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PayPal founder appears to have lost it
Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, appears to have gone off the deep end.
In a blog posting for the libertarian Cato Institute Thiel espoused some views which have sent Silicon Valley tongues wagging.
In an extended posting he said that he was increasingly becoming convinced that democracy and freedom were incompatible, that the 1920s were the last time Americans were free in a libertarian sense and, most startlingly, appears to come out against the right of women to vote.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron," he wrote.
One has to wonder what Meg Whitman, former head of eBay and candidate for the governership of California, thinks of all this.
In the future, if men wanted to be free, they would either have to head online, go to outer space or to floating cities on the planet's oceans. We shall see.
In a blog posting for the libertarian Cato Institute Thiel espoused some views which have sent Silicon Valley tongues wagging.
In an extended posting he said that he was increasingly becoming convinced that democracy and freedom were incompatible, that the 1920s were the last time Americans were free in a libertarian sense and, most startlingly, appears to come out against the right of women to vote.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron," he wrote.
One has to wonder what Meg Whitman, former head of eBay and candidate for the governership of California, thinks of all this.
In the future, if men wanted to be free, they would either have to head online, go to outer space or to floating cities on the planet's oceans. We shall see.
Spanish
Things are not quite as they appear.
Check out Thiel's comment:
Your Suffrage Isn’t in Danger. Your Other Rights Are.
by Peter Thiel
The Conversation
May 1st, 2009
I had hoped my essay on the limits of politics would provoke reactions, and I was not disappointed. But the most intense response has been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or libertarian politics, but at a commonplace statistical observation about voting patterns that is often called the gender gap.
It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.
Voting is not under siege in America, but many other rights are. In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies.
I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent. That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/your-suffrage-isnt-in-danger-your-other-rights-are/
Posted by: Chris | May 1, 2009 9:24 PM