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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?

#111

Post by dagw »

KGIII wrote: post #103
dagw wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're views (which I largely agree with) with ideas like strict regulations, higher taxation and solid safety nets sound more like European Liberal views rather than anything most people would recognize as libertarian. But I do understand that most political labels are pretty meaningless in isolation.

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

#112

Post by marvin »

hal9000xp wrote: post #109
confounded wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. f…

Well said. I have been trying to pinpoint these sentiments for a while, but haven't quite figured it out. The ultra-rich and the middle-class ruling above others is a very eloquent way of phrasing it.

Your description hits my native Norway very well. It is very difficult to excel and get recognition for it. In a discussion with my SO the other day, I was trying to find a Norwegian word for 'excel' and realized that we do not have this word in our language.

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

#113

Post by pryce »

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.

I don't find statements like that particularly helpful.

It is fair to say that most organised attempts to advocate for 'White Culture' -such as White Pride events and a staggering proportion of 'European Students Associations' etc are explicitly racist in practice. This by itself should be concerning enough to lead observers to scrutinise very carefully organisations or publications devoted to securing 'White Culture'.

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

#114

Post by b1daly »

jules wrote: post #39
confounded wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thiel is hardly alone in this view. Many libertarians are in favour of a constitutional republic over a democracy where 51% of the people have absolute power.

A key point in the philosophical foundation of democracy is that it is a good system for making decisions of consequence.

One can fashion a simplistic thought experiment where a simple majority votes to take resources from the minority, presumably against the minoritys' will. That seems rather unjust, or unfair.

What this glosses over is that governments need to make policy and decisions. Inevitably, there will be winners and losers.

Just because decision making power is taken away from the majority does not mean that more fair outcomes are likely. Some other method of making decisions, let's say by rule of a (hopefully enlightened) monarch, still needs to be implemented. And these decisions will have major consequences on the population, creating some winners and losers in the outcome.

The argument for Democracy is that it, on balance, will protect the population from potential tyranny of a despotic or corrupt ruler, better than other forms of government.

The political structure of the US government has built in protection against a tyrannical reign by the majority of the population over the minority. The system of "checks and balances" is a good idea, however imperfectly it is implemented.

As a practical matter, the "power of the people" is limited in any case. There is an actual "elite" in the US, and members of the elite hold disproportionate power. For better or worse.

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

#115

Post by asddddd »

ubernostrum wrote: post #74
jules wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel is hardly alone in this view. Many libertarians are in favour of a constitutional republic over a democracy where 51% of the people have absolute power.

American "libertarianism" has gotten pretty, um, corrupted compared to the philosophic ideals it's allegedly based on: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0... It’s probably true that some of the overlap between libertarians and alt-righters can be explained by their companionship as members of the political fringe. But it’s not purely accidental, either. Historically, prominent libertarian thi…

> the alt-right, which is a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state.

It amuses me to see every article about the "alt right" define it as something different.

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

#116

Post by pryce »

Banthum wrote: post #108
3131s wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

You have still completely glossed over what specifically you expect ought to to happen to the non-white people who already reside in whichever country you're talking about, and their descendents, and anyone they interbreed with, even presupposing some weird test for who does or does not count as white. I don't think it's inappropriate for readers to be quite alarmed about all of that.

This is also completely ignoring crucial context about where these white people you refer to came from or which lands they should be entitled to, and begs the question of why white people should be the ones who get to turn their nation of birth into an ethnostate for them rather than the ones being excluded.

Of all the things one might say about Ethnostates, the blithe claim that "it's not that complicated" is profoundly scary.

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

#117

Post by KGIII »

dagw wrote: post #111
KGIII wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're views (which I largely agree with) with ideas like strict regulations, higher taxation and solid safety nets sound more like European Liberal views rather than anything most people would recognize as libertarian. But I do understand that most political labels are pretty meaningless in isolation.

They were the most common of libertarian values until recently. Libertarians used to be the kooky left but are now the crazy right, at least as far as perception goes.

The thing is, we weren't ever a large group. When what I call ashamed republicans took over the party, it moved perception strongly to the right. We can't really kick them out of the party, that would kinda be antithetical to our stated beliefs.

So, here we are. I can understand why people would be confused when I say I'm a libertarian. I can understand why they'd immediately think I'm a Randian. So, I try to explain it, but it's rather verbose and not exactly easy to sum up.

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

#118

Post by dagw »

croon wrote: post #106
arethuza wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

So basically social norms and conventions.

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

#119

Post by asddddd »

remarkEon wrote: post #97
pryce wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that Thiel thinks 'Capitalism and Democracy are incompatible' that makes him right-wing, it is that given he believes they are incompatible, he concludes Democracy should be discarded to preserve Capitalism, rather than the other way around. This is a far-right view.

Interesting. Can you link something that more explicitly explains this view? I've long been skeptical of the virtue of Capitalism so I'm open to exploring the other end of that spectrum.

The general school of thought (that Thiel is linked to) is called neoreaction or the Dark Enlightenment. Here's a fairly good intro by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-...

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

#120

Post by richardknop »

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), with a minority government propped up by a bribe with a minor political party from Northern Ireland.

Well, that's how referendums work, there is never 100% turnout. So the amount of people who votes constitute the "100%" and you only need 51% of that to win a referendum.

Your argument is also not good because by following your logic we could say that almost no US president has ever gotten elected by majority, at least from top of my head I am not aware of anybody actually being elected by getting votes of 51% or more of all eligible voters.

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