The Hoover Institution is a think-tank, and we all know that think-tanks exist for the sole purpose of legitimizing ideologies that favor certain elites. Thiel may be a millionaire, but he's neither a deep thinker nor a great writer. His ideology is weak since it's not really an ideology, but rather a plan to maximize his wealth.
Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#32Some interesting ideas, but: http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/features/groeng1.gif
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#33Interesting that this was published in January 2008, and likely written before that. Rightly or wrongly, economic globalization's image didn't end that year untarnished. The world's a really complex system, even limited to just the human-systems part of it, and the In particular, Thiel wrestles with the fairly old internal contradictions of capitalism that many other thinkers have, some much more in depth. To use one…
You are anthropomorphizing "Capitalism," as a sort of aggregate of all capitalist behavior, but with a single goal. That's not accurate. Individuals certainly try to accumulate wealth, but the best way to make a lot of money is to find a better or cheaper way to do something--a side effect of which is the impoverishment of somebody else. Just look at, e.g., the way Sun nearly killed IBM in the late 80's and early 90'…
"but the best way to make a lot of money is to find a better or cheaper way to do something"
Nah, the best way is to prey on vice. Weight loss pills, get rich quick schemes, porn, 0 interest ARM loans, etc.
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#34I started reading the article with interest due to the topic and the author. However, after getting many paragraphs into it and seeing the repeated references to religion, superstition and apocalypse the author frankly lost me and I aborted. I would have liked to read something actually about globalization, but if that was coming up later in the piece I'll never get to it. Life is too short for some things.
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very interesting points, thank you for the references. Maybe I'm not so much convinced by Wallerstein as appreciative of the expanded perspective (and willingness to question) he provides. In taking a longer view (centuries), he's at least more interesting to me than the weak attempts at forecasting that are all too common, that try to paint an inevitable future based on one narrow domain, whether economics (e.g. The…
> economics (e.g. The World is Flat) Don't get me started on Thomas Friedman. As a TA, when I have to teach Friedman, I usually just instruct my students to go into it realizing that everything he says will be so wildly overstated, baselessly enthusiastic, or anecdotal that it will invariably be wrong. I really hate that people feel smarter when they read him.
I'd bet he's smart enough to know he's making generalizations and glossing over details. If you consider the medium he often works in (short newspaper articles) it's not conducive to much beyond that. In a book, sure, there's less of an excuse to leave out nuance and complexity.
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#36Interesting that this was published in January 2008, and likely written before that. Rightly or wrongly, economic globalization's image didn't end that year untarnished. The world's a really complex system, even limited to just the human-systems part of it, and the In particular, Thiel wrestles with the fairly old internal contradictions of capitalism that many other thinkers have, some much more in depth. To use one…
You are anthropomorphizing "Capitalism," as a sort of aggregate of all capitalist behavior, but with a single goal. That's not accurate. Individuals certainly try to accumulate wealth, but the best way to make a lot of money is to find a better or cheaper way to do something--a side effect of which is the impoverishment of somebody else. Just look at, e.g., the way Sun nearly killed IBM in the late 80's and early 90'…
* Just look at, e.g., the way Sun nearly killed IBM in the late 80's and early 90's. Sun never made as much as IBM did, but the people who founded Sun made more than they otherwise would have.*
I don't disagree with your general arguments, but this bit is factually wrong. IBM's problems in the late 80's and early 90's were to do with the rise of the PC industry, not the Unix workstation. Yes, IBM had a dysfunctional Unix strategy during that period, and yes it lost sales (some to Sun) but it wasn't Sun that was killing it, it was the rise of client server computing. If Sun hadn't been there then Apollo (remember them?) or HP or maybe even SGI
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#37Resilient communities are a good hedge against globalization. Best case, resilient communities can mitigate the harmful effects of globalization, improve local quality of life and dampen the magnifying network effects (whether financial, political, or natural). They can provide a "monkeysphere" that members can care about and be held accountable to, an excellent alternative to all the divisive, useless rhetoric and p…
That is an incredible nice way to pad conservatives on the head for being backwards. Globalization is a good thing, so why would you want to hedge against it?
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is horribly unjust for Americans, many of whom have no or poor health insurance They do, however, have free health care. You do understand the difference, right? No, it isn't as good as most paid care. So what? > Pharma, which spends disproportionate amounts of money on direct marketing to consumers, What's "disproportionate"? You do know that marketing includes free drugs for poor people, MD education, and the…
Since money is predominantly allocated by insurance companies, not individuals, I would say that Pharma knows what insurance companies will spend money on.
> Since money is predominantly allocated by insurance companies, not individuals, I would say that Pharma knows what insurance companies will spend money on.
Insurance companies are somewhat driven by what their customers want. If 20% want something, it tends to happen. Govt bureaucrats, not so much, and Congress rarely passes laws for 20% of the population.
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#39Wonderful! So this means I and other Americans will soon legally be able to purchase prescription drugs from other countries where drug companies sell them for much less money? Oh, I forgot; "globalization," as meant by multinational corporations and policy makers, doesn't work that way. Globalization is not a two-way street, and while it would certainly be foolish to bet against it when it means American jobs being…
Does Thiel address that point, or argue that there should be exceptions for American pharma companies? Our healthcare industry is psuedo-nationalized, in the sense that we have an inefficient domestic market in order to subsidize our ridiculously expensive regulatory approval process, all of which provides enough excess cash flow to fund lots of good research. Things would be different with fewer trade barriers, but…
You actually already buy a nice chunk of your meds from the Swiss. Switzerland is a nice place to incorporate.
Re: Peter Thiel: There Are No Good Bets Against Globalization
#40This is the same Peter Thiel that was recently complaining about women being able to vote. http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-could...
The offending statement is: "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron." In essence, this appears to be the claim that women are by and large not libertarian voters, and less so than men. This is a mere statement about the world…
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