(Late) Monday Smackdown: No, Peter Thiel, American Politics Was Not on the Right Track Before the Granting of the Vote to Women and "Welfare Beneficiaries"
Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Gehenna: Peter Thiel is speaking at the Republican National Convention. That's a very strange thing to do for somebody who once said:
In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies. I believe that politics is way too intense... gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision.... I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian...
Peter Thiel has many screws loose. He says that the last time you could be optimistic about American politics and regard it as healthy was 1920--before the granting of the vote to women and "welfare beneficiaries" put American politics permanently on the wrong track:
(2009): The Education of a Libertarian: "Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane...
...The trend has been going the wrong way for a long time.... 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. In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics.... The great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms--from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’...
Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country.... (1) Cyberspace.... PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution--the end of monetary sovereignty.... By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order.... (2) Outer space.... We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but... rhe libertarian future of classic science fiction, à la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century. (3) Seasteading. Between cyberspace and outer space lies the possibility of settling the oceans.... I eagerly support this initiative.... The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism...
