Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 766 posts

Re: undefined

#41

Post by pesenti »

morgante wrote: post #29

I'm genuinely curious what the rational for Thiel is in doing this. He's a smart guy, but I just don't see the ROI. At this point, it seems very unlikely that Trump will get elected. So Thiel isn't getting access to a future President. Plus, in addition to the monetary cost of the donation there's definitely a very real reputational cost. A lot of people in SV hate Trump and are completely mystified as to Thiel's sup…

Small chance of making it to the Supreme Court? http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57d80d57e4b09d7a687f9b03/a... ?

Re: undefined

#42

Post by nostrademons »

vinhboy wrote: post #17

Politics aside. What does it say about his judgement to continue investing in something that is statistically on track to fail. Not only that, but its also a toxic brand to attach yourself to. Or do we just put this in the "expensive new hobby" section and leave it at that. ---- Update: I want to hijack my own comment to ponder something. As someone with no money and no influence, I find it hard to think about how to…

Pretty much all of Thiel's investing thesis is to invest in things that are statistically on track to fail, but whose payoff if they succeed is greater than most people imagine. PayPal, Facebook - both of these were terrible ideas when they came out (along with a number of other ones that did, in fact, fail). His idea is that people consistently mis-price risk, and so investing in a portfolio where everyone else thinks it's a terrible idea but you have reason to believe it's a better idea than others suspect will give outsize returns. (Note: it doesn't actually have to be a good idea, it just has to be better than everyone else thinks it is.)

Supporting Trump fits perfectly into this: if he loses, he gets egg on his face (which most people will forget fairly soon) and may lose out on a little startup dealflow, but if he wins, he becomes the sole connection between the Presidential Administration and Silicon Valley. That's worth a lot more than $12.5M.

Re: undefined

#43

Post by metaphorm »

vinhboy wrote: post #17

Politics aside. What does it say about his judgement to continue investing in something that is statistically on track to fail. Not only that, but its also a toxic brand to attach yourself to. Or do we just put this in the "expensive new hobby" section and leave it at that. ---- Update: I want to hijack my own comment to ponder something. As someone with no money and no influence, I find it hard to think about how to…

yep. this is Thiel just playing with toys because he has left the reality tunnel the rest of us are living in. he's off in his own world now imagining ways to amuse himself.

Re: undefined

#44

Post by naveenspark »

Its unclear what Peter Thiel is supporting with this donation. This candidate is highly inconsistent. Perhaps his bet is that if this candidate is elected, it will result in chaos. A sharp, rapid upheaval will enable him to accelerate his overall agenda. Given his net worth he is insulated from the negative effects this chaos will have on everyone else. Given his net worth he, and others who support his agenda can quickly capitalize.

Re: undefined

#45

Post by anondon »

jp8000 wrote: post #3
nodesocket wrote: post #2

Not convinced this is Hacker News worthy. Let's keep politics in political forums.

Peter Thiel is a YC advisor. This is both a tech and a political story.

Peter is free to support whoever he wants. Just because he is associated with YC, does not make his views YC's views.

Re: undefined

#46

Post by bassman9000 »

Interesting to see that many comments on money buying influence. Yet no one seems to consider the possibility that the most pro-establishment candidate, with a proven track of money-for-favors trafficking is, in Thiel's opinion, a worse outcome.

Re: undefined

#47

Post by nodesocket »

morgante wrote: post #34
dsabanin wrote: post #22

He's making a wise investment decision - if Trump wins he will probably gain a lot in favors. If Trump loses, he will lose a little bit of money and some goodwill of some people. I'm sure he can live with that. Cynical.

But why is he making the donation now? That logic would have made a lot more sense when Trump's odds looked a lot better. You have to multiply the upside by its (low) probability. I also think the reputational cost is more severe than you let on: look at what happened to Brendan Eich, and his "crime" was a lot less than supporting Trump.

I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. He made a personal decision to donate a small amount to Prop 8, and extreme political activists completely annihilated him and forced him out of his job.

"Critics of Eich within Mozilla tweeted to gay activists that he had donated $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California until 2013, when it was declared unconstitutional and marriages were allowed to resume. Eich stood by his decision to fund the campaign, but wrote on his blog that he was sorry for “causing pain” and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Gay activists created an online shaming campaign against Eich, with OkCupid declaring they would block access to the Firefox browser unless he stepped down."

Re: undefined

#48

Post by mcknz »

dmix wrote: post #40

> [Trump's] position on immigration is the opposite of the tech industry’s Is this true? I'm not familiar with Trump's policies because it doesn't sound like he talks about them in much detail. Isn't he all for "legal immigration" and was just extremely against illegal immigration? Has he even addressed H1B or T1 Visas? Although he has mentioned making immigration harder through intensive testing/vetting, which sound…

Naturally he hasn't recently mentioned immigration because he's trying to move to the center.

During the primary, however, he wanted to block all Muslims from entering the country, as well as build a wall along the Mexico/US border.

Re: undefined

#50

Post by internaut »

morgante wrote: post #29

I'm genuinely curious what the rational for Thiel is in doing this. He's a smart guy, but I just don't see the ROI. At this point, it seems very unlikely that Trump will get elected. So Thiel isn't getting access to a future President. Plus, in addition to the monetary cost of the donation there's definitely a very real reputational cost. A lot of people in SV hate Trump and are completely mystified as to Thiel's sup…

It's the Stagnation Hypothesis.

More precisely it is the high level implications of the Stagnation Hypothesis. You won't know it from HN or a survey of typical developers but the people who really run Silicon Valley have a set of beliefs about the world which are very different to the people who work for them.

Watch this all the way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpmfaE9bII

Post reply on HN