What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism?

#11

Post by kenjackson » Wed, May 25, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #10

kenjackson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Are there statements you think are factually inaccurate? Or do you just not like the spin?

I reject the burden of proof you are implying. I'm saying this is such a terrible article it's not worth anybody's time to read. An article with the same factual content but less of the author's obvious issues may very well be worth reading, one that isn't an obvious hatchet job. I have no idea what the factual status of the article's various claims are. Indeed, that is my point; as a hatchet job it is basically info…

I found it tame, even-handed, and surprisingly content rich -- but that's probably because I've read Daring Fireball and TechCrunch.

Re: What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism?

#12

Post by teodesian » Wed, May 25, 2011, 11:17 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #9

teodesian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything? You make it sound like he's a child rapist or something. Has he ever tried to violently force his worldview on anyone? No. Is he a criminal? No. Is he trying to advance his own agenda, like anybody else? Yes. This is the same kind of demagoguery used against rock and roll music; they're afraid his evil ideas will corrupt our poor citizenry! It treats the reader as a mindless lump unable to think for himse…

Everything? You make it sound like he's a child rapist or something. Has he ever tried to violently force his worldview on anyone? No. Is he a criminal? No. That's a pretty low bar. Is he trying to advance his own agenda, like anybody else? Yes. But again, that's not the bar. It's what your agenda is that is at issue. Otherwise you don't differentiate between anyone since everyone is just advancing their own agenda.…

1). "I haven't heard anything good" is not exactly a high bar either.

2). I don't care what people's agenda is if they do not advocate focribly making others conform to it. Thiel does not, ergo his views are not concerning. If you want to be a follower of his, you can be; if not, dont.

If you think people expressing a view without violating someone else's rights is somehow wrong and must be fought, your position is not keeping with the spirit of free speech.

3). The article is advancing the traditional statist viewpoint that the people would be lost without wise overlords; otherwise they would not be advancing the argument that "OH his nonviolent views he isn't forcing on anyone are bad". Such ideas do not need to be fought by anyone, as the good ideas will win without coercion involved. If his ideas are bad, he will fail all by themseves. No need for a hatchet job, ever.

Re: What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism?

#13

Post by kenjackson » Wed, May 25, 2011, 11:41 PM UTC

teodesian wrote: post #12

kenjackson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything? You make it sound like he's a child rapist or something. Has he ever tried to violently force his worldview on anyone? No. Is he a criminal? No. That's a pretty low bar. Is he trying to advance his own agenda, like anybody else? Yes. But again, that's not the bar. It's what your agenda is that is at issue. Otherwise you don't differentiate between anyone since everyone is just advancing their own agenda.…

1). "I haven't heard anything good" is not exactly a high bar either. 2). I don't care what people's agenda is if they do not advocate focribly making others conform to it. Thiel does not, ergo his views are not concerning. If you want to be a follower of his, you can be; if not, dont. If you think people expressing a view without violating someone else's rights is somehow wrong and must be fought, your position is n…

"I haven't heard anything good" is not exactly a high bar either.

I actually said I'd heard only negative things. But close enough. That's a pretty high bar to me, especially if the feedback isn't a trivially small set.

I don't care what people's agenda is if they do not advocate focribly making others conform to it.

His goal is very likely to get people to conform to it.

If you think people expressing a view without violating someone else's rights is somehow wrong and must be fought, your position is not keeping with the spirit of free speech.

You clearly don't understand what free speech means. My vocal opposition to his views and agenda are very much in the spirit of free speech, in fact it lies at the foundation of free speech.

as the good ideas will win without coercion involved. If his ideas are bad, he will fail all by themseves. No need for a hatchet job, ever.

First, not a hatchet job as far as I can tell. Second poor political ideas can succeed, in the short-term (long enough to kill millions, if not billions at the extremes) if people who think otherwise remain quiet.

Re: What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism?

#14

Post by glenra » Fri, May 27, 2011, 6:03 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #3

jerf wrote: post #2

This is just a hatchet job, barely worthy of newsweek, let alone HN.

Is there anything in it that's false? I ask because literally everything I've heard about the guy is negative.

Most of what's false is the spin, including paraphrases such as "winner-take-all capitalism", a phrase I doubt Thiel actually used.

Seasteading in particular is a really exciting project. Thiel funds it because he wants to live in a world that still has frontiers, places people with unpopular ideas - religious, ideological, technological or otherwise - can escape to and try to live in new ways. Seasteading could revitalize political experimentation generally, yet here again the paraphrases are uncharitable and inaccurate - the claim that seasteads are intended or expected to be "law-free floating communes" is Jacob Weisberg's uninformed take on the subject, not Thiel's.

There's approximately zero chance Thiel himself would want to go live on a seastead - he invests anyway in large part to make the world a better place - the same reason he invests in kids who'd likely do better without college.

And how, exactly, is investing in long-term longshot bets less noble than to fund shorter-term projects like self-driving cars? Don't get me wrong, I love self-driving cars and I'm glad Google is throwing weight behind them, but self-driving cars were inevitable already. Google funds them because it fell naturally out of their other business interests and they stand to make vast sums off it in the short term - it's an easy bet for them to make. If Thiel likes to take the longer road, what's wrong with that?

Re: What's Wrong With Silicon Valley Libertarianism?

#15

Post by bluekeybox » Sat, May 28, 2011, 8:59 PM UTC

teodesian wrote: post #4

The primary beef this seemed to have with Thiel was that he was "withdrawing consent" from democracy, believing it to be incompatible with liberty. Not good for the writer of the article that Thiel is technically correct. Divine right of the mob is no better than the divine right of kings, oligarchs or whatever else. Anyone can look around and see that democratic government is just as capable of genocide and police-s…

> Divine right of the mob is no better than the divine right of kings, oligarchs or whatever else.

Absolutely. If the mob says a witch must be burned; is that still the democracy that the author had in mind? It seems that there are two definitions of democracy: one that implies a liberal system of the sort that developed in the West that has public institutions, several branches of power, and regular referendums, and another that implies that the majority is always right (aka "tyranny of the majority", "dictatorship of the masses" etc). I have a feeling that Thiel had the second definition in mind when he criticized democracy, and the author of the article decided to take advantage of the ambiguity of the word "democracy" and paint Thiel as an authoritarian of some sort. Either that or the author is really confused and shouldn't be writing about politics.