> Litigation finance is typically a business venture. It doesn’t become charity because a wealthy person uses it as a template for a personal crusade and then insists he’s doing everyone else a favor. Why? Many cases brought by individuals or groups on moral grounds have led the way to better governance. A lot of good work has been done by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Why should individuals or g…
Intent matters. One of capitalism's great powers is harnessing the greedy and power-hungry and getting them to at least sometimes work for society. (It's not perfect, but it's better to have Bill Gates trying for a monopoly than starting land wars.) But that doesn't make them great-souled public benefactors. (Although later they do sometimes become that as well.)
Here we can infer intent from design. If Peter Thiel's goal was to help out defenseless individuals harmed by thoughtless journalists, that suggests one set of structures. E.g., a public nonprofit that does advocacy while funding the occasional suit from someone without money or power.
The structure actually chosen was to secretly fund a series of suits against a single publisher with the apparent intent of driving them out of business. The first plaintiff chosen was already rich (net worth, $25m) and famous. And if you talk to journalists, the result isn't to make them generally more careful. It's to make them more afraid of Thiel and other billionaires. [1]
So either A) Thiel is a kind-spirited public benefactor who's just not very competent or B) he's getting exactly the effect he wanted, which was to hopefully crush Denton and scare anybody who plans to write about him, even when the articles they write are perfectly legal. He seems like s smart guy, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and going with B.
[1] e.g.: http://www.wired.com/2016/05/three-cheers-for-peter-thiel/