I think the interesting part would be to see if his cabinet is more pluralistic and diverse in composition than that of the other candidates --who by and large pick apparatchiks. Remains to be seen, but if he does, I hope it would pressure other candidates to be more politically inclusive.
Everyone that knows about Peter Thiel knows he's an outspoken libertarian, critic of the GOP and DNC, and that's he's homosexual. The surprise isn't that he's not a Democrat (everyone knew that) it's that Trump isn't exactly the libertarian on...any issue (at least not openly.) There is the assumption that Trump will be a major disruption to the establishment, that I have seen some libertarians and liberals both embrace.
I have a hard time believing Thiel actually embraces Trump, and it's more that he was going to be a delegate and will now be legally bound to cast his first ballot for Trump. I am frankly a fan of Thiel, a lot of people here at HN love Musk but I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen; and Thiel is not.
People dislike that he's benefiting a lot, directly and indirectly, from government subsidies. I usually point out that oil&gas get a tremendously larger amount of subsidies, but some people counter that by saying Tesla is different because it wouldn't be feasible without the subsidies. I am not sure I see the logic in that, if anything it seems like an argument for it to have subsidies because it's creating value that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
> I usually point out that oil&gas get a tremendously larger amount of subsidie
Oil and Gas do not get direct subsidies, they get to write off capital expenses. That's completely different.
You can downvote me all you want, but writing off capital expenses is available to every business and this is always included in the "oil and gas subsidies" number people tout, because it fits an agenda of corporate welfare for everyone else. Corporate welfare should be abolished. The Oil & Gas sector did get a bailout in the early 90s, and it shouldn't have. The auto industry also shouldn't have been reaped rewards from government bailouts.
Not just oil and gas, the auto industry and aerospace (i.e. his direct competitors) have received tons of subsidies and bailouts over the years. To expect Musk to get by without any subsidies would be to hold him to a higher standard than anyone else in his industry.
All of the companies he's involved in receive government dollars, directly or indirectly through subsidies. Tesla, Space X, and SolarCity. That's 3 out of 3. Hence the moniker.
To be fair, all of those industries have had and will continue to have heavy government involvement. He didn't create the problem, although he seems to be attracted to industries which have those sorts of problems.
Not a fan nor particularly informed on Thiel. But my brief impression is that he (also) considers himself some kind of realist. Trump is less conservative on many issues and presumably will push the republicans in that direction.
While I (unsurprisingly as a European) am far to the left in terms of what the government should do, I hate people who take advantage. But Musk mostly just had good timing (when both the space and car industry in the US was loosing momentum) and as long as you don't pretend he did it all by himself I don't see a problem with it. On the other hand you could claim that Palantir is part the military industrial complex.
Or that supposedly intelligent people are able to justify supporting Trump.
I think this goes beyond mere party politics - the man is incompetent and utterly unqualified for the job. I've heard numerous arguments (including in this thread) about Trump being a "wrecking ball" to the political establishment and I think it's telling about the audience of HN. If you were living on the poverty line, depend on government programs or, hell, are Muslim, you might not want to play so fast and loose with the current system. We're lucky that we can afford to risk such an idea.
Surprisingly I can see people here being anti-establishment more than Democrat or Republican.
Both Trump and Sanders are presenting themselves as such.
I have heard more than one time, if Sanders doesn't win, people claim would switch to vote for Trump. Sounds crazy right, well not so crazy if you partition candidates by "entrenched in political establishment" vs "anti-establishment".
As much as Republicans hate Trump. He is probably their best chance at survival. And this is coming from talking to a "rich old white guy" -- the stereotypical Republican. His comment was that based on current trajectory, Republican party will fizzle away.
Regardless of whether the democratic nominee is Sanders or Clinton, _MANY_ republicans will hold their nose and vote democrat if the republican choice is Trump.
You can't say the same for Sanders supporters. Traditional liberals aren't going to vote Trump under any circumstances.
While I can't vote for Trump, I definitely understand the sentiment. With the exception of a few large mostly coastal cities, the entire country has been in a low grade depression since 2001. Parts of the American interior are nearing collapse of civilization levels of decline.
This is really really dangerous. It's the classic precondition of totalitarianism. Existing politicians in both parties are doing nothing about it. Being occupants of coastal cities (DC) and largely upper class, many don't even seem to realize there's a problem.
Do you have any data to back up your claims that there is an economic dichotomy between central America and the coasts? I certainly don't see it in Kansas City. I would agree that there is a widening chasm between rural America and urban America, but that doesn't encompass the entirety of the country not on a coast.
I spend my time between Kansas City, Dallas and Austin and at least in those interior parts the world looks amazing and growing well. New restaurants, excellent hospitals and community/four-year colleges, medium to high employment...
> I have heard more than one time, if Sanders doesn't win, people claim would switch to vote for Trump.
Note that lots of PUMAs -- from polling data, more than this is true of Sanders supporters in this election -- said that they would do that if Obama won the nomination in 2008 rather than Clinton. General election polling data found that that group had evaporated by then.
What people say in anger during the primary campaign and what they do in the fall often aren't the same.
The title isn't wrong. The original article uses 'PayPal co-founder' and HN guidelines suggest using the original title unless it is misleading (which, in this case, it is not). While Peter Thiel may have name recognition on HN and in Silicon Valley, he is better known as a co-founder of PayPal in political circles and the rest of the US.
I agree the title isn't wrong, but I believe most hacker news readers know who Peter Thiel is. There were many Paypal cofounders, however. A change in the title isn't needed, but would have simplified some things.
Am I missing something here? Being a pledged party delegate is very different from being a true supporter of a candidate. It just means that you intend to cast your delegate vote for a particular candidate. There's essentially no one but Trump left in the Republican Primary, so is it really surprising that Peter Thiel, a Republican, would pledge for him?
Edit: It seems you mean career toxicity. Thiel, being able to write his own ticket, would founders really be unwilling to work with him on the basis of his political positions?
In the heavily democratic areas and in social media savvy demographics supporting Trump can lead to ostracizing, internet mobs and a wide array of other unpleasant consequences.
So Trump support tends to be underwater. People don't like to support him publicly.
I just want to send a wrecking ball to Washington DC - I'm not really picky which wrecking ball it is (Trump or Sanders).
So while I'd prefer Sanders, its clear to me that there are some fundamental problems with our economy - both of the two wrecking ball candidates have touched on something in common, which is average americans have lost in the balance of free trade - and that government is far more accessible to the rich and powerful than it is to the common man.
In the end, we lived thru 8 years of GWB - and very frankly, I have enough faith in our system of government to feel that its self regulating that we could put pretty much anyone in the office of president and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.
Yes, I expect to get downvoted for tacit support of Trump.
If you truly believe that someone who is part of the wealthy elite will ever do anything to reduce significant problems like income inequality, immigration reform, and expansion of the police state, you're insane.
Those voting for him aren't interested in reducing problems or fixing them. They gave up on that a long time ago. They're interested in breaking the system which gave birth to those problems.
Will Trump break that system? Maybe. It's a complex system and if he implements any of his wonderful solutions which he put forward so far, it will break a lot of eggs.
I'm not entirely sure breaking the system will be a net positive ... but I understand why people would want to vote for him. And it's perfectly rational for them to do so, if what they want is to break the system.
I would normally agree, but not in the case of Trump, because more than anything Donald just wants to be worshiped and adored.
A Trump Presidency will be bread and circuses for sure. His ambition is to be a populist tyrant in the mold of Julius Ceasar.
I've been enjoying watching a Randian Superhero in action, a completely self-interested man, a man that never gives anything away for free, a man that sees a pledge as just another opportunity to renegotiate better terms for himself.
He threatens the power of the Senate more than anything, and by Senate I mean the broad based aristocratic ruling class.
His enemies list will be long, and he will retaliate against anyone who so much as dares to dislike him with the full power of the executive branch.
It turns out that a majority of GOP voters never really believed in the Conservative principles their betters told them they cared about, save the resentment against rich liberals and poor minorities scrounging government benefits.
And he is smart. He saw the opening and he went for it. He can echolocate his opponents weakest point, and mercilessly exploit it for his own advantage.
And after he puts anyone in his way down for the count, he becomes gracious the minute they no longer threaten him.
He trains his opponents to be scared to go after him, because he hits back hard.
Trump, a chauvinist if there ever was one, has effectively made today's media cycle all about Bill Clinton's rape allegations and Hillary's "enabling".
A competitor, a dominator, a man without any altruism or thought for collective good, and a genius at manipulating the modern media landscape.
If he had more experience with equities and modern finance, rather than mere real estate deals and debt, I would almost think he could bring about some actual beneficial economic reforms for the middle class.
He would bully his enemies and the enemies of the masses from the bully pulpit like no other, because at his core, he is a brute, a bully.
I would almost want to see him in the presidency just to see what a smart outsider could accomplish in the office if he wasn't such a fascist with a torture fetish.
And in the end I think it will be his overreach that will make him the ultimate embarrassed loser this fall.
Even when he had the nomination wrapped up through his polarizing tactics to boost his resentful thug vote, he couldn't help himself with more statements sure to alienate female voters.
Even this fervent Sanders supporter has to concede that Trump is just a smarter candidate. Trump adapts, his reality and truth is flexible and situational.
You have a good finger on what makes Trump successful, but why do you think Trump cares about the masses's enemies, after you so thoroughly explained how well he fights only for himself?
It's not your tacit support of Trump that earned my downvote, it's that your self-described motivation ("send a wrecking ball") will make the problem you identified ("fundamental problems with our economy") worse, not better.
This sort revolutionary fervor is generally counterproductive, and is a large part of why our national politics has become to toxic.
> This sort revolutionary fervor is generally counterproductive
Do you have evidence for this claim? because to my mind, the exact opposite is true.
I completely agree with OP. I'd prefer Bernie but would take Trump. Some other users were quite rude saying you have to be an idiot to think a rich person would help poor people. I think that's a pretty silly statement, take Bill Gates for instance.
IMHO, members of HN are the vocal minority in their outright hatred for Trump. He will most certainly win the nomination if he goes against Hillary.
That's fascinating when coupled with the black swan of Trump and the near black swan of Sanders. Note the fact that dislike for elected candidates has been rising for quite some time. The general theme is that Americans are done with the status quo.
Independent voters are a very different thing than moderates, though; and, various studies have shown that they are as consistent in their major party voting behavior as major party voters. Often, rather than moderates, they are either people that, in addition to their preferences on the axis dividing the major parties, have strong preferences that don't fall on that axis and thus feel insufficiently represented by the nearest major party, or people who have positions that fall on roughly the same axis that divides the major parties, but are at a more extreme position on that axis than the nearer major party.
Elections are one more turnout among the people usually inclined to vote for your party (whether members of independents) than by "swinging" votes that might go either way.
Right now the two major parties cannot agree even on the causes of the problems (or on some level even that there is a problem) - why would I expect politics as usual to produce different results?
It's funny, because if this were a large software project that was going awry for whatever reason, I don't think anyone here would suggest, "hey, this isn't going well, bring in that blowhard from marketing, at least that'll break it spectacularly!"
Not sure why it's different when it's your government we're talking about.
That would be exactly what people would suggest, because they know from experience the "blowhard from marketing" will screw things up so badly, that the only viable option will be to start over with a clean slate. And that's exactly what's needed for a "large software project that was going awry" but it's always easier to say patch this here, tweak it there. Only when you can no longer patch and tweak yourself to anything functional will people actually clamor for a clean break.
That's why they vote for Trump. Nobody expects him to fix anything. They expect a clean slate at some point. Whether it's during his tenure or after, it's irrelevant. He's the catalyst.
It won't be a clean slate. It will be a very dirty slate, with the detritus of millions of ruined lives spattered around it.
A lot of what people hated about GWB was how he tried to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into a clean slate, and made a huge mess. Why would you want to do the same to USA (except out of some sense of radical fairness...)
If you want to build a new house, you have to tear down the old one first. That's what people use wrecking balls for. I suppose the demolition in and of itself is not a positive. It is destruction, after all. But if your desire is to build a new house, you can't skip that step.
I don't think anybody wants Trump building that new house... but I don't think it matters who the wrecking ball is? Hence the original sentiment of the OP that it doesn't matter if it's Trump or Bernie, same result.
>I don't think anybody wants Trump building that new house...
...other than anyone who votes for Trump, which leads me to suspect they haven't thought it through beyond setting him loose and watching him burn down the White House. The repercussions of a bad presidency can last for decades, and are felt across the globe. I shudder to think about a purposely destructive presidency.
They can't agree on anything because the national Republicans have been captured by the tea party, who has in turn now been captured by the Trumpists. Both events were based on newcomers to the political process claiming that the system is broken beyond repair, and that they were the needed "Wrecking Ball".
The tea party managed to scuttle Obama's "Grand Bargain" with Boehner, which consisted of TEN TRILLION DOLLARS of spending cuts in return for one trillion in new revenue (taxes). In my mind, this is when the national republicans ceased to be a rational force, in others' minds it could be the blowup over our debt ceiling or the government shutdowns, but regardless most rational observers with an understanding of the political process would agree that the right has lost its mind because of capture by revolutionaries. A Trump administration would bring far worse (just this week he suggested that he'd be open to partial default on US government debt). It's basically a self-reinforcing cycle of crazy where bad outcomes from bad decisions cause irrational actors to make worse decisions in response.
So the reason the two parties can't agree on anything is that there's really only one party, and that's the Democrats. This is problematic, because our political system is based on having two parties, either of which could be trusted to provide reasonably responsible governance.
The United States is, despite the apocalyptic rhetoric, a strong nation with a relatively stable government and an economy that is literally the envy of the world. We certainly do have problems, and that is what "politics as usual" is designed to fix. So I urge you to play the game rather than try to kick over the table.
The democrats want to soak the rich (I agree that, we probably should pay more anyhow), create a comprehensive social safety net, broadly have a larger role for government in individuals lives.
The republicans seem very concerned with collective security, 'judicial overreach' (any policy they don't like from a judge), and smaller government - this mostly seems to manifest itself as a firm 'no' to any proposed solution from the democrats.
Neither of them (at least at a national level) is focusing on what I see as the elephants in the room:
1. Broad swaths of the country that were prosperous 20 years ago are now not - and enormous areas that were busy 40 years ago are now dead wastelands. If you go out to a rural area, you'll see this, go on a road trip, go thru small towns, the only new buildings (built after ~1974 or so) are usually government or at funded by outside capital, (like McDonalds, or a Wal*Mart) sure, the college towns and county seats are often somewhat prosperous, but not like they were even in the 80's. If you look in third and fourth tier cities, you see similar trends.
2. In either place, rural or urban, its also very very hard for the young to find a good job, with or without a college degree - this has a multitude of causes - from we're teaching our youth the wrong things, to companies expecting inexperienced workers to come magically all trained up for the job - this topic alone is a couple thousand words - just suffice it to say, something is wrong.
Neither party is really speaking to this, they broadly don't see outside the beltway - I blame free trade, one size fits all regulation, and excessive defense spending (instead of say, infrastructure) for this malaise - I believe very strongly unless we fix these problems, they will come to breach the very foundations of our republic and we may end up with a much worse system than we have now.
This is how it works: take a platform based on issues and policy like the one you just sketched out, get the politicians who support it elected, and then let them horse trade to actualize some portion of your platform. Gain credibility, rinse, wash, repeat.
I know I have the makings of a political platform. I also have experience as a community organizer (event planning largely) - but I dont think I'm the man to lead a major political movement - its not impossible, but I dont know if its what I want.
> I have enough faith in our system of government
> to feel that its self regulating that we could
> put pretty much anyone in the office of president
> and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong other than....
Nomination of supreme court justices that take back decades of progress.
Starting new and unnecessary wars, making the geopolitical situation more dangerous and unstable : George W started 2 of them, didn't finish, and we're still dealing with the mess.
Have a leader who is a laughing stock, much like Berlusconi was in Italy.
I think the strong principle of the court to hold to stare decisis precludes a dramatic shift one way or another no matter which ideology is nominated to the court. I personally would rather see an ideological centrist appointed.
Peoples' fear is that there is no way to tell what he would do since he contradicts himself every time he talks.. One minute he talks about bringing all the troops back to the US and letting the middle east work itself out, the next he's threatening to shoot down Russian war planes if they come near US assets or send 30,000 troops into Syria to fight ISIS. He's also come out in favor of stronger forms of torture than waterboarding and won't rule out nuking Syria..
In actuality I don't see much difference between his stance and Sanders's. They both want to retrench. As for going after Isis and or Russia, it seems that would be congruent with "defending the homeland" which isn't contradictory with respect to disengaging from foreign wars.
In other words keep the homeland safe without initiating unprovoked wars and demand allies pay their fair share of expenditures for keeping _their_ territorial integrity. So western Europe, Japan, S Korea, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, etc.
I'm not a Sanders supporter but I don't remember the good Senator promising to expand torture, threatening to kill innocent family members of terrorists, or threatening to nuke Syria -- all of which would be war crimes. If you don't think there's room between Trump and Sanders on foreign policy, you aren't paying attention.
You're right he does not say that. But realistically if he saw it fit to go to war (and unless he's a pacifist) any involvement in war would involve the above, whether intentionally or not. You cannot honestly go into a war and think you can avoid that.
Maybe Trump really is looking forward to a conflict to commit such things, or he's realistic in that if his admin did get onto one, he's willing to admit the consequences.
The one I'd fear would be Cruz who is/was or wanted to sound like a warmonger.
One candidate or another is going to eke out a win requiring superdelegates to put them over the top, in the most divisive nominating race the party has seen since 1968.
A very significant fraction of Democrats aren't "fine" with the candidate you are referring to, even to the extent of seeing that candidate as a tolerable choice.
Hillary's more consistent in her hawkishness than Trump, who talks even more extreme hawkishness on extreme non-intervention at alternating moments (and misrepresents his past support of failed adventures in hawkishness.)
Which would be more hawkish in practice is hard to guess.
A wrecking ball must be larger than the structure it demolishes. Throwing Trump or Sanders at DC is like throwing a pebble at the Burj Khalifa. DC changes politicians more than politicians change DC.
I as much want to send a message to the leadership of the two major parties as I want to send a wrecking ball to DC. Things are broken and have got to change.
How many politicians run and win on that line? Maybe if you want actual change, you should elect candidates who have something more substantive to offer than being disgruntled and politically incorrect. Politics seems to be the only profession where having qualifications for the job disqualifies you for the job.
I know it's impossible for the Republican party to do that now, because they've hitched their wagon to a narcissistic cryptofascist orangutan, but maybe next time.
It's as much about breaking the power structures of the existing political parties as it is about changing government, both have to happen to get real change thru - and I'm not too picky on the order.
Trump's entire campaign until now has been for the party's nomination, and the approval of the power structure of an existing political party. What leads you to believe he's actually interested in breaking down the power structures he wants to control?
He won't even back down when reality hits him smack in the face. He is the king of his own world and does not even acknowledge the existence of a world outside his own.
Ask Hindenburg how well it works out to hand over power to authoritarian narcissists in the hopes that governance will somehow tame them.
Trump is actually a great candidate for the neoreactionaries: an apolitical strongman with barely veiled ambitions for unchallenged sovereignty. I'm surprised Mencius Moldbug isn't on the delegate slate as well.
FWIW, I've had some success persuading conventional Republicans to write in Hillary Clinton as a protest candidate in the upcoming California primary.
I thought he was a Libertarian, actually. I'm pretty surprised - I would have thought the proto-fascism of Trump would be poison for that crowd. Not that they'd be big Hillary fans either, but stuff like "hey, let's not pay our debts" or building walls or targeting a particular religion... that's not small government stuff.
Thiel is a libertarian. If you're up for reading... http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-i-a... dives into some differences. The key one IMO being that no neoreactionary should actually vote. Trump is of course the obvious best candidate from one branch of the NRx perspective, but him taking office doesn't fundamentally change things. Another branch of NRx could argue Hillary is the "best", too, but the reasoning may be surprising.
The underlying reason for which I think Thiel might support Trump is that Trump is ultimately a businessman, like Thiel, and one in the messy business of real estate development at that. (For a fun fairly anti-Trump piece that could also read as support: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/19/book-review-the-art-of-...) A common NRx thread is that pretty much any chief executive (which includes military generals) would do a better job at being President (and even better King) than the more traditional list of possibilities like lawyers and professors.
> A common NRx thread is that pretty much any chief executive (which includes military generals) would do a better job at being President (and even better King) than the more traditional list of possibilities like lawyers and professors.
Which is immediately disproven by the disastrous presidency of our first "MBA President" GWB. (See the fellating articles before people realized how awful he would be at managing the country[1])
not pro or anti NRx ideas, but GWB is better described as a favored son of a political aristocracy -- his MBA and CEO are more a form of inherited wealth than business success of someone like Morgan or Thiel (or even Gates, who certainly to a leg up, but was also a successful businessperson)
Yeah, there are many qualifications one could make to the "give us a CEO-King, doesn't really matter which CEO". For instance one might disqualify anyone from Harvard, or only count CEOs that managed large companies and didn't drive them into the ground, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_life_of_George_W.... is an interesting wiki page though.
"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."
Does Thiel support Trump or is he just legally or contractually bound to cast a vote for him because he's a Republican party delegate? I smell click bait.
Of course the real question is why Thiel would be a Republican delegate at all. Does he not have better things to do than carry water for a bunch of dimwits and apparatchiks?
This is surprising mostly because Thiel is a libertarian. Trump has staked out policy positions that provoke a much stronger central government.
To be specific.
- Increased federal regulation. Especially especially around restrictions of foreign trade. China/ Korea etc.
-Speech restrictions. Trump has advocated new laws against the press and others than disparage him (i.e. those small hands jokes for example or like Bill Maher- called him son of a chimp and was sued- trump lost and wants to change the laws so he'd win)
-Intervention in leading American business sourcing and investment decisions. Carrier AC is an example and of course Apple.
- Pro Gun control. This is in direct contrast to libertarian views. They dont want any rules from the government on gun control.
Now one could argue that Trump has a non interventionist military policy which is a traditional libertarian view. However, Bush ran on that platform in 2000 but becasue he was so inexperienced he ended up started several large wars including Iraq which was a dramatic failure. Trump is less experienced than Bush was so it's possible he is at a high risk of entering new wars as well.
There is zero about trump that has anything to do with being a libertarian. That's the puzzling part.
My best guess is that Thiel secretly supports neoreactionary politics. He's gone on record saying he's opposed to democracy and thinks things started to decline when women got the vote.
Neoreactionaries like the idea of government by CEO.
So Trump's strongman misogynistic views would be a natural fit if Thiel has indeed become more neoreactionary.
The problem is that neoreactionaries are secretive, so Thiel is never going to come out and say he's a neoreactionary.
> This is surprising mostly because Thiel is a libertarian.
Its not that surprising. While there is a lot of genuine libertarianism, there are also plenty of what superficially seem to be libertarians that don't really oppose authoritarian government, they only oppose the way they perceive their present government using authority, and would be quite happy with an authoritarian government that also shared their policy preferences.
Right-libertarians that turn out to really be right-authoritarians that just don't want a government left of their own position to exercise authority are common enough that I'm not surprised when another one pops up.
> This is surprising mostly because Thiel is a libertarian.
Where do you get this characterization from? His own words? Thiel has been arming secretive states with high-tech software for a while now. Thiel's prior actions revealed him to be a statist. Supporting a candidate who wants to build a large border wall and wants to kick people out of the country based on their thoughts (religion, for example) while claiming to be a libertarian is laughable (I hope you are laughing now too).
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[ 40.8 ms ] story [ 270 ms ] threadI have a hard time believing Thiel actually embraces Trump, and it's more that he was going to be a delegate and will now be legally bound to cast his first ballot for Trump. I am frankly a fan of Thiel, a lot of people here at HN love Musk but I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen; and Thiel is not.
Can you elaborate on that?
Oil and Gas do not get direct subsidies, they get to write off capital expenses. That's completely different.
You can downvote me all you want, but writing off capital expenses is available to every business and this is always included in the "oil and gas subsidies" number people tout, because it fits an agenda of corporate welfare for everyone else. Corporate welfare should be abolished. The Oil & Gas sector did get a bailout in the early 90s, and it shouldn't have. The auto industry also shouldn't have been reaped rewards from government bailouts.
To be fair, all of those industries have had and will continue to have heavy government involvement. He didn't create the problem, although he seems to be attracted to industries which have those sorts of problems.
While I (unsurprisingly as a European) am far to the left in terms of what the government should do, I hate people who take advantage. But Musk mostly just had good timing (when both the space and car industry in the US was loosing momentum) and as long as you don't pretend he did it all by himself I don't see a problem with it. On the other hand you could claim that Palantir is part the military industrial complex.
is a deeply offensive term, and even undermining to the point you are trying to make about Musk.
I think this goes beyond mere party politics - the man is incompetent and utterly unqualified for the job. I've heard numerous arguments (including in this thread) about Trump being a "wrecking ball" to the political establishment and I think it's telling about the audience of HN. If you were living on the poverty line, depend on government programs or, hell, are Muslim, you might not want to play so fast and loose with the current system. We're lucky that we can afford to risk such an idea.
Both Trump and Sanders are presenting themselves as such.
I have heard more than one time, if Sanders doesn't win, people claim would switch to vote for Trump. Sounds crazy right, well not so crazy if you partition candidates by "entrenched in political establishment" vs "anti-establishment".
As much as Republicans hate Trump. He is probably their best chance at survival. And this is coming from talking to a "rich old white guy" -- the stereotypical Republican. His comment was that based on current trajectory, Republican party will fizzle away.
You can't say the same for Sanders supporters. Traditional liberals aren't going to vote Trump under any circumstances.
I think we are in black swan territory.
This is really really dangerous. It's the classic precondition of totalitarianism. Existing politicians in both parties are doing nothing about it. Being occupants of coastal cities (DC) and largely upper class, many don't even seem to realize there's a problem.
Note that lots of PUMAs -- from polling data, more than this is true of Sanders supporters in this election -- said that they would do that if Obama won the nomination in 2008 rather than Clinton. General election polling data found that that group had evaporated by then.
What people say in anger during the primary campaign and what they do in the fall often aren't the same.
* co-founder of Palantir * the first major investor in Facebook * running a $2 billion VC fund * an outspoken libertarian * openly gay
I must say that I have no idea what is going on.
Edit: It seems you mean career toxicity. Thiel, being able to write his own ticket, would founders really be unwilling to work with him on the basis of his political positions?
What will happen to Christies career when Trump appoints him AG?
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/christies_trump...
So Trump support tends to be underwater. People don't like to support him publicly.
This is why he's winning. People are fed up with the PC police and their purging of anyone with "toxic" ideas.
So while I'd prefer Sanders, its clear to me that there are some fundamental problems with our economy - both of the two wrecking ball candidates have touched on something in common, which is average americans have lost in the balance of free trade - and that government is far more accessible to the rich and powerful than it is to the common man.
In the end, we lived thru 8 years of GWB - and very frankly, I have enough faith in our system of government to feel that its self regulating that we could put pretty much anyone in the office of president and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.
Yes, I expect to get downvoted for tacit support of Trump.
Those voting for him aren't interested in reducing problems or fixing them. They gave up on that a long time ago. They're interested in breaking the system which gave birth to those problems.
Will Trump break that system? Maybe. It's a complex system and if he implements any of his wonderful solutions which he put forward so far, it will break a lot of eggs.
I'm not entirely sure breaking the system will be a net positive ... but I understand why people would want to vote for him. And it's perfectly rational for them to do so, if what they want is to break the system.
A Trump Presidency will be bread and circuses for sure. His ambition is to be a populist tyrant in the mold of Julius Ceasar.
I've been enjoying watching a Randian Superhero in action, a completely self-interested man, a man that never gives anything away for free, a man that sees a pledge as just another opportunity to renegotiate better terms for himself.
He threatens the power of the Senate more than anything, and by Senate I mean the broad based aristocratic ruling class.
His enemies list will be long, and he will retaliate against anyone who so much as dares to dislike him with the full power of the executive branch.
It turns out that a majority of GOP voters never really believed in the Conservative principles their betters told them they cared about, save the resentment against rich liberals and poor minorities scrounging government benefits.
And he is smart. He saw the opening and he went for it. He can echolocate his opponents weakest point, and mercilessly exploit it for his own advantage.
And after he puts anyone in his way down for the count, he becomes gracious the minute they no longer threaten him.
He trains his opponents to be scared to go after him, because he hits back hard.
Trump, a chauvinist if there ever was one, has effectively made today's media cycle all about Bill Clinton's rape allegations and Hillary's "enabling".
A competitor, a dominator, a man without any altruism or thought for collective good, and a genius at manipulating the modern media landscape.
If he had more experience with equities and modern finance, rather than mere real estate deals and debt, I would almost think he could bring about some actual beneficial economic reforms for the middle class.
He would bully his enemies and the enemies of the masses from the bully pulpit like no other, because at his core, he is a brute, a bully.
I would almost want to see him in the presidency just to see what a smart outsider could accomplish in the office if he wasn't such a fascist with a torture fetish.
And in the end I think it will be his overreach that will make him the ultimate embarrassed loser this fall.
Even when he had the nomination wrapped up through his polarizing tactics to boost his resentful thug vote, he couldn't help himself with more statements sure to alienate female voters.
Even this fervent Sanders supporter has to concede that Trump is just a smarter candidate. Trump adapts, his reality and truth is flexible and situational.
I still hold out hope for a Sanders upset...
> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.
This sort revolutionary fervor is generally counterproductive, and is a large part of why our national politics has become to toxic.
Do you have evidence for this claim? because to my mind, the exact opposite is true.
I completely agree with OP. I'd prefer Bernie but would take Trump. Some other users were quite rude saying you have to be an idiot to think a rich person would help poor people. I think that's a pretty silly statement, take Bill Gates for instance.
IMHO, members of HN are the vocal minority in their outright hatred for Trump. He will most certainly win the nomination if he goes against Hillary.
Trump (followed by Clinton) is the most disliked candidates in (at least modern) US history.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-b...
And yet it's impossible to win a general election without appealing to moderates and independents.
Elections are one more turnout among the people usually inclined to vote for your party (whether members of independents) than by "swinging" votes that might go either way.
Not sure why it's different when it's your government we're talking about.
That's why they vote for Trump. Nobody expects him to fix anything. They expect a clean slate at some point. Whether it's during his tenure or after, it's irrelevant. He's the catalyst.
A lot of what people hated about GWB was how he tried to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into a clean slate, and made a huge mess. Why would you want to do the same to USA (except out of some sense of radical fairness...)
I don't think anybody wants Trump building that new house... but I don't think it matters who the wrecking ball is? Hence the original sentiment of the OP that it doesn't matter if it's Trump or Bernie, same result.
...other than anyone who votes for Trump, which leads me to suspect they haven't thought it through beyond setting him loose and watching him burn down the White House. The repercussions of a bad presidency can last for decades, and are felt across the globe. I shudder to think about a purposely destructive presidency.
The tea party managed to scuttle Obama's "Grand Bargain" with Boehner, which consisted of TEN TRILLION DOLLARS of spending cuts in return for one trillion in new revenue (taxes). In my mind, this is when the national republicans ceased to be a rational force, in others' minds it could be the blowup over our debt ceiling or the government shutdowns, but regardless most rational observers with an understanding of the political process would agree that the right has lost its mind because of capture by revolutionaries. A Trump administration would bring far worse (just this week he suggested that he'd be open to partial default on US government debt). It's basically a self-reinforcing cycle of crazy where bad outcomes from bad decisions cause irrational actors to make worse decisions in response.
So the reason the two parties can't agree on anything is that there's really only one party, and that's the Democrats. This is problematic, because our political system is based on having two parties, either of which could be trusted to provide reasonably responsible governance.
The United States is, despite the apocalyptic rhetoric, a strong nation with a relatively stable government and an economy that is literally the envy of the world. We certainly do have problems, and that is what "politics as usual" is designed to fix. So I urge you to play the game rather than try to kick over the table.
The democrats want to soak the rich (I agree that, we probably should pay more anyhow), create a comprehensive social safety net, broadly have a larger role for government in individuals lives.
The republicans seem very concerned with collective security, 'judicial overreach' (any policy they don't like from a judge), and smaller government - this mostly seems to manifest itself as a firm 'no' to any proposed solution from the democrats.
Neither of them (at least at a national level) is focusing on what I see as the elephants in the room:
1. Broad swaths of the country that were prosperous 20 years ago are now not - and enormous areas that were busy 40 years ago are now dead wastelands. If you go out to a rural area, you'll see this, go on a road trip, go thru small towns, the only new buildings (built after ~1974 or so) are usually government or at funded by outside capital, (like McDonalds, or a Wal*Mart) sure, the college towns and county seats are often somewhat prosperous, but not like they were even in the 80's. If you look in third and fourth tier cities, you see similar trends.
2. In either place, rural or urban, its also very very hard for the young to find a good job, with or without a college degree - this has a multitude of causes - from we're teaching our youth the wrong things, to companies expecting inexperienced workers to come magically all trained up for the job - this topic alone is a couple thousand words - just suffice it to say, something is wrong.
Neither party is really speaking to this, they broadly don't see outside the beltway - I blame free trade, one size fits all regulation, and excessive defense spending (instead of say, infrastructure) for this malaise - I believe very strongly unless we fix these problems, they will come to breach the very foundations of our republic and we may end up with a much worse system than we have now.
This is how it works: take a platform based on issues and policy like the one you just sketched out, get the politicians who support it elected, and then let them horse trade to actualize some portion of your platform. Gain credibility, rinse, wash, repeat.
Nomination of supreme court justices that take back decades of progress.
Starting new and unnecessary wars, making the geopolitical situation more dangerous and unstable : George W started 2 of them, didn't finish, and we're still dealing with the mess.
Have a leader who is a laughing stock, much like Berlusconi was in Italy.
In other words keep the homeland safe without initiating unprovoked wars and demand allies pay their fair share of expenditures for keeping _their_ territorial integrity. So western Europe, Japan, S Korea, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, etc.
Maybe Trump really is looking forward to a conflict to commit such things, or he's realistic in that if his admin did get onto one, he's willing to admit the consequences.
The one I'd fear would be Cruz who is/was or wanted to sound like a warmonger.
A very significant fraction of Democrats aren't "fine" with the candidate you are referring to, even to the extent of seeing that candidate as a tolerable choice.
(I find her frightening, but Trump terrifying, for different reasons.)
Which would be more hawkish in practice is hard to guess.
You think progress should be achieved by changing the interpretation of existing law? Odd view.
How many politicians run and win on that line? Maybe if you want actual change, you should elect candidates who have something more substantive to offer than being disgruntled and politically incorrect. Politics seems to be the only profession where having qualifications for the job disqualifies you for the job.
I know it's impossible for the Republican party to do that now, because they've hitched their wagon to a narcissistic cryptofascist orangutan, but maybe next time.
He won't even back down when reality hits him smack in the face. He is the king of his own world and does not even acknowledge the existence of a world outside his own.
Ask Hindenburg how well it works out to hand over power to authoritarian narcissists in the hopes that governance will somehow tame them.
Trump is actually a great candidate for the neoreactionaries: an apolitical strongman with barely veiled ambitions for unchallenged sovereignty. I'm surprised Mencius Moldbug isn't on the delegate slate as well.
FWIW, I've had some success persuading conventional Republicans to write in Hillary Clinton as a protest candidate in the upcoming California primary.
The underlying reason for which I think Thiel might support Trump is that Trump is ultimately a businessman, like Thiel, and one in the messy business of real estate development at that. (For a fun fairly anti-Trump piece that could also read as support: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/19/book-review-the-art-of-...) A common NRx thread is that pretty much any chief executive (which includes military generals) would do a better job at being President (and even better King) than the more traditional list of possibilities like lawyers and professors.
Which is immediately disproven by the disastrous presidency of our first "MBA President" GWB. (See the fellating articles before people realized how awful he would be at managing the country[1])
[1] - http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2004/08/the_first_mb...
"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."
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...
Fits right in with Trump.
How's the seasteading going btw?
Of course the real question is why Thiel would be a Republican delegate at all. Does he not have better things to do than carry water for a bunch of dimwits and apparatchiks?
To be specific.
- Increased federal regulation. Especially especially around restrictions of foreign trade. China/ Korea etc.
-Speech restrictions. Trump has advocated new laws against the press and others than disparage him (i.e. those small hands jokes for example or like Bill Maher- called him son of a chimp and was sued- trump lost and wants to change the laws so he'd win)
-Intervention in leading American business sourcing and investment decisions. Carrier AC is an example and of course Apple.
- Pro Gun control. This is in direct contrast to libertarian views. They dont want any rules from the government on gun control.
Now one could argue that Trump has a non interventionist military policy which is a traditional libertarian view. However, Bush ran on that platform in 2000 but becasue he was so inexperienced he ended up started several large wars including Iraq which was a dramatic failure. Trump is less experienced than Bush was so it's possible he is at a high risk of entering new wars as well.
There is zero about trump that has anything to do with being a libertarian. That's the puzzling part.
While he has certainly made pro-gun-control statements in the past, Trump's currently stated position on guns is fairly strongly pro-gun.
Neoreactionaries like the idea of government by CEO.
So Trump's strongman misogynistic views would be a natural fit if Thiel has indeed become more neoreactionary.
The problem is that neoreactionaries are secretive, so Thiel is never going to come out and say he's a neoreactionary.
Its not that surprising. While there is a lot of genuine libertarianism, there are also plenty of what superficially seem to be libertarians that don't really oppose authoritarian government, they only oppose the way they perceive their present government using authority, and would be quite happy with an authoritarian government that also shared their policy preferences.
Right-libertarians that turn out to really be right-authoritarians that just don't want a government left of their own position to exercise authority are common enough that I'm not surprised when another one pops up.
Where do you get this characterization from? His own words? Thiel has been arming secretive states with high-tech software for a while now. Thiel's prior actions revealed him to be a statist. Supporting a candidate who wants to build a large border wall and wants to kick people out of the country based on their thoughts (religion, for example) while claiming to be a libertarian is laughable (I hope you are laughing now too).
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=thiel&sort=byDate&prefix&page=...
Note: this is one of the few that doesn't have "Thiel" in the title.