First mistake was allowing Trump to run. Second was to be Republican presidential candidate. Third and the final one would be to make him win
During the primaries, did the RNC want Trump in their tent? Or did he force himself in?
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#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much all of Thiel's investing thesis is to invest in things that are statistically on track to fail, but whose payoff if they succeed is greater than most people imagine. PayPal, Facebook - both of these were terrible ideas when they came out (along with a number of other ones that did, in fact, fail). His idea is that people consistently mis-price risk, and so investing in a portfolio where everyone else thin…
I don't think he's investing in the hopes that Trump will pull of a long shot. I think he has a different goal in mind. He said in his speech at the RNC that the country is broken and that Trump is the only one who can fix it. I have no doubt that he believes the first part - he's said as much for a long time - but I do doubt that he really thinks Trump is the man to fix anything. Thiel may be nutty according to some…
Here is an interesting take on this matter:
> Famously, the only reason he went to seek fortune in the Silicon Valley was because he was denied a highly prestigious clerk position for a Supreme Court justice.
> It seems to me that Thiel originally wished to become a politician, and only stopped pursuing that path to seek his fortune in the Silicon Valley when he hit his first setback when applying to clerk for the Supreme Court.
Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Peter-Thiel-supporting-Donald-T...
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#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends what you mean by electoral fraud. In the US, the only electoral fraud that has a significant impact is one where groups of voters are prohibited/prevented from voting. Pennsylvania is particularly vulnerable to that one due to very broad rules that allow people to question the legality of other people to vote. It's why Trump has been calling PA supports to do exactly that. Other types of fraud (ballot stuffin…
george soros affiliate produces the voting machines in 16 states...
You're down-voted because you're right.
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#274Shitposting, billionaire style.
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#275I'm genuinely curious what the rational for Thiel is in doing this. He's a smart guy, but I just don't see the ROI. At this point, it seems very unlikely that Trump will get elected. So Thiel isn't getting access to a future President. Plus, in addition to the monetary cost of the donation there's definitely a very real reputational cost. A lot of people in SV hate Trump and are completely mystified as to Thiel's sup…
Has Thiel described himself as "libertarian" recently? Even if he has, I'm not sure he means it in the same sense as the general population. I like Samuel Hammond's analysis. His shorthand for Thiel's political philosophy is "corporate feudalism": https://medium.com/@hamandcheese/why-peter-thiels-endorsemen... https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/peter-thiels-plan-to-become-ce... Strange to be investing this late in the rac…
Neoreactionary(NRx). Dark Enlightenment.
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#276Thiel might have ulterior motives, but his support of Trump is not too surprising if you've listened to his other ideas. He feels that the political agenda has been overrun by distractions, like "who can use which bathroom", at the expense of real problems, like the stagnation of median wages over the last forty years. He prefers the days when the national conversation was about how to beat the Soviets, and sees the…
That's all well and good, but Trump is still a terrible option. He never held office, he doesn't know how the system works, and doesn't have the temperament to be commander-in-chief.
His tax plan will add trillions in debt over the next decade, and will only benefit the rich in the long run.
So excuse me if I think Thiel just wants to pay less tax and sue people that piss him off. It's the rich coming to power in a more matter-of-fact way.
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#277ROI talk aside, and long risks aside, as an entrepreneur in SV, I'll be damned if I touch a dollar of Thiel funding. You can be as rational and cynical as you like, but if you even indirectly support a candidate as abhorrent morally as Trump, I'm going to assume that you have the same vacuousness in ethics that the top of the Republican ticket has, and I'd rather be an impoverished failure than take a dollar of his c…
>abhorrent morally as Trump
>you're on the wrong side of history.
Let me guess, reality has a left wing bias? Get out of this industry if you place politics above code.
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#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might not be great, but I trust it more than these dishonest polls
Bernie is a good counter-example. Huge rallies, way behind in votes.
Except Bernie's rallies were full of young people, who are always up for a rally but who can seldom be bothered to vote. Meanwhile, Trump's rallies are full of old people who have nothing else to do but vote.
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#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump isn't nearly as far behind as you may think: http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/ Yes, this poll is an outlier because their methodology is very different than most other polls. Yes, Nate Silver has a very different outlook on the election, but Nate Silver was also not very reliable during the primary season (although that is, by his admission, because primaries don't have very good poll…
You've cherry-picked the one outlier. It's, of course, very possible that "this time it's different" as they say every time. He is certainly an unconventional candidate. However, I'll throw my lot in every time with the MANY polls who are trying to account for this, and the MANY poll aggregators who are trying to make sense out of this madness. I think 538 was actually quite reliable during the primary season. Pretty…
There was a good documentary on polling on BBC Radio 4 in light of their very weak performance in IndyRef and the UK General Election. One pollster said that he actually has a high regard for outliers which statistical aggregations do not capture. In cases where the majority of pollsters got it horribly wrong, there have been outliers at some significant distance from the herd that have been on the money but ridiculed at the time.
The reasoning is that pollsters have herd behaviours - they believe publishing an outlier they will lose them credibility so they suppress inconvenient results and will rework methodologies and weightings to avoid it. For many, election polling is a loss leader - its publicity to get their name out there for commercial services. The credibility of the outlier is increased because it has escaped the herd pressure despite the incentives.
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#280It looks like a lot of people here don't understand how someone could possibly support Trump. If I were simply following the mainstream media's narrative, I'd be in a similar position. If you're really interested in trying to understand a viewpoint that differs from your own (which I believe is healthy for anyone, even if you don't plan on changing your views), I would suggest beginning by listening to Stefan Molyneu…
" According to Jessica Roy of Time Magazine Molyneux argued that violence in the world is the result of how women treat their children, and that "If we could just get people to be nice to their babies for five years straight, that would be it for war, drug abuse, addiction, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, ... Almost all would be completely eliminated, because they all arise from dysfunctional early childhood experiences, which are all run by women."
I fear for the future of society when 40% of the population are on that level.
I would have never thought I'd miss GWB. Now, it seems only a matter of time until all pockets of civilization are overrun by those peddling comspiracy-theories on youtube.