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Comment by shadowtree | Hacker News Reader

He also wrote a libertarian pamphlet where he called women's right to vote a blocker of a truly capitalist democracy.

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.

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I'm not sure why that quote that people keep bringing up is so outrageous to people. In my opinion, it's a pretty factual analysis of the political climate; in which the voter demographics have shifted in a way which makes it tough for libertarians to win elections. Welfare recipients, for obvious reasons, are anti-libertarian. Women, supposedly, are also less libertarian than men? I don't know if that's true; but regardless, what's wrong with stating that fact.

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.

You should read the whole text then.

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.

Males receive public assistance in roughly equal proportion to women. It's not a fact if you don't know that it's true and don't have any evidence.

He also funded [1] videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlWKm01cauc

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...

I always try to find the context when people are outraged by a quote, so I started by trying to figure out what the definition is of the quoted "capitalist democracy". Wikipedia gave "page does not exist", so I went to google. Google gave me a bunch of news article about Peter Thiel pamphlet. The term don't seems to exist outside it.

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.

No one is arguing that Thiel's pamphlet is fully grounded in sound reasoning, facts, etc.

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.

> 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?

Intention behind the comment is as stated that I want to try understand the context and intended message behind a quote. Normally this allow for a more nuanced view, and also detect when context dictate the meaning of a quote. By documenting and writing about it maybe someone can point to something I missed, but also give insight to people who don't want to investigate the text themselves.

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