re: the linked piece, it is in some ways innocent and in some ways hyper-worldly,
Here's her bio, and here's one* of her posts that we linked to:
Big Four Accountant Partners: "Does Kant’s definition or Augustine’s and Aquinas’s definition of evil as privatio boni in subjecto..."
One of the more interesting philosophical juxtapositions to be found at the moment.
Francine McKenna writing at re: The Auditors:
From re: The Auditors, May 4, 2015:Is it epistemology or ethics?
Last quarter I took two classes towards a Masters in Liberal Arts degree at University of Chicago. One was a study of Hindu texts taught by Professor Wendy Doniger. She is the famous and controversial professor currently prohibited from entering her beloved India as a result of legal and physical threats based on her books about the Hindu religion. You can become familiar with her work via her frequent contributions to the New York Review of Books.
The second class was taught by Andreas Glaeser, a Professor in Sociology in the College at the University of Chicago, and is called “Meaning and Motive in Social Thought”. In this class we read texts by Rousseau, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, Arendt, and others. The course catalog describes it this way:
Rising inequalities, domestically and internationally, have ascribed renewed relevance to classical social scientists of the 19th and early 20th century. These thinkers offer valuable frameworks for understanding the political, economic, technological, social, and psychological transformations that shape our world and contribute to contemporary social thought. That is, how we respond to “modernity,” to the general acceleration of life—through rapid population growth, urbanization, industrialization, (nation) state formation, commodification, and globalization—affects our view of ourselves, our neighbors, and our enemies.In both cases, my grade was based on class attendance and one paper.
For Professor Glaeser’s class my class paper topic is the most ubiquitous guru of technological progress today, someone who some consider a philosopher for the modern age. Peter Thiel is surely an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. But, I know philosophers. Peter Thiel is no philosopher or a new era public intellectual in the image of Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag or even Camille Paglia.
Thiel is, instead, the embodiment of a technocratic elitist and libertarian individualist with one goal: growth in wealth. He has no answers about what this wealth should be good for. He never talks about ethics. Mostly he talks to show off his sense of superiority and that of his “Pay-Pal mafia”. His assumption of superiority breeds a sense of entitlement to command and to live forever.
My paper is almost 7,000 words, with copious notes, so I will reproduce it here in three parts.
This is Part 1.
****************************************************************
“There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is Curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is Vanity. There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love.” Bernard of Clairvaux
In April of 2013 Silicon Valley boy wonder investor and budding public intellectual Peter Thiel told students at Yale University that the United States needs technological progress to maintain a democracy. Thiel’s hedge fund, the Founders Fund, says on its website that technology is the fundamental driver of growth in the industrialized world.Part II: Peter Thiel’s Pursuit Of Technological Progress; It’s Not About Democracy and It’s Definitely Not About Capitalism
It’s a very open question of whether you could have the democratic process in a world without growth. You can’t craft compromise where everyone comes out ahead.[i]Capitalism, the engine of modern economic growth, thrives, however, in many not-so-democratic places.
China shows that when it comes to economics, the dividing line among the world’s nations is no longer between communism and capitalism. Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government.[ii]In fact, those who openly admit they want to rid the world of capitalism, now say democracy and capitalism are incompatible. During a panel discussion at an event at the New School in New York called “The Abolition of Capitalism”, two of the panelists, David Graeber, an anthropologist and author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Marina Sitrin, a lawyer, teacher, and activist explained their thoughts and intentions.
David Graeber: “It strikes me that if one is going to pursue this to its logical conclusion, the only way to have a genuinely democratic society would also be to abolish capitalism and the state.”This paper argues that Peter Thiel advocates for the demise of democracy, and traditional capitalism, in his writing and speeches, in his teaching at Stanford, and in media interviews. His goal is to replace democracy, and capitalism, with a more effective system, based on the wisdom of a few individuals, or maybe even only one. Thiel’s promotion of audacious technological development to increase economic growth via innovation is not, in my opinion, intended to save democracy, or traditional capitalism. Thiel’s pseudo “Christian” libertarianism is actually a utopia trending towards totalitarianism.
Marina Sitrin: “We can’t have democracy with capitalism… Democracy and capitalism don’t work together.”
In a 2009 piece for the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute[iii], Thiel describes why a more effective system than democracy is necessary to create the machinery of freedom that supports his version of capitalism.
In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms—from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’ The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.Peter Thiel has said enough since then to convince me that he believes he is the single person he speaks of. Thiel admits he is sick of politics and, in the essay, he explains he has even moved beyond libertarianism.
I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. [iv]He also says:
I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.[v]As a multi-billionaire, Thiel’s stand against “confiscatory” taxes is predictable. His flailing against death is understandable given everything he has to look forward to.
Thiel’s disagreement with “totalitarian collectives”, however, is a bit disingenuous. His biggest success lately is a company called Palantir whose first major investor was the CIA’s investment venture arm In-Q-Tel. The firm helps the NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest of the intelligence community analyze data acquired by mass surveillance. When asked[vi] about the non-libertarian nature of the firm and whether it was a front for the CIA, he joked:
“No, the CIA is a front for Palantir.”Thiel’s claim to be against “totalitarian collectives” also seems be the manifestation of an elite education in liberalism at the feet of his Stanford undergraduate philosophy professor René Girard and his infatuation with the German-American classicist Leo Strauss. It was Strauss that said:
Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy….Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.Strauss’ view, that political science was ‘‘the science of right action’’, is neo-Kantian[vii] in the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger and, arguably, an Objectivist Libertarian perspective.[viii]
Put plainly, this is the view that the task of politics is to protect the right to individual liberty – nothing more or less – and the achievement of virtue, human excellence or happiness, is something only the individual on his own can strive to fulfill, either alone or in personal and voluntary association with others: never by force or coercion.Strauss is generally known as the neo-conservative philosopher that allegedly provided the rationale for George Bush’s invasion of Iraq based on the idea that deception and manipulation of public opinion is a worthy goal for politicians and philosophers.
The truths discovered by the philosophic elite “are not fit for public consumption.” Philosophy is dangerous and must conceal its chief findings. Philosophers must cultivate a mode of esoteric communication, that is, a mode of concealing the hard truth from the masses. “Only philosophers can handle the truth.” The elite must, in a word, lie to the masses; the elite must manipulate them—arguably for their own good. [ix]Closer to our purpose, Straus famously critiqued Max Weber in his book Natural Right and History (1950). Weber, according to Straus, believes that “there is no ‘meaning’ of history apart from the ‘subjective’ meaning or the intentions which animate historical actors. But these intentions are of such limited power that the actual outcome is, in most cases, wholly unintended.”[x] Nassar Behnegar explains Strauss’ problem with Weber:
Strauss turned away from the ‘value free’ social science of his time, which could not understand Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes as tyrannies, and turned towards classical political philosophy out of a desire for a genuine social science.[xi]Despite his denouncement of “totalitarian collectives” Thiel is actually against everything that dilutes the “authentic” liberty, the true freedom of the ultimate me, myself and “I”, Peter Thiel.
Thiel believes competition is antithetical to capitalism because a perfectly competitive market yields no profits to owners like him. This concept is the centerpiece of his recent book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future[xii].
Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away. The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. [xiii]Thiel gained, and then lost, a multi-billion dollar fortune as a result of the financial crisis that began in 2007. His hedge fund, Clarium Capital Management was funded with the proceeds of his sale of the firm he founded, PayPal to eBay in 2002. By the summer of 2008, Clarium had assets of more than seven billion dollars, a seven-hundred-fold increase in six years according to a profile of Thiel by George Packer in The New Yorker magazine in 2011. His contrarian investment philosophy sent him in the wrong direction as the market went way down at the end of 2008 and in the wrong direction again as it was on the way up in 2009.
PayPal was an early dream, now realized by the crypto-currency movement that includes Bitcoin, to create an online currency that could circumvent government control. Thiel told The New Yorker’s George Packer[xiv] that his libertarian goal of creating an anonymous currency system outside of the control of the central banks failed because of heightened concerns, after 9/11, that terrorists might exploit such a systems.
His response to that failure has been to distance himself even more from mainstream, real-time practical financial strategies and to focus, with his Founder’s Fund, on what some may consider to be separatist, utopian ones. From the fund’s website:
Our answer is that substantially all of the capital in our portfolio should be directed to companies with audacious vision seeking enormous markets.In March of 2014, Peter Thiel presented, with the University of Chicago’s Stephen C. Meredith and another academic, on “God, Science, and Technology”. [xv] Thiel’s response to Meredith’s paper begins with two apocalyptic quotes from the New Testament’s Book of Revelations. Thiel believes in the coming of the “City of God” but says there is no return to Eden....MORE
Part III: Peter Thiel’s Pursuit Of Technological Progress; It’s Not About Democracy and It’s Definitely Not About Capitalism
*Another interesting one was "The Precarious Financial Position Of The New York Times"
Previously on the Thiel Channel:
"The PayPal Mafia: Who are they and where are Silicon Valley's richest group of men now?" (EBAY; TSLA; LNKD; FB)
"Some Thoughts on Peter Thiel’s New Book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future"
"Will Venture Capitalists Drive the Next Spectacular Breakthrough?"
Elon Musk Frenemy Peter Thiel is writing another book!
Thiel Sold 20.06 Million Facebook Shares For $395.8 Million Last Week (FB)
"PayPal Founder Talks Technology"
Energy Storage: Screw Batteries, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel and Khosla Ventures Team Up on A Different Approach
"Five Hedge Fund Managers Who Lost Their Superstar Status"
Which Came First: The Artificial Plant-based Egg That Bill Gates and Peter Thiel Are Backing
"Five Hedge Fund Managers Who Lost Their Superstar Status"
"The Tech Industry’s Asperger Problem..."
"The Weed Funding Bubble"
"Peter Thiel's Founders Fund becomes first institutional investor in marijuana"
See also Peter Thiel and:
Founders Fund
Mithril Capital
Valar Ventures
Clarium Capital
And at Founders Fund the mini-manifesto:
What Happened to the Future?:
We Wanted Flying Cars and Got 140 Characters
