Competition Is For Losers(lrb.co.uk) |
Competition Is For Losers(lrb.co.uk) |
He was given citizenship by a conservative-leaning Prime Minister in the hopes that he would invest in the local tech scene, which he has. The $50 million he invested is not a lot by silicon valley standards but it is a fair amount for New Zealand, and it went to some of NZ's best startups (possible bias, I worked at one).
He just filed his plans for developing a massive compound in New Zealand.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/01/peter-thiel-files-plans-to-b...
Both are equally made up "reasons" for Thiel getting NZ citizenship.
BTW: what kind of apocalypse exactly does one hedge against with NZ citizenship? A zombie apocalypse where zombies don't like New Zealand?
Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing.
One of the people he's shitting on in that sentence is Laura Deming, who's raised investment funds for companies working on stroke and biotech research as well as running a foundation that searches out disadvantaged people exhibiting special talent.
We get it dude, Peter Thiel is a jerk who doesn't vote like you and that really chafes your britches.
> ‘They were – nearly all of them – boys,’ as Chafkin points out, ‘and, almost to a person, they shared Thiel’s social awkwardness.’ One 17-year-old was hoping to extend the average human lifespan by three hundred years; a 16-year-old was developing a workaround to China’s Great Firewall. Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing.
Mmmm I dunno, I looked the fellow up and I think he's more of a culotte type.
Might be worth mentioning it is life extension research it is primarily focused on. The stroke thing is great, they may have initially started out trying to hibernate billionaires like bears to let them make it to the singularity, but the enzymes may prove useful for humans too.
Further reading:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88745476/peter-thiel-is-a-n...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Citizenship-rel...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...
Whats interesting is that people often mention that he secretly funded a lawsuit against some low quality news website, yet in his letter to NZ asking for citizenship he stated his Founders Fund is the primary supporter of an organisation called the Committee to Protect Journalists, "a non-profit group that prmotes press freedom and defending of the rights of journalists "to report news without fear of reprisals".
First rule I've learned about persuasion is to not behave this way, but of course it's okay when you have the "correct" politics.
I found this hilarious:
"The Thiel Fellowships, which began in 2011, initially provided $100,000 each to 22 high school students with big ideas for changing the world… Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing."
Because of [0]:
"He dropped out of university in 2014 when he was awarded with a grant of $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and went to work on Ethereum full-time."
Which I guess is "nothing" for these sorts of people.
That last quote reminds me of this classic Dilbert: https://imgur.com/zbTJR5o
[emphasis mine]
Surely the success of Palantir is a data point in favor of the thesis of the piece?
Absolutely ridiculous characterization of "unregulated, free-market capitalism" and libertarianism in general. The logical fallacies, in particular the non sequiturs linking Thiel's decisions to some imagined definition of "free market capitalism" that allows for abusive expropriations of private property to expend on wasteful security state initiatives, is particularly egregious seeing as how the author is intelligent enough to be aware of them.
This is pure bad faith ideologically motivated sophistry.
Free market capitalism simply means markets free of prohibitions on mutually voluntary interactions, including interactions that involve the exchange of money (gasp!). If you want to claim that interactions between parties with different wealth levels are inherently non-voluntary because of power/information asymmetries or some other superficially plausible but ultimately cockamanie ideological talking point, fine we can have that debate, but don't mislead the public about the plain definition of free market capitalism.
Oh and free market capitalism is not unregulated. There are foundational regulations, encapsulated in common law and that the statutes that codify it, against fraud, assault and any other violation of others' human rights. Under this governance doctrine, the courts are the parties who determine what constitutes a breach of anothers' rights, as they are the only body capable of engaging in the impartial deliberation required to do so effectively.
But don't characterize violent expropriations of private property by the state, to enrich special interests in the security state, as "free market capitalism". This is pure sophistry/propaganda. And it's shameless/immoral when it comes from someone intelligent enough to know better.
We also have looming ecosystem collapse, or cascading problems in spercific ecosystems (pests and plagues) that NZ might be partially sheltered from.
You mean being a billionaire is like making up for ~5 childless couples not contributing to the next generation? Could be!
>>Libertarians would have us believe that unregulated, free-market capitalism is somehow diametrically opposed to state capitalism. One encourages innovation; the other stifles it. What Thiel demonstrates is that unregulated, free-market capitalism is in fact closely aligned to state capitalism. Deregulation means that nothing constrains the monopoly power of the security state and nothing gets in the way of people selling it their bogus and corrupting wares
There is absolutely nothing in the principle that we should not have prohibitons on mutually voluntary interactions, or expropriations of private property from peaceful individuals, that would elicit resistance to the state having rules governing appropriations to ensure tax dollars aren't being wasted. This is such a ridiculous and shameless formulation by the author that it discredits everything else they wrote, and exposes them as an ideologue who puts advancement of their ideological agenda above truth.
Right, that's all "we" got for it… "nothing" besides ransomware and easier ways to pinpoint CO2 compared existing systems it seeks to obsolete…
If you ignore the costs of the trust issues between participants (as well as a lot of physical infrastructure apart of trust chains) and how that plays out through the entire system, and a lot harder to trace CO2 values on (esp those that people will all agree on).
Here's one persons take on this with Banks vs BTC wrt CO2[0] with their numbers from last year that I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with in one form or another (usually without numbers of their own).
[0] https://medium.com/@mukeat/carbon-footprint-differences-btc-...
Most forms of taxation constitute "expropriation of private property by the state", which libertarianism strongly opposes.
And in that passage I quoted from his article, it is funds derived from taxation - since that is the source of all government funding - that the author is alleging libertarianism/free-market-capitalism not only accepts the wasting of, as long as the waste is under the umberage of the government provisioning security services, but also, in its governance philosophy, expressly forbids having any rules to reign in the wasting of. Even spelling out his logic leaves me dumbfounded by its shameless dishonesty and absurdity.
I can't believe I even have to explain this: his claim is completely baseless, with nothing in any mainstream definition of libertarianism to justify it, and moreover, it contradicts one of the core concerns of libertarians/libertarianism, which is the avoidance of inefficiency and waste when expending tax dollars.
The article is an ideological hit piece, and it's crafted in utterly bad faith. But hey, as long as it's supporting the right political tribe, that's evidently okay for some people. The ends justify the means, i.e. bad faith sophistry is justified by the righteousness of the larger cause.
No of course not. You'll continue hiding behind these bad-faith quips.
Hacking away at the state's budget, but with an extreme focus on the welfare and regulatory side, all while seeking contracts from the military industrial complex for tasks that have nothing to do with capital-ell Libertarian tasks like enforcing the NAP.
He is describing what he claims "unregulated free market capitalism" produces:
>>What Thiel demonstrates is that unregulated, free-market capitalism is in fact closely aligned to state capitalism. Deregulation means that nothing constrains the monopoly power of the security state and nothing gets in the way of people selling it their bogus and corrupting wares
I've described in detail why this claim is absurd. Just to touch back on those for a moment: the "deregulation" has nothing to do with the security state. It doesn't mean a lack of laws constraining what the state can do. The term refers exclusively to an absence of regulatory restrictions on voluntary economic interactions between consenting private actors. Not lack of restrictions on the state and its procurement processes.
You're welcome to contend with my arguments, which I've elaborated on in detail, when you decide you want to have a meaningful exchange of arguments.
Second, in the quote, he refers to "unregulated free market capitalism" not just "capitalists", and describes what it, as a political and economic doctrine, allows, and his description is unambiguously false.
It's a hit job. It's intellectually dishonest and not fair to the target.
>>He’s discussing a biography after all.
Yes, but in that excerpt, he clearly makes a claim about "unregulated free market capitalism". An individual in his position, writing for a highly reputed publication, has a moral and professional responsibility to not make false claims, even as a side-note in a piece about a different subject from the claim.