealth and power.

By the way, this is Girard's definition of Satanism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard)

------
muninn_
"We have to treat our country's citizenship like an asset"

Meanwhile:

"How dare the US have different immigration laws than us"

------
MK999
In a WW3 scenario China might conquer Aus & NZ. Why not Patagonia?

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andy-x
All billionaires are filthy scum and must be deported to wherever their other
citizenship is and never allowed to return to US

------
d3ckard
I know that HN comments are supposed to be informative and meaningful, but
honestly "LOL" is all I can think of at the moment.

------
rhexs
Disappointing the hackernews comments are turning into the exact same thing
I've been avoiding at arstechnica, engadget, and gizmodo. A lot of rage, very
little substance.

~~~
chillingeffect
I hear you, yet I believe the substance is still there. The technical details
are still very strong around here. My SO tries to read this site to understand
me and is flummoxed by 98% of the content :)

Part of the questions in a hacker/entrepreneur's life or at least expert
developers, are concepts like, "how to interface with civic society." As
"wizards," we have a lot of power, and using it wisely and responsibly is an
important way to sustain our power and create the harmonious world we all
want.

In hacker form, we're seeing a number of approaches, such as aiding the ACLU
(YC), isolating oneself (Thiel), try experiments (UBI). This isn't going to be
the place with clear, obvious, simplistic answers. We're independent hackers
and we are _experimental_ and it helps us and the world to discuss results and
tactics in gentleperson fashion.

THAT SAID :) I acknowledge your plaint about how quickly many stir to rage.
Emotions need to be leveraged carefully. Allowing (and inducing) emotional
states to cloud unnecessarily can be highly counterproductive to progress. I
see this on nearly all sides of the discussions. I hesitate to say
circumstances have warranted it, because I agree we all need to keep our heads
on tight and dig deep into the facts, listen to one another and find that
common ground.

In the W era, there was lots of talk about bipartisanship, crossing the aisles
and also technocratic methods to achieve unity and comprehension of civic
process. I know technocracy is not primary, but I would love to focus some
attention toward that as a stepping stone for national harmony. Even those
websites that turn your zip code into your representatives communication are a
great step in the right direction. Let's keep it up.

------
dgut
And the witch-hunt continues.

~~~
c0nducktr
Yeah, poor Peter Thiel. It's a real shame that people have opinions on his
actions.

------
tsomctl
According to the article, he was granted citizenship there in 2011, long
before Trump was serious about becoming president. There's enough fucked up
shit going on right now; it delegitimizes all that stuff by saying he's using
New Zealand to escape Trump.

