On Liberthielism

I think we spend too much time trying to ascribe an internal consistency to famous people. Finding internal consistency with somebody doesn't change the destructive trajectory of their politics.

Peter Thiel started Palantir.<p>Palmer Luckey started Anduril.<p>I&#x27;m waiting for a complete set of Lord of the Rings company that will &quot;defend the West&quot;

&gt; I’m not here to weigh in on whether Peter Thiel is a goody or a baddy.<p>3 paragraphs later and that turned out to be a big old lie.

If anyone is interested in Thiel&#x27;s motivations and interests in politics, I recommend Geoff Shullenberger&#x27;s discussions:<p>Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel&#x27;s writing and actions pre-2016 (when the essay was written), along with his relationship to Strauss and particularly Girard.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesocietypages.org&#x2F;cyborgology&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;13&#x2F;mimesis-violence-and-facebook-peter-thiels-french-connection-full-essay&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesocietypages.org&#x2F;cyborgology&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;13&#x2F;mimesis-v...</a><p>Theorycels in Trumpworld: Published recently, and on the role of postmodernist-adjacent figures, including Thiel, in justifying the politics of Trump.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outsidertheory.com&#x2F;theorycels-in-trumpworld&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outsidertheory.com&#x2F;theorycels-in-trumpworld&#x2F;</a>

If the republicans were smart, which they mostly aren’t, they would let Thiel be their nominee for president next time around. I would vote for him over nearly anyone the dems are going to throw out there.

Or here&#x27;s a &quot;hot take&quot; he&#x27;s not fucking stupid and knows something removing the USA&#x27;s power without crippling China&#x27;s means he&#x27;s never going to get his libertarian utopia.<p>The USA needs to win every battle against China if he ever wants his dreams to come true is it really surprising he supports it so much???

If everything we know about a person, whether it be a Thiel, a Gates, a Soros, a Barak, a Trump, we learned through the media, and, we believe the media is biased, how much confidence should we have in our opinions of them?<p>I spend a lot of time working out why I believe what I believe about people I know strictly from 2nd or 3rd hand information, and for the most part, it stands on pretty soft foundations. Hence, I remain flexible in my opinions in such cases.<p>Meaning, I wouldn&#x27;t write and publish articles that ascribe confidence in my conclusions.

This is a good article.<p>You can be the biggest free market capitalist in the world but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the American government-industrial-military complex has propped up this capitalist paradise for the better part of a century.<p>You can be bullish on a crypto future but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that at the moment the &quot;decentralized&quot; part is mostly a myth, and a few early whales + Chinese miners wield a disproportionate amount of power.<p>None of these views are contradictory or hypocritical. The problem is really that the boxes of possible viewpoints and philosophies keep getting smaller and further apart, and everyone is expected to neatly fit into one of them.<p>Peter Thiel, like everyone else, makes decisions in order to maximize his own benefit, not for the sake of presenting consistency of thought to the world. Not being libertarian when it suits you is perhaps the most libertarian thing of all.

Holy crap is this missing the forest for the trees.<p>Thiel is a libertarian and America is his playground. There is nothing contradictory in protecting the country that his projects rely on.

It&#x27;s pretty simple. Libertarians want to minimize a state&#x27;s power over them. Some ways to do that are to shrink the state or somehow secede from the state.<p>Thiel has found a third way to be a Libertarian, albeit one that only one person can pursue at a time.<p>He can just <i>own</i> the state.<p>So whereas the Seasteading people have to worry about the US stepping in and invading their boat, Thiel&#x27;s boat is America and he has to defend it from China.

It&#x27;s about life as human being, people or even generations are progressive if they have a world to win. Once they have what they need, they will have a world to lose and become conservative. The majority of people in the west are risk adverse often in extremo and becoming more and more conservative. Funny is that they will lose a lot due to this behavior, and the cycle start will all over.