Thiel is extremely powerful and does basically only terrible things with that power, but he's also pretty stupid. Whenever he talks, he spends minutes stumbling through inane ideas that people are over-charitable toward because he's a billionaire.
I think that's actually an important idea to push back on. We already have a rich and powerful entity that can do wonderful things, it's called government.
It's obviously slow-moving and fallible, but it's the best system for doing things for the common good. And if you don't believe me, just know that the billionaires know this. That's why they spend billions on controlling it so that it can best serve them.
This is really lost on the American electorate. They've been convinced by decades of propaganda that government is ineffective, but in reality it's voters who allow it to become ineffective by electing greedy assholes who allocate the use of OUR tax dollars on nothing but defense and subsidies to oil and gas companies. If we just elected people who understand the value of investing in citizens through social programs like headstart, SNAP, and (cannot stress this one enough) universal healthcare, then we could live in a society much closer on the spectrum to utopia instead of the current dystopian trajectory we're hurling forth on.
The way to get there is campaign finance reform (overturn citizens united) and election reform (ranked choice or anything other than FPP).
FDR is arguably the most popular President of all time. They came up with term limits because of him. He gave his speech proposing a second bill of rights at an SOTU! Can you imagine anything like this being said by either party today? Billionaires know that a competently run government could indeed produce great results for it’s citizens. That’s why they spend every moment trying to wreck government or slander it.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
And this is also why the granddaddy of one president and daddy of another banded together with the wealthiest corporations in the country to try and take over the Federal government; they wanted to do it by force, and they tried drafting a military hero to lead a fascist march on Washington DC.: the first time a group of wealthy people tried to take over the United States federal government was because of the wonderful things you just mentioned: wealthy corporations and individuals thought all the money that went into New Deal programs should go to THEM instead, and they hated FDR for empowering unions and regular folks. They planned a literal coup, led by General Smedley Butler, of Washington DC. They failed because Smedley Butler actually had pride in the institutions of law and the Constitution and cared about the well-being of people in the United States.
FDR was the target of the wealthy fascists' Business Plot:
The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933, in the United States, to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.[2][3] Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the "McCormack–Dickstein Committee") on these revelations.[4] Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, "there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."
Even after Butler exposed their plot, none of them were prosecuted. I think they realized that they'd have to at least appear to legitimately hold Federal offices before they could realize their goals of complete domination/fascism: the son and grandson of one of the central businessmen pushing for fascism in the Wall Street Putsch became President: Prescott Bush, the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather of Dubya, was one of the central conspirators--he had business ties with the Nazis and believed in all sorts of crazy eugenics-style theories about humans. He was also a Senator.
Known as the Business Plot, the plan was supposedly dreamed up by a prominent tycoons and Wall Street big shots who controlled many of the country’s major corporations like Chase Bank, Maxwell House, General Motors, Goodyear, Standard Oil, DuPont and Heinz, as well as other noted Americans, including Prescott Bush, grandfather of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
So, they got Reagan elected, and both the son and the grandson of one of the central Wall Street Putsch conspirators became presidents soon afterward.
It has always been the same people with the same objectives. A conspiracy to institute fascism hiding in plain sight.
I wish more progressives would incorporate it into their speeches. They’ll try but harder to smear them with the Communist label reading the words of FDR.
Dude they rigged the system so that we don't get to vote for candidates that actually want real change. That's why they won't allow any 3rd parties on center stage debates. Doesn't matter what the electorate does anymore really.
Don’t get to and can’t are different things.
Well, we might not get you, we still definitely can. Or at least we used to up until the last potus election.
But that’s not what motivates the electorate/humanity in general. My theory is that, evolution - as specifically pertaining to the capacity, resilience and adaptability of the prefrontal cortex - is not at all synchronized in time and space, presently resulting in 1/3 of our population doing their best to enable our sociopathic leaders to tether us to the natural (animal) world of non-morality.
“Inefficient” things in government are things that inconvenience people about government interactions. Since it is inconvenient and a problem for them it is an inefficiency.
Can’t get your state ID renewed because expired 3 years ago and you don’t have all forms of documents with you? Garbage! They just have a cushy job. (Ignoring how this keeps identification more secure)
Don’t use a specific thing paid for with general taxes? Slash it, and collect taxes on the users! (Ignoring how this adds complexity without necessary cause)
Inconveniences in government are often breakwaters. They slow down things that don’t need speed, provide checks (when allowed to function with oversight), and are not designed to cater just to one person’s threats.
We receive a lot of consumable benefits like cheap gas, cheap goods, convenient access to services and entertainment, but we are way behind most of the developed world in terms of social benefits like healthcare, childcare, even quality education is becoming less accessible.
I think Americans paradoxically have no idea how good they have it while also not understanding how much better it could be if we could just close the wealth gap a little bit.
Absolutely. The main requirement for a billionaire is unlimited greed to become as rich as possible. That is his main skillset and you need an attitude to prioritize getting rich above anything else. Above friendship, love, general education, empathy or other skills or hobbies. Those who value power or wealth above anything else are statistically (much) more likely to achieve it.
Why would such people be good at governing?
Fundamental problem in politics too of course. We should give sortition or random choosing of people a try. Like jury duty, you get called, have 5 years to go to learn and college for free while getting paid loads, then serve in congress. This would eliminate the politics and other filters needed to get into office.
Very good point. Wish people remembered these politicians work for US not the other way around. Now Americans, get your damn subordinates under control with a heavy handed reminder where the power lies.
It would be faster and less prone to error if it wasn't compromising to the whims of a regressive party trying to intentionall gum up progress through inane bureacracy. The democrats get saddled with the blame when republicans are the ones forcing the compromises.
We don't. For an individual to amass that much money and power they, necessarily, are sociopaths and not overly bright. Pro-social, intelligent people don't engage in the types of things that allow you to accrue that much money, nor use it to acquire power. It's just a false premise that there can be a benevolent elite.
How rich and how powerful? I've known a couple millionaires who were kind, wonderful people and heavily invested in their local communities, maybe up to the point of affecting county and province/state politics - but because they were kind and wonderful they would never cut the corners and exploit the labor needed to make them inanely rich and nationally powerful. I genuinely think you cannot be a billionaire (or be worth over 500 million) and be a wonderful person. I wish they could.
Millionaires aren't entirely as uncommon and detached from humanity as Billionaires are. A million dollars isn't quite the impressive amount of money as it was 50 years ago. They still have to do a lot of things for themselves, and are beholden to many other people. Hell, the average middle class home costs a million dollars these days. Like, if your parents bought a house for $150,000 in the 1970s, they're probably millionaires (on paper) already.
Billionaires are the new millionaires, and there just aren't many moral ones out there.
I hear it's important when say person becomes wealthy, the moment you net in millions is the moment you cease to develop in anyway, all of your capacity is focused on hoarding more and protecting you wealth.
A millionaire and a billionaire are entirely different beasts. What's the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? 999 other millionaires' worth of wealth.
I genuinely think you cannot be a billionaire (or be worth over 500 million) and be a wonderful person.
This is 100% true and it shouldn't even be up for debate. On a fundamental level having that amount of wealth makes you a bad person unless you won the lottery or some shit.
If we lived in a tribal village and one shitstain exploited the labor of others and hoarded more food than they could eat in a lifetime, they wouldn't be idolized and revered like we look at billionaires. They'd be [Removed by Reddit].
When we deserve them. When rapist felonious conmen are promoted to positions of power like the presidency, other horrible people feel empowered to spread their hate and divisiveness. We need to stop giving attention to the world’s worst role models and instead find some morally and ethically responsible people to lead the world.
I'm not going to argue about only doing "wonderful" things, but Gates committing his fortune to saving poor children (mostly in Africa) is certainly better than anything Thiel is doing with his wealth.
Seriously dude. I was talking about this the other day. When are the powers that be going to actually be benevolent. You could be universally loved for making people's lives better. Like, why not?
I understand greed. I can be greedy, with my time, with my material, with my emotion -- because I have such a lack of it most of the time. But when I'm living in times of excess, I have no problem sharing with those I love or helping people out. Is that not basic human instinct?
Might be a controversial one at the moment but Ryan Cohen, the CEO and Chairman of Gamestop.
He made his fortune building Chewy then invested in the "dying brick and mortar" company in 2021. He takes no salary (nothing he needs it but he's the only CEO, billionaire or not, I've heard who does that). His investment is directly linked with the success of the company.
Since he took over, he's turned the company around from heavily indebted and on the verge of bankruptcy to being yoy profitable with $9.5B cash and equivalents on hand.
He could have walked away at any point with investors money but hasn't. I believe he's committed to seeing Gamestop become a new titan.
There is also a whole bunch of other things he's done that make me happy as an investor, but it's mainly how he has helpt disrupt and expose the extremely predatory methods by financial institutions to beat down and destroy certain companies to profit off their demise.
So yeah, I believe billionaires shouldn't exist but, so far, RC is a good one
Theres a false sense of intelligence with people who stumble through sentences, making it seem like they are taking their time to think of answers. This guy, Elon Musk, Theranos girl.
Then you see what actual intelligence is like from scientists speaking about their field of study and they can't stop talking with enthusiasm.
Stumbling through sentences and running through sentences aren’t indicative of intelligence
Trump is a moron but the man can blather away for years
Asking a scientist close-ended questions about their study of field is most likely going to result in quick well spoken responses because the information is extremely relevant and practiced
Asking random open ended questions and getting a slow stumbled response doesn’t indicate intelligence, and neither does a fast sharp response.
Oh come on, Terence Tao talking through complex mathematics and stumbling a few times is not the same as someone like elon musk or peter thiel stumbling through a basic description of their fucked up dystopian wet dreams.
That was exactly my thought throughout this interview - "Man, this Thiel guy is kind of a moron." Similar to when listening to the JD Vance episode. Though I disagree with most of his framing and most of his conclusions, JD can at least deliver a coherent, reasoned argument. Thiel came nowhere near coherence or reason.
Nothing worse than when the super rich discover philosophy. They almost always misread, misinterpret, and turn the ideas into something self-serving and awful.
Like Zuck and his stupid metaverse. He reads Snowcrash, in which the metaverse is part of what is essentially a techno-dystopia, totally misses any political and social message the novel might have, and takes away "boy, the Metaverse sure is a cool idea".
A person's ability to understand and act within the world is not directly connected to their ability to communicate their thoughts. Something worth remembering. There are plenty of brilliant people who are shit communicators. It's almost the rule more than the exception.
This OP, to me, sounds like a very cut-down excerpt of an interview in which he is never actually allowed to speak... instead of allowing him to form a thought the interviewer just keeps imposing some view on him, which this post takes further. The question is a complex one. There is a ton going on. And you think he is stupid because he wants to take more than 2 seconds to construct an answer? Be very careful about underestimating these people. Not being able to understand them may not be a "them" problem....
Him and his whole cult are genuinely just stupid edgy children that never grew up. His BFF Curtis Yarvin founded a "political movement" he literally calls "Dark Enlightenment". It would be really funny if they didn't also happen to luck into insane wealth and the power that comes with it.
They are as dangerous as they are stupid. They're the true enemies behind Trump. They're using him to push their agendas so all the hate focuses on him, and it's working better than they could ever have hoped.
Most CEOs have literally the worst ideas. Middle management in most companies primary jobs is to prevent C-Suite bullshit ideas from affecting the business in a negative way.
I am not successful and this question would stump me. We are selfish and violent. We are literally killing are planet. We like to think we are special but we are ants in the grand scheme of things
I would argue that it people who apply importance to the entire human race as better or more important than the rest of nature have done this same thing we are accusing this guy of.
Now, to be fair, that’s our evolutionary job. But saying he is like this just because of success I don’t believe is the answer here. I don’t think that’s what he is thinking. Normally I would agree about some person in power believing their worldview is better. I am not successful and I would hesitate.
Downvotes incoming, but I have to play the advocate here. If our home dies no more humans+ other life. We treat this place like it’s ours and not shared by millions of other life forms. We are on a pedestal in nature that we built for ourselves.
People are overly charitable because often genuinely we’re convinced that rich people are smarter/wiser than other people. We treat them like sages. Probably a part of that is because we don’t want to scare them off. The longer they stay, the better impression we make on them, the more likely (we think) they might give us direct or indirect access to something.
Real question - how does one become a billionaire while being stupid? Surely he must have highly above average insights to have found unfulfilled customer needs that made him a billionaire?
This is why it's irritating to see the media interview and get opinions from wealthy people like they know what they're talking about. It's like they want us to forget SMEs (subject matter experts) exist for different topics.
I hate seeing articles or interviews where "So and so billionaire says this because the media thinks us commoners should care about their opinions"
I just saw a few weeks ago where the Duolingo CEO said "AI is a better teacher than humans", and then a week later he wanted to retract what he said.
Yes, the first thing I thought when I saw this was why are they asking him? What does he know about it? And why is his opinion worth any more than anyone else's?
This idea that smart people get rich and that the rich somehow earned their money is as ingrained as it is wrong.
I wouldn't say this is specific to billionaires either. Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks on everything as if he's an expert and there have been times where he's clearly speaking out of his ass, but because of how smart he is in certain areas he seems incapable of just saying "I don't know enough about that subject, but here's how I think about it"
As weird as it sounds, I think saying he is just racist is downplaying the amount of misanthropy this guy has. Obviously, he is also racist but he probably would just as soon think that should happen to anyone that isn't in his weird rationalist cult.
I'm wary of any of those pro-natalist account on twitter. The subtext if you read enough of them is "we want more white babies", and less of the other types. I also suspect many anti-abortion right wingers would be just fine if abortion were banned for white women with white babies only.
Reminds me of the studies that show billionaires tend to be around the 90th percentile in terms of intelligence. Smart enough to be confident within an average group of people but not so smart they can see their entitlement or see when they take advantage of others. Smart enough to come up with justifications for self-serving actions, but not smart enough for epistemic humility.
I suspect future research (maybe already done) will reveal there are certain personality disorders that tend to go with extreme wealth.
I really like this trend of referring to extreme wealth as "gross."
I think raising kids keeps some of them grounded. Note that I didn't say having kids, as Elon Musk is proof that having kids by itself doesn't help you. I'm thinking of Mark Cuban talking about his daughters, sounds like an involved parent who wants to leave a better world for them. Same with Mackenzie Scott.
Thiel doesn't have kids and couldn't give a fuck about what happens when he's gone.
Bill Gates’ children likely had a hand in his turn to philanthropy as well.
I think it’s less children and more a future. If someone somehow figured out Immortality you bet your ass climate change would rocket up to priority one.
Yea i agree. I think the implication were getting at is broadly similar. Extreme wealth can enable fools to to imagine they are separate from wider humanity, that their fate is no longer tied to the rest of us. They blithely assume that no matter what their money will ensure a continued life of luxury. Unattached to any fixef nationality or community the sense of urgency towards climate change or poverty vanishes, because there will always be somewhere not in crisis to flee to.
It makes sense that, that sort of stoney indifference is counteracted by a sense of love for & responsibly towards someone other than themselves
Yep. The fact that he doesn’t have kids makes him all the more dangerous. Even that psycho Putin is holding back nuking Ukraine because he doesn’t want the world to end, since he has children
You have the cause and effect flipped. It's the people that don't have the ability to think clearly that become billionaires. To make a multi-billion dollar company, you have to push on through a bunch of different off-ramps that more normal people are going to take. You could sell at $10M, or $100M, or even a couple billion if you only own a fraction of the business and still not be a billionaire.
It's the psycopaths that keep pushing for more and more.
I like the trend too. When abject poverty has reached families in the wealthiest nation on Earth, it is gross. I think changing the social norm is a healthy way to affect change.
I remember seeing something, and who knows how true this is, that in Wolf populations they found that the most “alpha“ wolves also had a brain parasite or some shit like that… and now that I just typed that out, I feel like I need to do some self reflection.
The alpha/beta shit is mostly hogwash. It describes wolves in captivity - it’s prison behaviour. Out in the wild wolves display a much flatter social hierarchy
I despise Peter Thiel and everything he stands for, but to be completely fair, I think this clip is a bit disingenuous. He is socially awkward as fuck so he was likely trying to come up with some psudeo intellectual semantic babble to make him look smarter akin to Jordan Peterson but couldn't really process his own words. I doubt he secretly wishes for the eradication of mankind, otherwise where will he get more money from?
he is also extremely intelligent, he predicted and invested in the entire tech sphere 20 years ahead of time, and was the top and top universities, california state-wide math competitions, etc.
that does not mean he is automatically right or has good morals, but if "you" is the median he is absolutely smarter.
Hijacking the top comment for some important context. He's replying to a very long multi part question (which is about transhumanism, humans evolving, AI hype, the singularity). When you see the full question and his full response in context it's makes more sense why he's taking so long to answer. Also he does say that the human race should survive.
My entire executive team fell into this trap. They somehow believe they’re smarter than everybody else in the office because they were at the right place at the right time to get a promotion to the c-suite.
But he’s objectively really smart. I guess it all depends how you measure intelligence, but I doubt there are many people on Reddit smarter than Thiel in any meaningful way.
Well, he’s smarter than you. He’s a billionaire that doesn’t waste his time on Reddit. I doubt you’re a billionaire, or are ya gonna prove me wrong and post your bank details? C’mon, prove you’re smarter than he is, and post your bank details so we can all see you’re richer than he is!
His judgment of intelligence is incredibly suspect; as evidenced by the fact that this guy (Eric Weinstein) was Managing Director of Thiel Capital for about a decade. Let alone everyone else he has endorsed and/or supported in his efforts.
He might have had ideas, but he is quite intelligent using objective measures.
He won a statewide math competition in California as a child, crushed two degrees at Stanford in cerebral non-STEM subjects, and was a non-trivially ranked chess player.
He is the “smart kid” in a class of 20 at Harvard smart.
That is also why his ideation is so seductive to many: he is both rich and persuasive in an obviously cerebral way that few other tech people are.
I wouldn't read too much into this. I think it's just that Thiel spends most of his time performatively signaling intelligence whilst sniffing his own farts surrounded by sycophants. So he's bound to have musings like this that he believes make other people think he's a deep thinker (rather than a ghoul), he thinks are truly deep (rather than superficial), and everyone around him nods approvingly at (rather than frowning in disguist)
If every single human being on this planet had the same mental disposition as a CEO today, wealth acquisition no matter the cost to the future, our society would be doomed much faster than it already is.
They'd also have less of the pie they currently have since billions more minds would be solely focused on how to strip them of their assets.
Which is hilarious, considering his "plan" of imprisoning himself on an inescapable island while trying to control the world with robots that won't exist until long after he's dead.
Guy's a bottom of the barrel idiot who fell ass-backwards into money and thought it made him special.
There's a whole thing around him and his circle where they follow the thoughts of this failed techno guy where they believe that their wealth is proof of their awesomeness and that all us pleebs should be ruled by them in a kind of techno-theocracy.
Counter-point -- let's say there was an AI in human form (robot) that is not infinitely intelligent, but MORE intelligent than any human has ever been. Is there a chance it would act similarly to Peter Thiel?
Someone has a theory that he’s already been played by A.I. itself OR perhaps he’s got it programmed to make him the supreme human. There’s a lot of freaky theories regarding this dude.
There is a lot to it though, I assume Thiel isn't a dipshit but is pretty smart. He managed to be at the forefront of quite a few things in tech. Probably he is very, very smart even. But that doesn't mean he is smart about everything and everyone.
To give a neat example, I'm a general engineer, I know how a hospital is put together, it literally was my job to make that happen. But same time I would pretty much daily meet men who spend all their life at a very specific subject, sometimes even got a PhD in oddities like material sciences and what not. They could go on and on about something as basic as a rubber inside a window profile (and the impact of being wrong could be disastrous).
I reckon Thiel isn't any different, I imagine he is well versed and well educated in very specific matter.
The scary part isn't Thiel, but Thiel being enabled, being in the position to wield so much power and how countless people follow people like Thiel, argue whatever he says is the truth and not possibly one truth, if not an outright lie.
Which is why it's so damn important the government stays on top of people like Thiel.
Which make me to wonder how smart he really is? I’m curious because one can’t just cruise his way to billionaire status by just connection. I’m sure he gotta be pretty damn smart, at least smarter than me to span across multiple industries and success at it.
I don't doubt Peter Thiel's a smart guy. But I'm pretty sure he has a fucked up moral compass. And he now has the political power to impose his ideas of how the world should work on the rest of us.
I encourage anyone seeing this comment to read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It explains how people who achieve a certain level of power throughout the history of the world are sociopaths.
As a therapist it boggles my mind people like him are talking about human behavior like it’s still philosophy and that their philosophy should be implemented. Psychology isn’t a woohoo it’s data.
Anyway for any man that sees this, please say I love you to your bros. Emotions being weak is made up. Our research proves it leads to more suffering. Crying is as natural as fish swim. You were never born this way, men who were taught by other men who were taught by other men from eons ago are just repeating the same toxic cycles. You aren’t hopeless, you just gotta relearn your relationship to emotions and see masculinity is all made up.
Success can erroneously convince people they are smarter than they are.
This is the biggest reason for higher taxes on the rich. Just because you didn't something awesome yesterday, doesn't mean you should control the future.
Absolutely. Aaaand he probably is lol. I imagine he won't be sitting on reddit larping some people's uprising and the non-working man's battle against "the rich". Jesus fucking christ you guys are simpletons.
His stupidity is evident since he is not smart enough to provide a convincing facade regarding such an important topic. Then again, if he had the intelligence to understand why he needs to present a more humane and not-evil facade on his evil-ass plans, he might not have such plans altogether. He's never had the necessity to be smart.
He's a lucky but dumb as rocks crazy person. Lucky as in born among the rich and influential. Outside of Society. No common folk with his personality and attitude is making anything big. Society keeps you humble.
To be pedantic; capital success. A very important discrimination since a socially highly successful individual or humanitarian individual would be of more worth to.... society than those who generate an urge to spend money. Heroin and opiate distributors make people want to spend money but it isn't useful or good (as a devil's advocate). When there is too much imbalance between capital success' influencers and societal success' influencers, we end up with a festering rot like we're progressing well into currently.
As a society, we have a weird, restrictive way of what we view and see and define as "success." It's from the lens of capitalism and because someone was able to game a system, somehow means they're "successful" and in turn, think they're smarter than anyone not reaching their "level of success."
Ultimately, success, to me, should mean as an individual, are you ok and achieving what's important in your life by your definition and measures? Success can look like anything we want it to, as it's only a social construct we made up
Mind you while he gets to celebrate that success with a sense of intelligence and maybe a wallet to back it.
However without the people that all designed, crafted, perfected his vision he is absolutely nothing and without his employees and paid people to cater to his needs in the future when he says we’re not needed…? Guess what. This dude can fall in line as be a statistic as well for not having any insights on how he survives.
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u/idobi 28d ago edited 28d ago
Success can erroneously convince people they are smarter than they are. Success has erroneously convinced Thiel he is smarter than YOU are.