America might have been doing better on "progress" if their VC lottery winners were of a higher calibre than Peter Theil.
The most incisive thing he says in the whole piece is "America isn't a democracy. It's a republic".
Which is cringe coming from a random teenager online who just heard that factoid and hadn't yet discovered those things aren't opposites or exclusive.
Coming from an open fascist with deep ties to the CIA and who has been funding multiple election deniers... well it's still cringe but it's very dangerous cringe.
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,”
"It was a striking declaration. An even more notable one followed: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” (He elaborated, after some backlash, that he did not literally oppose women’s suffrage, but neither did he affirm his support for it.)
Thiel laid out a plan, for himself and others, “to find an escape from politics in all its forms.” He wanted to create new spaces for personal freedom that governments could not reach—spheres where the choices of one great man could still be paramount. “The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom,” he wrote. His manifesto has since become legendary in Silicon Valley, where his worldview is shared by other powerful men..."
Yes, his 2009 public and complete abandonment of democracy (which the quotes you cite here are from and/or refer to), which was never when he went on to donate to some (of the most anti-democracy) US political candidates, illustrates why the headline about him taking a break from democracy is misleading.
He's publicly trying (but admitting that he is unlikely to succeed unless the article about it itself makes people unwilling to accept donations from him) to stop giving money to political candidates, not taking a break from democracy, which he long ago abandoned and hasn't looked back.
1) "our world" is an illusion, no matter who utters these words. The "world" does not "belong" to any specific target demographic. On the contrary, it always belongs to *everyone else* that is *not* you.
2) using the term "world" at all. This is about finding sanctuary for some kind of ideology shared by a select group of individuals, which is the main trait of *a cult*. A cult is not the world, rather; a cult finds a minor physical or virtual space in which it can go about minding it's business(es) without interfering more than necessary with the surrounding *world*.
“Peter Thiel is still opposed to democracy” is neither news nor particularly engaging to intellectual curiosity. I'm not surprised people see it as not particularly high value for HN, which is not intended as a simply a megaphone for thr public pronouncements of the Silicon Valley old guard elite, who have plenty of media reach outside of HN.
Thiel, who wrote back in 2009 that “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” and “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron” [0] is taking a break from democracy?
He very publicly gave up on democracy, at the latest, nearly 15 years ago. He may recently be taking a break from sponsoring political candidates as a mechanism in his war against democracy, but he's not taking a break from democracy in any way that constitutes news.
Well, he's against anyone being allowed to vote if they don't vote the way he would prefer, which is why he gave up on democracy: there were too many people who disagree with his preferences, so it was too hard for his side to win.
Democracy would be fine (and women voting would be fine), if the electorate (and women in sufficient numbers) voted for Thiel's preferences.
After some backlash, he elaborated: It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.
Voting is not under siege in America, but many other rights are. In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies.
I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent. That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian.
I believe both those quotes/horrifically bad opinions are in the article, or at least referred to, so it may be one of those "editors choose headlines" situations.
> "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”
In The Education of a libertarian, he disavowed electoral politics as a vehicle for reshaping society. The people, he concluded, could not be trusted with important decisions.
All of this seems to rest on the paradox Theil can't overcome. He believes in the Great Man Theory of history but can't rectify that by his own philosophy he is not one of them.
He's stuck in the misery of not living up to his terrible inhuman standards.
Indeed. He only has political power through money, in a world he had no small hand in designing, and it turns out that does not really do nearly as much as he may want when he focuses it on self centered pursuits or the increase of personal power.
Whatever else we may all think of him, I strongly agree with this point:
> He hungered for advances in the world of atoms, not the world of bits.
Though his investment pattern doesn't seem to reflect it. And he seems to have forgotten that democracy is indeed the worst form of government, except all the others.
I'm so unsurprised that he's part of Alcor. The comments on HN lately do make me hopeful that this quote: "He is the techiest of tech evangelists, the purest distillation of Silicon Valley’s reigning ethos." is starting to be about the past and not the future.
He's part of the dot-com boom old guard that managed to roll their winnings into billions. He stayed in the sector so I'd consider him "techy" though our definitions may vary.
He smart enough to spread his money around and pull the right strings in the background. Palantir is for instance deeply embedded in the DC swamp.
I think colloquially it is anyone in the tech sector, predominantly web, computers, and smartphones. I wouldn't for instance call a CE/EE doing silicon design a "techy".
> the purest distillation of Silicon Valley’s reigning ethos."
> That.... is not the impression I've ever had? Is he a big mover and shaker? Sure. Is he "techy"? I don't get that impression.
Silicon Valley's "reigning ethos" does not refer to being "techy", notwithstanding your mapping. Instead, it is about the idea of being able to change the world, of not being hindered by government or the people, of leading humanity into the light.
Whether or not that is silly or not is beside the point.
We'd be better off with approval voting, and we could get things like that done if every voter agreed with me on every issue, which would free up political willpower.
It's not gonna happen this decade, but it'd be nifty.
This is reductionist and silly. Some libertarians, including Theil, are vocal in their distaste for democracy. Most of them look at it as having devolved into a patronage scam (in which ruling majorities are bought with redistributed dollars) that empowers cynical elites to grow the coercive power state to the detriment of the rights of the people. At first blush, opposing democracy is incompatible with the broader libertarian position, which calls for aggressively maximizing human liberty. So what's the deal? Well, Libertarians propose the near-total elimination of the coercive power of the state as a precondition to getting rid of democracy. By the time the voting stops, the state would be incapable of meaningful coercion, let alone anything remotely akin to fascism.
In the article, your libertarian non-fascist, is actively calling for the implementation of the 'light fascism' of FDR to allow the state to get things done.
> In the article, your libertarian non-fascist, is actively calling for the implementation of the 'light fascism' of FDR
It is literally impossible to interpret the article in that way. Are you lying, or do you not read good?
> he bought a portrait of his friend Curtis Yarvin, an explicitly antidemocratic writer who calls for a strong-armed leader to govern the United States as a monarch. Thiel gave the painting to Yarvin as a gift... When I asked what he thinks of Yarvin’s autocratic agenda, Thiel offered objections [innuendo removed]...“I don’t think it’s going to work. I think it will look like Xi in China or Putin in Russia,” Thiel said, meaning a malign dictatorship. “It ultimately I don’t think will even be accelerationist on the science and technology side, to say nothing of what it will do for individual rights, civil liberties, things of that sort.” Still, Thiel considers Yarvin an “interesting and powerful” historian. “One of the big things that he always talks about is the New Deal and FDR in the 1930s and 1940s,” Thiel said. “And the heterodox take is that it was sort of a light form of fascism in the United States." Franklin D. Roosevelt, in this reading of history, used a domineering view of executive authority, a compliant Congress, and an intimidated Supreme Court to force what Thiel called “very, very drastic change in the nature of our society.” Yarvin, Thiel said, argues that “you should embrace this sort of light form of fascism, and we should have a president who’s like FDR again. It would be hard to find an academic historian to endorse the view that fascism, light or otherwise, accounted for Roosevelt’s presidential power. But I was interested in something else: Did Thiel agree with Yarvin’s vision of fascism as a desirable governing model? Again, he dodged the question. "That’s not a realistic political program,” he said, refusing to be drawn any further.
How is this endorsement of Yarvin's ideas, let alone actively calling for them to put into practice? If you remove the hack author's fumbling attempts at innuendo, all you have a Theil engaging in a good faith conversation about controversial ideas (which the author brought up, not Theil), while a hack journalist attempts conjure controversy out of thin air.
Q: Do you advocate fascism (like your friend does)?
A: "That's not a realistic political program".
We're kind of looking for a straight "No" here from our politically involved Billionaires.
Doubly so if they've just claimed "America isn't a democracy".
Triply so if we think any of their Libertarian stylings are seriously what they believe.
Libertarianism is something you can respond to with "that's not a realistic political program". For actual fascism a "No, that's entirely incompatible with every Libertarian principle I've ever publicly espoused" would be more comforting.
> We're kind of looking for a straight "No" here from our politically involved Billionaires.
It’s a bad faith question that’s not worth asking, except as a setup for bad faith innuendo-mongering. Which is why one of the longest Theil quotes in the article is Theil describing some nobody’s theory of light fascism—-the only purpose it serves is a setup for a smear. There is nothing that Theil has ever said that would indicate that his politics are in line with FDR’s. Theil’s answer reflects that.
> Doubly so if they've just claimed "America isn't a democracy".
Yikes. He is observing an objective fact. America is and always has been constitutional republic, which is distinct from a democracy. Isn’t it amazing how Theil’s statement of a fact can be dressed up with innuendo and presented as though it was evidence of something sinister?
> Triply so if we think any of their Libertarian stylings are seriously what they believe.
I’m not sure what you mean.
> For actual fascism a "No, that's entirely incompatible with every Libertarian principle I've ever publicly espoused" would be more comforting.
As your comments have illuminated, there is no good-faith reason to be concerned about Theil being a fascist, so why would he feel the need to breathlessly disavow it? He says it’s bad policy. He’s right. Pretending that there is anything to be learned from the manner of his reply—-especially that it amounts to a revelation that all of his espoused beliefs are a lie—-is deceitful and unserious.
> He is observing an objective fact. America is and always has been constitutional republic, which is distinct from a democracy.
A constitutional republic is a small d democratic system. The political power in that system comes from the will of the people. We can play word games all day but the United States is a representative democracy.
That people like you parrot these ideas is deeply concerning, and the idea that the United States is not a democracy is often bandied about as a reason to act in bad faith against the will of the people. Most recently, the electorate in Ohio voted to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. One of the arguments people were making against that vote was that the United States is not a democracy. I've only ever seen people make this argument in bad faith as reasoning for sticking with unpopular policies like abortion bans.
Overall to me it shows not surprisingly that a lot of our culture and society is shaped by billionaires.. tho looks there's more billionaire's out there to compete with and their shared ideologies. Maybe all left to progressively left who wouldn't play in Theil's sandbox..at least he's open / transparent about how he's tried to shape culture /society with his money.
Because immortal billionaires are highly likely to seize more and more levers of power, and presumably your dislike would extend to living in a civilization entirely under their control?
People. We can all disagree with Mr. Thiel and call him a scumbag which will make him more extreme and everyone off more poorly, or we try to understand each other in the hope of getting to a better place.
I disagree with many of Thiel‘s viewpoints, but also agree with many of his viewpoints. For example, he beliefs that the government should be smaller and I think that there is certainly a point there. As Taleb also has argued, it’s better to have systems as small as possible so governments should probably be smaller. Look at the effectiveness of small countries like Switzerland for example. Or look at how ineffective academia is.
Ineffective? Huge chunks of the tech industry have descended directly from academia. Or are you using a definition of academia that begs your own question?
Depends on how small it is. What I can argue for is that there are probably parts of the government that could be removed. Bureaucracy in Western countries has only increased over the last 60 years, for example. Rules are almost never removed.
The most incisive thing he says in the whole piece is "America isn't a democracy. It's a republic".
Which is cringe coming from a random teenager online who just heard that factoid and hadn't yet discovered those things aren't opposites or exclusive.
Coming from an open fascist with deep ties to the CIA and who has been funding multiple election deniers... well it's still cringe but it's very dangerous cringe.