Funny how my comment was flagged and banned: Talk about an echo chamber of left wing fascists. Do you left wing nut jobs even have any clue what conservatives like Thiel stand for or do you just knee jerk to "ban em, ban em all"? I mean after calling them names of course.
Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional troll. I'm sure he's overjoyed to get crazy protests at Berkeley and to get banned from Twitter. The more attention he gets the better it is for his brand. He intentionally picks targets that are the most likely to over-react and uses the most inflammatory language he can. I mean this has to be the trolliest trollmobile that has ever trolled:…
> Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional troll. Peter is a slice of bread with honey on one side and some sort of putrid matter on the other. Milo does not have the honey-tinged side.
I think he's a bit more complex than that and we should avoid overly simplistic metaphors. I am not a fan of Thiel but I have listened to him explain his worldview at length in person and while I dispute many of his assumptions I feel he holds them in good faith and is persuadable.
Milo, on the other hand, acts as if he aspires to be the Ernst Roehm of the internet age and I have little tolerance for him.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#13Funny how my comment was flagged and banned: Talk about an echo chamber of left wing fascists. Do you left wing nut jobs even have any clue what conservatives like Thiel stand for or do you just knee jerk to "ban em, ban em all"? I mean after calling them names of course.
Users flagged that comment for being uncivil and unsubstantive, as in, against the guidelines of this site. Not only have you continued to comment uncivilly, but most of the comments from the account have been this way. We didn't yet ban the account before, but we've done so now.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#14Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf. I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German) and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways to recrea…
"Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf."
No - they fail 95% of the time because government administrators have no clue how to be running VC investment vehicles in the first place, which is why they have to hire people like Thiel.
I don't think it turned out so badly.
'Bad' would have meant all the companies went bust.
A public/private 'investment vehicle' that actually funds successful startups is a huge win - because it's rare.
Not to be too defensive of Thiel - but one could argue that it was Thiel's participation that made the fund successful.
Most of these government VC things fail badly, and it's one of the things that is way, way out of their competency.
It's possible that the structure of the org could have been done a little bit better, but then possibly it would have been hard to attract someone like him.
The governments goal was more along the lines of trying to spur entrepreneurial activity - they got that + a little bit of profit.
That they didn't get more is not a bad thing. In the vast majority of cases - they would have failed to spur activity - and lost a pile of money.
So, the situation should be characterized as a 'win' just not as good as people would have liked.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Destroy America by advocating for diminishing the scope of the first amendment?
Nobody has diminished the scope of the first amendment, which has never been unlimited and whose exercise Milo Yiannopoulos and his affiliates actively seek to limit for others.
> whose exercise Milo Yiannopoulos and his affiliates actively seek to limit for others.
How so?
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#16Funny how my comment was flagged and banned: Talk about an echo chamber of left wing fascists. Do you left wing nut jobs even have any clue what conservatives like Thiel stand for or do you just knee jerk to "ban em, ban em all"? I mean after calling them names of course.
Users flagged that comment for being uncivil and unsubstantive, as in, against the guidelines of this site. Not only have you continued to comment uncivilly, but most of the comments from the account have been this way. We didn't yet ban the account before, but we've done so now.
Wow, the bar for "uncivil" seems to be really low only for conservative posters on HN.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users flagged that comment for being uncivil and unsubstantive, as in, against the guidelines of this site. Not only have you continued to comment uncivilly, but most of the comments from the account have been this way. We didn't yet ban the account before, but we've done so now.
Wow, the bar for "uncivil" seems to be really low only for conservative posters on HN.
Any reasonable bar for incivility must surely catch the kind of name calling present in your comments (and specifically mentioned in the site guidelines), not to mention reposting it once flagged by the community. There are civil and uncivil posts on both sides of most issues on HN, including this one.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#18Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf. I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German) and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways to recrea…
Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional troll. I'm sure he's overjoyed to get crazy protests at Berkeley and to get banned from Twitter. The more attention he gets the better it is for his brand. He intentionally picks targets that are the most likely to over-react and uses the most inflammatory language he can. I mean this has to be the trolliest trollmobile that has ever trolled:…
Thiel is possibly an actual vampire, or at least aspires to be one.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#19Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf. I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German) and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways to recrea…
Interesting thing here is that is an example of why privatisation is bad (the people get scammed), but at the same time an example of government's administrative incompetence (which can be an argument for privatisation).
Personally, I'm tired of all this neoliberal bullshit and would rather just figure out a way to make our public institutions run extremely well.
Re: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government
#20Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf. I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German) and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways to recrea…
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