Why Peter Thiel doesn't like politics

Who's the world's most intriguing billionaire? My answer: Peter Thiel. In a 2009 essay The Education Of A Libertarian, Thiel wrote about politics, technology, and the clash between them. Key insights👇👇👇

In university, Thiel started a dissident newspaper to pushback against political orthodoxies. Despite some victories, "it felt like trench warfare on the Western Front in World War I." There was a lot of carnage and very little movement forward.

Thiel doesn't like the effort to reward ratio of politics. A lot of politics feels circular and polarizing to him: "the world is us versus them; good people versus the other." He writes: "the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms."

The "unthinking demos" hijacks free nations. "Capitalist democracy" is an oxymoron. The number of "welfare beneficiaries" keep growing - they have a vested interest in anti-libertarian policies such as low taxes. Peter Thiel has "little hope that voting" will improve things.

Politics is anti-libertarian as it is "about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent." Technology, however, can be pro-libertarian. Technology can open up new spaces - Thiel gives 3 examples - that can become playgrounds for libertarian experiments👇👇👇

The Internet. The internet has given people alternative spaces where they can talk, learn, earn, and more. But the core problem with cyberspace is "these new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more imaginary than real."

Outer space. What better place than space for genuine wild west experiments? Away from the tyrants, bureaucracies, and political regimes of Earth - but we must be "realistic about the time horizons." Space remains distant, expensive, and deadly.

Seasteading. Thiel writes, "Between cyberspace and outer space lies the possibility of settling the oceans." Creating a human colony on an ocean is harder than creating an app but "much more realistic than space travel." The oceans may provide the escape libertarians seek.

Thiel writes we should "resist the temptation of technological utopianism." There's no guarantee the world will keep improving. It might regress - ours is a complex civilization, and many such civilizations have collapsed in history.

Bottom line. Thiel believes genuine human freedom is a "precondition for the highest good." Politics systematically corrodes freedom, but technology might provide an escape. There is nothing fated about the future - individual decisions will determine which way the coin falls.