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Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

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Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it only right wing? The left elected AOC and gave Bernie a platform.

>Is it only right wing? That's what it said. I assumed they were talking about how bad economies led to people like Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and since then maybe Thatcher and Reagan, also Putin, and more recently Brexit, Le May, Orban, the leaders of Poland, Brazil, Philippines, etc. Nobody's propaganda did all that. Bad economies and folks scared about change and their future did. A very interesting book I read ca…

Notably absent are your left wing Maos and lenin.

Either you aren't discussing in good faith or ignorant of left wing populism.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#82
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what crispyambulance said (or perhaps a few hours before)?

He said both "New Year's Eve, 2000" and "starting on Jan 1st, 2000". I'm not sure why he contradicted himself, but the first one would be 24h early, and the second one a whole year.

My apologies, I had a brain fart.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#83

I'm more curious what caused the wave of populism in the late 2010s. Was it really Russian propagandists on social media? COVID will be gone in a year or 2, but the economic damage may cause things to be worse. My best hope is a reform of the medical cartels, but that is wishful thinking in the face of a billion dollar lobbyist group.

  I'm more curious what caused the wave of populism in the late 2010s.
I think it's a combination of three things.

History has a cyclical pattern (according to many. Toynbee, Hegel, etc) and the West was just rife for such a period. The people who experienced the negative outcomes of authoritarianism back in the 1940s died or entered nursing homes en masse in the 2010s.

Social networks, and other internet phenomena, advantage sensationalism and division.

The actual state of the world is bad enough that people stop voting for the status quo. By the 'state of the world', I mean things like the 'forever wars', terror attacks, the migrant crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of China, etc.

The more I think about it, though, the less I think the actual state of the world matters. My reasoning there is that the way people interpret both their own station in life, and the events of the world, depends largely on the zeitgeist. With a little effort, I could imagine a world where people interpreted the same political and economic situation in vastly different ways.

I should add a disclaimer that, when it comes to this subject, it's possible I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not a real historian :)

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it only right wing? That's what it said. I assumed they were talking about how bad economies led to people like Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and since then maybe Thatcher and Reagan, also Putin, and more recently Brexit, Le May, Orban, the leaders of Poland, Brazil, Philippines, etc. Nobody's propaganda did all that. Bad economies and folks scared about change and their future did. A very interesting book I read ca…

Notably absent are your left wing Maos and lenin. Either you aren't discussing in good faith or ignorant of left wing populism.

I wondered about Stalin, also.

Sorry, I ended up passing along what I remembered reading, and didn't think enough about your comment. Maybe I misremembered, or it would have been more accurate to say populism, without the left/right qualifier?

I agree, that makes sense to me. Populism is not unexpected after a certain amount of economic calamity.

I'm curious if there's a left/right distinction in this context, but I have no idea.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#85
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also the end of the post-08 crash era and the start of the post-20 crash era What crash? SP500 hit an all time high on Friday.

A crash in the real economy, if you will. Equity prices may or may not follow. There's a good chance that one year from now, the S&P 500 will be substantially lower than it is today.

[deleted]

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#86
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that the current long term trend is the velocity of money going down, no reason to expect it to turn back up necessarily. Definitely is a strong reason stocks are so overvalued though, yeah.

> no reason to expect it to turn back up necessarily. Except that looking at the Fred graphs, now that the worst of Covid seems behind us, it's starting to. Even if it doesn't go back to 2000 levels, it's certainly going to get to 2019 levels - meaning not just overvalued stocks but inflation too. It's gonna hurt, but as it will also fix the student loan crisis, it could be overall a good thing!

Looking at the rates of deaths and infections, the worst of COVID is right now, at least in the USA.

It's good that the vaccines are starting to be distributed but it was only a week ago that my state sent out an emergency text for the first time ever stating that statewide hospital capacity was 90% used up.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#87

It is still a little shocking to me that Peter Thiel can be quoted in mainstream business publications without any note being made of his quite open support for white nationalist hate groups. Not far off from quoting Albert Speer as an architecture critic!

Curious to hear from the downvoters. What about Peter Thiel’s banal punditry justifies overlooking his active and enthusiastic contributions to neo-Nazis?

Can you comment with links pointing to his support for neo-Nazis?

I can agree that some of the people and ideas he aligns with are creepy, but Nazism has a meaning, and critiques like this need to be accurate and evidence-backed.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter whether people of the time said AD 1 or not, because the BC/AD b system was adopted much later. It's confusing and ultimately pointless, but if you plant apple trees, the year in which you do that is the first year in which you planted apple trees, not the zeroth year. After ten years elapsed, it is now the tenth year of your apple tree planting phase. I agree about your 80s example (of course I use…

I understand the explanation, but your final statement is still wrong. If you're doing "serious date calculations" for any modern organization, and you are asked to make a graph of 20th century data by decade, you will be expected to use the standard decade divisions, i.e. 190_, 191_, 192_. If you include data from December 2000, and get different results from your colleagues, you have failed. The last decade of the…

I just wanted to say that I appreciate the amount of thought you have put in your argument, even though I ultimately remain unconvinced by it.
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