
Peter Thiel's Rise to Wealth and Libertarian Futurism - vrikhter
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all
======
calinet6
"I asked what the poles of the oscillation were. “It’s uh—it’s the, uh—it’s
the—it’s um—it’s probably, uh—it’s probably just that it’s not that—well, the
pro-seat-belt argument is that it’s safer, and the anti-seat-belt argument is
that if you know that it’s not as safe you’ll be a more careful driver.” He
made a left turn and fastened his seat belt. “Empirically, it’s actually the
safest if you wear a seat belt and are careful at the same time, so I’m not
even going to try to debate this point.”"

This theoretical-dichotomy-interrupted-by-empirical-reality is the hilariously
false core of libertarianism. They're a class of abstract thinkers stuck in an
imperfect world where their theories will always be unapologetically shattered
by complex and unpredictable realities.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
"They're a class of abstract thinkers stuck in an imperfect world where their
theories will always be unapologetically shattered by complex and
unpredictable realities."

First, this is a blanket ad hominem about an entire group of people. Second,
it's bullshit.

There's nothing wrong with being a pragmatic libertarian. In fact, that's the
way it's supposed to work. It's the purists on all sides of issues that
present the most problems for civil discourse. Yes, you can find lots of crazy
talk in libertarian circles: people owning their own nuclear bombs and such.
But hell, you can find a lot of crazy talk in any political movement -- it
becomes a matter of whether you are looking for reasons to dis-empower an
entire group or not. This type of "people of political group X _say_ this
thing, but when push comes to shove they're really like this" can be applied
to any group you'd like. It's completely generic. Arguments like this have no
value except as an attempt to persuade listeners not to hear what somebody is
saying.

If I could downvote you a dozen times I would. People of all political
persuasions are generally intelligent, well-meaning, and acting on the world
as best as they understand it. Why not try to treat them that way? We don't
need to assume they're unused to practicality or intelligent observation and
reflection simply because their opinions are divergent from our own.

~~~
qdog
Most people I've met who claim to be Libertarians seems to be very confused
about how the world works. Usually, they have a pet idea (guns, pot, taxes,
property rights, police forces, something) they are very hot about and fail to
extend their logic out to the endpoint, ie: get rid of all law enforcment some
magic is going to happen and criminals won't be criminals (I suspect life
would be a lot like the show Deadwood, not really my ideal life).

There might be some enlightened Libertarians out there sure, but I haven't met
one that I can recall.

Btw, I'm a Federalist. Zombie Washington/Hamilton in 2012!

~~~
bjorn2404
"get rid of all law enforcment..."

Are you confusing libertarianism with anarchism?

~~~
cobrausn
It's a fine line. As an example, ESR, often called 'libertarian', is really an
anarchist.

From what I can tell, there is 'little-l' libertarian, in which someone seeks
to keep government small to prevent abuse of freedoms and rights by said
government, and 'big-L' Libertarian, in which someone thinks that corporations
working via free market principles can solve all/most societal problems and
government just gets in the way.

I don't really buy the second, though I have some respect for the first.

~~~
mindcrime
_From what I can tell, there is 'little-l' libertarian, in which someone seeks
to keep government small to prevent abuse of freedoms and rights by said
government, and 'big-L' Libertarian, in which someone thinks that corporations
working via free market principles can solve all/most societal problems and
government just gets in the way._

At least in the USA, the breakdown between "big L Libertarian" and "little l
libertarian" is usually positioned as whether or not somebody is a member of
the Libertarian Party and/or registered to vote as Libertarian, versus simply
holding to generally libertarian principles.

The distinction you're talking about, if I understand you correctly, sounds
more like the distinction between "minarchist libertarians" and "anarchist
libertarians" (or "anarcho capitalists"). Minarchists support some (very
small) government for functions where it seems to make sense to share the
responsibility communally (commonly cited examples are national defense, law
enforcement, highway construction, etc.) where the more radical libertarians
want to banish essentially all "government" (at least as we know it today).

------
mindcrime
_Today, the sci-fi novels of the sixties feel like artifacts from a distant
age. “One way you can describe the collapse of the idea of the future is the
collapse of science fiction,” Thiel said. “Now it’s either about technology
that doesn’t work or about technology that’s used in bad ways. The anthology
of the top twenty-five sci-fi stories in 1970 was, like, ‘Me and my friend the
robot went for a walk on the moon,’ and in 2008 it was, like, ‘The galaxy is
run by a fundamentalist Islamic confederacy, and there are people who are
hunting planets and killing them for fun.’"_

You know, I think he's on to something there. Modern sci-fi really doesn't
seem to have a whole lot left to say about potential advances in technology,
and the tone does seem to have shifted away from the optimism of yesteryear.
The best new scifi I've read lately was a post-apocalyptic zombie story
trilogy, for crying out loud.

~~~
grandalf
What more is there to really aspire to? Virtual sex with an indiscernibly
lifelike avatar of anyone we've ever met? Wall-E covered the utopian concept
of robot-aided leisure pretty well.

His comment resonated with me as well. However I think there's a libertarian
explanation for the decline of Utopian Sci-Fi. It existed out of a general
optimism about problems too large for a ragtag group of individualists to
solve. Space travel, etc., is the realm of big governments, and exploration of
the universe is the stuff of political hegemony.

The real world has gone way beyond that to a place where Peter Thiel is
wealthy enough to fund his own space explorations. The problem for Sci-fi is
that market based approaches to solving problems are a lot less glamourous
than those undertaken by the state. There is also (quite often) far less
drama, a simple profit motive, and rather boring incremental progress.

State actions are always impossible to disconnect from the propaganda story
accompanying them. Scientific advancement, often undertaken by governments
solely for the purpose of warmaking, has been the locus of much propaganda,
and it wasn't until the 50s were over that the nation started to get a clue.

That said I hope someone writes a story that proves me wrong.

~~~
Mizza
> What more is there to really aspire to? Virtual sex with an indiscernibly
> lifelike avatar of anyone we've ever met? Wall-E covered the utopian concept
> of robot-aided leisure pretty well.

What a sad view of the world!

Artistic creativity is boundless.

------
grandalf
The tone of this article is annoying b/c it assumes that the reader is (or
should be) delighted to be a part of some large group of humans who are normal
compared to the eccentric person being profiled.

~~~
bluekeybox
I read this through Instapaper four days after this was posted to HN, and your
comment pinpoints exactly the thing I didn't like about the article.

------
joshuahedlund
_How many digits does the number 125100 have? Two hundred and ten._

They mean 125^100.

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=125%5E100>

~~~
dxbydt
In Indian high schools, you are supposed to memorize a ton of "useless" shit
like atomic weights of 50+ elements in the periodic table, logs upto 20,
exponentials, factorials, avogardo constant & tons of physics constants like g
and speed of light & sound & diffraction constants & the like. So from the age
of 12,I happen to know that log 5 is 0.7 Ergo, log(125^100) = 300log(5) = 210,
hence 210 digits in 125^100.

But I do wonder - do schoolkids these days memorize this trivia or do they
just reach for a calculator/wikipedia ?

~~~
godarderik
Current high schooler in the US here. I feel that today the trend is
definitely more towards looking things up as opposed to memorizing them. For
example, in my chemistry class, we always got a periodic table (with weights)
and were given things like Planck's constant. We did, however, have to
memorize some of the more basic ones such as speed of light and Avogadro's
number. With regards to math, all tests involving more than trivial amounts of
math you get a calculator, so I have never even thought of memorizing logs or
exponents.

~~~
pcopley
Wasn't it Einstein who said something along the lines of "Don't memorize
anything you can look up?"

~~~
noodlehopper
I believe this was Henry Ford

~~~
noodlehopper
"I don't know the answers because I do not need to clutter my head with the
answers you seek. I hire smart young people from your schools who have
memorized information(like the indians) that you think is intelligence. My job
is to keep my head clear of such clutter and trivial facts so that I can
think" Henry Ford

------
qdog
That article read like The Great Gatsby, I gave up after a few paragraphs. I
don't think I'm into idolizing rich people anymore, I probably would have
devoured this in high school, though.

~~~
jsnk
What is it about a person being rich that bothers you?

~~~
qdog
People being rich doesn't bother me, reading fluffy New Yorker articles about
them just doesn't interest me. Other people obviously enjoy it, but it doesn't
really read like the kind of article I look for on HN, or even in the New
Yorker.

Thiel's nose is bulbous? I needed to know that for some reason? It just read
like a fawning article about some rich guy to me. The author met with Thiel in
this fancy coffee shop, Thiel recently bought 2 multi-million dollar houses
blah blah blah. Great, just not anything I personally care that much about.

~~~
jaredmck
I didn't think it was fawning, in fact quite the opposite - that some of these
details were intended ironically, and the tone of the piece was actually more
negative? Did I just read what I wanted to see?

~~~
qdog
I read a few paragraphs, started skimming, and eventually gave up, maybe it
was only those first few paragraphs. It just didn't seem like a meaty article
to me, and if it was, it was too much work for me to get to the meat. The
internet may have made me lazy.

Or maybe I read jwz too often and was pre-biased against Thiel -
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/paypal-founder-has-played-
fa...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/paypal-founder-has-played-far-too-much-
bioshock/)

------
darrellsilver
The author's follow up to this article a couple weeks later is pretty
excellent. By some fluke of timing, the Thiel article was published shortly
before a fantastic profile on Occupy Wall St.

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/the-
po...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/the-politics-of-
dissolution.html)

------
chrismealy
And no girls:

[http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-
could...](http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote)

~~~
tomjen3
Thiel is arguing, congruently with the facts, that females are more likely
than males to vote for a larger government and a bigger social safety net and
you believe that nobody has the right to take others stuff (through taxes)
then it is understandable that he would prefer they didn't have the right to
vote.

I don't think anyone ought to have the right to vote, except on matters of the
military (which cannot work if it was subjected to market forces) -- the rest
is just giving groups the right to do things individuals can't.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, women have a really annoying habit of realising that the world doesn't
quite work the way that libertarians like Thiel think it does. For example, no
matter how good they'd be at jobs like CEO, they're still at a disadvantage to
men because the people who do the selection are other men who naturally favour
people like themselves. The market doesn't penalize them for this either - the
people that invest in them and write reports for investors and make loan
decisions? Almost all men who think in the same way.

~~~
Tichy
Do you have actual numbers about female startup founders? My hunch would be
they have a huge advantage.

------
DividesByZero
I can understand how one might come to be a libertarian: through
disillusionment with the government of the day, one comes to believe
government itself is the problem rather than its particular form. The problem
at the core of libertarianism is the slavish belief that the 'free market' is
somehow guaranteed to produce results beneficial to society as a whole, or in
the more sociopathic cases (which I suspect are the majority), benefit for
themselves at the expense of others in a way that government cannot.

This argument neglects the fact that there does not exist any such beast as
the 'free market' except in the platonic form - real transcational
characteristics of goods and services, as well as the characteristics of the
medium of exchange, always lead to a particular form of market emerging.
Specifically, because of the fact that capital compounds capital - it is in
the very nature of unregulated markets to concentrate resources in the hands
of a few.

Why should we therefore be satisfied with 'free' markets that lead to enormous
concentrations of resources in the hands of small numbers of individuals, far
skewed away from the distributions of human ability according to measures of
intelligence, aptitude or what have you? A market is a physical system to be
engineered to produce the social outcome of most benefit. How you decide what
is of 'most benefit' has some contention, but I'm pretty sure concentrating
resources created by a majority in the hands of a minority is not it.

------
revelation
Article from 2011. If you are more of a hard facts type of person, Wikipedia
has the details:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital>

~~~
lps41
I find his company's investment record eerily aligned with Francisco
D'Anconia, of Atlas Shrugged. Unintentional, I'm sure, though I wouldn't be
surprised if he noticed it himself and proclaims the parallel loudly among his
peers.

