81–90 of 281 posts
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.
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."
Yes we can actually. I think it has something to do with Silicon Valley's obsession with money. To SV-people, billionaires are like gods. They are worshipped and invited to all the events worth going to (meetups, hackathons, etc.). Everyone wants to be like them. And it seems to me to be a geographical problem too. In NYC, billionaires are like supervillains. Nobody particularly likes them (outside of select finance…
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 successfu…
Kind of hard to do this when he has so much money to buy influence anywhere. An example is how the current vice president of the United States is a protege of the guy.
And here I thought he was just trying to wrap his techno libertoonian worldview in the Book of Revelations in the hopes that the religious right would get behind it. Did I miss something?
Odd for a gay man to court those who support Leviticus stoning of gays. Self hating? Or just savvy?
If you don't think so, play this game: how would things change for Peter Thiel if he was of a different race? It wouldn't. Greed is blind to these superficial facets that drive the normies up the wall. It's truly by design. And it's so broadly accepted you don't even need to hide these things anymore which only adds insult to injury.
His ramblings aren't that relevant. The problem is that the money is used to get influence; we could see this with Musk too. Something has to change. The superrich act as parasites and broken all inter-generational promises. The USA really messed up here - they should have put down control systems to prevent this parasitic situation.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice "both sides" argument, very subtle.
When one side of crazies goes after a different side of crazies, “both sides are crazy” is an appropriate way to look at it.
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 successfu…
HN seems very ready to defend the rich and powerful from attacks that don't even exist and its weird to come here and say how great he is while also seeing what his efforts have actually wrought - nothing positive on education or government overreach via the Trump admin. Paypal may have been ok at one point, but is generally considered to be a terrible company to work with, Palantir is a murderer for hire, and SpaceX burns billions to get us not very much with its continued explosions in the sky with hilarious mars shot promises regardless of its other commercial successes.
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.