Y Combinator Cuts Ties with Peter Thiel After Ending Part-Time Partner Program
buzzfeed.com
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They ended the entire part-time-partner program, and transitioned some of the part-timers to advisor roles. Thiel is one of multiple part-timers not to become an advisor.
You are not going to get an answer, or more "context", from YC about the political implications of this change. No matter how many times you ask and how carefully you word the questions, you're not going to pry loose any first-hand drama from this situation.
I'm happy Thiel's no longer involved with YC. I'm disappointed that it took this long, but we can't always get what we want. There are people here that disagree with me on both those things. We all knew that about each other. We probably don't need to beat it to death.
Sam has said that he won't cut Thiel for political ties. Thiel is cut. Does this represent an internal shift in momentum, or an external shift in appearances?
Combine that with some recent news regarding Thiel. I wish I'd paid more attention to it. It was something like, Thiel was making a move against a certain company. So maybe it has nothing to do with politics, or that politics are an incomplete answer.
If we won't get an answer, that's fine. But it's unnecessary to shut down the conversation so harshly.
There could very well be a non-political reason for this move, and HN is one of the best places to shake loose counterintuitive truths.
I guess what bugs me is the lack of curiosity here. Everyone is acting relieved to be rid of Thiel. The underlying dynamics are interesting, and there's no reason it has to be an argument or polarizing.
A source close to Y Combinator said that the company ended its part-time partners program, which Thiel was a part of, some time last year. While some other part-time partners moved over to a program called "experts," which provides advice to Y Combinator entrepreneurs, Thiel did not join.
It's legit fascinating to me to watch this in action. Let's say hypothetically you wanted to get rid of Thiel. How could you do that?
"Just form another group, then don't invite Thiel to the new group" didn't even occur to me. That's smart.
Can this be seen as something other than an accusation or a political talking point? I'm trying to make commentary about overall emergent social phenomena. Maybe nobody cares about that, but personally I think group dynamics are really interesting to witness.
It is also a plot point from The Simpsons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7R3hzpfnmw
Conceptually, this is also how VCs wash out founders.
Curiously, that doesn't follow. The article happens not to contain any evidence that it was YC that "cut" ties, nor indicates when the working relationship ended or for what reason.
Did you reach that conclusion based on personal experience? Because you were quite vocal and unfortunately prescient about it 395 days ago [1].
This comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735404
Edit: I love how I still get downvoted a year later for stating the obvious. It’s funny how upset people get at those who tell the truth.
Good god. It's crazy how politically driven people immediately demand nobody talk about politics as soon as they get their way. The guy was ranting and raving about end of democracy. Now that thiel is out, he wants everyone to be silent.
Truly an "unhacker" type of mindset which has gained such a prominent foothold on HN.
Censorship truly gives power to the people who shouldn't have it.
Couple that with the anonymity and rampant upvote/downvote based on disagreements (My comments on this thread rapidly oscillate between -5 and +5 -- it's crazy how enormous the pro-Trump population on HN actually is and how blissfully Silicon Valley pretends they don't exist) in an attempt to silence ideas you don't like..
Yeah it's really fucked up. We need a new discussion forum format, that isn't so easily manipulated like HN and Reddit due to vote manipulation.
Some examples of over the past decade: MongoDB, NodeJS, Docker, React, Tensorflow, Blockchain
Regardless of the quality of the technologies listed above, anything negative about those topics (during their prime anyway -- it's acceptable to shit on MongoDB once again) would get downvoted/flagged to the point of not existing.
My issue isn't particularly on removal of off-topic threads (e.g. no politics in HN), that's totally acceptable. What I don't agree with is removal (either by mods or by massive swarms of downvoting "users") of unpopular thoughts/ideas.
>Yeah it's really fucked up. We need a new discussion forum format, that isn't so easily manipulated like HN and Reddit due to vote manipulation.
Are you sure you aren't just whining because you think more people agree with you than actually do? It's awfully convenient that since people online don't like it that you are dredging up comments from years ago stalking people's accounts and attacking them in support of a horribly unpopular position that is actively destroying things important to tech people, that it's the fault of the format and vote manipulation, and censorship, and mods, and it's all someone else's fault, I'm actually right and everyone is on my side. You conclude it's hard to have a conversation because people don't agree with you, because the conversation isn't going exactly how you want.
It's shocking how people who support him even pick up on his conversational tics; blame anything that you don't like on external enemies, the powers that be, claim everyone actually likes you despite all evidence to the contrary, that your crowd was huge, that it's just the lying liberal elites that control everything out to get you.
I think you are making an unjustified and inaccurate guess as to the source of your downvotes.
I am not quite familiar with what role he played at YC. Why are you glad he is gone ?
Personally, I think Trump is reprehensible. I also think that silencing people with opposing political viewpoints is dangerous and reprehensible. I don't always agree with Peter Thiel politically, but I would happily do business with him. It's really not our place as the internet lynch-mob to interfere with Peter's role in the startup community because of his political views. Note, @sama said as much when the whole thing went down.
This is a repugnant, defeatist, and just plain wrong view of the world. And it's held almost universally by the thought leaders of this forum.
1) That's not how persuasion works.
2) It's not how ideas or the stubborn humans who hold them work.
3) The point is not, in fact, to convince that one particular person at that one particular moment in time. If that's your goal, then I might suggest that a phone call would be more appropriate. These are public arguments. Read by the public. They're useful far beyond the participants.
4) Minds change over time, rarely in the moment. If your standard for success is immediate agreement, then you've established an unrealistic (and misguided) goal. You'll never get that. But, again, that's OK, because that's not what you should be shooting for in the first place.
5) Argument is as much for you as it is for the person you're trying to convince. Working through objections is good for you. You impoverish yourself when you take this away.
6) People seem to think it's a really strong argument to point out that people get mad or emotional during debates, but I have no idea why I'm supposed to care. So a faceless, nameless avatar that I'll never meet showed too much emotion in an online debate? I have no idea why anybody thinks that's worth mentioning in any context. It's definitely not a persuasive argument for nuking all debate.
It's no wonder so many people have such a dim view of online argument, if your comment represents the conventional thinking on it (and it does).
It's the suggestion that you know what's best for me, too, that bristles.
Probably because the “divisive” opinion is on a different question than the on tptacek sees as pointless, which he was pretty express about: the pointless argument is about the political meaning of Thiel not being a partner. And he's right, that's not going to get an answer and any argument about it is pointless.
The “divisive” opinion about whether or not it's a good thing that that relationship ended is, at a minimum, not pointless in the same way (it's likely to be fruitless in the way that arguments that rest in clashes of fundamental values are, but that's a different concern.)
> It's really not our place as the internet lynch-mob to interfere with Peter's role in the startup community because of his political views.
You are free to choose to restrain the means in which you apply your free speech and association rights based on this narrow, misguided, elitist view of the role of the hoi polloi, of course.
> Note, @sama said as much when the whole thing went down.
I'm entirely unsurprised that Altman would say no external party of should question YC decisions on political (or, heck, any other) grounds, but I'm not sure why you think noting that he did so adds any weight to your argument.
> You are free to choose to restrain the means in which you apply your free speech and association rights based on this narrow, misguided, elitist view of the role of the hoi polloi, of course.
Is where I burst out laughing and moved on.
That's a funny way of phrasing "people who strongly disagree with each other should be able to disassociate from each other without being attacked for doing so".
People who agree with Trump either directly condone the deaths of people, or are so ignorant that nothing they could say would be valuable.
Trying to portray it as "opposing political opinions" is a laughable insult to people for whom it's a matter of survival.
Obama extended the drone program considerably because to him it was a convenient way of both “keeping” his promises and maintaining US political and security interests.
Does that means that everyone who voted for him and agreed with most of his policies directly condoned deaths of far more people than what Trump’s policies at least currently may have contributed too?
Every US president and a few other world leaders would end up killing people through both direct and indirect actions.
But in all honesty this isn’t what this discussion is about. “Trump killing people” is effectively the new Poe’s law, it’s a statement that doesn’t have any meaningful substance behind it and it’s only goal is to end the discussion.
No.
Quantitative analysis matters.
Also, as to your last sentence: "same goes for *" doesn't have any meaningful substance behind it and its only goal is to drag the discussion out so far as to exhaust the other side into giving up.
How many people do you think have died due to Trumps policies so far, out of those how many of them are Americans?
Even more directly, Trump is in the process of gutting our healthcare, education, and taxes (read: infrastructure). If he had a few more votes in the Senate, they would have already undermined/removed even more of our social safety net. Millions of people will have significantly worse quality of life and for many of them it will mean the difference between life and death. Their medicines will get too expensive...they won't be able to afford to see a doctor in some cases...or get surgery or chemo in many more.
To say that Trump's policies aren't killing people (and especially Americans) is to ignore anything but soldiers from the count. Obama largely inherited Bush Jr's wars (and Bush Jr. was largely continuing Bush Sr's wars) so you're welcome to blame him for the deaths there but he probably had fewer options than you imply. Not to say he did nothing wrong, but Trump is literally threatening to nuke North Korea which is orders of magnitude different from how Obama acted even once in eight years.
I want to know who are these people.
Don’t get me wrong I agree with you on most things, that said I don’t actually see the US being much worse on climate change than under previous administrations they are just louder and more obnoxious about it (which ironically might actually push things for the better).
My problem is that I’ve seen too many people who claim trump is literally killing people and they don’t mean people in Bangladesh that might die to future floods due to climate change.
They usually would say “Trump is killing a minority/political_group_x” and those statements are pretty darn baseless, actually I take that back, he's definitely killing the republican party and also the center democrats.
And the post previous is right. Climate change is the big one. It affects the entire planet.
However the, for a better word, desocialization of the USA is also a big factor both inside the country, and outside of it due to people who associate with or are relatives of americans being affected, or resources that would be used to help improve situations in other countries being tied up with emergencies in-country that would otherwise be handled by funds that are now going to tax breaks.
Then there's also the situation in Yemen which the USA is indirectly responsible for. And there's the situation in Puerto Rico, which is nominally american, but i think if a people don't get to vote, they get to be counted as a different country.
The previous administration for better or for worse empowered Iran.
Much of the mess was predicted by quite a few analysts shortly after Obama’s speech to the Arab world in Cairo.
As far as the hurricanes concern; while I don’t think it was handled well, but in actuality I don’t actually see much difference between now and how the US handled natural disasters in the past; the response was pretty much always shitty.
And yes you kinda said now when you said trump is literally killing people and to them “resistance” (to his policies I assume) is a matter of life and death.
no.
Thanks for agreeing with the parts you didn't mention tho.
The ones you mentioned, we can disagree on them, if only because nothing useful is gonna come from further discussion of them here.
I don’t like Trump i personally think he has a mental condition and it scares the shit out of me that he has access to the nuclear launch codes but all you blame him for isn’t his credit.
- He is remotely associated with Trump - He helped take down Gawker - ....something something something...but he backed Trump!
For the Gawker part:
Gawker outed him without his permission.
Outing a gay man is something the tabloids used to do in the darkest time period of the United States. Finding someone was gay and making that known publicly was a tool used by very, very unpleasant people to destroy careers and lives for years.
Given how Liberal the tech industry is, it is genuinely puzzling that people would rise to the defense of "Freedom of the Press" to use someone's sexual identity to try to discredit or embarrass them and destroy their career.
This is not freedom of the press, its bullying. If a media outlet did something to you personally and you had a few million dollars to spare to shut them down, you would do it too. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
So Peter Thiel helped shut down an abusive tabloid that outs gay men against their will and regresses the tech sector back to the 1970's and 80's. That doesn't seem sufficient to warrant the hatred.
Then he was associated with Trump. He dared so say things like: "Our middle class has been gutted by globalization and we are being eaten alive by China."
Bernie Sanders ran on this exact platform. Almost word-for-word, Bernie Sander's political platform economically had many things in common with what Thiel was promoting.
So that leaves one final option: The reason that people hate Thiel is because he made enemies in the Liberal press, they smeared him relentlessly and people internalized this without doing their own independent thinking or research.
I don't like that Y Combinator was expected to "Apologize" for not firing someone for holding political beliefs that align them with 42% of the United States population. I feel the tech industry is now a worse, less free place when demonization of this type has become so endemic.
I don't think his association with Trump deserves him anything beyond disapproval from someone who also disapproves of Trump, definitely not hatred. And I've almost never seen any hate-filled comments directed towards him on HN that weren't downvoted.
But to suggest that he is only "remotely" associated with Trump seems like a blatant misrepresentation of his activities during and after the election.
I'm of the opinion that university is good for everyone, even people who don't strictly need it for their jobs. Democracy only works if you have an educated public that values critical thinking.
Thiel has openly said that democracy has become incompatible with his notion of freedom (and seems to prefer the latter given the conflict), so its not hard to see why he might not support something essential to the function of democracy.
The sooner we detach a degree from the concept of “being educated,” the better.
College degree != educated
Many educated people have a college degree but they aren’t educated by virtue of that degree. My dad isn’t a high school graduate who was a precision machinist who built high tolerance devices for NASA. He worked with Dr. Smalley at Rice University and built some incredible things — stuff that led to Smalley’s Nobel prize. He’s hardly uneducated and unable to think critically.
Education IS important, but college is just a means, not an end.
It's pretty well understood that both Gates' and Zuckerberg's success is owed in part to their parents' means (pun intended) and what it afforded them early in life, including attendance at elite private schools and living in prosperous, stable communities, and attending, though not graduating from, an elite university.
They are hardly examples of poorer people becoming big successes without college.
What I understood was more like it's a waste of money, considering the outrageous price you pay for it and it's ROI.
Of course university is good for everyone, but if it comes along with a huge debt? He blamed the education system for bubbling up the prices and not providing enough value, to the point alternatives should be considered.
I really liked his point that people should stop believing university is all you need to be successful in life and blindly throw money at them because they have no better idea.
At what cost?
Thiel never says "university is a waste of time", his position is that it's often not a sound investment of time and money, which is uncontroversial, given the number of graduates who incur 6-figure debts and find themselves to be unemployable.
In your judgement, what is the threshold (in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of inescapable debt) at which university ceases to be "good for everybody"?
IIRC, he was paying people to run with their startup idea rather than wait until after they finished college. It was far different than just paying random students to drop out.
> Democracy only works if you have an educated public that values critical thinking.
That doesn't mean that the university is good. Do the universities really teach people to value critical thinking? Or do they teach them to value thinking that supports the currently prevailing viewpoint? Too often, it's the latter.
Note well: I'm not a Thiel fan or supporter. What he did to Gawker was both dirty and hypocritical.
I could see people with an even harsher take on his various super-individualistic projects, though.
Care to elaborate?
Given what I've seen/heard from alumni I (or friends of me) have met, they largely seem to be doing very well. Giving someone a 3-5 year headstart can be a significant boost. The only way I see the fellowship having bigger opportunity cost than university is if you subscribe to the school of thought of making "Harvard connections", which can turn out to be more advantageous.
What he basically did was say, "don't ever print anything negative about a billionaire because they can take down your entire business". So now if a billionaire really does do something newsworthy and negative, places like the New York Times might think twice about publishing that story, for fear of the cost of defending a billionaire's lawsuit.
That's why people dislike him (other than his Trump support, although to be fair I haven't heard anything about him supporting Trump anymore).
No, he didn't. Gawker died on its own merits; in an alternative world where Gawker continued to flaunt the law because someone couldn't afford to fund a lawsuit, I'm OK with this outcome. Not to mention, Gawker did themselves absolutely no favors, from ignoring a federal judge to flippantly answering questions under oath, they garnered no pity from me.
But it's important to remember that the judgement was only the death blow -- defending the lawsuit was what gave them a slow death. Even if Gawker was right and won, they still would have died.
Just-world fallacy. If I had an axe to grind with you and had unlimited funds - how many of your negative interactions with (contractors|coworkers|neighbours|acquaintances) in the past couple of years could be escalated to financial ruin? If you survive the first suit, how many more could you stomach before declaring bankruptcy?
By accident or design, the fact that legal action is expensive acts as a brake on suits without much merit (to a degree).
Hogan got an injunction to take down the sex tape and Gawkers response was an article titled "A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won't."
They sealed their own fates with their muckraking tabloidism.
[1] http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hoga...
If that suit didn't happen, would reddit been as fast to stop the "fappening" exchange on their website?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_phot...
At least if you are a celebrity with deep pockets you have a good chance of getting your leaked photos wiped.
You're out of luck however if you are just an ordinary person, and partner uploaded your pictures to some "amateur" website as "revenge porn".
It was defending the suit, whether right or wrong, that killed them. The judgement was just the death blow.
Would you feel the same way if the suit had been against a more reputable organization like the New York Times?
Number 2, the New York Times would be much wiser in how they interacted with the courts than Gawker was.
Number 3, people do sue the New York Times. The New York Times pays the legal costs, and keeps publishing.
Do you really think that a billionaire can bankrupt the New York Times with a lawsuit? I'm pretty sure they can't...
But that seems to be a common pattern for narcissist writing self-help books: the first conceptual part can be useful, insightful and reasonable; the rest just shows how their general lack of creativity, of knowing how to actually do something, self gratification, and 'the end justifies the means', irresistibly and invariably takes over their mind... sad...
Honestly, it's because he's a jackass. Don't forget his absurdly libertarian stances regarding regulation, to the point where he funded studies that completely ignored the ethics/regulations around human medical testing. He's also espoused the views that women being allowed to vote is a bad thing, and that people like him should just run the place as a cabal.
"So that leaves one final option: The reason that people hate Thiel is because he made enemies in the Liberal press, they smeared him relentlessly and people internalized this without doing their own independent thinking or research."
No. Assuming that people don't agree with what you think simply because they haven't "done the research" is extremely uncivil. I have done the research, and I think he's a jackass.
"I feel the tech industry is now a worse, less free place when demonization of this type has become so endemic."
The only way you could think that is if you don't feel the rest of us have the right to express our opinions.
His support for Trump fits into that, though, because it's seen as part and parcel of Thiel's neoreactionary politics.
>why Peter Thiel so so hated.
he just receives back what he gives. I mean there is huge difference between being disappointed/critical/etc. (i'm not a big fan of humanity myself) which is necessary for the progress and being hellbent on promulgating hate for and destroying, just for the sake of personal comfort, those few good things we, humans, have been able to achieve so far.
Libertarian, on the Committee for Protection of Journalists, but hey I don't like what you said about me. I'm going to lie in wait for 8-9 years and then secretly fund a lawsuit against you with a possibly winnable case. (PS: I don't want to see a Hulk Hogan sextape anymore than Hulk Hogan wanted it released)
Gay, but will willingly support candidates who are against gay people: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump. Whomever will push his agenda.
Also, Thiel didn't hide that he was gay, he was only "in the closet" when it affected him financially. Despite what you wrote, the tech industry is not very liberal. SF is liberal, and a lot of tech companies are in SF but a lot of VC money is not in SF, and most VCs I don't think most people would consider very liberal.
And his hedge was Trump wasn't as bad as he was going to be during the campaign, that it was all theater. But he's rich so none of that matters to him if he's wrong. Worst case scenario is he flies to New Zealand to survive any fallout.
Never backed down that claim.
Here is the pamphlet, from 2009: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
Quote: "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."
If that is ok for you - ok.
Personally, I find this a very immature and troubling world view. Should tell the CEO of StitchFix that she is preventing capitalism with her IPO.
Things like these rot our society to the core by creating class and race divisions. I am very proud of YC for having distanced itself from Thiel, I just wish they were more vocal about it and that they'd done it earlier.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Support_for_politi...
So I went back to the pamphlet and looked if it defined the term only to find that the above quote is the first time he uses "capitalist democracy". The only thing that then make sense is to look above in the text to see what if anything related to either capitalist or democracy. However the only thing he say is that "capitalism simply is not that popular", and "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible".
So I can only really make a blind guess what he is trying to say. In 1920 9% of women were working, while about 90-95% of men were working. It might be this difference that the pamphlet is referring to, but if so, it is also missing the historical context of that date. World War 1 ended in 1918, and during that year the US congress had planned to issue a female war draft because they ran out of men to fuel the war machine and the voluntary female work places did not attract enough women. Naturally you can't force people into the military without rightfully open up the issue of voting rights. The draft, and associated discussion regarding voting was more or less decided, but then the war ended. The female draft became first delayed and then scrapped. The question of voting as we all know did however get voted in.
It is in the context of those first few years after world war 1 that the pamphlet bring up that quote. It seems to have no insight to 1920 economical environment, and even less so with the economy of 2009, that its hard to figure out what the intended meaning is supposed to be. Maybe the whole pamphlet was written to say that women should not vote because 1920s enjoyed political optimism?, but that too would also just be an other guess to what would be a very odd thing to write.
As you outline, he is thoroughly confused.
He proposes evasive techniques for libertarians like him, like seasteading, to escape and build the perfect society - I guess with no voting rights for anyone but cool dudes like him.
I took your comment as genuine, not some bullshit attempt to deflect through focus on some minute detail. Hope I am not wrong.
Yeah, who cares about pesky details, am I right?
I think people are upset because they assume that it's implied in Thiel's statement that he believes women shouldn't have received the right to vote. But it's important to note that he has never advocated for that. Not in this quote, anyways. He was merely pointing out a few shifts in the past century that have made it extremely hard for libertarians to win elections.
He proposes the creation of a new society, on an oilrig or on Mars, than can be ideal. Thereby outlining there would be no voting rights for women there.
And by the way, if you accept universal suffrage as hindering your cause, mayheps you take a good look in the mirror.
And how would we distinguish the truth from the fiction, given the ease with which we fall into us-vs-them thinking, the halo effect, and boolean-valued morality, or treat arguments are soldiers for Us in an eternal struggle against Them?
It's not complicated!
Its part of why he wants to be so friendly with Trump. Many more billion$$$$ of lucrative no-bid government contracts for Palantir and Thiel personally.
Here is an article from The Intercept that adds more detail: https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palanti...
Its titled "HOW PETER THIEL’S PALANTIR HELPED THE NSA SPY ON THE WHOLE WORLD". One excerpt:
In the demo, Palantir engineers showed how their software could be used to identify Wikipedia users who belonged to a fictional radical religious sect and graph their social relationships. In Palantir’s pitch, its approach to the VAST Challenge involved using software to enable “many analysts working together [to] truly leverage their collective mind.” The fake scenario’s target, a cartoonishly sinister religious sect called “the Paraiso Movement,” was suspected of a terrorist bombing, but the unmentioned and obvious subtext of the experiment was the fact that such techniques could be applied to de-anonymize and track members of any political or ideological group. Among a litany of other conclusions, Palantir determined the group was prone to violence because its “Manifesto’s intellectual influences include ‘Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky, [and] Cuban revolutionary Jose Martí,’ a list of military commanders and revolutionaries with a history of violent actions.”
It's really unfortunate that politics has turned into some kind of tribal warfare and polarized the USA to this degree. From the perspective of an outsider it seems like there either side is somehow morally superior to the other. Of late I personally tend to hear things like "taxation is theft" and "property is for fascists" on a disturbingly regular basis from voices that seem to grow louder as time goes by. Where did all the moderates go?
"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 seems pro democracy but then seems to think that some people's voting patterns threaten it.
He clarified the statement with:
"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"
So he doesn't like voting at all? Isn't that a pillar of democracy? Strange and I am libertarian leaning...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-donates-don...
(The implicit assumption here is that these particular voting groups are statistically more in favor of a welfare based system than a merit based one.)
Therefore, if one were to believe that the Orcish way of life equals "making things better", and one is living in a democratic system where the Elves are allowed to vote, then I would "have little hope that voting will make things better", since voting would lead us away from an Orcish way of life, which I assume to be superior.
He loves voting
He thinks taking away voting rights is absurd
He has little hope that voting is going to make things better, given the outcome of those votes.
The opinion here is "capitalism good, libertarianism good, democracy good, XYZ groups tend to vote against my political philosophy". The rest is facts.
Given that the democracy votes the way it does, and is heavily affected by the votes of XYZ groups given their sizes, factually, voting will not make things opinionatedly better, as an outcome.
Isn’t your percentage of those who bothered to vote?
40-50% (everywhere quotes different numbers) of eligible voters didn’t vote in 2016
That means they at least cut some ties.
It may have been politically motivated, and it may not have been. I'm also not aware how much Thiel was involved vs. other partners. Additional insight into much of this could shed good light to those that appreciate much of what YC has done and aims to continue to do.
Some response from YC would be a big win, but also just may not be an option.
If YC ended its relationship with Peter because of his political affiliations, I'd find that extremely unfortunate. Any institution which closes itself off to outside information, challenging viewpoints and diversity of thought risks becoming an ideological echo chamber and ultimately weakening itself in the long run.
Do you make sure to attend flat-earth meetings?
This is awesome. I had no idea this had been said. I have a lot of respect for anyone bringing that sentiment.
So I can't say this is surprising but I find it all extremely confusing.
EDIT: Mostly rumors I hear from happy hours with some politicos in DC. Sorry, its just meat space rumors.
However, if it were true, it matches so perfectly the article he wrote for WSJ a few years ago. It was literally titled "Competition is for losers". [1]
I still do not think that he basically wants to bully all the competition away so he can make more money and become more powerful. And I will not even go into how likely it is that could actually succeed with such a move, if he did.
But still - if the rumors should turn out to be true, we cannot say that nobody could have seen that coming, in fact he told us himself what he was going to do. If.
And at that point truth has become indeed stranger than fiction.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...
To them "all regulations == bad," lacking nuance and honest reality in preference to utopian illusions that align with the interests of unlimited greed.
And why is it a problem for him to concentrate power so long as the power transfer is consensual? or democratic?
“But it’s not the first time Thiel has handed cash to an AG who went after Google over monopoly concerns.
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Nov. 13 that his office was investigating Google to see if the Mountain View tech giant had violated the state’s antitrust and consumer-protection laws. The Missouri attorney general said he had issued an investigative subpoena to Google. He’s looking at the firm’s handling of users’ personal data, along with claims that it misappropriated content from rivals and pushed down competitors’ websites in search results.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/15/is-billionaire-vc-pete...
The program he was involved in got terminated
I appreciate that trivialising the issues to score cheap slippery slope points is de rigueur these days but you must surely see the yawning dichotomy between "people who don't like to eat what you like" and "people who believe other people are lesser beings less deserving of rights, money, health, protections"