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Re: undefined

#71

Post by meritt »

bobsgame wrote: post #38

I'm not very political and I haven't decided who to vote for yet, but I don't understand why the tech industry is so anti-Trump. He seems like a relatively sincere and smart guy to me, and some of his policies seem to be better for business. Is it because of tougher immigration laws? Are there other reasons based on his policies, or is it mostly just emotional?

Because he's a bully with a dangerous trigger-finger mentality. He doesn't have any actual policies. There's the formal GOP policy which he frequently contradicts and his own viewpoints are extremely fluid as well. His only consistency is attacking those who he views as lower than him.

Re: undefined

#72

Post by internaut »

nostrademons wrote: post #42
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 thin…

That is one plausible interpretation but there are several layers to this. It is not a coincidence that RenTech and Thiel are supporting Trump.

I hesitate to be explicit about what I think is actually going on but if you've read my posts on the Stagnation Hypothesis or watched Peter Thiel's videos on Youtube (low view counts, so I know you're not watching them!) you'll know there is a rather disturbing big picture which most people are oblivious to.

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

Re: undefined

#73

Post by nostrademons »

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.

It's not just multiplying the upside by the probability. The upside depends upon how many people are in the crowd with you. Right now, everybody else is deserting Trump - and so if Thiel doubles-down on his bet, Trump and his loyalists will remember that all the moreso, and so if Trump wins Thiel stands out even more from everyone that deserted Trump but then came crawling back when times looked good.

Eich and Trump are in very different roles. Eich was CEO of a non-profit: as a non-profit, they depend crucially on his ability to fundraise, and so pissing off big Mozilla donors makes it impossible to do his job. Thiel is an investor of his own capital: pissing off other people is generally neutral to him, as he doesn't depend on anyone else for anything, and being able to piss people off allows him to take risks that are underpriced because other people are too afraid of pissing others off.

Re: undefined

#74

Post by threeseed »

blhack wrote: post #59
argonaut wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just selected the national poll that is the most favorable to Trump. An average over polls >> any individual poll. Note that I am not saying that poll should be thrown out. But picking one poll in isolation is almost useless.

Looking at this specific poll in isolation is fine as long as you understand that you are looking at it in isolation. I say so because of its polling methodology, which is unique. If you're a politics/polling nerd, this poll is interesting. If you're not, then yes, you are probably better off either just reading 538, or looking at the RCP polling average. https://news.usc.edu/109339/why-the-usc-dornsifel-a-times-pr..…

Most politics/polling nerds look at aggregations of polls. Not sure where you get this idea that they are interested in a poll like USC which is such an outlier.

Re: undefined

#75

Post by rorykoehler »

megous wrote: post #33
finance-geek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Across the country, wages are flat. Americans get paid less today than 10 years ago” His solution has been to advocate increased immigration. Yep, wages are flat, lets bring more people so more people can compete for fewer jobs.

Available jobs increase with population. Additional people need more services, goods, etc. This leads to increased demand. In other words, more people are needed to produce stuff for more people.

*in the 20th century

Re: undefined

#76

Post by threeseed »

blhack wrote: post #66
threeseed wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the height of stupidity to believe in any one poll. Especially that one which has had major issues with sampling: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old... There are plenty of aggregation sites which are far better at smoothing out any issues: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-... They all show Trump losing in a landslide with Clinton getting around 330 EC votes.

USC's response to this: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-ques...

This is exactly why you should never blindly trust a single poll.

We don't know who is right/wrong until after the election so it is better to assume that a range of different polls taken at different times with different methodologies is likely to be more accurate.

Re: undefined

#77

Post by kennywinker »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #56

Here in Canada, it is illegal to give more than $1525 per year to a political party. That would have saved this guy some money.

There are similar donation limits in the USA, but the recent Citizen's United supreme court ruling allows individuals to give large sums to "political action committees" which can act in support of a candidate as long as they don't get caught directly coordinating with them. This has lead to some pretty egregious influences on politics, especially in smaller races with less scrutiny where elections can now be bought for sometimes as little as $10k.

Re: undefined

#78

Post by solipsism »

rorykoehler wrote: post #65
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…

I've always found the right-libertarian philosophy to be extremely confused. They want freedom to do whatever they want but they also want to base everything off of capitalism which by definition means you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. It just doesn't make any sense (unless of course you're already a billionaire in which case your world is already quite libertarian in reality).

I have my problems with Libertarianism, but I don't understand what you don't understand. Libertarians think everyone should have freedom to do whatever one wants, but that says nothing of having power to do whatever one wants.

Re: undefined

#79

Post by eksu »

megous wrote: post #33
finance-geek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Across the country, wages are flat. Americans get paid less today than 10 years ago” His solution has been to advocate increased immigration. Yep, wages are flat, lets bring more people so more people can compete for fewer jobs.

Available jobs increase with population. Additional people need more services, goods, etc. This leads to increased demand. In other words, more people are needed to produce stuff for more people.

Required jobs scale very very poorly with population. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate was something less than 1 additional person in the workforce for every 10 additional people in the population.

Re: undefined

#80

Post by inimino »

bobsgame wrote: post #38

I'm not very political and I haven't decided who to vote for yet, but I don't understand why the tech industry is so anti-Trump. He seems like a relatively sincere and smart guy to me, and some of his policies seem to be better for business. Is it because of tougher immigration laws? Are there other reasons based on his policies, or is it mostly just emotional?

Tech leans liberal and highly-educated, demographically not a good fit for Trump.
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