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Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

jacobin.com

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Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#71

Post by cbb330 »

jmathai wrote: post #13

Maybe slightly off topic to the article, but I don't really care what Peter Thiel has to say. I do think we need to collectively think about how to not give these people a microphone. It's one thing to have concentrated wealth. It's a very different thing to have concentrated wealth and people's attention. I think that's a much more interesting discussion :).

Sorry, but that take is complete garbage.

Wanting to “collectively figure out how to take away the microphone” from rich people you dislike isn’t a brave stance against inequality, it’s straight-up authoritarian censorship based on net worth. In a free society, people choose who gets attention. If you don’t like Thiel, out-argue him or ignore him, but don’t fantasize about silencing citizens because they’re successful. And honestly, Thiel’s worldview has real strengths: he’s been early and right on remote work, the stagnation of atom-based industries, the broken incentives in higher education, the dangers of bureaucratic overreach, and the need for bold technological breakthroughs instead of endless regulation. PayPal, Palantir, SpaceX (as an early investor), and backing young founders through the Thiel Fellowship have created massive value and progress. Dismissing all that because he’s rich and contrarian is lazy.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#72

Post by ryandvm »

jmathai wrote: post #13

Maybe slightly off topic to the article, but I don't really care what Peter Thiel has to say. I do think we need to collectively think about how to not give these people a microphone. It's one thing to have concentrated wealth. It's a very different thing to have concentrated wealth and people's attention. I think that's a much more interesting discussion :).

On the other hand, nothing is quite as liberating as finding out that being batshit insane doesn't automatically disqualify you from tremendous economic success.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#73

Post by rsynnott »

sd9 wrote: post #26

Thiel's ramblings seem so unhinged, delusions of grandeur. I am so thankful that I'm not rich enough to be surrounded by people who agree with every single half baked thought that I put out.

> I am so thankful that I'm not rich enough to be surrounded by people who agree with every single half baked thought that I put out.

Fortunately, Silicon Valley has now provided a machine to do that for you.

I'd be somewhat concerned that this type of severe detachment from reality may become more common as LLMs make the obsequious ego-buffing that was previously available only to billionaires too cheap to meter.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#74

Post by adolph »

If you can parse the academic jargon and get past the ad hominem, the article is a basic meditation on how the state of information technology continues to support both centralization and distribution of decisions.

  This ambivalence mirrors the paradox of American empire, where the United 
  States sees itself simultaneously as a guarantor of global order and a 
  bulwark against world government: the “world’s policeman” unbound by 
  international law.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#76

Post by subw00f »

fastball wrote: post #33
throw310822 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the article's second sentence: "Thiel’s lurid, apocalyptic view of world politics may be ludicrous or even deranged, but his wealth and power mean that we can’t afford to ignore it."

Power might be hard to ignore, but wealth you literally just can.

Wealth is power

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#77

Post by rsynnott »

gishh wrote: post #48
tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism. It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.

> Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism. It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao. > Sanders or Mamdani Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao. The mental gymnastics you’re doing to blunt that…

> such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.

... Oh, come on now. I can't tell whether you're extremely confused about Sanders and Mamdani, or extremely confused about Stalin and Mao.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/25/bernie-sande... would have gone very differently if Sanders was Mao, for a start.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#78

Post by philipallstar »

lm28469 wrote: post #23
antonymoose wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes both sides do suck.

One side is metastasising in the US government right now, the other has been long dead. "it's the same because they're both bad" ok...

It's not been long dead. There's a communist who's just been elected to Mayer of New York.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#79

Post by fabian2k »

jmathai wrote: post #13

Maybe slightly off topic to the article, but I don't really care what Peter Thiel has to say. I do think we need to collectively think about how to not give these people a microphone. It's one thing to have concentrated wealth. It's a very different thing to have concentrated wealth and people's attention. I think that's a much more interesting discussion :).

His power is not in his public speech, but in his money, connections and private speech. I think overall it's probably more useful to expose just how insane his views are, even if that publicizes them more broadly.

Re: Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

#80

Post by dpark »

fastball wrote: post #33
throw310822 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the article's second sentence: "Thiel’s lurid, apocalyptic view of world politics may be ludicrous or even deranged, but his wealth and power mean that we can’t afford to ignore it."

Power might be hard to ignore, but wealth you literally just can.

It’s naive to believe these are not connected. Wealth buys power.
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