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?
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.
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?
Because one view of the singularity idea is that, from the perspective of us puny human intelligences, the "more reasonable advent of super-human-AI" will be indistinguishable from "an endless, unpredictable period of technological growth". (The rate of growth may seem quite reasonable/predictable to the super-human-AIs, though.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
"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.
>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.
There are two ways to subvert the laws. One way is to take a rule that arbitrary parties would agree to in advance (e.g. "If a car belongs to A, B can't just drive off in it without being penalized"). The other set of laws involves taking some government program (whether of the 'shoot at people in the Third World' or the 'write a check to people who are doing some particular kind of good' variety) and subvert it to maximize profits.
You don't stay in business very long if you violate A, and you can only do B when the government is rich enough to rob.
>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.
Political power tends to come in big chunks while market power is disperse. If I had to choose between fighting any given private firm or the government, I have no doubt as to which one I'd pick.
Comcast could screw with my cable. The government could make me disappear.
The worst examples are, of course, things companies would not do. Like your grocer not selling you food, or your landlord not renewing your lease.
Which should tell you something: the worst people say about governments is that they behave the way they do -- the worst thing people say about corporations is how terrible it would be if they didn't behave the way they normally do.
Do you know of any private firms that disappear people who speak out against them? Governments have been doing that for millenia, but I can't think of a single private firm that has done so. The US government has a military and intelligence budget north of $600 billion and operates secret prisons around the world.
>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.
Political power tends to come in big chunks while market power is disperse. If I had to choose between fighting any given private firm or the government, I have no doubt as to which one I'd pick.
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?