Peter Thiel on the future of Libertarianism, politics, and technology

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/#

by sama • 17 years ago

37 46 17 years ago

biohacker423• 17 years ago

A sad yet realistic summary of representative democracy.

Also his cyberspace and seasteading ideas are far too optimistic. High tax governments are currently going after tax heavens, even as old and diplomatic strong ones as Switzerland. What changes does your sea outpost have against the world?

But he's missed out on two important things. First democracies tend to follow a long term cycle of government boom and bust. See Sweden and Great Britain. The general patter is the government grows until it's too big to be effective and then it collapses.

The other example is direct democracy like Switzerland, that's also worth examining.

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

The direct democracy is something I've toying around with. The Republic arose because it was not feasible to have thousands of people vote on every decision a government needed to make, obviously. However as technology advances there is a very real possibility that we'll see more direct democracies arise as technology simplifies those voting procedures (assuming we ever reach a satisfactory security level on digital voting.)

jacoblyles4• 17 years ago

I don't see what's so beneficial about direct democracy. Sure, it whets our 21st century egalitarian appetite. However, while populist sentiment is sometimes correct and sometimes disastrous, it is never created by any sort of rational decision-making process.

I have a hard time thinking of reasons why direct democracy is an optimal government structure.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

At least in the United States that isn't true. In the U.S. the republic was constructed as a way for the well educated to trump the masses if need be. That's the original reason for the Electoral College and that's why the U.S. Senate was originally filled with people appointed by state governments.

I'm not saying our Government wasn't built around a populist ideal and in the end I think the Framers trusted the public to appoint worthwhile people. But the republic our system is based around was created specifically to shield government against the knee jerk reactions of the masses

jacoblyles4• 17 years ago

The strongest point in favor of seasteading is that, if successful, it will allow people to experiment with many forms of government, including variants of democracy. Currently, the government industry has an extremely high barrier to entry, which has resulted in stagnation and inefficiency.

tc• 17 years ago

(replying to this thread because the parent was killed)

I object to this submission being killed. I understand the desire to keep HN 'pure,' but Peter Thiel is interesting to hackers and founders in the same way that a PG essay is interesting even if it is not a direct dissertation on Lisp or startups.

xenophanes7• 17 years ago

I agree with a lot of what he says, but not with his extremely pessimistic conclusion. It's not time to just give up on all existing countries!

Separate issue: Karl Popper (a friend of freedom) argued that democracy is good because it allows for non-violent changes in Government. I think Thiel should be careful in attacking democracy itself: what non-violent alternatives are there? Suppose we form a libertarian sea steading or outer space colony. What system of Government does Thiel imagine libertarians would use if not democracy?

byrneseyeview6• 17 years ago

They could use overlapping corporate jurisdictions. If you don't like how things are being run, you pay someone else to enforce your contracts. You might have different service providers for, say, IP versus personal safety versus family law. And since they'd compete, it would allow people to coexist with wildly different legal regimes. You could have a drug-prohibiting regime (or even one that fines you for alcohol consumption) -- but your neighbors might not.

mindslight3• 17 years ago

Few would sign up for a regime that prevented only their use of drugs. One would either sign up for a regime that didn't care about drugs, or one that punished others for using drugs, as a moral crusade.

frig• 17 years ago

Walk me through the mechanics of a hypothetical market for IP law service providers.

Who sells what to whom?

xenophanes7• 17 years ago

I don't think starting a new country with a new, untested system, which people don't know a lot about, will work well. I often advocate for anarcho-capitalism, but only as the result of an existing system being changed one step at a time. This gives time for any bugs/kinks to be worked out at each step, and for people to gain a better understanding of what it means.

byrneseyeview6• 17 years ago

Another alternative is tiny, Singapore/Dubai-type states, which accomplish the same thing, but by having very low costs of physically moving somewhere.

jacoblyles4• 17 years ago

>"What system of Government does Thiel imagine libertarians would use if not democracy?"

Perhaps neocameralism?

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/against...

But seriously, I expect that many seasteads will attempt some form of democracy. Markets are beneficial because they allow producers and consumers the freedom to innovate, but the outcome of their decisions is impossible to predict in advance.

jibiki• 17 years ago

I have some major reservations about whether a mercantilist state would have any respect for human rights.

anthonyrubin• 17 years ago

I think the optimal solution would be a world where there are many smaller countries with different forms of government to choose from and moving from one country to another is much simpler than it is now. A United States with less centralized power would achieve many of the same benefits.

smanek• 17 years ago

H.L. Mencken: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

A must-read for would-be seasteaders:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/

"Big capital will support tax-lowering measures, of course, but it does not need to piss and moan about taxes with the tedious relentlessness of the libertarian. Big capital, with its ranks of accountant-Houdinis, just gets on with not paying it."

jfarmer5• 17 years ago

I'm sorry, but this paragraph:

"Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. 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."

is just terrible. "[T]he extension of the franchise to women ... [has] rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."

Even the most generous interpretation of that sentence is very illiberal. Well, if they don't agree with us and we're right, maybe they just shouldn't be allowed vote. They obviously don't know what's best for themselves, those women and welfare beneficiaries. Really?

And also is the 1920s really the decade we want to hold up as the last great decade in America?

The whole article swings violently between utopianism and nihilism. I find it very depressing.

jdminhbg• 17 years ago

Women's suffrage is generally acknowledged to have resulted in the passage of Prohibition, and Prohibition is generally acknowledged to be a mistake. Why couldn't other mistakes have their roots in suffrage?

That doesn't mean that suffrage was itself a mistake or should be repealed, just that there could be bad effects as well as good. I'm generally libertarian, and regard the extension of the welfare state as bad, but I'd regard the political inequality of half the populace as far worse.

jfarmer5• 17 years ago

The contrapositive of his statement is: IF you believe in capitalist democracy THEN you cannot have universal suffrage.

Since he believes in capitalist democracy, presumably he also believes you cannot have universal suffrage.

Actually, he's more explicit than that. He doesn't believe you can have democracy at all if you're a capitalist: "I no longer believe that freedom [read: capitalism] and democracy are compatible."

So, sounds like that's exactly what he's saying.

gojomo• 17 years ago

In this paragraph, he's observing, not judging or making recommendations. Welfare beneficiaries and women do not, empirically, tend to vote for Thiel's preferred policies.

He might believe these groups are voting against their own long-term interests, but he's not making that case here, in a piece specifically aimed at those who already agree with him on a preferred (much lower) level of government economic control.

His piece doesn't advocate disenfranchising anyone -- as you imply -- nor does he call the 1920s America's "last great decade" -- just the last one where he could be "genuinely optimistic about politics". America's politics is neither the totality nor the pinnacle of its expression as a place/society/ideal, as his audience of cynics about state power understand.

(Though, as the decade of constitutional prohibition of alcohol, it seems an odd political high-point for Thiel. I think its main attraction for him is that at least it wasn't the 'New Deal' and massive government economic intervention ever since.)

jam2• 17 years ago

>> "[T]he extension of the franchise to women ... [has] rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."

Seems like so many people have been pissed about this line. It seems obvious that he didn't mean "women should not have the right to vote" though... just that it makes libertarian ideals harder to achieve, because women tend to favor more government.

Hence his main argument: The US majority will probably never be libertarian, so libertarians must try to go beyond politics if they ever want to achieve their goals.

jfarmer5• 17 years ago

He didn't say the "US majority," though, he said "women."

So, what place do women have in his ideal, libertarian state?

I think that's a relevant question.

For example, presuming women are disinclined to vote for libertarians, how do you reconcile the "democracy" in "capitalist democracy" and "universal suffrage?" Is he saying if we have universal suffrage then we have to pick one: capitalism or democracy?

That seems to be the implication of his statement.

daniel-cussen• 17 years ago

What about Chile? We have a real democracy, when we bailed out the banks in 1982 the bank boards got thrown out on the street and the taxpayers got all the shares and made a profit, and there is still rule of law. Entrepreneurs effectively pay no taxes. We have a democracy and have our shit together.

jfarmer5• 17 years ago

He's not arguing for "real democracy" -- he's arguing against democracy altogether. He believes that capitalism and democracy are mutually incompatible.

Maybe Chile is a counterexample, I don't know, but I don't think he's looking to salvage democracy. He's looking to jettison it.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

See: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/05/cato-institute-crashed...

Peter Thiel on the future of Libertarianism, politics, and technology

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