
Peter Thiel considering bid for California governor - danso
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/peter-thiel-california-governor-bid-233632
======
FabHK
I liked Gruber's take [1], commenting on the NYT interview [2]:

"Peter Thiel may well be smart, but he’s also dangerously foolish and
solipsistic. You have to be a reckless fool to be that smart and get into any
car without wearing a seatbelt, let alone a McLaren being driven by a
daredevil like Musk."

[1] [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/01/12/dowd-
thiel](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/01/12/dowd-thiel)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/fashion/peter-thiel-
donal...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/fashion/peter-thiel-donald-trump-
silicon-valley-technology-gawker.html?_r=0)

~~~
ikeboy
That story doesn't reflect too well on Musk either.

Based on the rest of the article, I get the feeling Thiel is trolling because
he can, and I wouldn't take his stories at face value: that said, making up
stories involving other people isn't usually advisable. It may very well be
exaggerated, though?

Edit: I didn't know the story had been mentioned previously, I take back my
skepticism regarding that.

~~~
conistonwater
> _I get the feeling Thiel is trolling because he can_

That's a kind of a strange road to go down, isn't it? I think usually the
whole argue-in-good-faith thing, together with the principle of charity,
require you to assume people mean what they say.

~~~
ikeboy
If you really mean that maybe more corruption/conflicts of interests are
needed, you're going to need to spend more time arguing for that than a couple
of paragraphs in a nytimes profile.

~~~
Gargoyle
A different view on his corruption statement.

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/01/bor...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/01/boring-
little-corruption.html)

' If you would like a “left wing example,” had the fiscal stimulus been twice
as large, corruption in government probably would have been higher too
(pointing out “the stimulus wasn’t very corrupt” is missing the point and in
fact is a sign that you are a rampant mood affiliator, determined to restore
the mood you feel is just, rather than tracing the analytic point at hand). In
other words, Peter’s point is entirely defensible and probably correct. He’s
not saying that “corruption is good.”'

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kosei
Seems like an odd thing to say if you're running for governor:

"At one point, Thiel said, perhaps jokingly, that he’d be “fine” with
California seceding. “I think it would be good for California, good for the
rest of the country. It would help Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign,” he
added."

~~~
kem
So now they're carving up fiefdoms? Where does this end?

~~~
redahs
Peter Thiel is an anti-democracy monarchist. It ends when the country is
broken up into small enough chunks that he can declare himself King of one of
them.

[https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-
monarchy/](https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/)

~~~
ComradeTaco
Is it at all worrisome that this man, through his donations, has an ear to the
president?

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woofyman
Unlike the POTUS, the governor of California is covered by conflict of
interest laws. He'd probably have to divest his assets and put them in a blind
trust.

[https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/publications/c...](https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/publications/coi.pdf)?

~~~
pdog
[deleted]

~~~
woofyman
That's true of federal government positions. Is it true of state positions? I
don't see how a California law could prevent federal taxes.

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pmoriarty
I've always wondered why California keeps electing conservative governors like
Reagan and Schwarzenegger while always voting for Democratic Presidents and
having a reputation for being ultra liberal.

Since Thiel doesn't have the celebrity status of the aforementioned two
hopefully he won't stand a chance. On the other hand, since Bush Jr and Trump
got elected it's obvious that anyone can.

~~~
eplanit
California has no electoral college, so conservative voices aren't muted in
state elections as they are in Presidential elections (but they're still a
minority in the coastal counties).

~~~
jaredsohn
I don't understand this. For both the California vote in the presidential vote
the winner for state-wide elections (i.e. senate and governor) it is winner
takes all.

Where you could see the difference would be in the California assembly and
senate and at the federal level in the House of Representatives since that
depends on how districts are defined.

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bkbridge
Sounds OK by me :-)

> Paypal founder Peter Thiel becomes marijuana's first big investor

> [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/08/cannabis-
> in...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/08/cannabis-investor-
> peter-theil-paypal-founder)

------
samkone
Thiel vs Zuck. Should be fun. Reign of the billionaires. Slowly but surely
America is descending on its downward path to join other banana republics.
Welcome to the club.

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RichardHeart
I'd vote for him.

~~~
michaelhoney
Genuine question: why?

~~~
RichardHeart
I wouldn't mind groundbreaking executive strategy differences for experiments
sake in a small state. You can't get the benefit of having 50 different states
competing with each other, if they're all too scared to actually revolutionize
anything. If California is the only place where people have the balls to try,
I'll take it.

If you're curious about the individual reasons I think Thiel is awesome, he
frees kids from college through his fellowship program, crushes bastards like
gawker, supports longevity and innovation in other moonshot industries.
Doesn't hurt that he has a book out trying to get people to create the future
definitively by investing their time and money into businesses that are doing
things no one else is.

The only downsides I see are, maybe Palantir sucks, and maybe his choice for
president will turn out to suck. He's the coolest gay christian republican
billionaire thinker I know of.

------
Kinnard
As the article notes, He supports #calexit the California Independence
Movement. I wonder if he's really making a play for President of California.

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forgottenacc57
The scary thing is that the people seem to be in the mood to vote in
vindictive, badly behaved self centered narcissists.

~~~
kem
My only explanation is that a certain segment of voters is willing to overlook
them if they consolidate power in their ideological favor. Party control at
all costs, and the more control the better.

I really don't understand how the current political situation in the US,
broadly speaking, could be described as anything but fascist or at least
protofascist. I know that term is used glibly, but the concentration of power
in a single party, to such an extreme, and with such little respect for
diversity (even majority) of opinion, or appropriate process or ethical
behavior, seems unprecedented to me.

I can't imagine those in control not using their power to extend it
indefinitely either, as long as it meets the letter of the law. To me it seems
some line was already crossed a couple of years ago, and now we've seen the
safety checks catastrophically fail. I think that's what makes me so nervous--
it's not just the unchecked power, but how they arrived at it and their
demonstrated lack of ability to compromise or cede.

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theparanoid
I like Thiel, he's not as self-serving like some other tech billionaires e.g.
Zuckerberg. He's no chance of winning because of lack of charisma and only
appealing to nerdy guys.

~~~
CalChris
Actually he's exclusively self-serving, solipsistic. He's an Ayn Rand
libertarian (which in fact is a contradiction). If he were not self-serving,
he'd be a liberal (which he isn't).

