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Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

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Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#101

Post by malmsteen »

maccard wrote: post #93
wwweston wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to consider problems that might be in play if a bare majority had arbitrary power. Worth doing, but then again, an odd point to underscore considering that such considerations are already well-woven into most western democracies, including the United States. It's another thing to propose that where representative government itself is in tension with capital... the problem is representation. Or perhaps…

> It's one thing to consider problems that might be in play if a bare majority had arbitrary power. ..... including the United States The last election for the POTUS had the declared winner elected by an overall loss of 3mm votes. The UK is plowing ahead with a hard brexit with a 52% majority on a 72% turnout (38% of the electorate explicitly said they wanted to leave), with a minority government propped up by a brib…

> The UK is plowing ahead with a hard brexit with a 52% majority on a 72% turnout (38% of the electorate explicitly said they wanted to leave)

I hate this argument because you would just not count if brexit had been rejected as you wish it had been. You would just say "sigh it's normal, i'm happy people are not that stupid" and you wouldn't bother arguing with "stupid people".

Even if i wanted to argue on that level, you can say there was - 38% who explicitly said they wanted to leave - 37% who explicitly said they wanted to stay - 25% who had no opinion / didn't care

so it make absolute sense to leave in that case.

EDIT: To be clear i'm not pro-brexit, i just think "echo chamber blah blah biaised opinions" like this one are the reason people "can't understand" election such as brexit and trump and question the legitimacy...

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#102

Post by xiaoma »

mtgx wrote: post #79

> “Peter has indicated that if he takes the P.I.A.B. position he intends to take a comprehensive look at the U.S. intelligence community’s information-technology architecture. He is super-concerned about Amazon and Google”—and Facebook, less so. “He feels they have become New Age global fascists in terms of how they’re controlling the media, how they’re controlling information flows to the public, even how they’re pu…

If you read the book, he directly explains that what's ideal for a company isn't necessarily what's ideal for society. For a company's founders or investors, it's pretty much always good to become a monopoly and that's completely legal, too. The anti-trust problems happen after a company already is a monopoly. The US government seems to have essentially ignored anti-trust issues during the Bush/Obama era, but enforcement used to be common.

During the MS anti-trust case in the 90s, it was common to hear things like "becoming a monopoly should be the goal of any business but once they succeed they can't use that monopoly to compete unfairly for another." It was lauded that the created the DOS/Windows monopoly, but it was illegal to force suppliers to bundle MS Word, IE or Media Player with each system and it was illegal to prevent them from pre-installing Word Perfect, Netscape or Real Player.

I don't think MS would have survived so unscathed if Gore had won, but it's impossible to know for sure. The political administration has a huge effect on how much these things are pursued, and it would be a huge deal if the Trump administration were to pursue anti-trust cases as aggressively as the Clinton administration did.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#103

Post by KGIII »

dagw wrote: post #96
KGIII wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making murder illegal and punishable in a court of law. The goal is equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. Bad things are still going to happen, abuses will always happen. The goal is to minimize the risks and to ensure a punitive response to unlawful behavior. The goal being to maximize your ability to enjoy your freedoms does not mean you'll be able to maximize them as much as someone else with greater assets. A…

You should still be allowed to swim in the lake and enjoy the park. That sounds naive to me. Without regulation on boat traffic what is to stop it becoming unfeasible to swim in the lake due to all the giant boats and all their docks clogging the lake. Being allowed to do something doesn't matter much if actually doing so in practice is impossible or highly impractical.

Where did you get the idea of no regulations? Only a few people want a world without laws, I'd submit that those people aren't very bright.

Additionally, I'm not sure how you would read my posts and think I was in favor of no regulations? Libertarian != anarchist. Maybe you missed the part about protecting the commons? Maybe you missed my comments explaining what libertarian means? I dunno...

If you're really curious, there is a pretty good Wikipedia article on the subject. Again, it is a broad spectrum that encompasses quite a lot of variations.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#104

Post by KGIII »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #99
KGIII wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those really laws? They don't sound like laws to me. Laws are enforced and don't require consent of everyone subjected to them. I'm not sure those qualify as laws, but as agreements.

Why does a law require a lack of consent? Consent makes it enforceable, if you don't consent than you shouldn't be in a situation where the law can be broken.

Because we are humans and some of us won't consent so it must be forced. There are people who feel that rape, murder, and arson are all things they should be allowed to do. They don't consent to the laws. That's why they are in prison. It's a necessary thing, assuming you want a functional society.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#105

Post by croon »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #99
KGIII wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those really laws? They don't sound like laws to me. Laws are enforced and don't require consent of everyone subjected to them. I'm not sure those qualify as laws, but as agreements.

Why does a law require a lack of consent? Consent makes it enforceable, if you don't consent than you shouldn't be in a situation where the law can be broken.

You mean by moving somewhere else?

The point of laws in a democracy is that they're (theoretically, without corruption) consented to by a maximum amount of people. If you don't have rulers, then whatever your group of 10 people consent to as an unwritten rule will be broken by me, much to my gain.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#106

Post by croon »

arethuza wrote: post #72
iand wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anarchists believe in no laws. This is incorrect. Anarchists believe in no rulers. Laws can be agreed between consenting parties.

"Laws can be agreed between consenting parties." That doesn't sound like a law - that sounds like a contract.

With no party to enforce it.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#107

Post by Banthum »

jevgeni wrote: post #94
Kevve wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'White culture is under threat' is a core belief of white supremacists. It's also a well known fact. All you have to do is look at the demographic changes in Western countries. Wanting white culture to survive still doesn't make one a white supremacist. I even want Japanese culture to survive. Does this make me a Japanese supremacist?

White culture does not exist.

Black culture does not exist.

Is this statement morally equivalent? Why or why not?

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#108

Post by Banthum »

3131s wrote: post #77
aaroninsf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an obvious correlation, and the language of the former is also used as cover for self-identified white supremacists who until recently found themselves obliged to cloak or mute their views. NB: that correlation is less obvious for those who have the "right" culture.

Not only that, but there is implicit violence in taking a "racial nationalist" stance in a country that is not and has never been racially homogeneous. These people couch their ideas in ostensibly neutral terms like "preserving white culture", yet how else is their ideal society attainable without the forced removal of non-white people? To expect that non-white Americans will adopt a worldview that involves leaving t…

"how else is their ideal society attainable without the forced removal of non-white people?"

Um, how about just reducing immigration a lot and giving it time? It's not that complicated.

I think you're just obscuring the obvious non-Hitler solutions because you want easy moral superiority. Easy to slag someone when you can pretend they just want to commit genocide. Much harder when you take their views charitably.

But, this is common, which is why I generally agree with Thiel here: Nobody had ever tried to convince me otherwise, only accused me of wanting things I don't want.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#109

Post by hal9000xp »

confounded wrote: post #21
rrggrr wrote: post #7

Rumours of Theils maleavolence are greatly exaggerated. His bio better resembles a modern day Ross Perot, libertarian and all. Network analysis and data mining inteilligence toolsets were used in the intel comminity lkng before Palantir, same as mercenaries were vighting foreign wars ling before Blackwater. A real problem in government is lack of domain expetise in oversight. Heres a chance to have some of that if th…

Perot was in favor of direct democracy, Theil believes that democracy is making things too difficult for capitalism. Perot was in favor of increasing taxes on the rich, Theil is effectively a feudalist. Both men were billionaires who invested in computing and were involved in the 'military industrial complex'. But the word 'libertarian' has been dragged so far to the right in the US in recent years that it's not a me…

I'm tired of two so wide spread dogmas - "will of majority is absolute good", "rich owes money to society, so we need rip them off".

I lived in Sweden and now I live in the Netherlands. You have better chance to meet alien from another galactic than a person who doesn't believe in these dogmas. So I definitely see absolute political monogamy here.

In centralized democracy high earners have absolutely no voice. I.e. formally they can vote but they will be always in the minority. So middle class and ultra-rich rule the game. Ones through voting, others through lobbying.

So middle class can very effectively rips off high earners (a good example - Sweden). In other words, middle class strive to "equalize" them as they are not normal. They completely forgot that high earners already brought value to society while earning their money.

The culture in many western european countries despise those who want to stand out of the crowd. So in this sense the crowd is against highly motivated and ambitious people.

That's why I don't believe that Europe could beat Silicon Valley without significant cultural shift.

Here are things I deeply hate in Swedish culture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

Very similar ideologically thing in Dutch culture "Doe Normaal" which often translates to English as "Act normal, it's already crazy enough".

Fortunately not every swede or dutch likes these "normality" things.

Re: Is Trump mulling Peter Thiel for a top intelligence advisory post?

#110

Post by d--b »

This position is about intelligence oversight. What's the link with being harsh on Google and Amazon?

What the article makes it sound like is that Thiel is against forms of censorship at the level of companies like Google and Amazon, which in a way is fine, right? (Or maybe I misunderstood?).

Also it sounds like Thiel would very much want to limit the role of the NSA in matters of domestic privacy, which is kind of what everybody wanted Obama to do.

Don't get me wrong, I really dislike libertarianism in that it necessarily leads to very unbalanced societies. And I especially dislike it when it's incoherent (like when libertarians are against immigration/freedom of movement).

But in matters of personal privacy, it's kind of good, no?

EDIT: ok - whoever downvotes this - please send a comment regarding why you think my comment is inappropriate / not interesting?

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