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Comment by clairity | Hacker News Reader

and that's why i commented. thiel is an idle opportunist, not an innovator or thought leader, and should be disregarded in such confines.

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Thiel didn't claim to have invented this strategy. The reason why people associate him with monopolies is because he claimed that they're better for the consumers. And he wasn't the first to make that argument, either - it's straight from Bork's "The Antitrust Paradox" - Thiel just happened to be the most prominent "big tech" voice who openly embraced this notion.

he was one of the few because the idea that monopolies were good for consumers is about a 5th grader's level of thinking. in a perfect world where monopolies serve a single, narrow segment, don't overreach into adjacent markets or sociopolitics, and there's no general uncertainty or strife, you might argue they'd be a more efficient than multiple market participants, but we live in a dynamic and ever-changing world where that kind of thinking is laughably simplistic. monopolists can't resist distorting markets for their own benefit.

I'm not suggesting that he was right; quite the opposite, I blame the man for the sorry state of affairs today. But this idea was not restricted to "a few" - Bork's book was popular in circles around Reagan, and from there it became a part of modern Republican economic orthodoxy. What was unusual was a businessman, and in the industry that had already seen issues with monopolies at that, saying it openly.

i mean, the era of reagan was also the era of trickle down economics. it was all sorts of stupid--full of greedy, motivated reasoning, not reasonable, rational, or coherent thought.

as an independent, party affliation is a sure sign of vacuous thinking to me, where the cost of membership is leaving your brain at the door (and that's what thiel does btw). democrats are currently making this mistake with anti-federalism, trying to push through national laws that are squarely in the province of state control. this is expedient in the short run for their political careers but damaging to the foundations of the nation in the long run, as consolidation of power nationally is the quintessential threat to our democratic republic. it reeks of hypocrisy.

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