The first paragraph is misleading enough that I stopped reading; there's no evidence that Thiel has NZ citizenship "as a hedge against the looming apocalypse" (?), and he recently sold that "500 acre estate".<p>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 $50 million he invested is not a lot by silicon valley standards but it is a fair amount for New Zealand, and it went to some of NZ's best startups (possible bias, I worked at one).
What the fuck is this guy's problem?<p><i>Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing.</i><p>One of the people he's shitting on in that sentence is Laura Deming, who's raised investment funds for companies working on stroke and biotech research as well as running a foundation that searches out disadvantaged people exhibiting special talent.<p>We get it dude, Peter Thiel is a jerk who doesn't vote like you and that really chafes your britches.
The full title is "Competition Is For Losers: Silicon Valley Vampire".<p>Further reading:<p><a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-got-new-zealand-citizenship/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...</a><p><a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88745476/peter-thiel-is-a-new-zealand-citizen-this-is-what-you-need-to-know" rel="nofollow">https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88745476/peter-thiel-is-a-n...</a><p><a href="https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Citizenship-release-25-January-2018/$file/Citizenship-release-25-January-2018.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Citizenship-rel...</a><p><a href="https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-release-29-June-2017/$file/Peter-Thiel-release-29-June-2017.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...</a><p><a href="https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-release-1-February-2017/$file/Peter-Thiel-release-1-February-2017.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...</a><p>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".
Ad hominem right out of the gate... why should I care what this intellectual bully thinks about anything?<p>First rule I've learned about persuasion is to <i>not</i> behave this way, but of course it's okay when you have the "correct" politics.
There is a book (political hit piece) about Peter Thiel coming out by a Bloomberg reporter this is part of its press tour along with the hit piece in Bloomberg.
What stood out for me was the assessments of Peter Thiel's involvement in politics by Steve Bannon and the author of this piece. They both seem way off in those assessments to me, given both the success of Palantir and Anduril and his ongoing ties to the conservative establishment - e.g. his recent appearance at The Nixon Seminar (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVOHakxXbMw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVOHakxXbMw</a>)
This piece is mostly an odd attempt to parallel construct a working philosophy that the author imagines is behind Thiel’s various interests and actions. It comes off as a hit piece. But the last couple paragraphs raise some interesting points that are worthy of debate independent of Thiel. Isn’t the point of a capitalist effort to ultimately become a monopoly? And how do we get the best of a free libertarian society with sovereign individuals without the runaway power of unregulated monopolies taking away the same sense of freedom for others? And does accepting government contracts make you less of a libertarian or is it just surviving within the system as it exists? I found those ideas more interesting than the earlier parts of this piece.
>>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<p>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.<p>This is pure bad faith ideologically motivated sophistry.<p>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.<p>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.